A Fragile Family
Page 16
Tayler’s fluffy fur brushed against her, tickling, but shining glossy onyx in the odd light. Wherever Myles was, he must be okay. Ashley could hear his British accents underneath the screaming of Jack, and then that faded away to gray, then white, and then nothing.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Sometime home of Myles Brooks-Montgomery
Darke Woods Road
Talking Rock, GA
“Sleep, Sherman, okay, luv?” Myles squatted next to the other man’s bed, stroking those silver-soft curls. He resisted the urge to touch the paper white bandage, a dot of red at the center of the gauze. It was merely a deep, curving graze, but so close to a major artery. It had to hurt, and had cost Sherman too much blood and too much pain.
The younger man was heavily drugged but resisting for all he was worth, it seemed, trying to stay awake. “Ash is okay, Myles? Tayler?” he slurred, barely able to form words.
“All is well, pet,” he repeated one more time, finding it oddly easy to be patient under the circumstances.
“Shot! You!” Suddenly, Sherman was groping at his chest, clumsily searching for bullet holes.
“Shh, s’okay.” He lifted Sherman’s questing hand, pressing it flat to his unmarked chest, so glad he’d discarded what he’d been wearing. A clean jersey meeting Sherman’s frantic fingers. “I’m hard to hurt, luv. The gene-splicing, remember?”
“Kay,” Sherman subsided with a sigh, his eyes fluttering closed, breathing evening out.
“Apparently seventh time’s the charm then,” Myles murmured, dropping a kiss on the slightly gaunt cheek of the man he’d briefly considered his nemesis.
He shrugged, pulling the door mostly shut, shaking his head at the oddities of life.
Sherman Landon was almost thirty, not thirteen, but somehow, Myles felt like a proud parent when he looked at the man.
He didn’t feel as if he’d done anything to shape who Sherman was, but he did feel the love swell in his heart at the thought of the younger man, his posturing, his protective nature, his brilliant mind and his caring heart. Sherman was family—that was irrevocably that.
And now, Myles smiled to himself with purpose, it was time to lavish some attention on the rest of his immediate family.
“How are you, Princess?” Myles murmured, arms snaking around her trim waist as he rested his chin on her shoulder. She stood by the bedroom window, leaning back into him now, her body molding to his.
“Glad you’re here,” Ashley sighed. “Sherman okay?” she tensed, turning in his arms.
“He’s fine and sleeping.” Leaning down, Myles’ hands eased up to cup her face and his mouth covered hers, tasting, taking, savoring.
“Mmm,” Ashley purred against him, wrapping her arms around his waist and cupping his shoulders.
“Per’aps it’s time to tuck you in as well, Princess?” he growled softly, swinging her up into his arms before she could protest.
Laying her down gently onto the bed, Myles came down on top of her, covering her, spreading over her, his hands coming up and stripping away the loose t-shirt she wore to sleep in.
“Mmm, Myles,” Ashley husked, arching against him. “Make love to me, don’t tease me tonight,” she begged him, her small hands stroking up under his shirt, tugging at it.
“Yes, luv,” Myles agreed. “No long teasing tonight,” he promised.
Moving to his knees, Myles shrugged out of his shirt and skimmed his trousers and shorts off, then leaning in to strip her tiny thong panties off as well.
The wind ebbed and roared, rattling the windows, but Myles ignored it, all of his attention fixed on Ashley. She, in turn was focused hungrily on him, her small hand immediately wrapping around his rigid erection, pushing his hunger for her even higher.
“Want you, Myles, right now,” she groaned, bending her knees and parting her thighs, spreading her legs wide. “Now!” she demanded, pulling him toward her, until his dripping cock brushed her folds.
“Oh, god, Princess,” he groaned, lining up and sinking in easily, her velvet heat wrapping around him, warming him.
She groaned, wrapping her legs around his, body arching like a bow. He began to move slowly, pulling out, sinking in, sliding out, gliding in. She rose to meet him with every thrust now, cupping his buttocks, pulling at him.
“More, Myles,” she groaned, her legs lifting to wrap around his waist. “More!” she insisted, delivering a stinging slap to his butt cheek.
Shocked, and then gone, Myles scooped her legs around his forearms, spreading her wider as he plunged deep, pumping into her high, hard and fast.
“Mine!” he rumbled, his mouth clamping down on her shoulder.
“Yeah! Yeah!” she urged him, her fingernails biting into him, her hips pistoning against his. “Mine!” she growled against him, biting him hard, just above the nipple.
“Princess!” he roared, slamming home one last time, his seed erupting, shot from him, squeezed from him, as he emptied himself into her clenching channel.
He collapsed atop her, rolling to the side and taking her with him, stroking her and cuddling as his body cooled and calmed.
“Amazing,” Ashley sighed, snuggling in.
“Quite,” Myles sighed, taking her mouth in a drowning, worshiping kiss. “Gonna combust if we do that again,” he murmured after he pulled back.
“It’s worth the risk,” she sighed.
“Yeah,” he agreed, still dazed.
“Myles?” she ventured after long minutes of quiet. He was embarrassed to find himself dozing.
“Yes, Princess?” he mumbled, trying to wake up a bit more.
“What happened with that man?” she shifted against him. “I think…I guess I passed out.”
“You and Sherman both passed out,” he confirmed, settling her more firmly against him. She’d need to satisfy herself before she could move on. Additionally, so would Sherman. “Jacob got a nosebleed, and Tayler seems to be okay, but…thoughtful, y’know?”
She nodded. “So, I didn’t ask, except about Rafe, what happened to anyone else. Besides Lilith, I mean. She’s still in surgery or…?” she let that trial off.
“Lilith died on the table while you were in the shower and Marc was shooting Sherman up with happy drugs. Apparently, the bullet punctured her liver and toxic stuff got in her bloodstream.” He expected that Ashley knew more about that than he did, but she’d get the gist.
“I don’t know how Sherman is going to be about that, Myles. He loved her—she hurt him, but he loved her.” Her face was sad and a tear dripped down, silver in the low light. He leaned down and sipped it up, kissing her lips lightly.
“We’ll just love him and be patient with him, and help him through it, hmm?” he smiled hopefully.
“I always knew you loved me, Myles, but…” she shook her head, possibly afraid that her words would be misinterpreted. Myles wasn’t worried. There was too much good to be had to worry about an occasional wrong word.
“Loving you, Princess. You taught me to love everyone else. I always had my sister Mya, and eventually, the pack. But you, you’re magic. I love you.” He couldn’t say anything else, and she didn’t seem to want to.
Her lips found his and lingered, clinging, not letting go. “I love you so much,” she mumbled against his lips, kissing, sighing against him. He stroked her long hair, pushing it back from the perfect lines of her face, still kissing lightly, tenderly tracing her jaw. A puff of breath evening out to regular exhalations told him that she’d fallen asleep. He knew it was only a matter of minutes for him as well.
Epilogue
Home of Tracey and Tavist Darke
Darke Woods Road
Talking Rock, GA
“He’s dead then?” T Paul asked Tav, his eyes straying over to Ashley who was sitting with her Aunt Lacey, Aunt Bernadette, and her mother.
Tav sighed, relief pouring off of him. “Yeah, finally, Jack Asshole is dead,” he growled, keeping his voice down. “He fuckin’ shot Myles four times before
Myles dropped him.”
T Paul squeezed Myles’ shoulder, noting that the younger Were’s eyes kept drifting between his mate Ashley, Sherman, and once in awhile, Missy and Heidi.
“I’m just glad that Tracey and my princess are both safe from him now,” Myles murmured.
“Me, too, Myles,” Tav slid an arm across his shoulders. “Sherman seems shell-shocked, though.”
“He will for a while, I think,” Myles agreed. “He nearly starved to death in a cave with his best friend, a bunch of strangers and three dead bodies. Next, he finds out he’s married to a werewolf, now deceased. And then an evening with evil. My lad deserves a quiet breakdown.”
“Breathe,” Kameron murmured, winking at Myles. Myles rolled his eyes but smiled back.
“Damned shame about the psychiatrist,” Mik shook his head. “She was a friend of Maisie’s. The service is tomorrow.”
“Tayler wants to go,” Marc shrugged. “The family ought to have a presence, for sure.”
“Tracey and I are gonna go,” Tav murmured. “I don’t think Sherman and Ashley…”
“Think we’ll play it by ear,” Myles agreed noncommittally.
“So the big guy? Who was he, and what happened to him?” T Paul asked, his eyes sweeping the room again.
“Apparently, he was in prison with Aschtholdt,” Tav answered. “From what we’ve gleaned, they had a special relationship.”
“Aschtholdt smelled like him, and there were…other little bits of…evidence. He’s been locked up, a maximum security psych facility,” Marc supplied, albeit haltingly.
“He’s in poor health—possible aneurysm.”
“And nobody knows what happened with him and Tayler and everyone?” He was so damned glad to be off that plane, but so frustrated that his pack had needed him and he had been trapped in airline hell.
Rafe sat, stretched out on the couch, his injured leg propped on the bent knee of Sherman who sat on the other end of the couch. Tayler was stretched along Rafe’s left side, close so he could be sure his big brother was fine.
Tracey, Lacey, Bernadette, and Ashley all sat around the kitchen island, easily visible from where all the men sat. Missy and Heidi sat with them, but were oddly silent; sometimes sharing a word with each other, and often looking over at either Rafe or Sherman, and T Paul couldn’t decide which.
He wondered with a start if one of those young men was meant to be a mate to one of his daughters or perhaps both? Hard to say because until they marked or were marked by a mate, it wasn’t obvious—there wasn’t a clear scent. If one of the girls was meant for Rafe, the boy at least would know it. But the twins hadn’t gotten any closer to him than they already were. They were so interchangeable. Maybe they both liked the same man?
Myles stared speculatively at them and then locked eyes with T Paul. “What’s up with your matched set and my boy?” Myles demanded, low and easy, but still insistent.
“I don’t rightly know,” T Paul answered, honestly.
Myles turned to Jacob and arched a brow. T Paul turned, realizing that Jacob would certainly know if anyone did. Hadn’t he been the first to say that Sherman was meant for someone in the pack? That’s what Tav had told him…
But Jacob smiled secretively and shook his head, fathomless eyes answering no questions. Myles glared, gaze narrowed on Jacob, to no avail.
Mik snickered. “Good luck getting a straight answer out of a seer,” he chuckled.
“He won’t even tell us what happened to Becker and he was there!”
“It wasn’t anything much,” Jacob smiled evasively. “He just got to listen to us sing.”
Montgomery Family Chart
Patriarch, Matriarch
Mik & Elke Montgomery
Montgomery Family 1: Acting Like Family
Riker Montgomery (twin of Lakon)
Bethany Black
Children:
Kameron (one son, Tinker)(twin of Kaden)
Kaden (twin of Kameron)
Kirin
Montgomery Family 2: Family Harmony
Lakon Montgomery (twin of Riker)
Mya Brooks (twin of Myles)
Children: (Triplets)
Lynkon
Jaymes
Mikhel
Montgomery Family 3: A Family Portrait
Tavist Darke
Tracey West
Children:
Ashley
Jacob
Christopher
Victoria (twin of Serena)
Serena (twin of Victoria)
Montgomery Family 4: Managing A Family
Yancey Livingston
Philomela Crossland
Montgomery Family 5: Family Doctor
Marc Fonteneax
Bernadette Reeves
Children:
Tayler
Rafe
T Paul Fonteneax
Lacey
Children:
Missy (twin of Heidi)
Heidi (twin of Missy)
Montgomery Family Legacies 1: A Fragile Family
Myles Brooks-Montgomery (twin of Mya)
Ashley West
Sherman Landon
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