May Contain Wine

by Vale, Lani Lynn

  “Now, tell me why, exactly, you have to have transfusions. Is that why you’re so sleepy? Or is it something else?” Avery asked. “I know you explained a bit about it before, but it doesn’t make sense to me completely.”

  Instead of me having to answer, Ares did.

  “Red blood cells carry oxygen from the lungs to the rest of the body. If you have anemia, your body doesn’t get enough oxygen-rich blood, which can lead to tiredness and weakness. Also, an irregular heartbeat, headaches, and other things such as her being cold all the time,” Ares explained.

  “Is that why you’re wearing a sweater when it’s hot as balls outside?” Rowen snickered.

  “Yep,” I said. “I’m always cold.”

  “You should steal Louis’ SWAT hoodie. It’s really warm, and would fit you like a parka,” Avery suggested.

  “Oh, I agree,” Rowen said. “Even pregnant with Dax’s fathead, it still fits me. And she’s right. It’s super soft and warm.”

  I grinned at that.

  “So back to the anemia thing. Do they say they have a cause for it?” Avery asked.

  I shook my head, my hair brushing against Ares’ foot, causing it to twitch.

  “As of right now, they don’t. Just something that I have to deal with. Ultimately, it’s my period that makes my anemia worse to the point that I’m needing transfusions,” I answered. “They’re ‘abnormally heavy’ according to the doctor. Years ago, when I was a teen, we tried multiple birth controls to hopefully help control them, but nothing worked. Not until I started getting regular blood transfusions.”

  Ashe shook her head. “Maybe you should just get pregnant. It might solve a whole lot of things.”

  “Might,” Ashe said suggestively. “I can just see you suggesting this to Louis. ‘Hey, Louie? Can we have a baby? I mean, you’re already donating blood to me once every month or two. Why not your sperm? It’s for a good cause.’”

  I cracked up but stopped to yawn halfway through my laugh. “Yeah, let’s tell him that.”

  “Didn’t we just do that with the texting thing earlier?” Avery asked.

  I yawned again. “Yep.”

  “Tell him you were serious.” Avery urged.

  Based on the look on his face, I just fucking might.

  The women in the room kept talking, but I eventually went so still that I just couldn’t fight it anymore. With my head leaning against Ares’s calf, I fell asleep, sitting up, in the middle of a bar brawl.

  Chapter 8

  When you make me mad, I look at your photo through a fork and pretend you’re in jail. It heals me spiritually.

  -Text from Calloway to Louis

  Calloway

  What felt like hours later, I felt myself being lifted from my spot.

  “Thanks, man. My leg was going to sleep,” I heard Ares say.

  I didn’t bother opening my eyes. Couldn’t really, even if I wanted to. I was just that tired.

  “Glad I found the keys,” Louis mumbled.

  “What’s wrong with her?” a familiar voice asked.

  I peeled my eyes open by sheer force of will to see Malachi standing there with a worried look on his face.

  “Nothing,” Louis answered. “She’s just tired.”

  Malachi frowned, his eyes meeting mine.

  So I decided for levity and stuck my tongue out at him.

  He grinned. “She’s awake.”

  Louis’ head tipped down, his eyes amused.

  “You want to walk?” he asked curiously.

  I shook my head. “Not particularly. Oh, and I’m also freezing my ass off. That bathroom tiled floor was cold as hell.”

  In fact, I couldn’t feel my ass.

  “I have a hoodie in the truck, I think. It might not be clean,” he said as he led us out of the bathroom.

  As we moved through the now mostly empty bar, I saw a few familiar faces.

  Downy was talking to my dad and Luke by the front door that we were heading toward. Nico was talking to his boys by the bar—both of which had beers in their hands.

  Michael, Foster, and Miller were bellied up to the bar reaching for beers.

  “Y’all were all worried about drinking tonight, and look where it left you,” Ares said as she walked up to Hayes and pressed herself against him.

  Hayes wrapped his arm around Ares’ shoulder and pressed a light kiss on her cheek. Ares pouted at him, but he jerked his head in the direction of her dad. “Yeah, I’m not doing any more of that until I get home.”

  I snickered. “Wiener.”

  Hayes’ eyes came to me where I was being held bridal style in Louis’ arms.

  “So you pick locks?” he asked curiously.

  I patted Louis’ arm. As much as I liked being there, and despite being tired as hell still, I didn’t like appearing lazy in front of half the police department.

  “Put me down, please,” I whispered.

  Louis did but didn’t remove his arm from around my waist.

  “I pick locks because these guys said that I couldn’t.” I gestured to Louis, Booth, and Bourne since they were closest.

  “Hey,” Booth said upon hearing my comment. “I’ll have you know that it wasn’t me that said you couldn’t. I knew you could.”

  “We all knew you could,” Louis rumbled from behind me.

  I grinned.

  “You really shouldn’t be carrying that lockpick around,” Dad muttered. “One day it’s gonna get you in trouble.”

  Maybe. Maybe not.

  But what was the point of having a lock kit if you couldn’t carry it around?

  “What took y’all so long to get here?” I asked. “I was in that bathroom for what felt like forever.”

  “It was an hour,” Louis said with amusement, his arm moving so that I was covering his front a little better.

  I knew why when I felt his erection being pressed up against my ass.

  Lips twitching, I looked at the destroyed bar around me.

  “So who were the men that came in and started all of this?” I asked.

  “A couple of men that were drunk off their ass coming from the Longview Lumberjacks game,” Nathan muttered as he came up to stand beside Louis and me. “Apparently, upon seeing me at the bar, they decided that they didn’t much like how I decided to quit playing baseball instead of being traded to the Longview Lumberjacks.”

  I looked over at him.

  “Why did you do that?” I asked curiously.

  He looked down at where I was standing in Louis’ arms, then shrugged. “I was tired of playing.”

  My brows rose. Was that all? Or was it that Reggie had come back to Kilgore and was home for good?

  Reggie, the girl he loved to hate.

  Without actually flat-out asking him about Reggie, though, I decided that I’d deal with his non-answer.

  Looking toward my dad, I said, “I’m leaving.”

  Dad’s lips twitched. “I assumed.”

  “Are we still doing that dinner this weekend?” I asked.

  Dad’s eyes filled with laughter. “We do ‘that dinner’ every last Saturday of the month, rain or shine,” he said. “And you know this.”

  I sighed.

  I did know this.

  Which was why I was hoping his answer would change.

  But, this month, things would be different.

  The ‘dinner’ in question was actually a barbeque and get-together of all the SWAT families. We were highly encouraged to come by our parents, and it’d been something that I dreaded going to since Louis had broken it off with me.

  But things would be different this month.

  Louis wouldn’t be someone I avoided at all costs, now would he?

  Slipping out of Louis’ arms, I walked to my dad and gave him a hard hug that he returned in kind. “Love you.”

  He dropped a kiss onto my forehead. “Love you, too, baby girl.”

  Before I could talk m
yself out of it, I walked back to Louis and let him wrap his arm back around me.

  Then we walked out of the bar, me leaning heavily into my man.

  “That was fun,” Louis joked as he led me to his truck. “Right?”

  I snorted and rubbed my nose against his shoulder, relishing in the way he smelled.

  Pine and man.

  My favorite combination.

  He’d smelled like that for as long as I could remember, and the distinct scent that was all Louis made me feel even more calm than I already was.

  Which was weird seeing as I should’ve maybe been slightly freaking out due to the fight that’d been happening moments earlier.

  “How many people did you arrest?” I asked curiously.

  “Twenty-four.” He grinned. “Three got let go because they were just there, not participating. Those two women that tried to start a fight with y’all went, too. They’re going to have some explaining to do. But it’s doubtful they’ll be held.”

  Seconds after that last word left his mouth, Louis’ mouth came down on my throat, nuzzling there as if he had every right to do so.

  And he did.

  His lips against my flesh made me shiver, and my nipples harden. My eyes narrowed into half slits as he guided me the rest of the way.

  Just as Louis and I made it to his truck, a familiar face rounded the corner of our vehicle and went to his own that was parked a few spaces down from us. Since we shared the bar parking lot with a popular teen hangout, I didn’t think much of it.

  But I also tried really hard not to make eye contact with the kid, hoping that he wouldn’t see me.

  Louis ignored him, too, as he continued to press kisses down the curve of my neck.

  Oh, Louis was aware that someone was there, but he didn’t care.

  And normally I wouldn’t either.

  But when it was Romeo staring at me with disgust and annoyance on his face, I tended to tense up.

  Not because I cared what he thought, but because I just plain didn’t want him looking at me.

  I looked at Louis’ collarbone, and honestly mostly forgot all about him when Louis pressed me up against the truck and I felt the hard length of his erection. “Come home with me.”

  I thought about that for a long second but ultimately nodded my head yes.

  “I can come home with you,” I said. “But we’re going to have to get me home early in the morning so I can get to school on time.”

  There were exactly eighteen more days of school, and I was literally counting them down.

  The idea of not having to get out of Louis’ bed in the morning was very appealing.

  “Cool.” He grinned.

  A scraping sound had him looking over his shoulder at Romeo. Romeo who wasn’t making a secret that he was watching.

  “Let’s go,” I whispered, squeezing Louis’ hand. “I’m ready.”

  “Aww, that’s a cute puppy.” I pointed across the street at a dog that was happily walking down the street, tongue lolled out as if he didn’t have a care in the world.

  The dog darted into the alley, and I dropped my hand to look over at Louis.

  “You know what else was cute?” I asked.

  He raised a brow at me and started his truck.

  “What?” he asked.

  “The way you didn’t want Malachi to help me.” I grinned at him. “Very cute.”

  We drove to Louis’ place without a backward glance at Romeo.

  “You know what else is cute?” I asked.

  “What?” he rumbled.

  “The way that you think I didn’t notice that big erection in front of my dad.” I laughed.

  “It’s awkward, okay?” he said. “I mean, this is your dad. I want him to continue liking me.”

  “Who says that he likes you?” I asked curiously. “You broke his little girl’s heart when she was only seventeen.”

  His eyes turned serious.

  “And he’s watched me regret it every day since,” he said. “I didn’t hide my attraction to you, nor my feelings when you would ignore me. I wore my heart on my sleeve, and the only one that didn’t notice was you because you were too busy ignoring me.”

  I immediately felt bad for bringing it up. More so, I wished that I could go back in time and notice. Pay attention to Louis’ face. Because maybe if I had, things would be different. Maybe I would be in a different place right now.

  “This Sunday’s dinner is going to be a whole lot different than last time’s,” I said softly. “I promise not to ignore you anymore.”

  He turned the corner and we arrived in the little subdivision that I’d dubbed ‘cop row.’ It was a line of duplexes that a lot of the younger SWAT guys stayed in. It was filled completely with police officers.

  There wasn’t a safer place in the entire city, at least that was what I thought, anyway.

  “I like this place,” I said to him. “It’s nice.”

  “It is,” he agreed. “Though, I’d love to have some land again. It’s great because I’m right in the city. My buddies are around. But it’s also worse because I can’t just walk out my back door and take a piss anymore. I have to worry about offending all the ladies that have suddenly started to move in.”

  I snorted. “I’m fairly sure they wouldn’t care.”

  “No,” he agreed. “But their husbands and fiancés and boyfriends would.”

  That was true.

  Then again, now that I thought about it, I really wouldn’t like any of them seeing his dick.

  I squirmed as possessiveness started to take over.

  I really, really didn’t like the idea of Louis being seen by any woman. In all honesty, that possessiveness had always been there. The only thing was, I didn’t have a right to it then. Now, on the other hand…

  “You’re being awfully quiet,” he rumbled softly.

  The soft rumble had me once again squirming in my seat.

  “I was thinking about the fact that I really want to get pissed off at someone seeing you pee,” I admitted. “But then thinking that’s an irrational thing to get pissed off about. Then I started thinking about other things, and yeah.”

  He chuckled softly.

  “Hearing you were out on a date with some man a couple of weeks ago pissed me the hell off,” he admitted. “I’ve been really paying attention to what you’re doing date-wise. You haven’t gone on many, and the ones that you have gone on I’ve always been there in the shadows watching. Willing to do what I had to do to interrupt it if it looked like it was going somewhere. But the fact that I didn’t know about this last one? Yeah, I wasn’t very happy about that.”

  I blinked in surprise.

  On one hand, I was pissed off that he was following me on my dates.

  On the other, it made me irrationally happy that he had.

  I liked that he cared.

  Even more, I liked that he was there in case something went wrong.

  “It was last minute,” I admitted. “Normally I tell Ares… but she was busy, and yeah. The date didn’t go all that well.”

  “Why not?” he asked. “What happened?”

  He parked the car and got out, leaving me to wait until he rounded to my side to answer him.

  “Nothing happened, per se. More like I realized rather quickly that I didn’t want to be on the date. It was a blind date through one of my friends that I graduated nursing school with. And, you’re never going to believe this, but it ended up being with the brother of the kid that drives me nuts at school,” I admitted. “Needless to say, it didn’t go all that well. I almost left during a bathroom break.”

  Before I could get up the front walk, Louis put his arm around me and stared at me thoughtfully.

  “The fact that you went on a date at all burns,” he said. “But I’m really fucking glad that it never went anywhere beyond that one date. I wouldn’t have been happy to find out that it did.”

  I moved my ha
nd up to press against the wall of his chest.

  His heart was slamming inside his rib cage.

  He really was worked up over it.

  “The thing is, Louis…” I moved until I was on tippy toes, and his mouth was close to mine. My eyes were staring directly into his when I said, “Nobody is you.”

  That was when his arms wrapped around me, and I found myself inside his place before I could even blink.

  I gasped, my mouth opening as my head spun with how fast his movements were.

  Seconds ago, we were outside, halfway up his walk. Just a few moments later, he was laying me down onto his bed and following me, his body moving to press wholly against mine.

  His face was in mine as he growled against my mouth.

  “So when do you want to start working on that baby?” he asked teasingly.

  He’d known that the baby text was fake after the fourth one of the SWAT guys received the message. It’d been Ford bursting out into laughter that had them all comparing texts.

  Luckily, we’d all gotten the rest of their responses before they’d figured out that it was a set-up.

  I called his bluff.

  “Right now.”

  His eyes dilated, and for a second, I thought he was going to just thrust right into me without preparing me first—he was that turned on—but then he seemed to gain a bit of control over himself.

  Luckily, the clothes in the way made it impossible to do so, or he probably would have.

  “Get naked,” he ordered.

  I grinned at his urgency but met his with a bit of my own.

  Shoving my pants and underwear off, I started on my shirt and bra, getting stuck halfway when my bra got tangled up with my hair, when I felt his hands on my hips. Seconds later, I felt his mouth on my mound, biting lightly.

  I gasped, my legs instinctively closing, and captured his head with my inner thighs.

  He chuckled against the inside of my thigh, easily overpowering my puny strength, and pushed them wide. Way wider than I’d previously had them, causing my lips to part and the cool air to kiss my overheated skin.

  “Now, bring your hands up and hold them high and wide,” he ordered.

  I finished yanking my shirt and bra off my head, tossed them unceremoniously to the side, and looked down at where Louis was inspecting my pussy. His eyes roved over it as if he wasn’t quite sure where he wanted to start.