Kids.
Two of them.
Christ. Like one wasn’t bad enough.
As he sipped his water, he watched Dylan assemble a baffling collection of items. A box of crackers from the cabinet. A block of cheddar cheese from the fridge. Chocolate syrup. A knife, presumably for the cheese.
“Anyway, if you do have a thing for Miranda because she reminds you of Missy, that’s perfectly healthy.”
Seth sighed. “Do you realize you have absolutely no credibility right now?”
“Why not?” Dylan added a box of sugar cubes to the growing pile in his hands.
“Because you’re walking around the kitchen with your cock flapping in the wind like the American flag.”
“What can I say? My dick’s a patriot.”
Seth snorted. “Yeah, I’m sure you—okay, seriously, what the fuck are you gonna do with all that stuff?” he demanded as Dylan grabbed a pack of toothpicks and a saltshaker from the cupboard.
His roommate strode toward the kitchen doorway. “Some of this is for eating, the rest is props.”
“Please tell me you have a girl in your room.”
“Duh.”
“Thank God, because I just pictured you drizzling chocolate syrup over your own balls, and almost threw up.”
“Quit fantasizing about my balls. Pervert.” Dylan tossed one final grin over his shoulder before disappearing.
Seth chugged the rest of his water. He left the kitchen, peeling off his black T-shirt as he made his way to the bathroom. Considering the relentless throbbing down below, he really ought to be taking a cold shower, but when he yanked his jeans off, the erection that popped up and slapped his abs was impossible to ignore.
Screw it. One way or another, he was getting some relief tonight.
Two minutes later, he dunked his head under the shower spray, letting the hot water slide down his face and neck. Rivulets coursed down his chest and dripped onto his hard cock, making it ache even more.
With a strangled groan, he leaned forward and rested his right forearm on the tiled wall. Then he brought his left hand to his groin and encircled his stiff shaft. At that first stroke, a shudder of anticipation racked his body.
Christ. He needed this. He hadn’t been with a woman in two months, not since he’d picked up that cute tattooed redhead at a bar after another one of Miranda’s rejections. He’d brought the woman home and screwed her all night long—and yet the encounter had left him entirely unsatisfied. He’d tried again a week later, cozying up to one of the ladies Dylan had come home with, but try as he might, he hadn’t been able to muster up any enthusiasm. Or an erection.
Miranda, damn her, had ruined him for all other women. He needed to fuck her, ASAP, before he completely lost his mojo.
Every muscle in his body tightened as he worked his cock, jacking it in a fast, furious rhythm, moving his hips to match the frantic pace he’d set. Steam filled the shower stall. His breath came out in harsh pants.
An image of Miranda’s tight ass flashed across his mind. Shit, she had a great ass. Looked particularly juicy in a pair of black tights. And her tits… His hand moved faster, mouth filling with saliva as he pictured those round, perky breasts bouncing beneath her tank top each time she walked up and down the bar counter.
The base of his spine began to tingle, all the blood in his body migrating south to pulse between his legs.
“Fuck,” he mumbled. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”
He came with a ragged grunt that bounced off the walls. A rush of pleasure flew through him, and his hand went still as hot jets shot out of his dick and landed on the tub floor.
After he caught his breath, he uncurled his fist and let his hand fall to his side. Damn it. Not enough. He didn’t feel an ounce of relief. The climax had been good, but his erection refused to subside. Stiff shaft, tight balls and, holy shit, but the anticipation was building again. The pressure that had just been blown to smithereens began to re-form into a knot of sexual desperation that throbbed in his groin.
“Son of a bitch,” he mumbled.
Smothering a groan, he brought his hand back to his dick and got ready for a repeat performance.
Cursing Miranda Breslin the entire time.
* * *
“Sorry, honey. I was chatting with my roommate.” Dylan entered his bedroom and flashed his trademark ladies’-man smile at the naked girl in his bed.
The blonde giggled as she studied the various food items in his hands. “You weren’t kidding about the chocolate syrup.”
“I never kid about chocolate syrup.”
He sank on the edge of the bed and dropped the supplies on the patterned bedspread. Next to him, Kelly scooted closer and reached for the plastic Hershey’s bottle. She popped the lid with her red-manicured fingers. “So what do you say, sailor? Feel like getting dirty?”
“Me? Uh-uh, baby doll, you’re the one getting dirty.”
He swiped the bottle from her hand and had her flat on her back in the blink of an eye, eliciting a delighted shriek from her pouty lips. He wrapped his fingers around the bottle, turned it upside down, and squeezed. Chocolate sauce trickled onto Kelly’s bare breasts.
“And you’ll be getting sticky,” he rasped, dipping his head and letting his mouth hover over her delectable double-Ds. The girl was built like a Playboy Bunny, all tits and ass and long golden limbs.
Dylan licked a drop of syrup off the tip of one pearly-pink nipple. “And wet,” he murmured. Another lick. “I think you’ll get pretty wet too.”
With a moan, she grabbed his hand and shoved it between her legs. “Already am,” she said breathlessly.
He trailed his finger along her slick folds, then pushed it into her pussy. He groaned. Yep, she was wet. Very, very wet. He’d been so damn bored all damn day, but this, right now, totally made up for it. No-strings sex with a cute girl who didn’t mind getting a little kinky? Could anyone say living the dream?
Kelly squealed as he grabbed hold of her thighs and shoved them apart. He lowered his head and brought his mouth to her core, flicking his tongue over her clit, the taste of chocolate and sex infusing his taste buds.
“Mmmm, tastes good,” he murmured, working her tight channel with two fingers while he latched his mouth on that swollen nub and sucked.
Moaning, she rested her hands on his head to keep him in place. Right. Like he was going anywhere.
“More,” she pleaded, rocking her hips faster.
He fingered her harder and rode out the resulting orgasm, his own arousal heightening at the sexy sounds she made and the way she moaned his name, over and over. When she grew still, a sleepy smile stretching across her face, he reached for the condom on the bedside table and tore open the package.
He’d just rolled the latex onto his erection when his cell phone rang.
“Shit,” he said with a sigh. He grabbed the phone and studied the screen, his irritation transforming into a knot of worry. His brother’s number was flashing on the display. And since it was three in the morning, he couldn’t think of any reason Chris would be calling other than to deliver bad news.
With growing alarm, he signaled to Kelly that he needed to take the call, ignored her disappointed look, and pressed the Talk button.
“What’s wrong?” he demanded in lieu of a greeting.
His brother’s answering laughter brought a rush of relief. Chris wouldn’t be laughing if he was calling with bad news.
“Nothing’s wrong,” Chris replied. “In fact, everything is very, very right, little brother!”
Loud music and muffled voices in the background made it difficult to hear what Chris was saying, but the guy was slurring, that was for sure.
“Are you drunk?” Dylan asked warily.
Next to him, Kelly slid off the bed and slipped into the white button-down he’d tossed on the chair. “I’m going to use the loo,” she whispered before darting toward the bathroom.
“I might be a little drunk,” Chris admitted. “But a man’s gotta bust out the cha
mpagne when the woman he loves agrees to marry him!”
Dylan’s heart sank to the pit of his stomach like a body chained to a cement block. Oh shit. Had he misheard, or had Chris really just said—
“I’m engaged!”
Yep, he’d heard right.
“To…uh, Claire?” he had to ask.
More laughter filled his eardrums. “Of course to Claire! Who the hell else would I propose to?”
Um, anyone other than that bitch?
Dylan kept the nasty thought to himself. His older brother didn’t have a clue that he despised—absolutely despised—Chris’s latest girlfriend. Fuck. Make that fiancée. Chris was actually marrying the woman. That snooty, judgmental, prissy, materialistic woman.
Lord, he’d hated Claire McKinley from the moment he’d met her. Chris had brought her along on his last business trip to San Diego, and the three of them had gone to Dylan’s favorite diner for lunch. Everything about Claire had rubbed him the wrong way—the self-righteous glint in her brown eyes, how she’d turned her nose up at the menu as if diner food was utterly beneath her, the way she’d tapped her French-manicured nails on the table like she was dying of boredom. By the time lunch was over, he’d felt like strangling her, and the next two visits hadn’t gone any better.
He had no idea what his brother saw in that woman. She was attractive, sure, but good looks didn’t make up for the whole being-a-total-bitch part.
Show your future sister-in-law some respect…
He blanched as the thought registered. Oh shit. She would be part of the family now.
“So that’s it? Silence? No congratulations?”
Chris sounded so upset that Dylan gulped down a lump of guilt. “Sorry, I was just in shock.” He injected a note of excitement into his tone. “Congrats, man. I can’t believe my big brother is getting married. When’s the big day?”
“We’re thinking December.”
Relief trickled through him. Eight months away. Hopefully Chris would change his mind long before then.
“So I don’t care if you have to beg or bribe every naval officer on the base—you’re getting leave to attend my wedding,” Chris declared. “Can’t have a wedding without the best man, right?”
“You sure you want me standing up there with you? I don’t want to steal your thunder, you know, what with me being so good-looking and all.”
Chris barked out a laugh. “I’m not worried. My future bride only has eyes for me.”
Another blast of music rippled over the extension. It sounded Latin…salsa music?
“Where exactly are you?” Dylan demanded. “Don’t tell me you proposed at a salsa club.”
“No, I proposed at LeBlanc’s,” Chris answered, naming one of the fanciest restaurants in San Francisco. “But Claire wanted to celebrate, so she dragged me here. We’re at that club you and I went to last time you came home.”
Dylan’s eyebrows shot up, even though Chris couldn’t see him. He remembered that particular nightclub catering to a more rowdy crowd, like Dirty Dancing-style shit. Claire had chosen to go there? Seemed like the last place a goody-two-shoes snob like her would pick to celebrate an engagement.
“Anyway, I couldn’t keep the news to myself, and I knew you’d be up, night owl that you are. We’re going over to Mom’s tomorrow morning to tell her.”
He suppressed a sigh. And ten minutes after Chris and Claire left Shanna Wade’s house, she’d be on the phone with her younger son, demanding to know when he was getting married. Dylan adored his mother, and the two of them had always been close, but no matter how many times he told her he wasn’t ready to settle down, she never seemed to hear him.
“Well, at least this will give Mom something to do, planning the wedding,” he told his brother. “She’s been kind of bored and cranky ever since she quit her job.”
There was a beat. “She was bored and cranky even when she had a job.”
“True.”
“Okay, well, it’s late and I’m ready to forcibly remove Claire from the dance floor and take her home,” Chris said with a touch of exasperation. “Just wanted to share the good news with my baby bro.”
He rolled his eyes. Only a two-year age difference between him and Chris, yet his brother never failed to act the part of the perpetually wiser older sibling.
“Congratulations again,” he said with fake enthusiasm. “Pass that along to Claire, too.”
“I will. Talk soon.”
After they hung up, Dylan turned his head in time to see Kelly saunter out of the bathroom.
“Everything okay?” The mattress bounced as she hopped back on the bed.
“My older brother’s getting married.”
She smiled, tucking a strand of blonde hair behind her ear. “An impending marriage is typically good news, sailor. You look like someone just died.”
“Something did die,” he grumbled. “My brother’s manhood. Trust me, this chick he’s about to saddle himself with for the rest of his life? She’s god-awful.”
“Speaking of manhood…” Kelly shot a pointed look at his cock, which had gone soft, the condom sagging off the tip.
Great. Now Claire McKinley was destroying his sex life. The way she would destroy Chris’s future.
Okay, that was extreme. Chris’s future wasn’t destroyed. And to be fair, Chris had the tendency to be a goody-two-shoes snob himself. There was a reason Dylan didn’t talk to his brother about his sex life. Some of the shit he was into, Chris would never understand, not in a million years.
“How about you put your womanly charms to use and get me nice and ready again?” Dylan drawled, licking his bottom lip as he met Kelly’s blue eyes.
She licked her own lips, already peeling the unused condom off his shaft as she scrambled into position between his legs. She wrapped her lips around the blunt head of his cock, summoning a groan from deep in his chest. He closed his eyes, but not before he saw her reaching for the discarded Hershey’s bottle.
All thoughts of his brother and Claire McKinley flew out of his head. Let Chris make the mistake of his life. Dylan would help the guy pick up the pieces later, when it all fell apart.
For now, the only thing he needed to concentrate on was the hot suction of Kelly’s mouth as she sucked chocolate syrup off his dick.
3
“In other news,” the Channel 8 news anchor chirped, “the San Diego Zoo welcomed some new residents this morning. Piggy the Lioness gave birth to four healthy cubs. Mother and babies are resting comfortably, and zoo officials hope to reveal the new additions to the public in the next few weeks…”
Miranda tuned out the news report as she stood by the stove, flipping pancakes. Why on earth would anyone name a lioness Piggy? Shaking her head in bafflement, she slid a pancake onto the empty plate on the granite counter.
“Did you hear that, Mom? Piggy had babies!”
She glanced over her shoulder to smile at her daughter, who was sitting at the kitchen table braiding the hair of her favorite doll. “I did hear it,” Miranda confirmed. “What do you say, should we go meet Piggy’s babies?”
“Yeah! Let’s go today!”
“We can’t. Didn’t you hear what the lady on the TV said? Piggy and her cubs are resting right now. We have to wait until the zoo says we can see them.”
Sophie’s bottom lip dropped out in a pout. “Fine.”
Turning off the burners, Miranda carried two plates to the table and placed one in front of Sophie, the other by the empty chair. She headed back to the counter to grab her own plate, then joined Sophie at the table.
“Jase!” she called. “Breakfast!”
When her son didn’t come skidding through the doorway, Miranda frowned. “What’s he up to?” she asked her daughter.
Sophie’s expression was too angelic to be trusted. “I dunno.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Spill, missy. You know I don’t like it when you two keep secrets.”
“But, Mommy, I really don’t know.” Sophie had the nerv
e to bat her eyelashes, all liquid brown eyes and innocence.
Miranda was used to it. Her twins loved only one other person more than they loved their mom: each other.
Whatever bond they’d formed in utero had followed them right out of the womb—they always had each other’s backs, no matter what, and Miranda could swear they possessed the ability to read each other’s minds. Maybe even communicate telepathically. As toddlers, they could be in the same room for hours without saying a single word. They conducted entire conversations with their eyes, and if anyone tried to hurt one of them? The other came running to the rescue.
Normally, she loved the idea that her kids were so intrinsically connected, but at times like these, when one of them was up to no good, it was impossible to get them to turn on each other.
“Soph, if you don’t tell me what Jason is doing, I might have to reconsider giving you a solo in the summer recital…”
Sophie tilted her head pensively, looking far too mature for her six years. “You wouldn’t.” Her voice was matter-of-fact. “Everyone gets a solo in the summer recital and I know you wanna see me do the solo ’cause I heard you tell Ginny that.” She beamed. “And you told Ginny you loved my enfoozeeazim.”
“Enthusiasm,” Miranda corrected, choking down laughter. It figured that Sophie would see through the empty threat. The girl was way too smart for her own good.
“Here I am! Sorry! I was doin’ stuff!”
Jason flew into the room with the same level of intense enfoozeeazim he threw into everything he did. The kid was a bundle of energy and always had been, unlike Sophie, who was more laid-back. Sophie was also capable of extreme focus, which she displayed during ballet class, while Jason’s head was all over the place, bouncing from subject to subject in a whirlwind pace that made Miranda dizzy. Fortunately, his short attention span wasn’t hurting him in school; the twins’ kindergarten teacher assured her both kids were doing well. In fact, their reading and writing levels could even be considered advanced for their age.
“And what kind of stuff were you doing?” Miranda asked as she popped open the cap of the maple syrup bottle. She drew her trademark syrup happy face on Sophie’s pancakes, which made her daughter grin, then did the same for her son, who was doing his damnedest to avoid her gaze.
Out of Uniform Box Set: Books 4-6 plus 2 Bonus Novellas Page 3