by Bethany-Kris
Life with toddlers was not for the weak.
Nope.
“I love you, Tommy,” Abriella murmured, “you know that, right?”
Tommas nodded. “Yeah, babe.”
“Good, so then you won’t mind me telling you that if you don’t fix this shit somehow, I cannot guarantee how much longer that love is going to last.”
Abriella knew her husband wouldn’t even take that personally. She was mostly joking, even if she was serious about the wanting him to fix this whole thing. And no wonder …
They were drawing attention. People waiting at the gate to get on the same plane were now staring at them, and their large group. Eyeing the kids like little bugs they thought were probably going to ruin their flight.
Not that they would be wrong.
Tommas scooped their son up from the ground, and held the boy tightly as he headed for the woman waiting behind a desk at the gate. Abriella followed behind him just because she felt like doing something other than listen to kids scream for another ten minutes. God knew it would take at least that long to get them all calmed down again.
“Thirteen seats just opened up if you had people on a wait list, thanks,” Tommas said.
The woman’s eyes widened. “I beg your—”
“We’re not flying today.”
“Oh, we’re going home?” Abriella asked him.
Tommas gave her a look from the side, grinned, and leaned forward to catch her mouth with his own like nothing was wrong in his world. Like the kids weren’t all melting down around them, and she didn’t have a raging headache.
“We’re not flying on this flight,” he told her. “I have something better in mind. What do I always tell you about trips, huh?”
Abriella grinned. “Always have a backup plan.”
“That’s right, babe.”
It paid to be rich, really.
FOUR
Eve and Theo
EVE
Evelina had never really been a fan of flying. And then once, Theo had taken her out in a small single-engine plane after earning his pilot’s license, and suddenly, she was forced to face that fear head-on. Not that her husband would have made her go out in the plane with him if she was scared, because he wasn’t the type.
But she had wanted to go. She’d wanted so badly to celebrate that moment with him, so she swallowed her fear, and got in the damn plane.
The first ten minutes had been absolutely terrifying. She still remembered how her heart had felt as they climbed higher in that plane. Like if it didn’t stop beating altogether, then it was going to race right out of her chest. But that was the thing about Theo, too. Eve swore the man just knew when she was scared. Like he could feel her fear, or something.
He’d started speaking, his voice echoing through the comms in her ears as the plane leveled out. Soon enough, they’d been in the air for twenty minutes, and Eve was distracted from listening to Theo talk to her as she stared at the beautiful sights below her.
She didn’t mind flying so much after that.
“Not really all that surprised that Tommas had a private jet on stand-by,” Theo murmured beside her. Sitting in the aisle seat so that she could take the window, he had a better view than she did of the rest of the people on the jet. “Although, he could have saved us a lot of trouble today and just directed us there instead.”
Eve laughed as Theo’s hand curved around her thigh under her dress. “I think the point of today was Tommas pointing out we don’t always have the best ideas when it comes to the kids … or I guess, traveling with all of them.”
Theo made a noise under his breath. “That’s fair.”
It wasn’t a lie. They were the only ones in their large group of friends that still, after all this time, were childless. Not that they didn’t enjoy children because they did. They were always the first ones to speak up and take anybody’s kids when they needed a night away. They had three extra bedrooms in their house saved just for their nieces and nephews to use that were filled with toys and things the kids loved.
They just … never wanted their own.
Eve had wondered over time if that might change for them. She waited for that motherly urge to strike that would remind her of the ovaries in her body that had a fucking time clock ticking down.
It never came.
She just didn’t feel the urge to have her own biological children, and she was fine with that. Theo never said anything one way or the other. He had the grandest time taking care of everyone else’s kids, and being the terrible influence that he was.
Whether he wanted to admit it or not, he owned that shit.
The fun uncle.
“Or maybe the lesson was that we shouldn’t all travel with five kids,” Theo said. “Maybe we should just wait until they’re older. At least then, they’ll actually remember these trips.”
Eve made a face. “No—private flights, instead.”
Theo chuckled. “Yeah, all right.”
Because yeah, despite the fact she didn’t want her own kids, she still wanted everybody else’s kids around her. That made her happy.
At least, she didn’t get as defensive anymore when someone else thought to look at her and outright ask, “When are you going to have one?”
Sure, it was invasive. Like their private business or choices was public consumption simply because someone dared to ask about it. But she didn’t get as offended as she used to, and she knew people didn’t really mean any harm when they asked.
Thing was—Eve figured that wasn’t her purpose, or Theo’s. They weren’t put on the earth, or given each other, simply to procreate and bring life to the next generation of their family. They had other things to do. A different purpose, even if they hadn’t quite figured out what that was just yet.
“Hey,” Theo murmured.
Eve glanced over at him. He was grinning in that way of his. A way that told her he was thinking of something fun or bad or a mixture of the two. That had never changed where her husband was concerned.
“What?” she asked.
“Let’s go explore. They’re all passed out. I want to check out this plane.”
Eve arched a brow. “It’s a private jet. You’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all.”
“But not this one, Eve. Come on.”
Theo didn’t give her the chance to argue further. Instead, he tugged her up from the seat, finally allowing Eve a view of the rest of their gang on the plane. Sure enough, it looked like everyone else had finally calmed down, and were all asleep. Even the parents.
“Long day,” she said.
Theo smirked. “It ain’t over, babe.”
“What?”
What was he planning?
Theo was always planning something.
He tugged her along the wide aisle of the private jet until they were at the very back of the plane. Bypassing a sizeable bathroom—for a plane—he pushed open a door at the end that opened up to what looked to be a small office with a double bed against port windows.
Right then, Eve knew.
Knew what he was planning.
Knew why he was smirking.
Fucking man.
Theo closed the door, and didn’t even give Eve the chance to speak before he flicked the lock, and grabbed her. Those hands of his slipped under her dress as his lips attacked hers. A burning, harsh kiss that drove her crazy and took her breath away at the same time. He backed her into the door as he worked on getting her dress higher, never once breaking their kiss.
It was only once her dress was up around her hips that he finally pulled away from the kiss just long enough to wrap his hands around the waistband of her panties, and then yank them down her legs.
“Theo!”
“Hush,” he muttered, kneeling down to kiss a path across her pubic bone. “Don’t want to wake up the rest of them, do we? Then, this ends, Eve. Figure it out.”
“You’re an ass—”
Theo glanced up. “An asshole about to fuck you twenty
thousand feet in the air, yeah.”
Well …
“Yeah, that sounds good,” Eve admitted.
Theo just laughed again.
It took him no time at all to shed the rest of the clothes between them, and then get Eve on her back on the double bed. She barely even felt the turbulence of the flight once Theo was between her thighs, and finding home.
He went slow at first—teasing and tempting her. Promising wicked things as he filled her full, and then drew out slow enough to make her want to scream.
Except she couldn’t be too loud, so she settled on hooking her legs around his waist, and holding him tight to her body to make her point clear. All she cared about was the way his mouth felt on her throat while he fucked her, and just how good his hands felt tugging on her hair as he murmured all those dirty words.
Yeah, damn.
God, she loved this man.
Bad influences and all.
FIVE
Lily and Damian
DAMIAN
No shame, and all, but Damian had learned over the years that having kids was nothing more than a battle of the survival of the fittest. If someone was stupid enough to give kids an inch, the kids didn’t just take a mile when they ran with it, no. They took ten, and laughed the whole way like you should have known better.
And you should have.
Even knowing this, Damian had somehow convinced himself that it would be a good idea to put his kids on a plane, fly them to a whole other country for the holidays, and everything would be just fine. Because that’s also what kids did to you—they made you fucking delusional.
“Slow down, Cory!”
His youngest son glanced back at his father down the boardwalk connecting the vacation huts spread across the scenic spot. Each hut was suspended over the water—glittering, crystal blue water that was as clear as the sky above their heads. The Maldives really were quite a fucking place. Beautiful, and peaceful. This particular spot where they had all chosen to spend their vacation was a well-known resort, although more expensive, and far more private.
All things Damian liked.
He still couldn’t have his son running that far ahead of him, though. Especially given the fact Cory, far more than Joe, really, found trouble like nobody understood. All it took was someone looking away from that kid for a second too long, and he was gone. They couldn’t afford for their kid to find trouble here.
Too much fucking water.
“Cory!”
Damian dropped his oldest son’s hand, but Lily was quick to grab it before he darted ahead. Cory had only really skipped ahead about ten feet, but it didn’t matter. It still made Damian nervous. People didn’t understand that drowning was a silent fucking death. Especially in children. They didn’t shout and flail … they just slipped under before you even noticed it was happening.
He could tell already—given how fucking paranoid his thoughts were—that most of this vacation would be spent with him in a panic about his sons, and keeping them away from the water, or the boardwalk …. or doorways considering their huts were right over top of the goddamn water.
Once he caught Cory around his little waist, he didn’t really scold the boy. He just threw him over his shoulder like Cory was a sack of potatoes, and turned around to wait for his wife to catch up. Lily, still smiling sweetly and as pretty as ever even after a long flight where she barely slept at all, gave him a sigh.
“Keep a hold of him,” she said, “we’re almost there anyway.”
“There better be locks on the door, or I am fucking killing Theo,” he muttered.
Joe looked up at his father, and in all his three-year-old wisdom, said, “Can’t kills Uncle Theo. He’s family.”
Lily smiled again.
Damian sighed that time.
He patted his oldest boy on the top of his head with the hand that wasn’t locked around a kicking and giggling Cory. “Yeah, that’s right, little man.”
Joe nodded, still holding tight to his mother’s hand. Quiet and a loner, the kid was easy to please and almost always followed the rules as long as people were willing to give him his space. Everyone liked to say that Joe reminded them of Damian. That his moods and demeanor, even at his age, reflected his father’s in a lot of ways.
Damian didn’t always know that it was true.
Sometimes, Joe reminded Damian of someone else entirely.
His uncle—Dino.
But that was a discussion for another day, and today was not that day. This was supposed to be a happy trip—relaxing for the girls, fun for the kids, and a mix of the two for the guys, even if they did have a bit of work involved while they were here. It wasn’t the time to be bringing up old wounds, even if they were mostly healed.
“All right,” Lily said, peering down the way, “I think that’s ours right there.”
Further down the opposite way, Damian watched as Tommas and Abriella slipped inside their hut with Tommaso hanging over his father’s shoulder. Alessa and Adriano were closest to them, while Theo and Eve’s place was closest to Damian and Lily. But really, they were maybe a couple of minutes apart walking distance.
“You got the keys?” Damian asked, following behind his wife while still holding Cory tight. He was really going to have to have a conversation with that kid about safety while they were there, although he didn’t know how much good it would do them. Lily flashed the keys over her shoulder, causing them to jingle at the same time. “Good, let’s get these monsters inside the safety of four goddamn walls.”
“Language,” his wife murmured.
Damian just rolled his eyes.
Lily had the right hut, although … he didn’t know if that was an accurate description for the place when she unlocked the door, and they stepped inside. Oh, sure, from the outside it resembled something of a hut suspended over the water, but inside was something else entirely. The walls facing the front were solid, and private. But a good portion of the walls facing the water were made of glass, including two sliding doors that led to a hot tub in the back, and a deck to lounge on, or jump off to swim in the crystal clear water. Modern furniture, hardwood floors, and rooms that … well, weren’t really rooms.
The sections were mostly made into rooms by sheer fabric hanging down to separate them, but it looked like there were darker curtains at the ends to pull too to make it less see through.
An inverted section of the floor was covered in large white pillows—a sitting area. The kitchen was small, but the dining area was large enough for all of them to eat, plus have the others come over, likely. A woven, bright colored hammock hung in front of a section of windows overlooking the ocean. Damian never did understand the appeal of hammocks, he always felt like he was going to fall right out of one. But to each their own, he supposed.
All in all, it was beautiful.
And comfortable.
“And not kid friendly,” Damian muttered to himself.
He put Cory to the floor, a little less worried than he had been outside. At least he could see practically everything but inside the bathroom, so it wasn’t like his son could get too far before his father would find him or catch up to him.
Lily glanced back at him after she had let Joe go. “Tommas said they put in those requests for all the safety gates and locks, right?”
They had.
“Supposed to be under the sink in the kitchen, from what I understand,” Damian said.
“Well, once we get all that up, it’ll be better.”
“Slightly,” he corrected his wife. “It will be slightly better.”
“Damian—”
“This much water makes me nervous, Lily.”
“Yeah, I know.”
He’d had an incident as a kid—almost drowned when he fell off the end of a dock when the adults weren’t paying attention. Not that anybody had ever paid any attention to Damian when he was younger. Fact was, he’d never learned to swim until he was a teenager, but that almost-drowning when he was ten stuck with him.<
br />
Damian blinked, and Lily was standing right in front of him. Her soft hands came up to cup his face, and like this, he had no choice but to stare at her. Only her. Not the water, or the unlocked doors. He didn’t have time to go inside his head and wallow in his currently unfounded fears because his wife was looking at him, and everything was always better—no excuses or exceptions—when Lily was looking at him.
Dragging in a hard breath, Damian offered her a smile.
She smiled back, then leaned in and kissed him on the mouth. “It’s fine, Damian. It’ll be fine.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“But we’ll be safe, take extra precautions …”
“I’m going around to lock everybody else’s fucking shit up, too.”
His wife nodded. “Okay.”
“Ow, Cory, don’t hit!”
“I nots!”
Lily turned around, giving Damian a good view of their two sons. Apparently, Joe had climbed into the hammock to lay down, and then must have helped his brother inside as well. Except the two were now fighting again, smacking each other and making the hammock rock dangerously.
Story of his life with those two.
He doubted that was ever going to change.
SIX
Alessa and Adriano
ADRIANO
Out of the corner of his eye, Adriano watched Alessa breastfeed Lissa as he continued his phone call. He’d much rather climb in the bed with his wife amongst white pillows and soft sheets, but business never ended, and he needed to take care of this first before he could get on with the rest of his day.
A few feet away from the bed, Corrine slept happily in her portable playpen. Those things were a bitch to travel with, and yet, it had proved more than worth it to bring it along, too.
“You do understand, Mr. Conti, that should this not go as we had planned—”
“Then, what?” Adriano asked, trying to keep his tone cool and not too sharp. Not that the man on the other end of the call even proved he deserved Adriano’s respect at the moment, but he didn’t want this entire fucking thing to be a wasted trip just because someone decided to catch a goddamn attitude. “If things do not go as planned, and we can’t work out a deal on the cache of weapons, then I will tell you exactly what will happen, Mr. Torres.”