by Cora Brent
As soon as I was out of the small reception room I felt better. I paused by the bar and squinted at the television. It was the seventh inning stretch and the Dodgers were up eight to two.
“Shit sucks,” slurred a disheveled man in a suit. He appeared ready to topple right off his bar stool.
“Only if you’re a Cubs fan,” I said and he didn’t seem to like that answer. He winced and swiveled in the other direction. I shook my head and walked away, wondering how it was possible to get so emotionally invested in watching other people play a game.
When I was growing up, no matter what the season was, there was always something blaring from the padded theater room in the basement; a game, a match, a race, anything men could gamble on. Sports in the Bransky house didn’t mean what they meant to everyone else. I’d known that from the time I was a little girl even if it took a few more years for me to realize the mechanics of what my father did. He never minded letting me in on the terminology although he wouldn’t allow me to clerk for the business no matter how much I argued for it. That was a privilege reserved for my older brothers, Robert and Michael. Nick Bransky didn’t seem to know what to do with a daughter. One minute he was indulgently handing me his credit card and telling me to shop for something pretty at Roosevelt Field Mall. The next day he would be hell bent on educating me about the finer points of a parlay. I think he tried to be a good dad, although I never really forgave him for the way he carried on with various women, especially while my mother wasted away.
Then there was Robert.
It wasn’t fair to blame my father for that, even though Robbie’s unsolved murder could almost certainly be traced to the crooked shit Nick had gotten him wrapped up in. My father lost his wife and his oldest son in the same week. Nine months later he was sent upstate and shortly after that I left New York. We kept in touch sporadically and he would probably make parole next year. He’d never said a word about me running a sports book although I figured someone had likely told him because the world was always smaller than it seemed to be.
I hung around the bar for a few more minutes. The Cubs got back two runs in the bottom of the seventh and the drunk who was sprawled on the barstool came to life. A few of the men idling nearby glanced at me but their eyes immediately glazed over as they searched for something more provocative. I knew I looked younger than I was and my body language didn’t really invite conversation.
A man and woman at a nearby table were pawing each other so eagerly they just had to be minutes away from heading upstairs to hump like animals. Sometimes I wished I had a clue what made everyone so bat shit over sex. I wasn’t completely immune to desire, but what did it mean when I liked thinking about it a hell of a lot more than I enjoyed actually doing it?
When a bearded dude plainly wearing a wedding ring offered to buy me a drink I figured that was my signal to finish the night alone in my room. It was a nice room and I had it all to myself. I knew a few people in Vegas and had been able to secure a sweetheart deal on rooms for everyone who flew out for the wedding.
As I headed to the elevator I couldn’t wait to be alone, to tear this silly dress off and lounge on the bed in a t-shirt while I caught the last few innings. And yet, some vague piece of me felt a little sorry to be leaving the lights and the energy behind. Maybe that was why my knees turned weak when Chase Gentry slid into the elevator a split second before the doors shut. He smiled at me.
CHAPTER TWO
Chase
This was a damn good day. One of the best. I’d stood up next to my brother and watched him exchange vows with the girl he loved. When the door opened and Saylor began walking down the aisle on the arm of her father, everyone looked at the bride. Not me. I looked at Cordero. There was nothing but joy in his face as he watched her come closer.
It seemed like only an hour had passed since it was just the three of us brothers, scraping by and lurching from one good time to the next. Then one moment changed everything. It was the brief pause in the universe when Cordero Gentry bumped into Saylor McCann on a hot desert night.
As Saylor’s father kissed her cheek and handed her off to Cord, I tore my gaze away from the groom and looked at her. She was ecstatic, luminous. I absolutely loved that girl for the way she loved my brother. Saylor had every reason in the world to despise the three of us forever. We’d been unredeemable dicks, to her and to countless others back in the hazy days of youth in our hometown of Emblem, Arizona. Instead, she had allowed Cord to show her how he’d become so much more than the white trash Gentrys everyone thought we were. She’d given herself to him unreservedly and made him whole.
Their vows were simple, as vows should be. I had no doubt that the rings they gave one another would be forever. At the end, Cord took her face between his hands and gave her a long look of complete reverence before kissing her softly. Then he hugged her to his body, resting his head on her shoulder as he closed his eyes and ignored the applause of a roomful of people. We didn’t matter to them.
Creed shot me a stern glance when I started sniffling. He thought I was full of shit. Creed always assumed I was full of shit. But I wasn’t faking those tears at all. As I watched Cord become a husband I felt like I was seeing him cross a more unofficial threshold. I’d never seen a man so happy, or so deserving of that happiness.
After everyone was done hugging and congratulating, we all headed to a small room down the hall. The faint noise of the casino rang through the corridor. Once we got to the reception room, Creedence had his guitar out and sang Steve Miller Band songs as the guests filed in. Anybody might have assumed it was a strange musical background for a wedding but I understood the choice completely. The music made me think of those late spring days when Saylor came back into our lives. It made me think of listening to the boys sing as I sat up in a hospital bed, laughing so hard my damaged ribs nearly cracked.
My cousin Declan jostled me as we made our way to the reception room. He grinned as some cheap snatch hung onto his arm. Lord only knew where he’d picked that up. I doubted he’d carried it all the way up from Emblem, where he still lived. Deck had scoffed at the idea of flying with the rest of us. He would take the trip on his bike or he wouldn’t take it at all.
“That was lovely,” the girl purred as her hands roamed dangerously close to his package. She might not have been bad looking before she got all used up.
“It was, baby,” he agreed, winking at me.
Everyone else stood there waiting. They clapped when Cord and Say walked in, then began finding seats at the scattered tables.
Declan’s girl glanced around. “Is there a bar? You said there’d be a bar.”
He pressed some cash into her hand. “There’s one right outside. Go help yourself, baby.”
The girl smiled and ran her hand along his crotch again. He didn’t visibly react. He just waited for her to leave with a mild look on his face.
“Nothin’ but class,” I teased him, nudging his shoulder. “Baby.”
Deck pushed his dark hair out of his eyes and frowned at the girl’s back. “Yeah, I forgot her fucking name. It might be Tami.” He flashed me a grin. “It might be something else. Think I’ll stick with ‘baby’ until I’m done just to be on the safe side. I don’t feel like starting over tonight. Where’s your action? You holdin’ out?”
“Maybe,” I mused, zeroing in on the girl I was looking for.
Stephanie sat at a table on the other side of the room and sipped some champagne. She made a face and looked at the glass, making me think she didn’t drink much. She saw me watching and deliberately turned away. Stephanie wasn’t really a bitch. She just liked to behave like one most of the time for reasons I hadn’t figured out yet.
Deck sized the situation up quickly. “That’s gonna be tough,” he laughed.
I was encouraged. “I like tough.”
It was true. The more Stephanie glowered and seemed to hate my ass, the more I wanted her. She was cute as hell and would have been even more dazzling if she’d put o
n some makeup and show herself off a little. Sure, there were cute girls everywhere and frankly I’d been inside more of them than I could remember with a gun to my head. But Stephanie Bransky got under my skin for some reason and I was determined to get some relief.
Tonight Steph was dressed up for once. She seemed unhappy about it. I was a little confused about her dress. It looked like it didn’t belong to her. The fit was bad and she kept pulling at the fabric around her chest. As I watched, she started doing it again. There was something rather adolescent and self-conscious about the way she kept adjusting herself. Maybe she was uncomfortable over the way the dress accentuated how small her tits were. I didn’t mind small tits though. Not as long as the rest of the body was hot and I could tell hers was pretty damn fine. I wanted to see all of it. I wanted to put my mouth everywhere and feel her shudder underneath me. It might have been a sick thing, to want so badly to fuck a girl who seemed to loathe the sight of me. Except I would bet the tip of my dick that it wasn’t true. Stephanie didn’t hate me. In fact, she wanted me as much as I wanted her.
Declan had moved on to go hug the bride like he might eat her. I leaned flat against the wall to avoid poking anyone in the ass with my colossal boner. There was a reason why that shit was just raring to go. I’d steered clear of women for the last month as I got clean. Cord and Chase had pushed me into the program but now I could admit that I couldn’t have kicked the pills without it. It had gotten out of hand so fucking quickly and it still terrified me. At first I’d just thought of them as a form of help. I told myself I just needed to swallow some ‘help’ to get to sleep. Then I was swallowing more ‘help’ to stay awake. In between it all I needed something else to even out the two. How long would it have taken me to leapfrog to the same level of hopeless addiction I’d watched overtake my mother? It was a weakness that had consumed so many Gentrys before me and it would have had me in its teeth too, were it not for Cord and Creed. The boys would never let me get ruined that way.
Creed stopped singing and Saylor hugged him. They’d had a rough time of it when she first moved in. Creed couldn’t seem to get used to dealing with a female on a daily basis and Saylor couldn’t get used to Creed. He’d changed though. It might have been because of the fight last month, a brutal match set up with high stakes. He had needed to maim the evil bastard he was pitted against just to walk away alive. Creedence wasn’t exactly the introspective type but the brush with death may have crossed his wires a little.
Creed’s girlfriend, Truly, sidled next to him and he wrapped his arms around her waist. I saw the shift in his face as he gazed down at her. No, it wasn’t the fight that had changed him. It was her. It was finding an incredible girl who thought he was everything even as he was blown away that someone like her could fall for him.
“You sick or something?” Cord asked, joining me against the wall.
“Nope. I was thinking deep thoughts.”
“Yeah? The kind that make your dick hard?”
I shoved him. “Up yours. What the hell are you looking down there for anyway?”
“I wasn’t, Chasyn. But I know you better than you know yourself.”
“Twenty two years of constant attachment will do that.”
“Plus the months spent in the womb.”
“Speaking of wombs, I knew it was gonna be multiples.” I grinned at him. “Genetics and all.”
He smiled and glanced over at his bride. “Look at her,” he said in a tone of soft awe.
I looked at Saylor McCann Gentry. She was talking to her father, her hands resting on her belly and her face glowing. She was beautiful. She was his.
“You couldn’t have done better,” I told him sincerely. “I should be so lucky.”
“You will be,” he assured me with a look of surprise. “Just give it time, Chase. Your girl is out there.” He turned his head to see what I’d been staring at while he talked. He chuckled. “I don’t think that’s her, though.”
“Maybe not, but it gets me all crazy the way she acts like she hates the world.”
“Not sure it’s an act, bro.”
I watched Stephanie adjust her dress again and then glare at one of Cord’s friends when she thought he’d been looking at her. My mind was starting to run away with me again, imagining pushing that damn gown up over her waist and sliding inside while she moaned my name. I let out a low whistle.
“Damn, I want to fuck her. I want to fuck her so bad. I could turn all that angst into something useful.”
Cord was exasperated, looking around as if he were panicked that someone might have heard me say the word ‘fuck’. We were in a Vegas hotel for crying out loud. People said ‘fuck’ here as often as they said ‘hello’.
Cord swatted me over the head anyway. “Jesus, dickhead. It’s my wedding day. Try and keep a lid on your urges, or at least try to stop talking about them.”
I smiled. “You know, Steph’s the kind who keeps it all bottled up. Yeah, that’s right. Those kinds of girls always come the hardest. Can’t resist that temptation.”
“Okay,” Cord rolled his eyes. “Whatever.”
“I bet she plays with her pussy every night while she pictures my dick. I bet she keeps a big vibrating dildo underneath her mattress, strokes it, calls it ‘Chase’ and needs to replace the batteries once a week. Maybe twice a week.”
Cord was cracking up in spite of himself. “You’re having a fantasy. I’m gonna go mingle with some guests who can control their libidos.”
“All right, man. Congratulations again.” I didn’t tell him that I thought marriage had made him a little uptight already. Hell, it wasn’t as if I was standing there jerking off in front of everyone, although I was getting more uncomfortable the longer I stared at Stephanie. Something would have to be done about that.
I figured I’d wait until Stephanie downed some more champagne and improved her mood before I made an approach. One way or another, I was determined to have some kind of encounter with her before the end of the night. I had thought it would happen last night but she’d holed herself up in her room as soon as we arrived and when I knocked on her door she flat out ignored me. We were in Las Vegas for crying out loud, the epicenter of sin. It was too good of an opportunity to pass up.
Brayden and Millie appeared to take pity on Stephanie and sat down at her table. I figured that would keep her busy for a while so I relaxed and wandered around, talking to everyone. Cord’s coworkers were freaking hilarious. They were a rough bunch covered in ink and loaded with dirty stories about the curious places girls wanted to get stamped. If I had an ounce of artistic talent I’d be all over that tattoo shit.
It got awkward when I tried to have a conversation with Saylor’s dad. He was willing to tolerate Cord at this point and had even footed the bill for most of the wedding. But he didn’t seem to have much use for any other Gentrys. He’d gone to high school with my father. The experience must have left quite an impression because he flared his nostrils and kept his conversation stiff, like he would rather get kicked in the nuts than speak to the progeny of Benton Gentry. The tacky blonde at his side was a whole different situation. She licked her lips and looked like she could stand to cougar jump me.
The steaks were a little overdone for my taste, but I ate every bite anyway. I noticed Stephanie picking at hers and talking to Truly. Sometimes Truly seemed a little lukewarm over the idea of me getting together with Stephanie. I had to wonder what made her so protective. Steph didn’t seem like she would have any problem taking care of herself. Yet just last night Truly had squeezed my arm and issued a plea.
“Don’t hurt her, Chase. If it’s just a hot time you’re after, then find it somewhere else, okay?”
Well of course I was after a hot time. But it wasn’t a good idea to admit it so freely. “I’ll be the same gentleman I always am,” I promised Truly with a grin and she gave up with a roll of her eyes. Creed had glared at me again though, silently warning me of the consequences if I upset his girl. I flipped him off wit
h a smirk. Now that my brothers had settled into real relationships they were all over my ass to act like an adult. It was becoming tiresome.
When Stephanie rose out of her chair and started heading for the door I saw the perfect moment. I could buy her another drink, maybe take her for a stroll along the strip, and then slowly, gradually, coax her into letting me inside her room. I was already standing and silently rehearsing what I would say when the bride caught my eye.
Saylor had retreated to a table in the corner. Cord didn’t notice; he was talking to some of his buddies. Saylor sighed and ran her hands along the white tablecloth. She looked so sad all of a sudden.
I glanced over to where Stephanie was already disappearing through the door. Even though a curse flashed through my mind I couldn’t follow her right now. I sure as hell wasn’t going to walk away while Saylor was sad.
She smiled a little when I put my arm around her. “Chase.”
“Hey, sis.” I pinched her cheek. “This is the happiest day of your life and you look like someone just told you there’s no Santa Claus. Not having buyer’s remorse, are you?”
She shook her head. “No. And it is the happiest day of my life.” Saylor sighed. “I guess I should be grateful enough that my dad’s here.”
I understood. “But your mom’s not.”
Saylor’s mother hated Cord. She’d had this sick, torrid affair with my uncle long ago, but that seemed to make her hate everything Gentry even more. She and Saylor had never been close and when Saylor got together with Cord that was the end of whatever relationship they had. She’d told Saylor to have a good goddamn life popping out Gentry brats and being wedded to white trash. Saylor was better off without that bitch in her life. Still, it stung to be rejected by your mother. I knew that.