by R. R. Banks
"That's what I want, too," Talon said.
The other two made agreeing sounds, nodding.
"Then think about it this way: we don't each have to be a father to a child. We just need a child of our lineage. So why don't we handle this the same way that we handle everything else? We do it together."
"Together?" Jackson asked.
I nodded, looking to Lucas.
"I was telling Lucas that it doesn't make sense to have multiple children or even for just one of us to have a child and raise it. That would do nothing but create competition and animosity. So let's all raise a child together."
Jackson stared at me blankly and Lucas pointed at him.
"See? That was my reaction, too. It's ridiculous."
"Actually…" Talon said.
Lucas looked at him.
"Did you just say 'actually'?"
"Yeah," he said, nodding, looking at me as if he was surprised that I had come up with that idea. "Actually, it's brilliant."
"See?" I said.
"Are you serious?" Jackson said.
Talon nodded again.
"Yeah. I'm completely serious. Think about it. There has to be an heir. That means that there has to be a child of our bloodline. That doesn't mean that that child has to have a specific father. If we raise it together there isn't any competition, any argument, any anything. We all get to contribute and influence the child, and we can all pass everything on to that child. From there, it can have children and pass on the legacy the way that it wants to, but we'll have done what we thought was right."
"How are we supposed to do that?" Lucas asked.
I smiled at him.
"That's the best part," I said. "We do it the old-fashioned way. We've shared women before. But that's always been just for fun. So this time we find one who's willing not just for us to share her, but to have our baby."
"We wouldn't know which of us was the biological father?" Jackson asked.
"No," Talon said. "It wouldn't matter. We'd all raise it together. We would all be its father."
"And the woman?" Lucas asked.
"She would be its mother," I said. "She would help us take care of the baby and then as it got older, she could be as involved as she wanted to be. We'd make sure that she was well taken care of as well."
"We have to make sure that we find the perfect woman," Jackson said. "It's not just about finding one who is willing to have all of us. Think about the women any of us have shared before. We've never had one who's had all four of us, but even the ones who have had two or three...would you really want any of them to be the mother of our child?"
I thought about this and realized that he was absolutely right. While we had had women who made enthusiastic and entertaining playmates for various combinations of us brothers, I couldn't think of one whom I would want contributing to the DNA or the raising of my child.
"Well, what do we want? What kind of woman would be perfect?" I asked.
"She would have to have good genes, obviously," Talon said. "We want our child to be healthy, smart, and attractive. She'll need to be healthy and strong, too, to handle the pregnancy and childbirth well."
"She can't be greedy," Jackson added. "We'll offer her a set payment and then a monthly stipend. She needs to know that is what she's getting and she's not going to go after more."
"We also want to make sure that she will emotionally be able to handle all of this," Lucas said. "She needs to understand that we'll all be involved in the pregnancy and raising the child, but that this is about the baby, not about some kind of relationship. We need to choose someone who we like spending time with but who isn't going to suddenly fall in love with one of us and completely freak out."
"No problem," Talon said with a sigh. "I'm sure we can go scoop up five or six of those women off the street right now."
I knew that it would be a major undertaking, but it could work. It had to.
Chapter Six
Gabrielle
I stared at my phone for several seconds, contemplating the phone number on the screen. Jackson had called me the day before, surprised when he found out that it was my cell that he was calling and not the shop. I explained that I wanted to be able to receive and make business calls no matter where I was, so I just had the shop number linked to my phone. Now I stared at his number, feeling oddly nervous about calling him. Finally, I pressed the button and squeezed my eyes closed as I heard it start to ring.
"Hello?"
"Hi, Jackson. It's Gabrielle."
"Hi," he said. "It's good to hear from you."
His voice sounded like it actually was and this made my chest feel warm. I couldn't resist the smile that curved my lips.
"I came up with a few ideas that I wanted to go over with you. Do you have time to talk?"
"Um," he seemed to think about this for a second. "Yeah, I could. But if you could, I'd rather have you bring some to the Club to show us."
"The Club?" I asked.
"Yeah. You can see where the gala is going to be held. That might help you better visualize the event and we can start talking about where to set up the different desserts and chocolates and everything. Besides, I'd like you to meet my other brothers."
At that, I thought about what Skylar had said. There were four brothers, not just the two gorgeous men who had come into my shop. My heart pounded at the thought and I couldn't resist the opportunity to meet the two others. I agreed to meet him at the Club, took down the address, and started gathering up the samples I had made. I was driving toward the Westchester Club when I made a sharp turn and headed back toward my apartment to change. Even though I was keeping the shop closed, the force of habit had made me put on my uniform that morning, and I decided that I wanted to change. There was no need for me to walk into a place like that, looking like that if it wasn't absolutely necessary.
I had been completely enraptured by the idea of two more men like Jackson and Lucas, and I wasn't disappointed. When I was escorted by uniformed staff through the elaborate building and beyond a set of massive wooden doors into a sprawling ballroom I knew that Skylar had not been exaggerating when she was describing the immense wealth and power of the Griffin brothers. In fact, she might have been underestimating it. As soon as I walked into the ballroom, however, thoughts of their wealth were pushed to the back of my mind, replaced by a surge of attraction to the four men standing in front of me. Just as Jackson and Lucas looked remarkably similar, the other two fit right in line with them. Jackson walked toward me smiling and I felt the same little leap in my heart that I had when I saw him and Lucas outside of the shop.
He took my hand in both of his, but rather than shaking it, he squeezed it. The touch was both familiar and electrifying and I felt myself being drawn further and further into him. We stared at each other for a moment, and then he turned and led me toward where the other three men stood. Now that I was closer to them I could tell more clearly that they were different ages. The two brothers I hadn't yet met seemed to bracket Jackson and Lucas, with one seeming several years younger and the other slightly older. The older one stepped toward me first and I saw that his eyes were a stormy gray, the expanse unbroken by a dark ring or change in color. He held his hand out to me.
"I'm Talon," he said.
"Gabrielle," I introduced myself.
"And this is Aiden," Jackson said, directing me toward the younger of the brothers.
He came up to me and I noticed his eyes were as vibrant and sparkling as Jackson's, but instead of the bright blue of his brother's eyes, Aiden's were a shade of vivid green. He smiled at me as he took my hand and I felt my attraction toward the four men raised even higher. I was intrigued by them, undeniably drawn to all four of them even though I'd only spent a few minutes with them.
"What do you have for us?" Lucas asked.
He was eyeing the cooler that I carried in one hand and I smiled at him, carrying it over to one of the small round tables that was posi
tioned to the side. I placed it on the table and opened it, starting to pull out the treats that I had inside.
"Jackson and Lucas mentioned to me that the four of you thought it would be fun to do a Valentine's Day cocktail party as opposed to a banquet," I said. "You all wanted it to be very immersive and sexy, and of course that means plenty of chocolate. And the more that I thought about what they said, the more I thought about the different senses and how I would be able to bring those in with the desserts. I want to encourage all of your guests to get involved with the desserts rather than just eating them. Tapping into as many of their senses as possible will make them focus in on what they are experiencing, and hopefully, lose some of their inhibitions and be able to really enjoy themselves."
I realized that what I was saying made the party seem even more lascivious than how the brothers had described their vision to me, and for a moment I felt embarrassed. When I looked at the brothers, however, they seemed interested in what I was saying. I decided to dive headlong into the ideas that I had come up with, giving them everything that I hoped they were asking for. At the worst, they could tell me that I had gone too far and I could edit myself back. I pulled out several small containers of truffles and then the other desserts that I had designed. They were fairly elaborate and involved, which meant that if the brothers liked them, it would be a tremendous push to get them all completed by the time of the party, but I felt like they filled the request that they had made of me, and with the amount that they were paying me, they deserved nothing short of excellence.
"What's that?" Talon asked when I opened the top of a small bowl and took out a disposable spoon.
"When people think of appealing to their senses with food, they usually think about how it tastes or how it smells, or maybe even how it feels, and we'll definitely get to those, but I also wanted to really create visual appeal. The idea that you eat with your eyes before your mouth isn't anything new and presentation is always been a really important part of serving food, but I thought if you wanted to create a cocktail party around the concept of sensory experiences and indulgence, we should take the visual another step forward and create desert experiences that were engaging and dynamic even before they were delicious."
The bowl that I was holding looked like it was full of nothing but a smooth, creamy white chocolate ganache. While sweet and certainly tasty, it wasn't very interesting and the way that the brothers were looking at it, I felt like they were thinking the same thing. But that was exactly the initial impression that I had been trying to achieve. I took the disposable spoon that I had taken out of the cooler and scraped it across the top of the ganache, creating a shallow path through it. Then I dipped just slightly lower and scraped again. This time the tip of the spoon went beyond the white chocolate ganache to a thick raspberry jam.
"This thought came to me when I was thinking about trying to avoid the cliché of making the inside of my truffles pink by flavoring them with raspberry. The more that I thought about it, the more that I realized that it's a cliché because it's delicious and effective, but that didn't mean that I needed to do it the exact same way that everyone else did."
I lightly blended the raspberry into the white chocolate ganache, creating a soft pink. I delved a little deeper, gathering some of the center layer of blueberry and mixing that in. The result was a creamy lavender color. With a final push of my spoon, I scooped down into the last layer of the desert, pulling up a piece of the rich dark chocolate cake embedded with flecks of edible gold.
"I call this one a heart of gold," I said. "You might have to search for it a little bit and go through layers to find it, but when you do you've transformed, and it's absolutely worth it."
I knew that my explanation of the name of the dessert was a little bit cheesy, but the four brothers grinned at me happily.
"That's perfect," Jackson said. "Valentine's Day is all about people wanting things to be traditional and exactly what they've come to expect, and yet also wanting surprises. I think that that dessert blends those two things perfectly."
I smiled at him.
"Thank you," I said.
I picked up other disposable spoons and handed them to the brothers so they could try the dessert. They all made little moans of appreciation as they took several bites. I laughed and pulled the bowl back toward me, putting it behind me on the table.
"There's plenty more to try," I said. "You don't want to fill up yet."
"I don't think there's much risk of that," Aiden said.
I glanced over at him and noticed that he wasn't looking at the desserts that I had just laid on the table. Instead, his enticing green eyes were tracing along my body, taking in the curves accentuated by the simple black dress and heels that I had chosen to replace my uniform. The tip of his tongue ran along his bottom lip and I felt my breath get deeper.
"What's next?" Lucas asked.
"In keeping with the visual theme," I said, "I thought that serving something that was intended to be interactive between guests and not just between the guest and the desert might be a fun way to get people involved."
I reached into the cooler and pulled out a small bag. Inside were several pastry- grade paint brushes. I pulled one out and then opened several smaller containers that were sitting on the table, revealing a range of chocolate from a nearly black bittersweet to a pale milk variety. Besides the chocolates were a few brightly colored options, created by tinting white chocolate.
"What's that?" Jackson asked.
"A little arts and crafts project," I said. "It's not Valentine's day without getting creative. But who wants construction paper and glitter when you can turn each other into your own personal Valentine?"
I dipped the tip of one of the paintbrushes into a pot of chocolate from the middle of the range. I had crafted each carefully so that they would remain smooth and liquidy even at room temperature, and it came up on the bristles of the brush like creamy paint just as I had hoped. I extended my arm, turning it over so that my palm was facing the ceiling. I used the paintbrush to create a series of abstract swirls across my skin. When I was finished, I dipped my head and licked a little of the chocolate away. And then I looked up at the brothers they were all staring at me with hunger in their eyes and I felt my stomach clenched.
"Let me try," Talon said.
I offered him the paintbrush that I was holding, but instead of taking it, he took hold of my wrist and drew my arm up closer to his mouth so that he could lick some of the chocolate away from my skin. My breath caught in my throat and I gasped slightly. He smiled at me as he lifted his face away from my arm.
"That's delicious," he said.
"I thought that we could package several of these paint brushes together and tie them with a nice ribbon," I said, stumbling slightly over my words as I tried to keep myself focused on what I was supposed to be doing there. "We could have a basket or box sitting at the end of the table and each guest could take their own set of paint brushes so that they could use them in the different chocolates. They could then take the brushes home with them and continue with their art experiments if they were so inclined. "
"I think that we could just offer that as both the desert and the entertainment at the party and it would be considered a success," Aiden said.
"Then I think that I put far too much effort into this," I teased, "because I have a lot more to show you."
"Show us," Lucas said.
I spent the next hour going over each of the new flavors of truffles and the desserts that I had designed for them. We worked our way through each of the senses as I showed them the offerings that I had created for those guests who were more adventurous and for those who wanted a tamer, more traditional gala experience. The longer that I spent with these men, the more I could feel myself becoming attracted to them. They were charming, funny, and attentive, nothing like Skylar had suggested that they would be. That my sister had told me that their family had been one that had helped establish the Club and continue to be powerfu
l and instrumental members, it didn't really sink in until I had been spending time with them. I saw the way that the staff interacted with them and could tell that they were looked upon with tremendous respect and even reverence. I did notice a few fleeting glimpses from the women who came into the room occasionally to ask if they needed anything and to bring us drinks, but I ignored them. I felt a hint of intimidation at the thought of their wealth and influence, but none of them had treated me like they thought that I was beneath them.
My mind was racing, filled with thoughts of tasting each of them, feeling their skin, touching their bodies. I was nearly overwhelmed with my desire for them and could feel the heat rising between us. Each time that they looked at me, my heart raced. Each brush of their skin against mine made me tremble. I felt surrounded by them as if they were each designed to appeal to a different part of me. They were all so similar, and yet distinct, like sides of the same person crafted into individual, irresistible men.
Talon
I made an excuse to leave the ballroom and then hesitated at the door when I returned so that I could watch Gabrielle from a distance without her noticing me. I wanted the opportunity to observe her, to get a different perspective of her than I got when I was right there with her. Being close to her fogged my mind and dragged my thoughts to the lushness of her body, the tenderness of her lips. I was incredibly impressed with her, taken by her in a way that I had never experienced with any of the other women I had been with. She was gorgeous, but she was also smart and funny, drawing me into her and making me want to spend more time with her.