by Kay Maree
My mind fills quickly with images of Sophie on her knees unzipping my jeans and running her tongue up the underside of my cock. Her head would bob up and down too fast for my liking as I fuck her mouth, but that’s okay; I could control that. Fisting her hair and guiding her movements, I would make sure she took every inch of my rock hard cock down the back of her throat before I made her swallow every drop of my come.
“So, are you going to let me pass gatekeeper, or do I have to stand out here all day?” Her husky voice rasps, which has my cock standing to attention, pulsing down the leg of my jeans.
“No.”
“What do you mean, no?” She asks with desperation lacing her tone.
“As far as I knew, there has only ever been one meaning for the word, no, sweetheart, and that’s, no,” I grin.
All of a sudden the shutters behind her eyes snap closed, and she straightens her spine. “Fine, if you’re going to be a dick, then will you at least give her this, please?”
Taking the plain white envelope from her outstretched hand, I nod and watch as she walks down the steps to her car, drops her head to the steering wheel and begins to cry. My heart thuds painfully in my chest as I see the tears course down her cheeks, but there’s fuck all I can do about it. After witnessing cancer destroy my wife, in the end, making her bitter and angry, I know pain when I see it. This gorgeous woman, Sophie, is the very definition of pain, and I can’t go through that again. I won’t.
“Was that Sophie that just took off like a bat out of hell?” Jake asks, coming to stand beside me.
“Yep,” I mutter still staring at the corner her car disappeared around.
“What’d you do? Sophie isn’t easily riled, so it must have been good,” he grins. Then tipping his head to the envelope I’m clutching in my fist, Jake asks, “She give that to you.
“Yeah,” I reply, handing it over. “She said it was for, Farrah and then took off.”
Not giving a shit that it isn’t for him, Jake slides the single folded sheet of paper out and begins reading. With every line, his face hardens, turning to stone at the end.
“Fuck,” he hisses, tossing what I assume is a letter on the coffee table. “Just what I need today. I only just calmed Farrah’s ass down, and now I’m going to have to break it to her that her best friend has left town. Fuck me.”
Jake stomps back down the hall to Farrah’s room, so with Talon gone to pick up his girlfriend, and Eli fuck knows where, I’m alone with a letter common sense tells me not to read. Not only is what’s written in it none of my business, but I don’t even know the woman. Sure, she’s sexy as fuck, has one hell of a mouth on her – which surprisingly, I don’t find a turn off in the least – and is funny to boot, but that only makes her more dangerous. I’m drawn to women like, Sophie. I shouldn’t be, but I am. I love a good challenge, and I have a feeling Sophie would be one I wouldn’t mind working to conquer.
Going against my better judgment, I start reading, and by the end, I feel nothing but ice cold rage as it fills my veins. Whoever this motherfucker is, he’s dead. And if I’m lucky, I’ll get to make it hurt before I end him.
Chapter Thirteen
FARRAH
Trying to sit up is one thing, but attempting to heft myself off the bed is almost impossible. I need to use the bathroom, though, and if there’s one thing being pregnant has taught me it’s when you’ve got to go, you should have gone ten minutes earlier. Finally, after what feels like an hour, I manage to stand up and start walking to the bathroom, but I don’t even make it halfway before I’m standing in a puddle of fluid, clutching my lower stomach.
I look at the clock and realize it has only been four hours since I went to bed, complaining to Jake my back hurt. He held me and massaged my back, but by the looks of it, Jake didn’t stay in bed with me; he must have gotten up to do some work he brought home after I fell asleep.
A sharp pain radiates across my belly which has me stifling a scream. Jesus, that was intense. From everything I’ve read, first babies are supposed to take their time coming into the world, but I think my son must have missed that memo. It takes me a second to get my shit together enough to call out to, Jake, not that he wakes up or anything. No, not my husband. He’s sleeping like the dead, and it will take a nuclear explosion or a blowjob to rouse him.
“Jake, for Christ’s sake, wake up,” I say louder than before, kicking the side of the bed for good measure.
Coming awake with a start, Jake jackknifes off the bed, retrieves his gun from under his pillow and in seconds is standing in front of me naked as the day he was born. “What? Are you hurt? Is everything okay with the baby?” He demands, scouring the room for signs of an intruder.
Oh my, God, this would be hilarious if it weren’t happening to me. I don’t think he’s noticed yet, but not only is his dick swinging in the breeze, but he’s standing in a puddle of amniotic fluid holding a gun. Fuck, someone should write this in a book because otherwise, it’s not to be believed.
“I’m fine, but you son wants out, so do you think you could find some pants and drive me to the hospital?” I ask, not sure whether to laugh or cry. I don’t want to scare Jake unnecessarily, but if he doesn’t hurry the hell up, his son will be born on the floor of our bedroom, and that is not in my birth plan.
“Are you positive? The midwife said that sometimes those Braxton Hicks things feel like labor, but they’re not,” he says, reciting what we were told at my last appointment.
“Oh, I’m sure,” I reply sarcastically and pointing at his feet.
Jake looks down and then at me. He does this twice more before deciding to heed my advice and find some pants, all the while, I’m busying myself getting changed and trying to find my other damn shoe.
“Screw it,” I exclaim, throwing my hands in the air in defeat. “Who needs shoes anyway?”
The pain comes and goes, but before long they are lasting longer and getting closer together. My legs are unsteady as I grip the doorframes, rocking myself back and forth. I’m trying to ease the pain in my back and the tightness in my belly, but it’s not working.
Coming up behind me, Jake murmurs, “Deep breath, baby. In and out. You’ve got this; I know you do. You’re going to make the best mom, Farrah.”
Doing as he says, I breathe in through my nose and out through my mouth as Jake kneels at my feet. He strips my soaked panties down my legs and replaces them with new ones, before helping pull on a pair of loose fitting yoga pants. This is not how I saw my labor going, having my husband change and dress me, but whatever. I’m in too much pain to care right now.
Jake’s expression is stoic, but I can tell he’s worried. Truth be told, so am I. All of the books I read on childbirth, and it’s now I find out they were all filled with lies. Labor isn’t a beautiful experience; I’ve only just begun, and I’m ready for it to be over. Staying calm and focus on breathing techniques they say. Well, clearly whoever the asshole is that wrote that never tried to push a bowling ball out of a hole the size of a lemon at best.
Leading me to his truck, Jake picks me up and deposits me in the seat, buckling my seatbelt for me. He’s around the other side and climbing into the cab, and less than a second later, we’re on the road. I send Simon a message to let him know what’s happening and Sophie too, not that she will reply.
I haven’t heard from Sophie once since she left town and me with nothing more than the letter Ford handed me before storming out of my house. He was gone for a week after that, and when he came back, Ford was a different man. Colder. Harder. Angrier. None of the men, Lyric included, have been able to get a word out of him about where he went or what happened while he was gone. I asked a few times, but after his standard response, which was to ignore me, I stopped pushing and instead hoped he would tell me when he was ready to.
And as if he knew I when I needed it most, Ford gave me the peace of mind I had been craving for months just yesterday. He told me that he had tried to track Soph
ie down using some of his old contacts but with no luck. He went to her apartment, her parent’s house, questioned all of her friends and co-workers, and nothing. Sophie has disappeared off the face of the Earth without a trace. Or that’s how it appeared, until the day Ford decided to stop looking.
There was one man who said he saw Sophie go into a gas station on highway eight the week before. He couldn’t be certain, but he said it seemed like she was running from something or someone. When he attempted to stop her by putting his hand on her arm to ask if she needed help, Sophie pulled away as if she had been burned. That’s when he noticed the bruises. According to him, she was covered in them. Head to toe.
There wasn’t much more he could tell Ford, other than she headed west on the very same highway, driving a black sedan, but that was enough. Ford found Sophie in a Motel 6 just outside Cheyenne, Wyoming and spent two days trying to convince her to come home. By the end of the second day, Ford told me he gave up hope that she was going to see she was safer here with us and left.
I could tell by the haunted look in his eyes that he didn’t want to leave her, but there was nothing he could do. I know Sophie. She’s stubborn as a mule, and there’s no changing her mind when she has it in her head to do something. Trust me, I’ve tried.
Nine minutes after helping me into the truck, Jake helps me out of it. Praying that I can make it to the nurse’s station before delivering our baby in the carpark, I wrap my arms around Jake’s neck as he scoops me up and all but runs toward the elevators that will take us to the maternity floor.
One glance in my direction has nurses scurrying around to find me a bed. Once I’m placed in a room, and they help me onto the bed, just as the doctor walks in. “Always the overachiever I see,” Dr. Mathews grins at me.
He’s a handsome son of a bitch, I’ll give him that much, but right now all I want from him is drugs, a way to speed this up, and a promise that my vagina will not look like hamburger when we’re done here. Call me vain, but I kind of like the way it is now and so does my husband.
Close your eyes and stop reading if you get squeamish because this is the part when I tell you labor is a messy business. Blood, amniotic fluid, tears, snot, you name it, and if it’s a bodily fluid, it’s likely to come out of you during childbirth. I’ve even heard some women have bowel movements while pushing, which thank the baby Lord Jesus didn’t happen to me because I would have died of embarrassment.
But to cut a long story short, pushing out a ten-pound baby is brutal. Especially when your husband passes out cold on the floor, and your doctor is more worried about whether he is going to sue or not when he wakes up. Oh, and if one more person told me that I was doing great, that I’d forget the pain as soon as he was born, or I should have a thousand babies if they all look like him, I was going to scream. Jake will be lucky if we have even one more after this, let alone enough to fill the bleachers of a high school football field.
Jake’s face is still pale when he pulls himself to his feet to stand beside the head of my bed. Holding my hand tightly in his, he gives it a gentle squeeze before saying,
“One more, baby. Just one more push and we’ll be holding our boy.”
I won’t lie, during the course of the next half an hour, I cried, I screamed, I threatened to castrate Jake, and I may have accidentally on purpose kicked the doctor in the side of his head. Whoops. Oh well, that will teach him for telling me he understands my pain now, won’t it?
But when the last excruciating contraction rips through me, I bear down and push as hard as I can, begging and pleading for this it be over. I’m drained, sore, and covered in God knows what, but the moment I see the dark shock of hair on my son’s head, I break into body-wracking sobs of sheer relief.
He’s beautiful. Axel Knox Hansen looks just like his daddy, and I couldn’t be happier. I mean, I can’t see the color of his eyes since they are scrunched closed, but the rest of him from the tips of his tiny toes to the cute button nose on his face is all, Jake.
With Axel being checked over by the doctor and one of the nurses, Jake leans forward to place a tender kiss on my lips and brushes a lock of hair off my face that has fallen in my eyes. “He’s fucking perfect, Farrah. I’m so proud of you, baby. So damn proud.”
My eyelids are heavy, and I’m exhausted, but I don’t want to miss out on seeing Jake hold out son for the first time. And I’m glad I didn’t. The sight of my husband holding a newborn is one of the most amazing things I’ve ever witnessed. “I love you, Jake,” I whisper, my valiant efforts to stay awake fading fast.
“I love you more, baby. Now sleep. We’ll be right here when you wake up. We’re not going anywhere. Ever,” he reassures me as I drift off into dreamland.
Epilogue
JAKE
“Eli dropped off your report to me this morning on his way out. I take it you informed the client her stalker has been found?” Lyric asks, leaning back and folding his arms over his chest.
With his motorcycle boots propped up on the edge of his desk, a leather jacket hanging from the back of his chair, and a good portion of his body covered in tattoos, no one would think he was the owner of one of the most successful celebrity protection companies in L.A. Yet, that’s precisely what he is.
When I pitched the idea of D.I.C.E to Lyric, I never expected to be sitting here today, talking about opening another office in New York so soon. I knew between us we could make a go of it; the guys Lyric employs are highly skilled and work their asses off under some tough circumstances. Trust me, being mobbed by hundreds of crazy fangirls, desperate to get within a foot of their favorite pop icon isn’t fun. But this? Two offices with the potential to open three more within the next twelve months? Never.
Nodding, I lean forward resting my elbows on my knees. “Yeah, I called her. And let’s just say, Leandra won’t be trusting everything to one person ever again.”
What Eli and I thought was going to be a quick in and out assignment turned into months of chasing our tails, followed by a solid week of confirming what we’d come across on the hidden camera we placed in Leandra’s study. It seems that her manager, Jeffery believed he deserved more than the cool quarter mill he was getting paid each year, and was helping himself to Leandra’s personal accounts. Worse still, he was responsible for the letters and texts she was receiving.
There was no stalker, just a greedy bastard who thought he was above being caught. The moral of the story – something Jeffery has plenty of time to learn while he serves out his eight to ten – is that no one is bulletproof. Everyone fucks up; it’s just a matter of time before you’re caught with your hand in the cookie jar. Oh, and who’s around when it happens. Let’s put it this way; Alex was even more pissed than Leandra. He didn’t think twice about breaking Jeffery’s nose when he came face to face with him as I dragged him out of the house. And if it weren’t for Leandra’s plea for him to stop, Alex could and would have done a lot worse.
“Since that’s done and I’m still officially on leave, I’m going to head out unless you’ve got anything else for me,” I prompt, hoping like hell he doesn’t. I want to get home to my wife and son, not sit around shooting the shit with Lyric.
“As a matter of fact, I do,” he mutters. “When you come back, I’m going to need you to keep an eye on, Ford. I spoke to Eli earlier, and he’ll be partnering up with Talon for the foreseeable future until I can get a read on what’s going on with the moody bastard.”
“Something happen with him I should know about?” I ask, curious to see where this is going.
Shaking his head, Lyric groans. “Nothing I can put my finger on, but something’s up with him. He’s been an asshole since he took off for a week without telling anyone. Now, I can barely get a word out of him, he’s not showing up to work on time, and he’s drinking more than my dad does. And that’s saying something because my old man can drink me under the table.”
And I’d believe it. Jonas, Lyric’s dad, owns a tattoo shop in Fur
nace, and is good friends with all the men who make up Vengeance MC. He’s probably been drinking since he was in the womb, building up a steady tolerance to anything less than ninety proof.
“Sophie,” I mumble. “This all started the day Sophie showed up to see Farrah but ended up meeting Ford instead.”
“Yeah, but he talked to her for what? Ten minutes at the outset. I don’t care how attractive she is, ten minutes arguing with a woman doesn’t account for his fucked up attitude and crazy mood swings.” Lyric maintains.
“Then you haven’t met, Sophie,” I state, cocking an eyebrow at him.
I might be married, but I’m not dead. Sophie is stunning, and you’d have to be blind, deaf, and dumb not to see the effect she has on men. Small enough to be classed as petite, her height is the only thing tiny about her. Sophie has huge crystal blue eyes that suck you in, hypnotizing even the strongest of men. Her big tits, nipped in waist and white-blonde hair that reaches all the way down to her ass is simply the icing on the cake. It’s those eyes that have the ability to slay a man. Ford is no different. He’s just her most recent victim.
“You saying this chick has a magic pussy, or she’s just that hot?” Lyric smirks at me.
“What the fuck did you just say?” Ford bellows from the doorway.
“Fuck me,” I hiss under my breath, wondering how much of our conversation he heard.
“Yeah, fuck you. And you too,” he says pointing at Lyric. “I suggest you shut your mouth about Sophie or you and I are going to have bigger problems than we’ve got already,” he warns.
“Look, you two have fun but I’ve got better shit to do than sit around and argue over a woman who’s long gone,” I interject.
Standing up, I make my way to the door stopping directly in front of Ford. “Listen to me when I tell you, she’s not coming back. It’s been six months, Ford and if she were going to come home, then she would have by now. Her best friend got married and had a baby, and she never turned up, never called, didn’t even send a fucking card. Her sister got engaged, and her brother came home from his last tour of duty, and where was Sophie? Not. Fucking. Here. So give it up, brother. Give her up.”