The Hail You Say (Hail Raisers Book 5)

by Lani Lynn Vale

  She snorted. “Yeah, whatever.”

  Twenty minutes later, we were seated at one of the only restaurants in the city that was open that wouldn’t be packed this late at night.

  Instead of sitting across from her, I sat next to her, scooting in close so she was either squished up against the wall or against me. She chose me, and we were touching from knee to shoulder. Her shoulder, not mine.

  She was a tiny little thing, and though she had some muscle on her, it was more than obvious that I had quite a few pounds on her.

  “How tall are you?” I questioned.

  She looked up at me and narrowed her eyes. “Why?”

  I shrugged. “Honestly? I’m just curious. You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”

  “Five-foot-one-and-a-half.”

  “That half an inch is important to you?” I teased.

  She blushed and looked back down at her menu before shrugging. “Yes. It really is.”

  “In case you’re wondering, I’m six-foot-three.”

  She looked back up at me, and our eyes met. “I wasn’t.”

  I snorted. “What do you like to do for fun?”

  She smelled good. Really, really good.

  It was something sweet, melon maybe? Her hair was down around her shoulders, and she’d twisted half of it up and brought it around to lay across her chest.

  She kept twisting the hair around her fingers, over and over and over again.

  It was downright distracting. On instinct, I reached up and caught her hand, which was nervously twisting the hair, and pulled it down into my lap and gave it a slight squeeze.

  “I…” she paused. “I like to play volleyball. Sometimes I like to go to the library.”

  That was what she liked to do for fun?

  “Really?” I asked. “You don’t go to the movies? Go to the mall?”

  She grimaced. “One would have to have a car and money to do those things. Neither of which I have.”

  I frowned, thinking about her brother.

  “But your brother…”

  Her brother didn’t have a job, and he also had a car. What the hell?

  “My mother feels that I should be staying home and focusing on my studies.” She snorted. “I have straight As. I could seriously graduate right now, but it serves my purposes to do what I’m doing.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  She looked away. “What are you getting to eat?”

  “A hamburger,” I answered, knowing that she didn’t want to discuss what we’d been talking about any longer. “You?”

  “I’m thinking chocolate cake.”

  My lips twitched.

  “You’re thinking chocolate cake?” I laughed. “What about your main course?”

  She pursed her lips. “Maybe fries, too. And a strawberry shake.”

  I just laughed, knowing that she was being one hundred percent serious.

  “Do you do this often?” I questioned, drawing a pattern on the back of her hand with my thumb.

  “Do what?” She licked her lips.

  “Order odd stuff for dinner,” I expounded.

  She shrugged. “I like ordering pancakes and French fries when we go to IHOP, but that’s not all that often that I get to do that because my mother feels that I’ll gain a vast amount of weight if I eat like that too often.”

  I didn’t have anything to say to that.

  “I’ll gladly take you out to eat any time you want me to,” I told her. “And I highly doubt that you’ll put on weight like she’s thinking. You’re thin, active and young. Those three things are in your favor. Now, give it twenty years, and you might not have the same luxuries. But if you want to eat pancakes and French fries, then it won’t affect you like she’s thinking it will. At least not yet.”

  Her smile was wide as she laughed.

  “I’m glad someone agrees with me,” she admitted. “I go out and run a few miles every other day, depending on how hard of a workout I had that day. I can afford to eat the chocolate cake.”

  The waiter came and took our order then, and he didn’t blink an eye at bringing dessert out with my meal.

  And later, as I watched her enjoy her cake and strawberry shake—which she dipped her fries into—I didn’t once think that she was odd.

  No, I thought she was enchanting, and I couldn’t wait for the next date.

  Chapter 10

  Your butt plug has a metal core.

  -Things not to find out at the airport

  Krisney

  Honest to God, I never, ever would’ve worn the butt plug out to do laundry if I’d known that someone would see it.

  I’d just been so horny lately.

  So, so horny.

  Seriously, never would I have done that.

  I’d even gone as far as to look into the mirror to check. I hadn’t seen a damn thing.

  But I hadn’t taken into account the bending over process of putting clothes into the bottom dryers.

  What had I been thinking?

  I could tell you what I was thinking…at the time.

  My best friend, Hennessy, had tossed me a box that she’d ‘accidentally’ ordered off of Amazon. In this box, there’d been three ‘trainer’ butt plugs.

  Since I was always curious by nature, I tried one…and I’d liked it.

  It felt almost…nice.

  So, then I’d tried the next size up and had almost died.

  It’d been big…so freakin’ big.

  But I’d gotten it in.

  And I’d known that if I hadn’t worn it, stretched out my anus, I wouldn’t have ever gotten up to the third one. So I’d done the dumbest thing in the world, and I’d worn it out to do laundry.

  I never, not ever, saw anyone when I was doing laundry.

  Never.

  Except this Sunday.

  This Sunday, there was someone there.

  I just wasn’t aware of it.

  I’d gone through my entire load of clothes before I’d started in on the drying process.

  “Do you have something in your ass?”

  I straightened up so fast that I knocked my shoulder on the dryer door.

  Turning around, I got angry, instead of embarrassed like I normally would have.

  Why?

  Because it was the asshole. The same asshole that’d held me in his arms while I cried three days prior, gotten a page, and walked out like I wasn’t pregnant with his goddamn twins.

  “No,” I snapped. “What do you want?”

  His eyes narrowed.

  I resisted the urge to blush.

  I was allowed to stick things in my ass if I wanted to, dammit!

  He was studying my face for signs of my lying, and I was studiously trying not to squirm under his attention.

  It helped that I was getting madder at him by the second.

  “I wanted to stop in when I saw your car,” he gestured over his shoulder. “Why are you washing clothes here?”

  He looked around like it was the most disgusting place in the world.

  I sneered at him.

  “Because I don’t have a washer and dryer?” I stated the obvious.

  Reed’s eye twitched. “Why not?”

  I tilted my head in confusion. “Because I don’t have the money to buy them…”

  “Why not?”

  I knew what he was asking.

  Why wouldn’t I spend the money that my parents had left?

  And the answer to that? It was scary.

  I didn’t want to spend their money. I didn’t want anything to do with them.

  I wanted to move, but I couldn’t move until the house I’d bought was in better repair.

  That meant redoing the electrical, which I’d gotten a quote for, and had nearly squawked in protest. Who the hell could afford fifteen grand after they’d just bought a house with property?

  I paused, wondering why he cared. “Because I b
ought a house, and used almost every bit of my savings on it. I was told by my realtor that the house was old, and that I should expect repairs would be needed. When I had an inspector come out, he told me that the house needed a lot of work. The electrical needed to be completely redone. The floor is about to go out in a few places, and there isn’t central heating and air. That’ll come later, though.”

  His eyes twitched. “Then why did you buy a house that you knew needed work?”

  I didn’t answer.

  He knew why, just as well as I did.

  “Why not use your parents’ washer and dryer?”

  I looked at him.

  “You think my parents actually did their own laundry?”

  I almost laughed at that.

  Reed did laugh.

  “Touché.”

  I rolled my eyes and turned around, going back to what I was doing in the dryer. This time, I made sure to bend down to the floor instead of lean over, so he’d have to be lying on the floor to really see anything.

  Something that I knew he wouldn’t do, seeing as he was already looking around this place like it had cooties or something.

  He was also looking at me like I’d lost my mind.

  I hadn’t.

  I just liked it at this one.

  It was far away from my parents’ place, close to the new place that I’d just purchased, and honestly? It was always quiet. Always.

  When people came into this laundromat, they never spoke to me and didn’t expect me to speak to them.

  And their quarter machine made me happy.

  Why did it make me happy?

  Because the owner wrote funny quotes on a Post-It note and taped it to the quarter machine every week.

  That was it.

  Once I got all of my clothes into the basket, I stood up and walked them to the table.

  “Why are you doing your laundry at eleven o’clock at night?” he continued.

  I looked over at him in a sideways glance as I started to fold my laundry.

  “Why are you out at eleven o’clock at night?” I countered.

  “I just delivered a baby,” he answered.

  My shoulders fell.

  Shit.

  I’d managed to forget I was carrying his babies.

  “Do you wear those still?” He eyed the short shorts.

  I showed him the waistband, and then stretched it for emphasis. “They’re pretty damn stretchy, so yes. I don’t own much stuff that stretches enough to allow for this.”

  I shimmied my waist for emphasis, and his eyes went down.

  He’d been trying to stare into my eyes, but he was failing miserably.

  Though, that could be because I was wearing the tight short shorts that hadn’t fit last week, yet here I was, still in them. And again, one of his t-shirts. This was getting ridiculous.

  However, I refused to go buy new clothes.

  A, because I didn’t have any money to buy them. And B, because I didn’t want to admit that I was pregnant yet.

  Sure, I knew logically that me ignoring the situation wasn’t exactly realistic, but I couldn’t help it.

  I wasn’t ready to deal yet.

  Maybe tomorrow.

  So today, I was going to act like my pants didn’t fit because I was fat.

  Today, I was going to act like the man standing in front of me wasn’t the babies’ father.

  Or I would have, had Reed not brought it up.

  “Do you not have any maternity clothes yet?”

  I shook my head. “Nope.”

  Dammit.

  So much for ignoring the obvious elephant—elephants—in the room.

  “Why not?”

  He looked down at my clearly could be really fat—could be pregnant—belly and stared.

  I knew that he wanted to touch it.

  I knew it.

  I don’t know how, but I could practically read the thoughts flashing through his brain.

  “Just do it,” I growled.

  His eyes came back up to me, and then he dropped his hand to place it almost reverently on my belly.

  Everything inside of me tensed, including my asshole—which reminded me of the butt plug still in my ass.

  With Reed standing this close, I seriously couldn’t think straight.

  Shit.

  Because now that I was reminded of what was in my backside, I realized that I wouldn’t mind having something else in my backside. Something else that was attached to Reed’s body, and was quite a bit larger than his fingers.

  Oh, God.

  Seriously.

  I was this sex-crazed nympho pregnant woman who couldn’t stop thinking about doing dirty things!

  What the hell was wrong with me?

  “You mind?”

  I looked at where he was holding the shirt, and at first, I thought he wanted the shirt back, but then he started to lift it. Effectively letting me know that he wanted to lift the shirt, not have it back completely.

  I shrugged, trying to act nonchalant that this man—the same man that I loved with all of my heart, and probably shouldn’t—was about to touch me skin to skin without the excuse of being in a doctor’s office to do it.

  I swallowed hard and watched as he lifted my shirt with one hand, and reached for my belly with the other.

  According to my favorite friend, Google, I wouldn’t be showing much at this point if I were only pregnant with one baby. But since Reed obviously had super sperm like the rest of his kin, and had knocked me up with twins, I was exceptionally thick around the middle.

  Really, what it looked like to me was that I ate a dozen donuts, every day, for the last six weeks.

  As if I’d added about twenty pounds, and all of it was in my middle.

  Reed seemed fascinated, though.

  He was running his hand from one side of my belly to the other.

  “Since you were so fit before you got pregnant, it might take a while for you to see it as an actual ‘baby bump’ as they call it.”

  It was as if he’d stepped into my head, plucking the thoughts right out of my brain.

  Though, we’d always been able to do that.

  The other dryer made an annoying grinding ring-like sound, and I jumped, pulling away.

  My heart was hammering, and my chest fucking hurt.

  It always hurt, but when Reed was this close, I literally found it hard to breathe. The realization that Reed was here, but I couldn’t have him, shouldn’t still suck as bad as it did.

  But it did.

  I freakin’ missed him.

  I missed everything about him.

  The way he used to play soccer, and then give me sweaty hugs after. Or the way he used to hug me close before returning me to my parents’ doorstep every night.

  Yeah, I could think of a thousand things that I missed about him, and all thousand of those things felt like a lead weight sitting directly on top of my chest.

  Ignoring the way his face seemed to fall as I pulled away, turned around, bent over, and started getting these clothes out of the dryer, too.

  This was my sheet set, comforter, and mattress pad.

  They’d taken about twice as long to dry as the other two loads had, and I was thankful to find them dry instead of slightly damp as they were the last ten times I’d put quarters in the machine.

  I was quickly running out of quarters, and I really didn’t want to have to break another twenty if I had a choice.

  Unfortunately, in my haste to get away from Reed, I forgot one important thing.

  I forgot all about the butt plug.

  All. About. It.

  His hands had a way of making me forget everything and anything. And when they were on me? Yeah, that was asking a price that I would never be able to pay.

  At least until he touched my ass, his fingers probing between my cheeks.

  “You do have something in your ass,” he growled into my ear. />
  Annnnd, that’s when I nearly slammed my head on the dryer in front of me in my surprise to have something touching my ass.

  Someone.

  Reed.

  “Reed!” I moaned and turned, placing my butt against the dryer. “What the hell?”

  His eyes weren’t on me, though. They were on my vagina…or more accurately where my ass had once been in his line of sight only moments before.

  “You have something in your ass,” he whispered, his eyes coming up to meet mine.

  They were on fire. Literally, his eyes were hot, and the full force of that stare was aimed at me.

  And that’s when I knew that I would be getting to feel Reed tonight.

  That look in his eyes was one that I couldn’t ignore.

  “I can’t…” I tried to search for the words, but came up with no other way to put them. “I’m horny. All the freakin’ time.”

  He swallowed.

  “Let me go home with you.”

  Was there any other answer?

  “Okay.”

  We were fucked up. There was no other wording for it.

  We weren’t in the right place, neither one of us, to be doing this.

  Yet we would be doing it. It didn’t even matter if we wanted to at this point. There was just something about the man that I couldn’t resist. Just like there’d been something about the boy, twelve years ago, that I couldn’t walk away from.

  It took him less than five seconds to gather up every single piece of clothing—folded and not—and shove them into my basket. It took him another three to gather up the ones he’d dropped on the floor in his haste to leave. Ten to gather both baskets and order me out the door.

  And then fifteen seconds to shove them in my car.

  The fifteen-minute drive to my house, though?

  That was the longest drive of my life.

  I’d even contemplated removing the thing from my ass before we got home, but I had a feeling that Reed wouldn’t be too happy with me if I did.

  So, I left it there, even though by the time I got home, I was squirming in my seat.

  We didn’t even make it up to my parents’—because even though I’d been living in it now for a while by myself, I still didn’t count it as mine—front door before Reed was on me.

  “I’ve wanted to fuck you right here, where your mother could catch us at any second, for what feels like a lifetime.”

  “What?” I gasped.

  “I wanted her to see what kind of filth was tainting her daughter.” He growled. “I wanted her to know, that even though she was an asshole, that she didn’t break you. Or me.”