“Ryder or Judd?” I ask as I will myself to calm and feel my heart settle.
Cage barks a laugh and kisses me again, his face so filled with joy it lights the room.
“Ryder, idiot, you are way too uncool to be a Judd. Now like I was saying, they’re fine. Just give poor Cage here a chance to love up on you before you expect him to let go just yet. Oh and FYI, your belly looks like you made love to Freddy Kruger. My condolences.”
And so starts the kissing, hugging, and ribbing that you just knew was coming. By the time Cage manages to shoo them out, I’m exhausted but smiling happily as the news that we all made it settles in.
“So?”
“So?”
I know exactly what has that look on his face and why he’s clutching at my hand as if just by touching me he’s assured that I won’t be able to slap his stupid head.
I want to giggle when he looks up at me and seems to shudder with fear. Serves him right.
“You’re a sneaky prick.”
“Guilty.”
“You’re a rotten liar.”
“Guilty. Mostly,” he concedes, wincing at my snarl.
“Mostly?”
“Mostly. Look, I won’t lie and say that I didn’t think about getting my seed in you by swapping out those semen samples, and yeah, okay, so I’m happy that it turned out that way, but you have to know that I changed my mind and called it off before it happened, Luci. I felt like shit for even wanting to trick you like that and—”
“And you, Mr. Possessive, just willingly changed your mind and let me go ahead thinking that I was going to have some other man’s babies?” I ask, biting my lip to stifle a giggle when he growls and grinds his teeth.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Why? Because what difference would it have made, Luci? I’d still have come after you and done anything to make you mine. Honestly, those babies would have been mine anyway because I love you and they’re a part of you so I love them too,” he says, giving me a look to let me know I’m being stupid for even asking.
I feel all warm and gooey inside at the words and I have to blink back tears of joy and just plain gratitude that I got this man as mine. He’s not perfect, not by a long shot, what with his domineering, moody ass, but he loves me so much it hurt a little to see the intensity of that love shining back at me.
I finally understand Mummy and Daddy, because yes, I love Cage so much that he’s all I see most days.
“You are so lucky that I love you this much, dude, because I should be wanting to kick your butt instead of feeling like I hit the jackpot.”
“Yeah?”
So much hope and unbridled joy. How can a woman not see all that devotion and feel it in equal parts?
I do. I know that our road may never be an easy one, that’s pretty much damn guaranteed what with four kids with his DNA on my ass for the next eighteen years or so, and yeah, but I’d rather be nuts with him than nuts without him any day of the week.
“Definitely yeah. Now, shut up and kiss my morning breath away and then let’s go see those kids you gave me, huh? I sure hope they got more of me than you or I see myself becoming a chain-smoking alcoholic.”
Cage laughs and kisses me deeply, bad breath and all, and I feel as if life just handed me the keys to the Ferrari and said go at it.
Chapter Eighteen
Go With It
Cage
I’m in heaven and groaning my pleasure as I look up at Luci over her belly and flick my tongue out to catch her swollen nub with the lightest of touches.
She moans and keeps her eyes on mine, the green depths so dark with need and lust, I feel my dick go hard and leaky against the sheets beneath us.
“You can’t tease me, Cage.”
I grin and continue to torment her some more as I get her hotter and wetter for my dick. It’s been three months since she almost died bringing our babies into the world, and I haven’t so much as allowed myself to sniff at her ass while I waited for her body to heal from the ordeal it went through.
Now, after three months of cold showers and watching her nurse my babies, I’m not about to make our first lovemaking a rushed affair.
Oh no, I want to savor every touch, taste, and moan I can get from her sweet ass, and I want her to be so needy for me that taking me will be more pleasure than pain for her.
She keeps moaning and pulling at my hair as I settle in and open my mouth over her and kiss her.
Luci moans loudly and starts pulling me closer, her hips bumping up, urging me on.
“Cage. I swear to God.”
I’m in her and catching her cry of delight before she can say another word. The feel of her sheath taking me is like coming home, and I have to grit my teeth and concentrate on not blowing my load immediately.
The pleasure is beyond anything else, because this is the reclaiming I’ve needed since I almost lost her. Jack warned me not long after I brought them home after a month of them being in incubators that I’d have the need to stake my claim on her again.
He said it was a man’s way of reassuring himself that his girl is still his and she’s okay. I didn’t believe him till the first time I saw Luci nursing one of the boys.
Her body goes wild beneath mine and I snap out of it as my body takes over and I start hammering her like a wild man. She’s hot, silky, and so tight that I feel every pulse around my swollen dick.
“More, Cage.”
I give it to her without thought, just like I give her everything else she asks for, and make love to my wife with every part of me.
Her mouth is open, her breath filling my lungs as she gasps into me and screams just before her sex pulses and grabs on to my cock, pulling me deeper.
My own orgasm as it hits has me going blind with pained pleasure and I come in her in long spurts of growled adoration.
“God I love you, sprite,” I groan as I fall face-first onto the pillow beside her and try to convince my brain to work.
She’s giggling and gasping for breath just as the first wail pierces the air, followed by three more.
That sets her off even more, and even I’m smiling as I pull her from the bed and follow her into the nursery. To say that my boys are little monsters would be like saying Hannibal was a slightly depraved guy. They’re straight-up terrors, even at three months old.
How they sprouted so fast after looking like tiny aliens when they were first born is a mystery, but as I grab two and hold them close, kissing each sweet-smelling little ash-blond head I feel the love that I can’t ever deny my children streak through me and settle deep.
They’re each of them so different and all mine that I know I wouldn’t deny them a damn thing.
Indiana has Mommy’s hair and my bright blue eyes. Harley has her eyes and my disposition to the core with the way he demands attention at all times. Alan is a little quiet, but with my eyes and that grin I get the impression he’ll be reeling the ladies in without so much as a word. Last but most certainly not least is my little man Grey.
We still don’t know where those grey eyes came from, but Jack is smiling like a loon because I swear to God he somehow thinks that sharing an eye color gives him claim to one of mine.
The kid just stares at us all in narrow-eyed interest and gives me the creeps because I know he’s Mama’s little criminal and he’s going to be just like her.
My family. All mine.
“Stop plotting over there and grab the bottles before they start chewing at you again. Swear to God, Harley, Mommy’s nipples are not jerky!”
I’m still laughing when the kid seems to wink and I settle down with my Luci and the boys, plotting how best to make myself a little girl just like her mommy.
Chapter Nineteen
Only the Lonely.
Dot
The smell of babies and satisfaction is thick in the air as I sit around Jack and Callie’s table watching Luci and Freddie juggle four six-month-old little tyrants while Jack tries to hold a conversat
ion with a yawning mini Jack.
It’s been so long since I didn’t look at a family that I love and feel as if I’m all alone in this big bad world. My friends are all talking over each other, as I pretend to smile at them all and eat the food I have no stomach for.
How can I when my life is a steaming ball of manure right now?
I’m not only jealous that everyone else is getting their happy ending, but also that they can all be so wrapped up in their happiness that they don’t see my misery.
It’s such an uncharitable thought, I know, but I can’t be bothered to stop thinking this way when I think of what my life is now and what I have to look forward to.
I’ve found myself in a nasty situation that just won’t let me go.
My parents are English transplants two generations back, and though I see us all as American as anyone else, they don’t. As a result I am currently stuck in a place that’s driving me insane.
They’ve got me hopping through hoops to impress a man they think I’m going to just marry because the families decided a long time ago that that’s just what they want.
I may be a soft touch, but I am no fool or doormat, hell no. I’m a Naughty One, and as such I have this thing called a backbone. Which apparently my parents do not like since I told them just this morning where to go when they started pushing me about a wedding I have no intention of going through with.
No way in hell will I marry Alex freaking Summers, a man I don’t even know, just because that’s been decreed.
Why the marriage when I know for a fact that they aren’t getting a thing out of it? No idea, and it’s not like I care. All I know is that my mother has cancer and is using a guilt trip to try and get me to do something I just can’t do.
I love my family, I always have, I just love me, too. As a result I’m having to sit here through months of agony and decide how the heck I’m getting myself out of this situation. Especially considering that I went to dinner at the old house last night and clapped eyes on a man who made my panties bunch on sight.
Alex’s cousin Paul.
Good God Almighty, I just about melted on the spot and threw myself at his feet like some kind of lovesick nutso.
I want him.
According to the Summers clan and my own Harper clan, I’m practically married to Alex already.
What the hell am I going to do? I ask myself as Luci hands me a baby—Harley, I think—and I find myself occupied with the little nugget.
“Hello, Harley, my little man. No biting now, you hear?”
He has no teeth but the kid has stamina and he goes for it with a gusto that does not bode well for when he sprouts one or ten.
God, I want a baby, too. And a man.
***
Paul
There she is again, looking ready to bolt as Alex keeps yapping at me about some stupid little blonde he’s into this month. It irks the shit out of me that I have to hear the asshole crowing about his next conquest when he could have the sweet Dot for himself and never have to want another woman again.
I’m not really a man to obsess, I find the need stifling, but as I take in her carrot-red hair, falling in a long silken sheath down her back, and see those blue eyes dart around the room as if looking for an escape, I suddenly have the need to grab her up and run with her.
Alex—I hate the man, quite frankly, blood or not, because he’s an asshole who’s stepped all over me for most of my life and is now hanging on my coattails as if he has any right to be there.
I let him, thus far, only because pretending to be his friend lets me trail along here and I get to see Dot enough to stop me from going nuts.
I want her. It’s like a fire in my blood and a need that has my skin crawling. But to what end? I’m not looking for love or a relationship right now, if ever, and I certainly do not see the sweet little carrot allowing me a bite or nibble without wanting me to take the rest.
Therein lays my biggest problem. Oh I have no guilt about poaching on Alex’s girl, because frankly that woman has no intention of marrying my cousin, any fool can see that.
But I can’t rightfully go after her knowing that all I want is a quick affair before I move on.
Or can I?
This could be your opportunity to screw with Alex just like he screwed with your life.
Yeah, it is but I’m not enough of a prick to use an innocent woman to get one over on this man.
At least that’s what I keep telling myself before I look over at her again and see her stunning blue eyes on me just as she licks her lips. The move is so seductive and unconsciously flirtatious that I feel myself respond and get hard in a second.
“Jesus, would you look at that hair. My kids are going to glow in the dark, man. At least she’s hot and relatively quiet, though, huh? I like my woman quiet unless I’m banging them. Do you think Dorothea is a screamer?”
His insults and the way he talks about her as if she’s nothing more than a vessel makes my teeth ache. I grind them so hard and it takes an inhuman effort not to react as I hold her eyes and make up my mind to do something that may just change the course of my life forever.
Not that it takes a lot from Alex for me to decide on this course. I’m man enough to admit that I’m looking for any and all reasons to go after the sweet little redhead.
Paul Summers, the businessman, the man, the hard-assed cold-hearted fool, will look for any excuse to take what he wants and I usually do just that.
I’ve used this tactic for years to build my company from the ground up and keep adding to it to the point that I’m too rich for comfort and jaded beyond belief.
There hasn’t been a thing to spark my interest in too many years to count, and perhaps that’s why I’m so damn taken with Dot that I think of her constantly, to the point that I can’t even try to want another woman.
Nothing held any challenge or appeal for me anymore.
Till her.
Just as I make up my mind, I hear her mother tap the room to silence and raise her glass to us all.
Dot seems to stiffen and I see her tremble in her designer shoes as those eyes dart for the exit, her intentions clear. I’ve never taken Dot as the type to cut and run. She seems more quiet and duty-bound, more good girl than rebel, but as she slides a foot to her left I get the impression that she’s way more than I’ve let myself see.
“Everyone? Thank you all so much for joining us tonight. I’ll be happy to announce that the Summers-Harper wedding is on!”
We’ll just see about that.
~~~
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Prologue
The club that Linda and the other girls have brought me to is my worst nightmare. It’s hot, crowded, and smells like booze, vomit, and something that I know isn’t the sweaty armpit of a bear but smells like it.
And the lights. They’re flashing, strobes that gave me a headache the moment I teetered in on the high-heeled death traps Linda had shoved on my feet—after squeezing my size eight butt into a dress that looked small enough to fit an eight year old.
“Isn’t this place great!” one of Linda’s many friends yells into my ear, her vodka-scented breath hitting my cheek in a hot puff of air and spit combined.
“Sure,” I mutter with a fake smile, as I lean against the bar and signal the bartender for another water and a round for the rowdy bunch sitting in one of the lounge areas.
This is not my scene, and I would have avoided it at all costs if I could have, but Linda—my college roomie, all round pain in my ass, I-love-her-she’s-a hyperactive-party-girl—refused to leave me alone in the dorm and had practically twisted my arm.
<
br /> So here I am, pretending to drink while fighting off a migraine and hoping that I make it out of here alive and with at least some hearing left thanks to the music and the screaming, writhing crowd on the dance floor.
“So Lin says you’re done. You finished your studies three months early?” she yells, leaning over and shaking her bust at the grinning barman.
I don’t even know why she’s bothering to ask since she’s obviously not interested enough to pretend to wait for my reply, but I bite back my annoyance and wait for the order, while trying to block out the din around me.
Yeah, I have finished three months early. It’s something I’ve worked my ass off to accomplish so that I can be a shoo-in for the internship at the museum of natural history.
The program isn’t new, but it’s so sought after that only a few students know about it because the school and lecturers have singled them out as suitable candidates.
You’d assume that I’ve spent the last four years of my life studying for something I’m passionate about, but that is just not true. I chose the field of History and Archaeology because, not only is it a very stable one, but the money isn’t bad. At all. And that will mean that I’ll always have a job and a decent income.
That’s important to me since I come from a broken home that’s run by a mother whose only goal in life is to torture not only me but my twin brother Alec, too.
He’s away at Tulane, thank God, and free of her tyranny so that just leaves me. I’d elected to stay in the dorms at school—even though the house is only two trains away—and you better believe I’d sever an artery and endure a hospital stay before going home during breaks.
I have a definite plan for my life and nothing will stop me from getting there. That’s why when my professor had advised me to try and finish sooner than is actually humanly possible, I’d taken his advice and worked myself half to death to get done.
Now I’m almost positive I’ll get that internship.
“Hey Shaw! Are you growing roots girl? Where are the drinks?”
LUCI (The Naughty Ones Book 2) Page 11