He let out a deep, husky laugh. “That was not a request, my love. Some submissive you are,” he quipped with a melodramatic sigh. “After all this time and you still won’t follow orders.”
Meghan shrieked with laughter. “Orders? From who? You? Bah!”
Alex had a handful of her hair in his beefy fist before the sound of her mocking reply ended. Giving a good yank, her head jerked back and he loomed over her, his eyes boring into hers.
She marveled at how readily her body responded to his dominant bluster despite the delicious orgasm she’d just experienced. The thrilling tingle running along her spine triggered a supersensitive rush to her ears of all places.
“Let’s try again, shall we?”
Oh, yes, please! Again and again and again.
“Who do you belong to, woman?”
He was messing around but the question came from the core of their relationship. This wasn’t a husband and wife or an Alex and Meghan moment. They were in caveman territory. Man. Woman.
“Yours.”
His eyes flared when she answered with the word ritual that defined them, letting her know he was pleased.
“Indeed,” he growled.
She waited. He didn’t play along so she pouted until his lips claimed hers. Ending the possessive kiss on a loud smooch, he canted back slightly and stared into her eyes.
His fist in her hair tightened. The dom move unleashed a throbbing pulse of super-heated desire. Damn. Not again.
He eyed her knowingly and a slow smile curled his lips. “Here’s how it’s going to go,” he murmured quietly so no one would hear.
At that moment she thanked her lucky stars that they were in the shadows and not on full display. She blinked slowly and chomped down on her lip. Excitement ricocheted throughout her body. He was setting a scene and there was nothing Meghan enjoyed more than her alpha beast breaking out some wicked fuckery.
“Do you want to play, wife?”
Simple question. Simple answer.
“Yes.”
Alex’s smile lit up her soul.
“Good. I think tonight we’ll play master and slave.”
His fist tightened even more and she felt her scalp stretch. Oh my god. If he kept that up she’d be sitting in a puddle.
She could tell by the husky snicker and sound of his voice that he’d worked this scenario out in his head.
“Prepare yourself, fuck goddess. Your willful disobedience unleashed the beast.”
The beast? She wanted to clap her hands with giddy excitement and scream with delight. She loved the beast!
And then he released her. Disappointment forced a groan from her throat.
“Patience, Meghan,” he chuckled.
She stuck her tongue out and grunted. “Says you.”
17
After Alex walked away and she gathered herself together, a figure moved in over her shoulder and stepped up to the table. Heather?
“Mind if I sit down?” she asked. Meghan heard the laughter in her voice and sighed.
“Busted?” she asked with a smirk.
“Oh hell yeah,” the other woman chirped with amusement as she sat.
Meghan squirmed a bit and wondered just how much the newest member of the Justice ladies squad actually witnessed.
“Okay, look,” Heather said with a laugh. “Straight to the point.”
Reaching for a glass of ginger ale, Meghan took a small sip and peered at the snickering pirate wench. She wondered just how personal this was going to get and then laughed. There weren’t any secrets in family Justice. Not really.
“I wouldn’t tag you as the type, Meghan, and believe me when I tell you it feels weird to be saying this. But, I mean,” she stammered and gave a little shrug, “it’s hard not to be curious. You guys are so out there and everyone has a whole slew of hilarious comeback comments that tell me you guys aren’t exactly…reserved.”
Reserved? Well, damn. That was a new one!
“We all have our kink,” Heather continued with a sly smirk. “In fact I’m beginning to think someone would be real smart to make a movie about this place. For shits and grins,” she snickered.
Meghan didn’t need to hear anything else. “Heather,” she drawled with a hair flip that made the other woman roll her eyes. “Slow down pirate wench! It’s time, as Julie Andrews sang, to start at the very beginning.”
“Oh goody,” Heather snickered with a snarky hoist of her tankard. “It’s story time.”
Meghan pulled something out of the sash around her waist and laid a pair of long yellow gloves on the table. Holding the end of one glove open with her hand, she began sliding her other hand into the cool satin as she spoke.
“First of all, what you’re asking about has nothing to do with kink. Not really. Oh, I know,” she assured Heather with an emphatic head wag, “that people automatically equate the two things as the same but honey, that’s one helluva stretched equivalency.”
Smoothing her bare hand along the satin of the elbow length accessory, she absorbed the seductive smoothness of the fabric and tucked away a note to explore getting satin sheets. But back to the explanation at hand.
“Since you framed your inquiry around me personally, I’ll give you my take on why you’re so shocked. And just so you know, I was shocked at first too. Until I started putting the pieces together.”
Heather nodded thoughtfully. “Didn’t think for a minute you were just messing around. That’s why I’m asking Meghan. We’re alike in a lot of ways.”
Oh, really? Why wasn’t she surprised that Brody also carried the alpha gene? She suddenly understood where Heather was coming from. This wasn’t idle curiosity. Meghan remembered what it was like in the beginning with Alex when the roles they fell so effortlessly into were emotionally and physically challenging for her.
As she started to slide on the second glove, she searched for the right way to start.
“I’m the only girl in a family of strong Irishmen. My dad and brothers, hell…even my granddad, all cops, firemen, medics. The energy in our house was decidedly male,” she sniggered. “But at the same time, my mom ruled this manly tribe with grit and a firm hand. Even an alpha knows when to mind his damn manners.”
Heather’s hand shot out for a fist bump. “Word,” she muttered.
“So what did a little red-haired girl in this environment learn growing up? Well, I learned to kick ass and destroy prisoners, having figured out early on to ignore the part about taking names. All that shit I learned from the men with a bunch of embellishments worthy of a true Irish badass thrown in for good measure. And from my mom?” Meghan chuckled and adjusted the long gloves before laying her hands atop each other on the table. “Meggie O’Brien taught me to always be a lady, even when I’m kicking dirt in some boy’s face. And she showed all of us how to be a partner, not just a lover.”
“Some of this sounds awfully familiar,” Heather murmured.
“One day the spitfire girl became a woman and it didn’t take her long to figure out that boys were icky. Especially the young ones, cause all they wanted to do was touch her and act like jerks. So she got even more badass because being some dickhead’s scratching post was just never gonna work. To survive and get ahead, I went about my life in a shit-kicking way. I mean come on! A gym teacher? And it worked, I guess.”
“Until?”
“Exactly. Until my world changed and I took another path. That’s what I was doing when I came to Arizona. Packed up my life and embarked on a coast-to-coast, find myself adventure. Along the way some of the hard outer shell began to fall away. There was an exciting freedom in ditching what was for a whole new way. The way I dress for instance.”
“The girls joke about you raising the bar around here. They say nobody rocks a dress like you do.”
Meghan snicker-snorted. “The result of a lifetime spent in jeans, yoga leggings and sweat pants.” To make the point she shuddered and stuck her tongue out. “Yikes! What the hell was I thinking?”
> “So you took off on an eat, pray, love pilgrimage and connected with your inner chick? Sounds good to me.”
“Pretty damn close,” she agreed. “And then, and then, and then. And then oh my god Heather. And then the Major happened. He was such an adorable mess when we met.”
Her memory flooded with images and she smiled as warmth built in her chest.
“But for the first time in my life, when the door to the villa opened and our eyes connected, I knew what it meant to be a female in the presence of an alpha male. After that, I couldn’t imagine a life which did not involve that man.”
They sat in contemplative silence for a few minutes before Heather came back with a question.
“Was there a moment when you talked about it?”
“You mean like did he come to me one day and thump his chest? Me, dominant. You, submissive.”
The pirate wench laughed heartily and flipped open her tankard for a drink. “Ah geez Meghan. Thanks for the visual.”
“I pretty much figured out where the Major was coming from in short order. All that command and control stuff comes to him naturally. It isn’t an act. The real surprise was how easy it was to trust him completely.”
Hmph, Heather grunted. “I trusted Brody before I loved him. Sometimes I think the trust was simply the flip side of love. Two sides of the same coin.”
Oh, I feel the same,” she enthusiastically agreed. “With Alex, I understood his need for the power exchange. And again, the surprise was how deep my need to please him went. I was finally the best image of myself. The one kept hidden inside. He makes that possible, Heather. By loving him without restraint and letting him be who he is, I know a freedom and a sort of peace that didn’t seem real or possible before. But it is. I know he loves me without condition and will always keep me safe. In that perfect environment, we continue to grow and learn and love as best we know how. Sure, we use the words because we kind of have to. It’d be stupid to pretend he isn’t a dominant and if he’s the big ‘D’ then that automatically makes me the little ‘s’. I’m cool with everyone knowing it.”
“That was quite a speech. I noticed you left out all the dirty stuff.”
Meghan laughed. “Because I know the girls are eager to fill in those dirty blanks. But every tale is a two-way street, you know,” she teased. “And Drae with his bitching and moaning about almost going blind from what he saw in the barn is just one side of the story.”
“Oh god, seriously? Are you going to tell me what really happened?”
“Well, it’s all true. The way he tells it I mean. Yes. My hands were tied to a hook thing sticking out from a beam in the tack room. But I was dressed. Jeans and a flannel shirt, I believe. I’d been riding you see.”
Heather had the best sarcastic sounding snigger on the planet, which she didn’t hesitate to use.
“Anyway, we were messing around and Alex left me to grab a couple of bottles of water. Seriously, I was fully dressed, although I will admit the flannel was unbuttoned. Believe me, if Drae had seen any more than just my bra, Alex would have ripped his eyeballs out.”
Heather was almost giddy when she shared what the current story was. “The way he tells it, a sound got his secret agent radar clicking. Pulling a gun from his shoulder holster,” Heather recited in a voice with enough melodrama to enchant a group of kindergartners. “He kicked open the door with a mighty grunt and swung into the room like 007, gun at the ready, prepared to shoot up a bunch of bad guys only to find Alex’s latest victim, uh, lady friend, trussed up and suspended from the ceiling for his sick fuckery.”
Anyone glancing their way would see a costumed Belle falling sideways in laughter as she pounded her hands on the leather bench. “Oh my god, stop!” Meghan screeched. “You’re gonna make me pee myself.”
“I take it the view from your side of the door was quite different.”
Heather’s droll tone only made Meghan giggle harder.
She snatched the napkin under her glass and used it to dry her eyes. A honking nose blow couldn’t be helped. Giggling like a hyena had a way of making her face a mess.
“Girl,” she began with a desperate grab for some measure of decorum, “that St. John cool? The legendary,” she emphasized with a growl and some air quotes, “St. John cool? The man who peeked into a room because a door was left open, note that no door kicking happened, couldn’t form words with a dictionary and a translator. He went white as a ghost, nearly swallowed his tongue from shock and spun around so fast he created a breeze. No one was trussed, there was no sick fuckery going on, and my memory says I even spoke to him. Asked him how his trip was. So there.”
This time it was Heather who roared with amusement. “I like you double M.”
“Why thank you,” she replied. “So now you have the story of big D, little s. The rest is Justice storytelling. I rather liked the 007 swing into the room with his gun drawn though. Nice touch.”
“Can you imagine what it’s like to get thrown in with you bunch of lunatics? There’s a shorthand to how you talk and more inside jokes than I can keep track of.”
They were still smiling and chuckling but Meghan sensed the serious shift in the conversation.
“I admire you, Ms. Clarke. No! Seriously,” she fervently demanded when Heather’s face turned skeptical. “What you did took guts. Leaving your home and your job to go someplace you’d never been to start a new life with Brody and his surprise kid was a ballsy move. My husband holds you in high regard. We’re all excited for you guys.”
“It’s been a lot to take on. My relationship with Brody before this was…complicated. He changed my life.”
“Because he didn’t give up?”
“Yes,” Heather agreed with a wide-eyed sigh.
“Justice trait. Never give up once you know what you want.”
“The decision to commit full time to Justice happened before his last trip east. He came back for me, didn’t he?” she asked quietly.
Meghan smiled. “He knew what he wanted.”
A pause more pregnant than she hung in the air around them, and then Heather asked a question that blew Meghan’s mind.
“I know he wanted me back then. But Bella happened. What about after? Am I what he needs? I’m not even sure I know how to do this family thing. After what was taken from me, I stopped thinking in those terms.”
She didn’t know where her next words came from. They felt inspired so she went with it.
“Heather. Sweetie. Don’t you know? Haven’t you figured this out yet? Bendover is where lost souls come to find a happily ever after.”
“Jesus, Meghan,” she muttered. “You make it sound so simple.”
“It is.” She tapped on Heather’s hand and pointed across the room. “Look at Victoria. She was the Leonard Hoffsteader of her field. More nerd bucket than femme fatale, she clung to her moral compass when an ethical crisis fell in her lap. Tori can tell you all about having a life rather rudely taken away. She did the right thing but it was her who lost everything as a result. Corrupt power doesn’t take kindly to whistleblowers.”
“Brody told me her story. It’s hard to fathom that little thing kicking an entire country’s financial system in the shins.”
“Well, she did. And suffered for it. I’ve seen pictures of Tori from her earliest days at the villa. She was hiding in plain sight playing an angry geek who didn’t give a shit. Look at her now.”
They turned in unison and gave Tori a long, thorough assessment. Perched on the bar in her Mrs. Incredible outfit, she was in full vamp mode. With legs crossed to showcase the killer thigh boots, her posture put her figure on display. She’d gone full character and covered her beautiful long locks with a wig in a bob style that changed her entire appearance. Next to her, Drae was close to salivating at her side, his hand possessively on her leg as he hung on her every word while she seemed to be telling a fascinating story to everyone gathered around.
“She came here wounded, broken, defeated. Look at her now! She
puts the V not just in Victoria but also in vamp. And Drae? By all accounts he was little better than a man whore who needed an ass kicking. Then one day a hurricane blew into the middle of Justice and a dowdy nerd girl cut his arrogant ass down to size. Tori might be tiny but her mouth needs a zip code it’s so big.”
“They’re gonna be fine,” Heather assured her. “I loaded them up with information and resources to help them communicate. Said no way would I play marriage counselor, but did give them the benefit of my dubious professional opinion.”
Meghan snicker-laughed. “I think we love them so much because they are a hot mess. Talk about opposites attracting! Failure is not an option for either of them. Alex and I hope that as long as they nourish the love that’s always been there, they can sail over the inevitable rough spots.”
“I get it. They found the best part of themselves in each other and from that are making their own happily ever after.”
“It’s more than that. This is a family we are making here in the desert. They aren’t alone. Just look at Drae’s shirt. The guys aren’t so different from us.”
“At the wedding, Carmen said she thought there was something in the water. She was joking of course, but the comment stuck in my head.”
Carmen had the best comments. Not unfamiliar with this one, Meghan had a four second fantasy about Conquistadors, magic springs and love vortexes, and pretty much everything else under the sun, real or imagined, that could explain it.
Something about the ancestral lands of the Valleja-Marquez family—the hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of acres baking under the desert sun—attracted a disparate group of people. Family Justice. Destiny, luck, misadventure, chance—whatever it was that led them all here at this moment in time, also described the unique bonds of the family they were building for the future.
“I feel a strong draw to this place, Heather. Am I still a Boston girl? Of course! It’s in my blood. But so are hot summer nights and panoramic sunsets that send my pulse racing. I was supposed to end up here despite the pale skin, red hair and required bucket of SPF one million sunscreen.”
Unforgettable (Family Justice Book 5) Page 19