“Me?”
“You’re exactly what I always wanted in a submissive, but then you were his and I was allowed to fuck you but not fall in love with you. I felt guilty every time he asked me to touch you because I really wanted to touch you, and not as a favor to him. And then you and I started talking on the phone all the time and we clicked so well, and I wondered if maybe you were meant to be mine and not his.” He groaned. “I’m in love with him and have been for years. He’s my best friend, and yet I fantasized about making you mine. He knew it too. He told me I could stop pretending I wasn’t in love with you, and also mentioned that my acting sucked.”
Her heart did a little flip in her chest. Before she had a chance to think of a response, he kissed her again.
“I’m sorry if I’ve upended your happily ever after.”
She pulled him down for another kiss.
“You were always part of that. Sometimes I’d think about how you’d eventually claim a submissive again, and I’d get this weird jealous feeling I had no right to. I’d have to stop thinking about it. Sometimes I’d pretend you’d choose a girl who liked me and maybe we could still be close, but it wouldn’t have been the same. I didn’t like it.”
Their gazes met, and he grinned crookedly at her.
“Right before the night in the alley, I was seriously contemplating taking a step back from you two and finding someone else. As much fun as you were, being your confidante and a sex toy was getting hard on my ego. After so many years of waiting and hoping I realized I needed more. There’ve been people around who were interested in more with me over the years, but I chose to stay available in case he wanted me, and then to be available as an extra in your relationship. Being a stunt cock isn’t love, no matter how much you’re in love with the people using you.”
Guilt twisted at her. She’d thought Rodrigo had simply enjoyed being single. She’d had no idea he was staying available in the hopes for more.
“I’m sorry you felt used. At the time I thought you were having fun tormenting me with Severin.”
“Oh, I was. Still am.”
“But you wanted a relationship with him and now you’re stuck marrying both of us.” She bit her bottom lip mischievously. “Not that you proposed or anything.”
“I’ll have to agree with Severin on that one. Asking leaves too much of a possibility that you’ll say no.”
She was about to glare at him, but his dominant smirk made her shiver instead. He ran his thumb along her bottom lip.
“You like to pretend you have a choice?” he asked quietly.
A knot of desire twisted low in her belly, and damn him, he saw it.
The thumb he’d rubbed along her lip poked into her mouth, and she couldn’t help but be a good girl and suck the tip. Rodrigo’s eyelids lowered to half-mast, lust etched along his beautiful face. He rose from the bench, his demeanor hinting that he was planning a completely sexual public display.
He stood over her, menacing her with his body.
“What are you doing?” she asked breathlessly.
“What I should have done ages ago.” He grabbed her right hand and jammed something onto her finger.
She looked down at her hand. A ring. In color, it matched the band Severin had made for her, but it was elegant and filigreed. Platinum rather than stainless, if she knew Rodrigo at all. The stones were big and clear, and she had the distinct suspicion they weren’t zirconium.
“What’s this?” she asked stupidly, looking from the ring to his face. There was a grim determination there, like he wasn’t about to take no for an answer any more than Severin had.
“To show people you’re mine.”
“Oh, I am, am I?”
He narrowed his dark eyes, and she bit her lip, knowing she shouldn’t be provoking him in public, but was too full of adrenaline to care.
“You are,” he replied, so full of confidence she couldn’t find it in herself to make it into a joke. Instead, he claimed that part of her heart she hadn’t realized she’d reserved for him, in case he ever wanted it. “I’ll be the parts of him that you need that he can’t give you.”
“So you’re all of Severin’s warm fuzzy bits?”
“I’m a complete bastard who adores you and wants to make you happy.”
“So you’re a complete bastard, but you’re my complete bastard?”
“Exactly. And I can give you the outside world, like this. I can give you an extended family.” His dark eyes were full of emotion. “And when he can’t be there for us, I’ll be there for you. We’ll take care of him together when he needs us, but I won’t forget that you need someone looking after you too.”
“I’m a big girl.”
“Everyone needs people to take care of them sometimes, no matter how grown up they are, preciosa. When loving him hurts, I’ll be around to kiss it better.”
He pulled her to her feet. Before he led her to the hotel, she peeked back at the bench, wanting to remember exactly how it had looked.
Chapter Nine
Wedding crap coated every flat surface of his mother’s house. Magazines with wedding dress fashions, print-outs of reception ideas, piles of fabric swatches, stacks of brochures – the array of colors and choices and details that needed to be seen to overwhelmed Rodrigo, even though most of the choices were Minnow’s to make, and it was going to be a small affair.
Well, the decisions were hers to make, and yet it was his mother and sister going crazy over arrangements.
Jorge dozed in Minnow’s arms, his tiny features finally filling out so he looked more cherubic than he had when he was born. His oldest nephew, Santiago, was crawling around the floor barking at people and trying to chew their shoes.
Mama and Mayte were flipping through some of the wedding magazines, showing dresses and cakes and decorations to Min, who seemed completely bemused by the whole thing. Instead, her attention was focused on Jorge’s every facial movement, as though his REM sleep was the most fascinating thing she’d ever seen.
Something about seeing Minnow holding a baby was making Rodrigo think terrible things – like how sexy she’d look pregnant. She’d be an excellent mother, but they’d have to hire a really, really understanding nanny. One who was hard to shock.
As expected, Severin had escaped into the yard early on, needing to get away from the hubbub, or maybe to get away from the kids. Or both. At least he hadn’t grabbed his bike and taken off yet. Every time Severin walked into the house, Santiago was crawling on him, trying to make friends. Severin was so damned awkward with the kid it was hard not to laugh. Typical, though. Kids and cats always found the people who didn’t like them then pestered the hell out of them.
Fidel snickered. “What the hell were you thinking telling them Minnow needed help with the wedding? I thought you wanted something small.”
“It’s going to be small. Who the hell would we invite to a poly wedding?”
“From the looks of things, everyone your mother and sister have ever met,” his brother-in-law Dax said, grinning. “You’re so effing doomed.”
“You shut up. Don’t you have babies to make?”
Dax closed his eyes, and ran a hand through his shock of sandy blond hair. “Shh. Santiago isn’t sleeping through the night yet, Jorge isn’t latching well, and Mayte’s already talking about how she wants to make sure there’s not too much of a space between Jorgie and the next one.”
“And here she always blames you!” Fidel laughed.
“She’s an animal,” Dax complained, although he winked. “I can’t keep her off me.”
Rodrigo whipped a cushion at his brother-in-law. “Dude, that’s our sister.”
The barking from the floor had turned to growling, and Rodrigo looked down to find Santiago sitting by his foot, lips drawn back ferociously from his teeth.
“Can you call off your attack son before he bites my kneecaps?”
“You assaulted his alpha with a pillow. Now you must pay the price.” Dax shrugged. “Don’t
worry. He doesn’t have many teeth yet, so he’ll probably be satisfied with piddling on your shoe.”
“Dog peepee!” Santiago crowed. “Pee on your shoe!” He started to laugh, then saw a bird go by outside and ran to the window to bark at it too.
“I see he inherited his intelligence from his father,” Fidel said, sipping at his beer.
Dax flipped him off affectionately.
“Do you think Minnow should get one of these sexy dresses with the open back or something more princessy?” Mayte called from the dining room table.
“Nothing super sexy like that, May,” Minnow objected. “Just something simple.”
“How about something short and flouncy with those long socks she wears around the house,” Rodrigo suggested, giving Minnow a heated look.
Minnow flushed and killed him with eye daggers.
“Hmm... Easy access,” Fidel said, shaking his head in disapproval. “You’ll be late for your own wedding, and I sure as hell don’t want to be the one who gets sent to look for you.”
“I still can’t imagine how all that works.” Dax’s brows drew as he dangled his giggling son upside down by the ankles. “You and Severin with that teeny girl? How is Minnow not squashed like a pancake? And do you, like, take turns? Or...”
Mama cleared her throat pointedly at Dax, whom she’d apparently overheard, and frowned at him. He grinned back at her, all too aware that as the father of her only two grandchildren, he had diplomatic immunity in the house.
“What? Like we haven’t all wondered?” He arched a brow at Fidel, as though daring him to deny it, but Fidel only nodded in agreement.
Mayte raised her eyebrows, warning Dax into silence. It saved Rodrigo from responding.
“Are you and la bestia wearing matching suits, Ro?”
“Maaayte,” Rodrigo growled in warning.
She rolled her eyes. “Sorry. Severin.”
Minnow met Rodrigo’s gaze, still as in the dark about Severin’s preferences for the wedding as Rodrigo was. It had been Severin’s request that they start planning it as soon as they got home from Belgium, and yet whenever they tried to get him to participate in choosing things, he went quiet and made himself scarce.
“I don’t know. Probably not, unless he wants to. He did wear a tie to his brother’s wedding.” Minnow’s face turned a brilliant crimson for some strange reason, and Rodrigo made a mental note to ask her what that was about later.
Mayte sighed and patted Minnow’s shoulder. “Girl, I thought I had it rough with Dax. You have two of them to keep in line.”
Minnow snorted. “They keep themselves in line. I don’t manage them.”
Both Mayte and their mother raised their brows at Minnow. In their family, the women were anything but submissive. He could just imagine them trying to groom Min into being more assertive. Ha.
“So you said you don’t want to invite anyone from your family?” his mother asked again, incredulous.
“My family wrote me off because I took care of my mother’s estranged father when he was dying. Other than you guys, the only family we have are Severin’s brother Church, his wife and their girls, and his other brother, Loïc.”
“We can’t invite everyone and their dog,” Rodrigo reminded his mother and sister. “Even the immediate family overwhelms him.”
Mayte blew out a frustrated breath, but Mama nodded.
“It’s Severin’s wedding too, Mayte. It wouldn’t be right if he was uncomfortable the whole time because we invited the whole family.”
“If Rodrigo just married Minnow, they could keep la bestia as a pet, with none the wiser. Then he wouldn’t ruin the party with his issues,” Mayte grumbled.
“It’s their wedding, not yours, oh spoiled one,” Fidel reminded her. “You got to do exactly what you wanted for yours, remember? What does Minnow want?”
“I’d say she wants a baby,” Mama smirked, casting a glance at Minnow murmuring sweetly to the baby she held.
“Me? Oh, maybe someday, but there’s no rush. We need to get settled first, and we should probably discuss it.” She shrugged. “I don’t even know if they want children.”
Both his mother and sister gave Rodrigo a pointed look, but he held up a hand. “Minnow is young, and even if she does want children, I’m sure she’s not going to be trying to outdo the breeder over there.”
Mayte flipped him off and he chuckled then headed upstairs to the bathroom. The beer Fidel had brought along was basically water. He was barely even buzzed.
On his way back down the hall, he heard a sound from his old room. Was Mayte giving Minnow a tour? Little jerk. If she was, Dax was going to hear some new stories about Mayte’s teenage escapades that would probably give their mother extra gray hairs.
Annoyed, he stalked into the room. Severin was lying on Rodrigo’s old twin bed, staring at the Kittie poster tacked to his ceiling. Seeing Severin there, of all places, did weird things to Rodrigo’s heart...and his cock. He never would have imagined him here – not in his mother’s house, let alone in the bedroom he’d abandoned when he went to study at Columbia.
“Kittie, huh?”
“Look at them. I was seventeen when I put that up. What wasn’t to like?”
Severin reached under his head and pulled out Gary, the stuffed rabbit Rodrigo had kept since he was a baby. It was gray, although maybe it hadn’t always been, and it was now a patchy, misshapen lump.
“Stray dustbunny?”
“That’s Gary. He knows a lot of shit about me.”
“He’s fugly.”
“Hmm. True. You two have a lot in common.”
Severin narrowed his eyes and crooked a finger, summoning him. Rodrigo glanced at the doorway, wondering if he dared close the door. That would just make people suspicious.
He moved to the edge of the bed and Severin swung up into a sitting position, then pointed at the floor between his booted feet. Self-conscious and afraid of getting caught by family, Rodrigo knelt.
“Your family doesn’t like me.”
Rodrigo shrugged. “They haven’t had time to get to know you.”
“They just met Minnow, but they like her.”
“Well, you are an asshole, Sir.”
Severin arched a brow and slapped his face, but only hard enough to make his dick hard. The corner of Sev’s mouth twitched.
“Watch it, puppy.”
The nickname was supposed to be derogatory, Rodrigo was sure, but he fucking loved it. Any other man who tried talking to him that way would get a punch in the face, but a nickname from Severin was like a prize. He let very few people get that close.
Severin dug his fingers into the back of Rodrigo’s hair, and before he could decide whether he should safeword a blowjob where anyone in his family could happen upon them, Severin’s mouth came down on his. There was nothing erotic or explosive about it, just a brushing of his lips against Rodrigo’s, his hand keeping Ro from trying to control things – not that he would.
As Severin gently explored his mouth, lips barely meeting, tongues barely touching, every muscle in Rodrigo’s body turned liquid. In no time he ached to deepen the kiss, to revert to their usual violence, but Severin wouldn’t let him. The sweetness of it was starting to make his eyes burn and his chest ache. Rodrigo desperately attempted to cling to the emotional walls he kept having to reconstruct, but like always, Severin stripped them away.
This thing between them was too good, and he’d wanted it too for too long. It was hard to trust that it was really happening.
Severin didn’t pull back until Rodrigo was completely lost, once again. He was so close Rodrigo almost had to go cross-eyed to see his expression. Rather than using one of his cold, expressionless masks, there was a crease between Severin’s brows that made him look concerned.
“You should just bring Minnow to these things.”
“Nice try. You don’t get out of family shit for bad behavior.” Rodrigo fake glared at him.
“It’s not like I’m a dick on pu
rpose.” Severin caught Ro’s incredulous expression. “Not to your family,” he had the grace to clarify.
“You just need practice being around people.”
“I already see enough people. Not everyone is an extrovert.”
“I can see how hanging around with my six relatives would freak you out. If you add them to me and Minnow, Loïc, Church and his family. Wow. Double digits.”
“I can’t care about twelve people,” he grumbled. “That’s way too many.”
“No one is saying you have to take a bullet for every one of them.”
“I’ll take a bullet for each and every one of them if it gets me out of small talk.”
“Stop being a baby and come downstairs.”
The corner of Severin’s lip curled in the type of amusement Rodrigo probably wouldn’t enjoy later.
“You’d better watch that fucking mouth.” The whispered words made Rodrigo groan.
“Are you coming back to my place tonight?” It was still difficult for Rodrigo to have to ask for things he wanted when he was used to being in the position where he was the one issuing orders. He hadn’t been hesitant in taking over as Minnow’s full-time dominant since Sev had sent them away, but when the king was in the castle, the prince still knew his place. It wasn’t to command the king to attend to them. That was for damned sure.
“I wish I could, but Loïc still isn’t in a good place in his head, so I don’t want to leave him alone for too long.”
Rodrigo was silent for a moment, arguing with himself about what should be left unsaid.
“You feel like I’m neglecting you and Minnow.”
Rodrigo shook his head. “I just wanting to be sure you’re not ghosting us. That and...”
“And what?”
Rodrigo sighed, trying to guess how Severin would respond to advice. He hoped it would sound like concern rather than meddling. “You can’t teach Loïc to swim while you’re drowning, Sev. I’m afraid he’s going to pull you under.”
Tragic King (The Dominant Bastard Duology Book 2) Page 18