by L. A. Casey
BROTHERS
A Slater Brothers Novel
L.A. Casey
Brothers
a Slater Brothers novel
Copyright © 2018 by L.A. Casey
ISBN-13: 978-1912223039
All rights reserved.
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under S.I. No. 337/2011 – European Communities (Electronic Communications Networks and Services) (Universal Service and Users’ Rights) Regulations 2011, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without prior written permission of the author.
The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorised electronic editions and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, establishments, organisations, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously to give a sense of authenticity. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
License Notes
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Table of Contents
Dedication
I. DOMINIC
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
II. ALEC
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
TRIGGER WARNING
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
III. KANE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
IV. RYDER
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
V. DAMIEN
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
Acknowledgments
About the Author
To those of you who love the Slater brothers, and their ladies, and much as they love their ladies. I will never be able to correctly put into words—and words are my job!—how truly thankful, grateful, touched, and blown away I am by the support for these characters from each of you over the last four years. The Slater brothers were never just mine, they were always ours.
Part I
DOMINIC
CHAPTER ONE
Present day ...
When you had five children, sleep was very hard to come by. And sleeping in on the weekends was practically unheard of. I was a trier, if anything, so ever since I became a father fifteen years ago, I attempted, every single weekend, to catch a few extra minutes whenever I could. My know-no-boundaries offspring made it their personal mission to make sure I didn’t.
“Daddy?”
I refused to lift my eyelids as I grumbled, “Go away.”
“Come on, Daddy. Get up.”
I snored. Loudly.
“Daaaaaaddy?”
I groaned but kept my eyes shut, hoping the kid harassing me would give up and leave.
“I know you’re fakin’ it.”
“Go bother your mom,” I half pleaded, snuggling into my pillow. “Please.”
I felt tiny, soft hands touch my bare back, and that was when the let’s-pretend-dad-is-a-drum game started.
“I don’t wanna play with a girl. I wanna play with you. You’re stronger than Mammy.”
I chuckled gruffly before I rolled onto my back, halting the drum game my son had started. I reached up and rubbed my eyes before I opened them and stared at the ceiling of my bedroom. A ceiling that had multiple stickers of stars and moons stuck to it from when Georgie was a baby. I turned my head to the left and came face to face with my actual baby. I reached over, gripped under Axel’s armpits, and heaved him onto the bed, making him squeal with laughter. He was the youngest of our five, our last child. My baby. He was spoiled rotten because of this.
“Your mom is plenty strong. Why don’t you want to play with her?”
“I’m not talkin’ to ‘er anymore.”
He said this as he sat directly on my chest, making me grunt.
“Why not?”
Axel scowled. “She keeps callin’ me a baby.”
My lips twitched. “You don’t think you’re a baby?”
“I just turned seven,” Axel said, puffing his chest out with pride. “I’m not a baby, Daddy.”
I grinned at him. “Your mom doesn’t mean anything when she calls you baby, son. It’s just a habit from when your brothers and sister were little. She even calls me baby now and then ... Do you think I look like a baby?”
Axel considered this, then giggled. “You’re definitely not a baby.”
He spoke as he poked at my abdominal muscles. Muscles that at thirty-eight were still tight, toned, and very defined. My love for working out never faded as I got older and neither did my wife’s adoration for my body, so I made sure to keep it in peak physical condition because it made her moan on sight.
I loved hearing that woman moan.
I yawned. “Is Mom still in her pjs?”
“Yup.” Axel nodded. “She said she’s gettin’ a shower when ye’ wake up.”
“I better go downstairs and relieve her then. What do you say?”
Axel cocked an eyebrow. “Are ye’ goin’ to kiss ‘er again?”
“Do you not like when I kiss her?”
He shook his head. “She’s my mammy.”
“And she’s my wife,” I countered, grinning.
“I was in ‘er belly,” Axel deadpanned. “Beat that.”
Easy.
“I put you in her belly.”
He stared down at me. “How?”
I hesitated, wondering if he was too young for the talk that I had given to all my other kids at various ages, but Axel’s attention switched to flicking my nipples and laughing when I flinched. He crawled off me when I playfully swatted his hands away, then jumped off the bed and ran out of the room shouting, “I woke ‘im up, Ma!”
I shot into an upright position. “You said you wanted to play!”
“I lied,” Axel shouted as he reached the stairs. “Mammy said I’d get the biggest cookie ever after dinner tonight if I woke ye’ up. Sorry ... not really, though! Cooookkkiieeee.”
I kicked the blankets off my body, then turned and hung my legs over the bed. I snorted as I heard my wife praise our youngest at the bottom of the stairs for waking me up. I wasn’t surprised that she enlisted our kids’ help; she always had them scheming when she didn’t want to do something. She said it was one of the perks of having children.
“Beau!” Georgie suddenly bellowed. “Give it back or I swear to God I�
�ll—”
“Hey!” I shouted, getting to my feet and walking out to the hallway to see what was going on.
Georgie, my eldest, had Beau, my second eldest, in a chokehold with her arm hooked perfectly around his neck. She had her right leg wrapped around his left to angle his body so she could get a firm grip in a better stance. He couldn’t attempt to break her hold on him without hurting himself in the process, and she knew it. I had taught her how to protect herself and how to hold her own, but she wasn’t supposed to practice her self-defence moves on her brothers.
I stared at my firstborn son, and a flashback of his birth suddenly entered my mind.
“He’s perfect, baby,” I said to my exhausted partner as she cradled our newborn son against her chest. “He’s so perfect.”
“He looks so much like ye’, Dominic.” Bronagh smiled. “We have a mini me and now a mini you.”
“How did we get so lucky?” I asked, amazed. “How did I get so lucky?”
Bronagh smiled up at me, so I leaned down, closing the distance between us, and brushed my lips over hers.
“What will we name him?”
“I love the name Beau.”
I raised a brow and leaned back. “How do you spell that?”
“B-E-A-U.”
“That’s pronounced Bo, baby. I like that, though. Let’s name him that.”
Bronagh blinked. “No, it’s pronounced Beau as in beautiful.”
“In the States—”
“We aren’t in the States,” she tiredly interrupted. “I like Beau bein’ pronounced like the word beautiful. Bo can be his nickname, if you’re so pressed about it.”
“Okay.” I chuckled. “His name is Beau like beautiful, and Bo will be his nickname. I’ll inform my brothers of this to avoid your wrath.”
Bronagh smiled. “What will his middle name be?”
My heart warmed when I said the name, “Damien.”
My girl beamed up at me. “Beau Damien Slater. I love it, I love him ... I can’t wait for Georgie to see ‘im. She’s a big sister now.”
“Alannah will bring her up when I call,” I assured her. “She’ll be with us soon.”
Bronagh closed her eyes and snuggled Beau.
“I love our family.”
“I love you, pretty girl.”
“I love you too, fuckface.”
“Let him go, Georgie,” I said, my mind snapping back to the present.
“He has me phone, Da!”
“Let him go,” I repeated, sternly. “Now.”
Georgie gave Beau’s neck one last squeeze before she released him and forcefully shoved him to the floor. I folded my arms across my chest and stared down at my only daughter. She placed her hands on her hips and stared right back at me. I looked at my son as he groaned on the floor, then looked back at Georgie.
“Was that really necessary?”
“Yeah,” she answered without hesitation. “He took me phone without permission, Da.”
I looked at Beau. “Why’d you take her phone?”
He groaned as he pushed himself to his feet, then straightened up to his full height. He was fourteen, but he already dwarfed Georgie’s five-foot-two frame with his five-foot-eight one. When he stood next to her, it always amused me. He was fifteen months younger than she was, and he physically looked down at her. My daughter, however, never let a trivial thing like height stop her when it came to disciplining her brothers or any of her many male cousins. She’d had years of practice on how to harm them when she needed to. Or wanted to.
“I was only messin’ with ‘er, Da,” Beau said before glancing sideways at his sister. “She’s a bleedin’ psycho.”
Georgie kicked Beau in the shin. He yelped, grabbed his shin with both hands, and hopped around on one foot.
“Bo, give your sister back her phone,” I ordered. “And George, stop hitting your brother.”
I hoped by using their nicknames, the situation would calm to somehow make it playful, but Georgie’s antsy teenage attitude refused to cooperate.
“No promises,” she said to me as she snapped her phone out of Beau’s outstretched hand. “Next time, Bo, I’m breakin’ your bloody leg.”
She turned and stormed down the hall and into her bedroom, the door clanking shut behind her. Beau shook his head, then his leg, before he lowered his foot to the ground and trained his eyes on me.
“Ye’ need to send ‘er to a mental institution, Da,” he said, his face the picture of seriousness. “She is a bloody nightmare.”
I raised a brow. “She wouldn’t bother you if you didn’t touch her things.”
“I wouldn’t bother ‘er if she didn’t annoy the life outta me.”
I lifted my hand to my face and pinched the bridge of my nose.
“It’s too early to deal with this.”
“It’s after nine.”
I dropped my head. “Exactly. That’s early.”
Beau snorted as shouting and a bellow from my wife sounded from downstairs.
“Not in this house.”
I pointed at my son. “Leave your sister alone. Otherwise, she’ll whoop you.”
“Only ‘cause I won’t hit ‘er back!”
“I know.” I grinned. “When you’re bigger and fill out more, she won’t be able to grapple you so easily.”
“I can’t feckin’ wait.”
“Language.”
“Feckin’ isn’t a curse.” Beau rolled his eyes. “And neither is damn or hell.”
“The former can slide because it’s part of everyone’s vocabulary in this country, but if I hear you say the second and third, your ass will be whooped by me. Understand?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good.” I nodded. “Now, go clean your room. It’s Saturday, and you know your mom will raise all kinds of hell if she finds it dirty when she makes her rounds.”
As I walked down the stairs, Beau asked, “How come you get to say hell and not be whooped?”
“Who’s gonna whoop me?”
“You’ve got a point, Da.” Beau paused. “You’ve got a real good point.”
I laughed as I jogged downstairs. A glance into the living room revealed Axel lying upside down on the couch as he watched a cartoon on the television. I crossed my arms over my chest and stared at him.
“You’re going to give yourself a headache watching the TV like that, Ax.”
“No, I won’t,” he replied, not taking his eyes off the TV. “I always watch it like this.”
I had no doubt.
“Just sit up every few minutes; otherwise, the blood will rush to your head.”
“Okay, Daddy.”
I shook my head in amusement, dropped my arms to my sides, and walked down the hallway and into the kitchen. My eyes found her the second I entered the room. With her back to me as she cooked breakfast, I took a moment to drink her in. In twenty years, nothing about her had changed. Not really, even after five kids. Her body was the same level of perfection it had always been. Small waist, thick thighs, and an ass so fat it still made my knees weak when I looked at it.
Her hair was shorter—it hung just past her shoulders instead of touching her butt—but it was still a beautiful shade of chocolate brown. She had more laugh lines around her eyes, more stretch marks, and a slight tummy pouch from having so many babies, but she didn’t look thirty-eight years old. She could easily pass for being in her late twenties, and I told her that often because it was true ... not just because it got me laid whenever I said it.
She was tiny, feminine, and was the greatest love of my life, along with my five children. Children she gave to me. I glanced down at my ringed finger, smiling at the reminder that we recently celebrated our thirteenth wedding anniversary. We’d been married for thirteen years, but together for twenty, and I couldn’t wait to spend fifty more with her, God willing. I couldn’t imagine spending my life with anyone else, and I didn’t want to, either.
“Good morning, Mrs Slater.”
I knew sh
e smiled without having to turn around. I could sense it on her.
“Good mornin’, Mr Slater,” she replied. “How did ye’ sleep?”
“Before or after you woke me up with your mouth on—”
When she spun around and narrowed her bright green eyes at me, my own laughter cut me off.
“Children,” she whispered hissed. “They are present.”
I glanced to my left, noting my third and fourth sons, Quinn and Griffin, sitting at the kitchen table on the far end of the room, not paying us a lick of attention. I turned my attention back to my wife and grinned.
“They can’t hear me.”
She gave me a once-over, her eyes lingering on my groin and torso a little too long, allowing naughty thoughts to enter my mind, but just as I knew she would, she turned back to face the stove.
“I made you eggs, and I’m workin’ on your protein pancakes,” she said, rustling the pan to flip the pancake. “The boys horsed down the first two batches I made, as well as two ten-egg omelettes.”
“Q and Griff?”
“Yeah,” she answered with a shake of her head. “Axel and Beau had cereal; Georgie hasn’t been down to eat yet. Quinn and Griffin are goin’ to eat us out of a home all by themselves. I can’t believe how much they can put away. They’re just as bad as Locke, and that lad never stops eatin’.”
“They’re growing boys.”
Bronagh snorted. “Growin’ boys, me arse; they are always feckin’ hungry.”