by RGAlexander
Just like Ken, he was ready for whatever came next. And yes, he had a feeling they weren’t done with that shadowy group of untouchables with blood on their hands. But Terry and Patricia were together and safe. Ken was safe and they were in love. For now, in this moment, life was good. Brady felt blessed. Happy. With this man by his side, he could do anything.
Ken must have felt him staring. “You’re missing Tasha’s comedy stylings,” he said. “What is it?”
“Have you ever been to Paris? I told you about the place Mom had there. I was thinking we should take a vacation. We’ve earned it.”
Ken leaned over and kissed him again with those perfect, wicked lips, making his heart skip. “I’d do Paris with you. Or you in Paris. Anytime, Finn. Anything you want.”
“I love you.”
“And I love you. I wasn’t expecting this.” He made a motion to include the bar filled with Finns. “I thought I had it all together. Thought I was doing great on my own.”
It was hard to argue with that. “You were Batman.”
“Exactly.” Ken’s grin softened. “I was fine until I met you.”
Brady smirked. “Jake says whenever people say they’re fine, it means that they’re too worn out from crying to go over why life sucks so bad.”
“Jake? The tween? Well, it must be true then.”
Brady nodded. “For the record, I was fine too. Just fine. All black shirts, control and careful passion. I didn’t think there was anything more for me. Until you.”
“Stop or I’ll drag you out of here before we find out what’s going on. You are trouble, Finn. A giant, gorgeous mountain of trouble. I should have known from the minute I saw you but I—Oh, wait, I think she’s getting to the good part.” Ken kissed him quick with a laugh, then turned his head back toward the bar.
“Time to get serious.” Tasha brought her hand up to quiet the crowd. “I’ve known these delectable Finns for years now, and they have many wonderful qualities. Too many to be fair to the rest of us. Those eyes. Those bodies.” She pointed at Ellen and Shawn. “Those parents.” Everyone laughed. “But they aren’t perfect. One of their less than wonderful traits is their need to be in your life. Not just involved. In. Your. Life. Little Finn knows what I’m talking about.”
Jen raised her glass and smiled, nodding. Brady noticed Trick laughing with another man behind her. A cop he recognized. James’ friend?
“So because everyone was so upset not to be present for what I thought was a very personal moment, we’re going to put on a show for them right now, aren’t we honey? Stephen? Baby, will you help me out?”
“He looks nervous,” Ken murmured.
“She’s Tasha and she’s got the entire room’s attention. I’m nervous.”
Seamus set out a chair and Tasha guided Stephen into it. “Senator? Do you remember that time you found out I was pregnant?”
He grinned. “I do.”
“Do you remember tearing up and kissing my stomach and singing Irish lullabies to it for over an hour?”
Stephen adjusted his collar, shaking his head at the crowd. “She’s exaggerating.” He sent her a warning look. “She’s also a brat.”
Brady watched Tasha share a look with Stephen’s twin Seamus, who held a camera phone up to his brother’s face.
“Uh-oh,” Brady muttered. “I need to talk to him about that. All recording devices should be banned in this place.”
Ken patted his thigh. “After tonight.”
Tasha took Stephen’s hand and placed it on her stomach. “I didn’t get the chance to tell you with everything that’s been happening, but the doctor asked me to come in for another ultrasound this week.”
Senator Finn paled visibly, sitting up straighter in his chair. “Tasha?”
Her smile was incandescent. “It’s okay, honey. I’m healthy. Everything’s perfect.” She paused. “We’re just having twins.”
The roar in the pub was deafening, but Brady didn’t need to hear to read the expression of joy on Stephen’s face. His blue eyes filled with tears as he stood, pulling his wife into his arms and kissing her senseless in front of God and everyone.
“We did that.” Ken sounded proud of himself.
“We did not do that,” Brady corrected him. “But we helped. I wonder if that gives us first dibs on baby names.”
“Maybe we could make that the fifth rule of Finn Club.”
“We’ll see.”
Ken’s golden eyes were filled with laughter. He looked like he belonged here, in Brady’s crowded and messy life. And Brady finally understood what Solomon meant when he said his brother was back.
Brady was home.
Keep Reading for the Bonus Quickie,
A Curious Proposal.
A Curious Proposal
An Owen and Jeremy Quickie
Owen
“Why won’t you let me?” Jeremy moaned, his gorgeous tattooed ass in the air, taking every inch of Owen’s aching cock.
“You don’t like it, baby?” Owen gripped the handcuff chain and tugged teasingly, reminding Jeremy just who was in control, even here in the woods in the middle of nowhere. “Not knowing where I’ve brought you? If anyone is watching? If they know how easy it was to get you on your knees in the dirt with your pants around your ankles?”
“Owen.”
“The blindfold stays on…unless you want me to stop.”
Jeremy pressed his forehead into the carry-on bag Owen had put there and relaxed in submission. “Don’t stop,” he whispered.
“What’s that?” Owen closed his eyes, torturing himself as he slowed down, pulling back until only the head of his cock was inside Jeremy’s snug ass. “I can’t hear you.”
“Don’t stop,” he said, louder, with an edge of anxiety and need.
“Don’t stop what?”
“You are a goddamn sadist,” Jeremy muttered.
Owen laughed, need making him light-headed. “It’s taken this long for you to figure that out? Don’t stop what?”
“Don’t stop fucking me, Master Finn.” Jeremy’s voice was so loud it startled a few birds in a nearby tree and made Owen smile. He only used “Master” when he was really desperate.
“You know I won’t. I can’t resist this tight, fuckable ass.”
Owen looked down, spreading Jeremy’s cheeks wide with his thumbs so he could watch his own lubed-up cock stretching that sexy ring of muscles gripping him like a hungry fist.
“Damn, I’ve needed this all day.” He went in slow, one inch at a time, wanting to hold back as long as he could. Wanting this to last. “I’ve been planning it for hours, taking you like this.”
“Hours?” Jeremy panted. “Deeper, Owen. Please.”
“Be patient.” Owen slapped Jeremy’s hip with the palm of his hand. “I decided to cuff you when you rejected my mile high club suggestion.”
But he’d been planning to wait until they got into the cabin he’d rented for their two-week vacation to put his plan in motion. His timetable had changed the minute he got that blindfold on Jeremy in the car. He’d been so turned on during the thirty-minute drive he’d barely been able to wait to put the damn rental in park.
Jeremy did this to him. Sex with him was always hot, hard and ecstatic, and it had been from the first time he got that big, beautiful cock in his hands. Owen could never get enough of his mouth or how good it felt to be taken by him. He craved making his lover crazy enough to go primal. Craved submitting to Jeremy’s wild, rough claiming. Sometimes he needed it so badly he wondered how he’d live without it.
Still, Owen liked getting the chance to turn the tables and take the lead. When he had control, he made sure he took his time. He’d tie or chain his lover up, paddle him or whip him with the small leather flogger Jeremy had gotten him as a present, and work on him until he was begging to be fucked. It was a challenge to resist the race to the goal line, but Owen loved a challenge.
He loved Jeremy.
He stopped, his erection still only part
ially in, and waited. His whole body was vibrating with restraint when Jeremy finally tried to push back. There. Owen spanked him again.
“I told you to be patient,” he warned. “I was patient. I sat next to you for four hours in that deathtrap, rock-hard and needing you, and you were too busy reading to join me in the bathroom and suck my cock.”
“They would have noticed,” Jeremy panted. “We wouldn’t have fit.”
Owen slid his hand around Jeremy’s hip and gripped that thick, delicious erection. “It’s not easy, lover, not with that monster cock of yours, but you always fit.”
“Owen, damn it.”
“Not even a hand job under the blanket, Jeremy,” he continued wickedly. “No one was looking. It would have been so fucking easy for you to slip your hand into my pants and give me some release. You know what your touch does to me. And you know I could have returned the favor.” His fingers tightened around Jeremy’s cock for a heartbeat, and then he let it go.
Jeremy swore again under his breath. “Stewardess,” he gasped. “She would have done it.”
“She did keep asking if I wanted anything else,” Owen mused, pulling his dick back just enough to make his lover shake. “I wonder what she would have done if I told her. Or better, just fucking showed her. Unzipped you right there and given her a peek at what I was hungry for.”
Jeremy bit his lip, his hands flexing in the cuffs. “You liked it. All that attention.”
“I didn’t want her,” Owen growled. “I wanted this.”
So much for winning this challenge, he thought as he drove his hips forward, filling Jeremy and starting a fast, deep rhythm that would end their session too damn soon.
“This was all that was on my mind,” he muttered. “Burying myself in this tight ass over and over again. Getting you alone, finally alone and on your knees for me.”
Trembling now, Jeremy rattled his cuffs. “Please.”
Owen couldn’t refuse him, undoing the handcuffs and letting them fall to the ground.
“Don’t take off your blindfold,” he ordered.
Jeremy was obviously too aroused to disobey as one free hand went instantly to his erection. “Harder, Owen. I deserve it. I should have bent you over the drink cart and given you what you wanted. I need to learn my lesson.”
Owen wanted to laugh at his tactics but he was too turned on. He slid his hand up Jeremy’s spine, loving the slapping sound of flesh as he gave him what they both needed.
“That?” His knees sank into the dirt as he punished Jeremy with his cock. “You want to learn that lesson, baby? Is that the kind of fucking you deserve?”
“Yes.” Jeremy’s arm was working as he stroked his own erection in time to Owen’s thrusts. “Oh God, Owen, don’t stop.”
“You don’t want to know where we are?”
“I don’t care. I need it as much as you do. I wanted to bend over the seat and suck your cock so all the women eyeing you knew I could. Can I come, Owen? I need to come.”
“Almost,” Owen allowed, his voice guttural. “I’m almost there. I just need... Fuck, that’s good. I just need a few more— Now.”
He heard Jeremy’s voice break on his name, and his head fell back with the power of his climax, his hips pumping in time with the waves of his release. Yes. Love this. Love you.
When he could hear himself think over the rush in his ears, he gently pulled out, smiling with satisfaction as he dragged his t-shirt off over his head and used it as a towel to wipe the cheeks now covered in his come, as well as those hot Maori tats. “How’re you doing in the dark, sexy?”
Still on all fours, Jeremy turned his head and sent Owen a shaky smile. “Ready to see my surprise. As soon as I can move my legs again.”
Owen bent down to kiss his hip then pushed himself to his feet, helping Jeremy up and kissing him gently on the lips. “You can lean on me.”
“Trust me, I plan to.”
When he looked over at the cabin he’d parked their rental car next to, Owen finally got his first clear-headed glimpse at what he’d only seen online—and cringed. The picture had been an evil lie. He’d thought they were going to a beautiful lodge with two stories, a deck with an outdoor kitchen—the works.
Reality was nothing like the picture. It was the set of one of those campground horror movies, where the first people to have sex got axed. Luckily they’d nipped that myth in the bud before the sunset.
Fuck.
Take him to some romantic getaway where none of our relatives or his friends from the convention can get ahold of him, his cousin Brady had suggested. Of course, that was during the Great Rumming of 2015, when they’d both drunk too much and Brady had spouted all kinds of relationship advice he was in no way qualified to give.
Owen had rolled his eyes through most of it, but when he woke up with a mild headache the next morning, he couldn’t get Brady’s words out of his head.
You’re a Finn. We go all in or not at all.
That was how Owen had always tried to live. If he wanted something, he went after it. When he’d made up his mind that he wanted Jeremy, he’d knocked over every obstacle Jeremy threw in his path and ignored every good reason why they shouldn’t be together, to get him.
Of course, communication had never been one of his talents, and his actions didn’t always go over well with the man he loved.
He still remembered showing up late at the lake house with a U-Haul full of his things and realizing that Jeremy had thought they were over. He’d had no idea that Owen loved him, because Owen hadn’t bothered to say out loud what seemed so fucking obvious. What he thought Jeremy should’ve already known.
It still wasn’t easy for Owen to talk about feelings that weren’t lust and love. About needs that weren’t the basics like sex and hunger. Or sleep and sex. But he’d been trying…until he’d started seeing signs that their relationship was in trouble.
Owen tightened his arm reflexively around Jeremy’s waist. He couldn’t lose him. He refused to let it happen. He wasn’t going to let some coffee table book photographer swoop in and steal his happiness.
Jeremy was his. And Brady was right, Owen had wanted to propose the second his shamrock lamp found its new home in the guest room instead of the trash. Even before that, if he was honest with himself.
When he’d thought about it, Brady’s suggestion had seemed like the perfect solution. A getaway. Just the two of them with no interruptions for two weeks. No houseguest who wouldn’t leave. No wedding to plan for Stephen and Tasha or baby to shop for. No conventions, and no phone calls from other men that Jeremy had to take outside. Not even Badass, who was just too damn cute not to be an attention-stealer.
He could shout his love from the damn rooftops, and he would, but before he slapped a bumper sticker on their truck that showed his true colors to the world, he had to make sure Jeremy was tied down. In every possible sense.
So he’d scheduled his vacation, spent the next few days relegating his duties at the construction company and then packed their bags. He hadn’t communicated to Jeremy where they were going, and he’d hidden his phone. He’d wanted the cabin to be a romantic surprise.
Well, he’d gotten the surprise part right anyway.
Sighing, Owen released Jeremy and reached up to remove his blindfold. “Surprise.”
He watched closely as Jeremy blinked, getting used to the sunlight, and knew the moment his eyes finally landed on the cabin. “Wow.”
Fuck, he sucked at romance. “We don’t have to stay…”
“No,” Jeremy soothed, reaching down to pull his jeans up over his ass. “It isn’t that bad at all. It has character.”
Owen stared at him and Jeremy chuckled. “Okay it looks like a shithole, but it might be better inside. How did you find this place?”
“Online. I should have checked for reviews.” Owen followed him up the rickety steps to the faded gray cabin. He should also have been suspicious when the deposit was so affordable. “They said the key would be under the
—”
“It’s open,” Jeremy said as he disappeared inside.
“Son of a bitch.” Owen looked for the welcome mat that was supposed to have his receipt and a spare key. Nothing but rotting wood. “Great.”
“Hey, there’s running water.”
Jeremy’s call from inside the cabin pulled him in against his will. He went directly to the light switched and flipped it up. Thank God. “We’ve got electricity too.”
Strong arms wrapped around his waist and he tilted his head so Jeremy could kiss his neck. “You might not believe me, but I love this surprise, Owen. Two weeks of no distractions? Just you and me with nothing to do but each other? Sounds like heaven to me.”
Owen felt a grumpy growl forming in his chest. Apparently, Heaven was a one-room cabin with a large copper bathtub…and no furniture.
Surprise.
Jeremy
Jeremy knew Owen was miserable, but he wasn’t sure what to do about it. From what he’d said before he went outside to “take a look around,” they were a half hour away from a super Walmart and a Loews, but he hadn’t seen a single hotel. He’d picked this place in the middle of nowhere, and now he was definitely regretting it.
It did have a The Hills Have Eyes kind of vibe to it, but Jeremy wasn’t too focused on that. He was still recovering from Owen’s “Welcome to our vacation” sex and enjoying the fact that he’d put this together in the first place.
Owen fucking Finn, the gorgeous, insatiable couch potato who believed there was no place like home, had planned a two-week vacation. Their first trip as a couple, and close enough to their one year anniversary to be called romantic.
“I’ll be damned,” Jeremy huffed out, smiling as he cleaned up dinner.
According to Owen, the fridge was supposed to be stocked—and it was. With frozen dinners and little else. When they’d made that discovery, they’d also seen a note stuck to the freezer that made Owen swear softly. “We’re in the right place, damn it. This says, ‘We hope you enjoy your stay, Owen and…Jenny.’” They’d chuckled, popped two Hungry Man’s in the oven and then eaten on the floor in silence.