One Month Later

“Are you done banging my brother?”

Griff’s bored voice barely made it to my ears past Reese’s heavy panting as he fucked me against the storage closet door by the back entrance to the lodge. Shelves of fresh cotton linens next to us vibrated with every thrust of his hips against my ass.

“Nope,” Reese barked hoarsely. “Five more minutes.” His voice lowered to a growly purr. “Because you’re so fucking tight and hot, I’m going to come in about two seconds.”

“I heard that,” Griff called. “Shake a tailfeather, will you? Wedding happening. You know, that thing we’re all attending any minute now?”

Reese’s dick hit my prostate and I cried out. “Oh fucking fuck, fuck, oh god that feels good. Keep going.”

“Holy mother of pearl,” I heard Griff mutter. “Oh HEY TILLY!”

Reese grunted behind me and his hand tightened on my cock. The pressure in my balls threatened to send me to my knees.

“Please,” I whimpered. “Please.”

“I love you,” Reese said into my hair. His voice slid into me like liquid gold, and I came in an instant, biting my fist to keep from attracting any more attention than we already had.

“WHO, BEN YOU SAY?” Griff yelled. “NOPE, HAVEN’T SEEN HIM.”

Reese shoved deep into me one last time and came, throwing a hand over my mouth as if I was the one who was going to scream the roof down.

His muffled cries went into the skin of my throat as he gently clamped his teeth there and held on through his orgasm as the sensation of warmth filled me. Ever since ditching the condoms, I’d felt a new kind of closeness between us when he came deep inside of me. I relished the moments we managed to find time alone, and even may have secretly planned a few public ambushes like this one when Georgie was safely preoccupied with others.

Reese shifted but instead of going for a towel like I thought, he dropped to his knees in front of me and licked the flat of his tongue up my length.

“Fuck,” I whispered as he nuzzled my groin and then sucked up every ounce of cum he could find. He kept his contact on my sensitive shaft light, then used his hands to turn me around.

“Reese—”

“Spread ’em,” he said as his big hands split me open. I looked over my shoulder and saw him watching as his juices dripped out of me.

I was sure there was no way he was going to—

“Motherfucker!” I screeched when his tongue slid up my crease. I dug my fingers into the wall and realized how supremely grateful I was to be out of both the cast and the brace that had come after.

“What was that? Did you hear something, dear?” I heard someone say on the opposite side of the door.

“I’m sure it was just some birds or something, Mom,” Griff responded.

“In the lodge? Really? That’s odd.”

I tuned out the rest of what they were saying because I couldn’t have moved even if I’d wanted to. Not with the way Reese was licking and sucking at my hole. My knees shook.

“You two are some sick motherfuckers,” Griff growled through the door. “Oh, Aunt Tilly, you didn’t find them? Huh? Maybe they went back to the bar to grab a drink.”

Reese climbed to his feet and pressed his body against mine.

“Okay, you assholes are on your own!” Griff whispered through the door. “And you know she’s coming back with Granny and Irene next time.”

Reese smiled against my neck.

“Thanks, Foxy, we owe you one,” Reese said lazily.

“Yeah,” Griff hissed through the door. “You owe me some ear bleach is what you owe me, Peanut Butter Cup. That’s my fucking baby brother you just debauched in public.”

“Hey, don’t call him—” I began to say, but Reese covered my mouth with his to silence me.

“Don’t,” he murmured against my mouth. “I kind of like it… plus, I’ve figured out that nicknames are Griff’s love language.”

My heart swelled the way it always did these days when Griff claimed me and when I could tell my partner and my brother were going to get along just fine.

Reese reached for a towel off the shelf behind him. When he turned around, I spotted a flash of something dark through the thin white fabric of his button-down shirt.

“What’s this?” I asked, lifting his shirttail high enough to get a better look. The area on the back of his shoulder was a little red and swollen, but clear as day, I could see a tattoo of Princess Kitty sitting on a tuft of green grass.

I looked up at him. “Is there something you need to tell me about you and Princess Kitty?” I asked, eyeing him with as much seriousness as I could manage.

An adorable flush ran up his neck and into his cheeks. “Well, you got your knuckle tattoos for me.” Reese picked up my fingers and kissed the letter tattooed on each one. I’d settled on the words, “Made Mine,” when I’d realized that was what I’d made Reese from the moment I’d met him, even if neither of us had necessarily known it.

“So I decided to get something that shows the world who you belong to.” Not surprisingly, his growly, possessive voice had all my sated parts getting all excited again. It was hard to focus on his next words because I was seriously considering whether or not I could risk Griff’s anger by getting Reese off again.

“Nico suggested starting with something small until we have more time to do the rest. You and Georgie are on the final design… Griff sketched something for me.” I watched in disbelief as he took out a piece of paper and opened it up to show me. The sketch was of me and Georgie sitting by the pond behind our cabin on the vineyard. Georgie had a couple of butterflies sitting on the back of her hand and the two of us looked deep in conversation. I remembered the moment, but I hadn’t realized Griff had seen us or even sketched it.

“I made him draw her without her purse,” Reese said nervously.

I looked up at him.

“Princess Kitty,” he said quickly as he pointed to the part of the drawing that was already tattooed on his shoulder. “I mean, I don’t ever want to hold that little, uh… well, anyway, I thought it would look nicer if she wasn’t in it.”

I chuckled. “It’s freaking you out, isn’t it? Knowing she’s on there forever.”

“You have no fucking idea,” Reese said.

I laughed and pulled him into my arms. “I love you so much.”

After kissing him, I met his eyes again. “You know you’re going to have to keep adding to it, right?”

“What do you mean?”

“Did you forget our new addition? The kitten that Georgie talked you into?”

Reese’s face fell. “Princess Puppy. Shit.”

“Yeah.” I couldn’t hold back my laugh anymore and was still laughing about it when we finally stepped out of the linen closet and straight into a gaggle of Marians.

“Why in the hell did she name a kitty, Puppy?” Granny asked. “And I hope to goodness you didn’t think that door was in any kind of way soundproofed.”

Irene’s face was beaming. “And for that, we thank you and the workers who built it. Now, any idea how to get your father and his hot honeys in there?”

Despite having a plum-colored face, Reese answered her, not surprisingly ignoring her second question altogether. “The name Princess Kitty was already taken. Obviously.”

Granny rolled her eyes and turned to loop her arm through Irene’s. “Those two are weird as hell. Letting their kid name a spider Kitty and a kitty Puppy. What’s next? They gonna name their puppy Tarantula?”

Reese gave a full-body shudder, which set me off laughing again.

“Yes, isn’t it wonderful?” Irene said as she led Granny away. The rest of us followed the old ladies along the corridor toward the wall of glass doors leading to the stone terrace behind the lodge.

Griff shuffled past Blue and Simone to reach Reese. “Look, Reese, buddy, I know you’re trying to impress my brother with your stamina, but seriously, do you understand what a quickie is supposed to be? Sam, honey, come here, I need you to explain to Reese what a qui—”

I was the one to clamp my hand over Griff’s mouth because not only was Aunt Tilly within hearing distance, Reese’s father was making his way toward us.

“Ha, ha,” Reese said. “We were in there for fifteen minutes, tops.”

“PBC, Ronan and everyone are already here from Seattle. That’s how long you’ve been in there.”

Reese stopped walking and stared at him. “Shit, really?”

“Yeah, really. The ceremony starts in like three minutes.” Griff began rushing the rest of the people in our little group until we were all through the doors and finding seats in the rows of white folding chairs arranged on the pristine stretch of green lawn. When Reese’s dad reached us, he gave us each a long hug.

We’d seen a lot of Everett, Gage, Nash, and Gage’s daughter, Charlie, in the past couple of weeks as we’d dealt with the fallout of everything that had happened both with Kirk and Reese’s outing to the public.

It’d taken about two days to discover what had happened to Kirk after Simone’s abduction. It turned out, Kirk had been trying to blackmail a high-ranking executive in charge of research and development at a giant pharmaceutical company, and the men the R&D director had sent after Simone hadn’t been the only guys he’d sent to track down the information Kirk had come across when he’d purchased the contents of the storage space. The information had included a memo from the director instructing his lead scientist to falsify data related to a new cutting-edge medication meant to treat Alzheimer's. The company had seen huge profits from the sale of the drug because the falsified data had allowed the drug to get FDA approval.

If the memo had been discovered and leaked, the public relations nightmare would have put the company out of business and landed the R&D director and lead scientist in jail. After discovering the memo in the contents of the storage locker, Kirk had tried to cash in on the explosive information. Once the dust had settled from Simone’s attempted abduction, Ronan’s tech expert had managed to find a copy of the incriminating memo on the scientist’s personal computer. Kirk had been found less than forty-eight hours later.

Well, his body had.

I hadn’t asked for details about how my foster father had died. All I’d needed to know was that his need for money had overshadowed everything else, because despite the danger that memo had meant, he’d gone and tried to blackmail the man a second time.

The pharmaceutical exec had already been arrested and was facing jail time for a host of crimes, not least of which was Kirk’s murder, but Ronan had assured us Kirk would get justice, even if he hadn’t necessarily deserved it.

The chaos of the pharmaceutical company’s downfall was surpassed only by the news that Reese Shaw, the son of the former President of the United States, was gay. But Reese and Everett’s publicist had been ready and waiting for the news to leak and had actually scooped the story themselves by having Reese do a live interview with one of the major networks. He’d come out exactly as he’d wanted—on his own terms. His father hadn’t been there to try and deflect attention from him, and there’d been no dramatic details about when he’d known, how many people he’d been with, or if he had a boyfriend now. Reese’s only goal had been to set the record straight, advocate for others who were still struggling to accept their sexuality like he had when he’d been a kid, and to say that going forward, there would be no more interviews about the subject.

He’d taken his life back, and that was that.

As for me, I’d gotten the news just this morning that I’d been granted legal guardianship of Georgie and could now move forward with officially adopting her. Reese had already expressed an interest in us adopting her together, but we had a few things to work out on paper before that could happen. Namely, that we were going to make our permanent home in California… at the vineyard, in fact. And that Reese would be starting a new job with On Your Six, Joel Healy’s security company. It’d been a difficult decision for Reese to leave Ronan’s team, but he’d decided that not only were the jobs too risky, but his frequency of being recognized was much higher now and Ronan’s team relied on their ability to fly under the radar.

“How are you guys doing?” Everett asked. I loved how he and Reese seemed so at ease with each other.

“Good,” Reese said. “Ben was just showing me around the lodge. He’s found all the most interesting nooks and crannies.”

I felt my face flame as I punched Reese in the stomach.

Everett took pity on me because he nodded and said, “Hmmm, sounds like Nash, Gage, and I will need to check out all these… interesting spots.”

Reese looked a little green around the gills as we said our goodbyes and made our way to our seats.

The day was picture perfect. No clouds, no chill, just plain sunshine and fresh air with healthy rows of vines lined up in the distance and thick stands of trees lining each side of the lawn. Colorful clusters of flowers were tied with satin ribbon to the end of each row of chairs and spread across the top of an archway at the end of the aisle.

Most of the guests were decked out with nice but casual clothes, but every one of them had big smiles in anticipation of the joining together of Cain and Ethan.

Reese held my hand as the wedding procession began. I nearly cried when Georgie began walking down the aisle in the little white dress Rebecca Marian had made for her. Instead of the traditional flower-throwing duties, Georgie was walking next to Jamie, who was holding the basket of rose petals for her. I nudged Reese when Jamie actually handed Georgie the petals one by one.

“Our future son-in-law is a gentleman,” I whispered to Reese.

“Um, we may have several sons-in-law,” Reese responded. “Look.”

Two other boys appeared at Georgie’s side and kept pace with her. One was a boy with light brown hair who looked to be a year or two older and the other was a brunet about the same age. The boy with the light brown hair was carrying Princess Kitty’s purse, and the boy with the darker hair was carrying Georgie’s Spider-Man dolls. Soon the boys were competing to hand Georgie the next petal… well, all but the brown-haired one, who was tugging at his collar.

“Are those pajamas?” I asked as I got a better look at the little boy’s tuxedo as he walked by.

“We need to keep Leo away from your Aunt Tilly or this could all go really wrong, really fast,” Reese said with a grin.

“Why?” I asked in confusion.

Just then, little Leo stopped and dropped to the ground to start working his pants off. His friend with the light brown hair stopped, as did Jamie. The little group waited patiently as Leo partially disrobed. I heard several adults telling Leo to leave his pants on while Georgie turned to find me in the audience.

“Look, Benji, he’s got Ant-Man undies!”

I snorted and noticed Tate, who’d brought Leo that weekend to keep his son Matty company, leap forward to strongly encourage Leo’s pants back onto his body. Tilly piped up, because of course she’d never stay silent when naked body parts were involved.

“Let the poor boy streak, for goodness’ sake. It’s nice out today and this shindig could use a little spicing up, if you ask me.”

“Can it, old lady,” Blue hissed from the row behind us. “Sit down, for the love of god.”

The ceremony leaped into overdrive at that point, and I saw the grooms laugh as people began bickering back and forth and little Leo took off around the back of the rows of chairs. His little friends cheered him on as Tate and his husband Hawke tried to corner the child. Within moments, more kids got in on the game, as well as dogs, and it descended into complete and total chaos. I was reminded of the YouTube videos I’d seen of dogs stealing onto a baseball field and playing keep-away with the players.

“Look,” Reese said as he nudged my arm, then curled his fingers around mine.

I looked up to see the grooms standing almost flush, their eyes only on each other. They were speaking softly, enough so that we couldn’t hear what they were saying, but I’d never seen anyone look happier. It took me a moment to realize what was happening.

The men were saying vows to one another.

I’d been privy to the plans for the wedding, so I knew Ethan and Cain had actually planned to have the reverend do all the talking for them. I’d gotten the impression that Cain hadn’t really been the kind of guy who wanted to stand up in front of a crowd of people and share his innermost thoughts.

But I realized he was doing exactly that, thanks to Leo’s timely interruption. The crowd eventually picked up on what was happening and went silent, but the men’s voices were still too low to be heard. It was just them and the minister.

I leaned into Reese’s side as he played with my fingers. “Promise me our wedding will be exactly like this.”

Reese chuckled. “Babe, between your family and mine, I can guarantee it will be.”

“Everyone,” the minister announced as Ethan and Cain kissed deeply, “I’d like to introduce you to Dr. and Mr. Rhodes.”

The crowd burst into applause, dogs barked, kids began tearing around like maniacs, babies cried, Aunt Tilly demanded alcohol from a guest who had the misfortune of wearing a plain white shirt and black trousers to match the servers, and Ethan and Cain began accepting congratulations from their family members.

“Now that’s how you do it,” Griff said as he nudged my arm, then stood with his husband by his side and wandered off to speak to the new couple. Georgie worked her way through the crowd of adults and plopped down on Reese’s lap.

“How come they have the same last name and ours are different?” she asked, reaching out to toy with a button on Reese’s shirt.

Reese leaned forward to press a kiss to her cheek. “Would you and Benji like to share the same last name with me someday?”

Georgie’s eyes widened. “So I would be Georgia Starr or Georgia Shaw? Or…” she turned to me. “Bassett? Or like you and Uncle Griff have Fox?”

I looked up to meet Reese’s gaze just as Rebecca and Thomas approached. Thomas’s hand squeezed my shoulder and Rebecca handed us champagne flutes.

“We were hoping you might also consider Marian,” Thomas said softly with a warm smile. Rebecca nodded with tears in her eyes.

My eyes closed for a beat before I met Georgie’s gaze and leaned into Reese’s side. “Ben, Reese, and Georgie Marian. What do you guys think?”

“Perfect,” Reese said.

Georgie seemed to mull it over. “Can it be Princess Marian?”

“No!” Reese and I barked at the same time.

“Okay, can I get a puppy and name it Princess Snake?”

“No!” Reese yelled at the same time I said, “Absolutely!”

Reese shot me a dark look, but I wiped it away with a soft kiss. “To the Marians,” I said to him as I held my champagne glass up.

“To making a family,” he said, tilting his glass to mine.