TWELVE
Scotti
"Stop right there," Rush cut me off as I finally forced the words out of my mouth after they all came clamoring in right when I finished the eggs, the toast popping up as if to announce it was time to eat. They had all exchanged words with Mark and with me about Mark.
But eventually, their stomachs shut them up and got them around the table where I laid out the idea that Mark had given me the night before. You know, before the amazing sex, then cuddling and sleep, the mind-blowing session in the tub.
I had never had a man inside me without protection before. First, because, well, STDs. Second, not all birth control is fool-proof, and I did not want some fool's baby; I figured my chances were below zero using condoms and the Ring. Third, that just seemed like a level of intimacy meant to be saved for someone special.
I had never had someone special before.
Mark was special.
What other man would track you down, argue with you, give you amazing orgasms, create alternate plans for you, and give you hope?
"What?" I asked, feeling my stomach tightening, knowing I shouldn't have gotten my hopes up with them.
"I said stop right there. I don't need to know anymore," Rush said, reaching for the orange juice. "I'm in. Navesink Bank was the shit."
I was pretty sure I was hearing things. You know, like what I wanted to hear.
"I mean that shack is not a fucking option," Atlas went on.
"And we need to find some jobs. I mean we have the stash from the jobs we've been doing for a decade, but cut five ways, it won't last any of us long." That was Nixon.
And I was pretty sure at this point that there was a gas leak in the cabin and I was hallucinating before I dropped dead.
Wouldn't be a terrible way to go- my brothers all agreeing with me, Mark beside me, hand on my thigh, giving me a reassuring squeeze.
Pretty nice.
"Sounds like it's unanimous, kid," Kingston added, drawing my attention.
"What?" I asked, feeling completely blindsided by their reaction.
"Looks like after we crash here for a while, we can head back to Navesink Bank and see about settling down."
"I mean, we'll need to look over our shoulders for a while, but maybe it will work," Nixon said.
"I didn't want to go to fucking Russia anyway," Rush added. "It gets cold as fuck there."
Completely thrown-off, I turned to Mark, my brows drawn together. "Are they all agreeing?"
"This would be my 'told you so' moment, right?" he asked, smile going devilish. "I fucking told you so, babe."
"You know," Nixon said, pointing a corner of toast at Mark, "maybe he's not so bad. I think he could fit in here."
"And thanks to you fucks," Mark said, perfectly at-ease calling my brothers fucks already, "she is gonna have no problem dishing it out to my brothers."
"The loansharks," Atlas said. If I wasn't mistaken, he did so with interest. I would have to have a talk with him later, alone. We were not trading one illegal business in for another. If we were going to do this, we were going straight. Case closed. I didn't care if that meant they had to pump gas or sling diner burgers for a living.
"Enforcers. But we do a lot more business shit now than we do enforcing."
And then there was about an hour spent discussing the various "business shit" the Mallick men were involved in. Some connections were made. Some ideas were punted around.
All this happened while I cleared the table and washed dishes. Because, apparently, it was 'man-talk' time. I couldn't get a word in edgewise. And, quite frankly, I was too happy to see them all getting along with Mark to ruin it.
So once I was done cleaning, I quietly exited out the back door and set to the garden. "I'm not talking to you, Nugget. That was a disgusting mess this morning. I am going to figure out how you keep escaping and then you are going to need to spend your time with your birdie mama."
He clearly did not take heed of that as I spent the next hour weeding the kale and spinach patches with him clucking and dancing all around me.
"I think he's yours now, baby," Mark said, making me jump, not used to being interrupted while I was weeding. Mainly because my brothers were afraid I would put them to work if they bothered me.
"I don't know the first thing about chickens," I objected, looking over at the little fluffy idiot, pretending my heart didn't go all melty as he pecked at the bottom of my shoe.
"Navesink Bank has a great library. I'm sure Reese can find a book about chicken-rearing or something."
"I have nowhere to keep him," I said, hearing maybe a slight bit of sadness in my voice. What can I say? I had never had a pet. The idea was perhaps a bit more appealing than I ever realized before. I was learning a lot about myself now that my focus wasn't fully on robbing stores and avenging my mother. I seemed to want a lot of things I never imagined I would want before.
"Couple pieces of wood and some chicken wire, honey, and you have a coop."
"Yes, but I have nowhere to put said coop. At least not yet. If I left him, he would probably bond with his chicken friends and forget about me. It's not meant to be."
There was a pause, one that was long enough to make me look up. "Alright," he said, shrugging. "King wanted me to come tell you that he has the, and I quote, 'plant shit' that you asked for."
"Oh good," I said, looking around, trying to figure out which plant I wanted to take clippings from. When Mark just kept standing there, looking almost uncomfortable, I slowly stood. "Are you, ah, heading out?" I asked, trying to pretend that didn't make my belly wobble. Of course he would need to leave eventually. He left in a mad rush. He probably left a ton of work undone and the lights all on or something.
"Left in a hurry. I don't think I even locked the fucking door," he said with a grin.
"Oh, um, alright. Well... ah... I guess I'll see you..."
"On the walk back to the house? Then inside the house while you pack a bag? Then again in my car on the drive back to Navesink Bank? Yes, I believe you will see me all during that. I mean, you can't seem to take your eyes off me."
He wanted me to go back with him? Right then?
Dumbly, all I could manage was an idiotic, "What?"
"Don't worry, I already cleared it with your gatekeepers. They're cool with it so long as I make sure there is no law breathing down your neck. They said they were gonna hang here and sort some shit out, do some research, look for places to stay."
"But I need to do all that too and..."
"And I have this nifty little thing called a wireless router at my house. You can sit your pretty ass in my bed, preferably naked, and search until your heart is content. Taking only short breaks to eat and let me fuck you silly."
A big, goofy, ridiculous smile pulled at my lips for a minute, making his eyes warm all the more, before I worked my mouth into a straight line, going for pretend-serious. "Well, I suppose that could work."
"Good, then hop to," he demanded, slapping me hard enough on the ass to send me forward a foot.
"Ow," I grumbled, small-eyeing him over my shoulder as I started to walk away.
"You loved it," he shot back with a devilish grin.
And, damn it, I did.
I totally did.
"Alright," I said with a huff as I dropped down into the passenger seat of his truck an hour later. I had just had to have a talk with my brothers about weeding the garden and feeding the chickens and letting them roam, but only until dusk. You'd swear I was trying to explain quantum mechanics to them they looked so wide-eyed.
Poor Kingston would be the one saddled with the job in my absence.
But, I reminded myself before the guilt could take a foothold, that was only until they all found their own places and ways in life. He would be free to do as he pleased soon enough.
I just really, really wanted the long weekend with Mark.
And King, the saint of a man he was, was not going to get in the way of that.
So my stuff was stashed in the back, and we were ready to go.
"Wait what is that..." I started to ask at a strange scratching noise in the small backseat.
"Nugget was having separation anxiety," Mark explained, casual as could be, as he reached behind him to get the small cardboard box and hand it to me. "He told me that since I'm a big, buff, sexy owner of a contracting business, I could sure as shit build him a coop."
I smiled at that, charmed more than I knew was possible. "And I'm sure those were his exact words."
"Absolutely," Mark agreed, backing out of the driveway. "He was very adamant about the 'big, buff, sexy' part. Kinda weird, but hey, to each his own. The chicks have always liked me," he added with a wink as we started on slowly down the back road.
The drive back to Navesink Bank took the better part of nine hours, and by the time we pulled up, we were both sore, hungry, cranky, and tired.
Mark handed me a take-away menu for some place called Famiglia, then took Nugget upstairs to give him a temporary home in the bathtub with some of the feed he was smart enough to steal from the cabin.
We ate, climbed into bed, and, too tired to even think of sex, fell into an exhausted sleep cuddled together like it was something we had been doing for ages instead of just a couple days.
I wasn't sure what actually woke me the following morning.
All I knew was one minute I was blissfully unconscious. The next, I was shooting up in bed, fully awake, finding myself alone.
As if answering my unasked question, Mark walked in wearing only a pair of black and white plaid pajama pants slung indecently low on his hips, and holding a cup of steaming coffee.
"We're being invaded," he informed me, making my heart shoot up into my throat.
"What!" I shrieked, immediately assuming he meant by the cops, though why he was so damn calm about it was completely beyond me.
"Not the cops," he said, reading the situation immediately as he moved to sit down beside my legs, putting the coffee on the nightstand. "My family," he clarified, not really succeeding in calming me down one bit. His family? Meaning... his whole family? He gave me a sheepish look, likely picking up on my dread. I didn't even pack anything 'meet the familyish' at all. "My dumb ass answered the phone this morning and mentioned to Eli that you were here. And, as it always seems to happen with my family, it went from there to another of the brothers who now all have women. Then it goes from the women to my parents. And, long story short, we are being invaded. Yes, by all of them. And... right now."
As if to prove his point, there was a knocking one floor below us and, if you listened closely, the distinct sound of a rather large group of people.
"Ah, nope," I said, shaking my head a little frantically, knowing I looked like a crazy person with my huge eyes and bed-hair, and not particularly caring. "No. I can't do that today. Tell them I left. That I got sick of you already," I added, not smiling when he did because it wasn't funny to me. "Please," I asked, shoulders slumping down.
"Never did a meet-the-family thing huh?" he asked, reaching down to stroke a hand down my bare thigh, bare because I slept in only his tee and my panties. "I know it seems like it is, but it's not a big deal. They are all kind of loud and crazy, but they're chill as fuck. They aren't going to grill you or anything like that."
"Mark, you and I are barely..."
"You let me fuck you with nothing between us. For me, that isn't 'barely' anything, and I'm pretty sure it isn't 'barely' to you either. So take your cup of coffee, drink it up, take a shower, get yourself together. When you're done and ready, bring your pretty ass down and meet my crazy ass family, okay?"
There was a sort of intensity, a neediness in his face right then that made me realize how big a deal it was for him to want to introduce me to them. I had heard a lot about the Mallick family from him, like he had heard a lot about my brothers. Every time he spoke of them, even if he was bitching about them or ragging on them, it was with love, with a deep, unshakable bond. I understood how much that meant because it was exactly how I spoke of my own family.
I also knew that Mark had never been a settling-down sort, that he never introduced his family to a woman in a 'this is serious' kind of way.
So this was a big thing for him.
And he needed me to not be a chickenshit, a flight risk.
He needed me to drink my coffee, take my shower, calm down, get dressed, and go down and meet his family, take whatever they threw at me, even if he was wrong and they did want to grill me. He needed that from me. Given that he had been nothing but good to me, I owed that to him.
"Okay," I agreed, taking a breath so deep it burned, and reached for the coffee. "It might take me a while, but I promise I will be down."
His hand squeezed my thigh reassuring me as all the tension left his jaw and shoulders, letting me know I said the right thing.
"No rush. Trust me, this storming in thing takes a half an hour itself. And I bet my left arm Eli brought the mutt which means he and the girls will be fawning over it. I can show them your chick too if you take too long." He moved to stand up, then turned back, reached down, grabbed me by the back of the neck, and gave me a hard, fast kiss. "Thanks, baby."
With that, making my chest do that weird swelling thing again, he was gone, closing the door behind him, making it clear it was on my own time, that he wasn't rushing me by the sounds from below.
Though, two minutes later when the clan all crowded in downstairs, the closed door did nothing to muffle the loudness of that particular group of people.
"The fuck is that fuzzy little shit?" Was a phrase that had me grinning huge all alone in bed as I finished my coffee.
That fuzzy little shit must have been Nugget.
And all of a sudden, I wasn't worried anymore. I didn't want to put it off. I moved into the bathroom, quickly showered and made myself presentable, slipping into black skinny jeans and a simple white tee, checking my hair one more time, then going to the door to head down, realizing how much I actually wanted to meet them - the people who made Mark who he was. I had a feeling they all had to be pretty freaking amazing to help shape the man he was.
The man I was most definitely starting to fall for.
Nope, that wasn't even right.
I was pretty sure the falling was over, and I had landed.
Smack-dab in the middle of it.
Love.
Oh, God.
That realization had me freezing on the bottom stair, completely unable to force the thoughts away and keep moving.
"Breathe into your stomach," a female voice called out of nowhere, making me jerk and turn to find one of the women from the pictures - blonde, green-eyed, sweet-looking - standing in a corner behind the front door, her hand on her belly, her eyes a little wild.
"I'm sorry?" I asked, head ducking to the side.
"They're overwhelming," she clarified. "I know. Trust me, I know," she said, brows raising. "Hence why I am standing in this corner and breathing into my stomach. It's just... very crowded in here. I'm still not used to it. Plus the dog and the chick and... yeah, I needed a minute. You can take a minute with me. They won't come looking for us. They know I need to get away sometimes."
"You have panic attacks?" I asked, figuring that explained the big eyes and the deep breathing thing.
"I was agoraphobic, and now, well, it's just... a process. Progress and regression. Like now, I am regressing for a few, and then I will progress my butt right back out there again. I'm Dusty," she said, offering me a kind smile.
"Scotti," I agreed, nodding.
"I'm with Ryan," she explained, giving me a chance to get things straight before I was bombarded by strong personalities. "He will be the one in a suit."
"Oh, yeah, I saw him at the gym once. He's the more... serious one. Oldest."
"Right," she agreed, nodding. "He's not as intimidating as he seems right at first. None of them are really. They're just a bit, ah, in-your-face. But they have been nothing but nice to all the serious girlfriends."
"Good to know. You want to walk in with me, or do you still need a minute?" I offered, noticing she had relaxed a bit, but her hand was still on her belly as she took deep breaths.
"Need a minute," she admitted. "But I'll be in. You'll be fine."
I gave her a smile, maybe a little charmed that in the midst of a panic attack she felt the need to try to comfort me.
"I'm not saying that," another female voice said as I rounded into the living room. It seemed everyone was in the kitchen area. "I'm saying if you don't stop spoiling her, you are going to be in deep sugar-honey-iced-tea."
"Sugar-honey-iced-tea?" one of the men asked, clearly sounding amused. "Are you worried about our virgin ears, Fee?"
"Becca likes curse words now," Fee informed them all. "And she likes to repeat them. Loudly. At school. So everyone is going to have to step up their acronym game until she's over this little phase."
"You expect all of us to... ah, there she is." This came from the one I knew as Shane, the biggest one, the owner of the gym. "Expected you to put this sh..." he started, only to cut off when Fee gave him a hard look, "this sugar-honey-iced-tea off for at least another twenty minutes."
"Guys," Mark said, giving me a smile as he walked toward me. "This is Scotti. Scotti this is, well, everyone. But let's start with my parents. This is Helen and Charlie," he supplied, leading me over to an older version of himself and a gorgeous woman with way too nice a body to have popped out five giant sons.
"Nice to meet you," I said, shaking their hands when they were offered, feeling weird as hell about it the whole time.
"So you're in the..." Helen started, looking down at her granddaughters, then back up at me, "less than legal acquisitions trade."
If I had a drink in my mouth, this would have been a genuine spit-take moment.
"Breathe," a newly familiar voice called to me from across the room as the girls moved their game of fetch outside into the backyard. I turned my head over my shoulder to find Dusty curled up into Ryan's side, his arm possessively around her. "I was a shut-in who held a stash of drugs for a dealer friend of mine when Ryan first met me."
"And I was a phone-sex operator with a cutting problem and a fucked up - God it felt good to say fuck - " the other blonde, the one with a bunch of tattoos said, "childhood... when they first met me."
"And I was a phone-sex operator on the run from the MC I was raised in," the last woman said, a tall, leggy brunette who was just perhaps too damn pretty.
"The point being," Helen said with a smile, "I wasn't saying it as a judgment, just an observation. I always wondered what kind of woman could rein this whore in," she said, slapping the back of her son's head, but giving him a warm smile. "Now I know. Should have guessed it would be some badass, combat-boot-wearing armed robber. That sounds just his type."
"Thanks, Ma," Mark said, shaking his head, looking just a tiny bit bashful. "And she's going straight now," he added.
"And settling here." That was Charlie.
It wasn't a question, but I answered anyway. "It seems like a good place for a criminal to retire. Or, a whole group of them to be exact."
"Yes, we heard about the brothers," Helen said, nodding. "I have to look into expanding my dining room. Hunt is going to need to make me a much larger dining table too."
And that, that sentence right there, it reminded me of something I had almost long-forgotten.
See, we had been so busy avenging the bad treatment of our mother that we had started to forget the things we missed most about her. Motherhood. That huge, open heart. That willingness to open your arms and your table. That generous spirit I was convinced you only ever truly found in maternal figures.
There was Mark's mother, a woman who screamed 'badass' from her awesome hair to her heeled feet, who had only known me two minutes, who knew almost nothing about me, my life, or my brothers, but she was willing to entertain the idea of inviting all of us into her home, cooking for us, sharing dinner conversation with us.
I don't think I had ever felt more welcome in my life.
I didn't let myself often think about what I missed about my mother. Knowing, perhaps, that it would be everything from the way she opened up all the curtains first in the morning to let the sunlight in, to the way she would buy big tubs of ice cream when one of us had a hard day and would sit in front of the TV with us, eating it right out of the container, to the way she kept up the Santa charade well into our teens even though she damn well knew we all stopped believing by ten. I missed the French toast on Christmas morning and the stuffing she made from scratch for Thanksgiving. I missed having her non-judgmental ear, her love-me-despite-all-my-flaws heart, her terrible singing voice, and her determination to keep us all close. Maybe because she knew, as all parents did, that she would be gone someday and all we would have left is one another.
"You alright?" Mark asked as the girls came running back in, drawing everyone else's attention.
And because I felt it, because it hurt, because I knew that the only way to have any kind of relationship was by sharing that kind of thing, I leaned in closer, dropped my voice, and admitted, "I miss my mom."
His arms went around me, pulling me close, holding just a bit too tight as if to say he couldn't imagine, but he understood.
"You're welcome to share mine," he offered, giving me a squeeze before pulling back slightly.
Sure, I didn't know her. And, likely, she was nothing like my own mother. But regardless, that meant something to me. Some day, if things progressed, it would be nice to know there would be a maternal figure in my life again. Hell, even in my brothers' lives. Sure, I had been a makeshift stand-in. I did the laundry. I cleaned. I fretted over them when they were sick or hurt. I cooked on special occasions. But I knew it was nowhere near the same.
They needed a mom just as much as I did. And even though they all got more time with her than I did, that didn't mean they didn't still need her. I don't think you ever stopped needing your mother.
"She seems pretty badass," I admitted.
"You got no fucking idea," he said, giving me a wicked look that promised a lot of future stories.
"So, we're stealing her," Fee announced suddenly, moving to stand in front of her brother-in-law. As if they had choreographed it, Lea moved in as well.
"I would pretend to fight for you," Mark said, releasing me, "but I don't stand a chance against them."
"See how good we have him trained already?" Fee asked, patting his cheek, and giving me a smile. "Want to get some air?" she asked, turning before I even finished nodding.
I was vaguely aware of Dusty breaking away from Ryan and moving our way as well.
"Becca," Fee called when we stepped out to find her three daughters running around the yard. "Uncle Mark said you could totally jump on his bed," she announced in a dramatic voice, making the girls squeal and charge inside to put that to the test. She gave me a smile. "That is payback for him dropping my girls off to me last month with a karaoke machine. I love my girls, but good God in heaven, not a single one of them can carry a tune. They make all the dogs in the neighborhood shriek in misery. So, you're Scotti."
"I'm Scotti," I agreed, nodding.
"I'm gonna level with you, I didn't think Mark was ever going to find a girl. Let alone some badass armed robber. You really up our cool quotient. Navesink Bank has a lot of badass women from bomb-makers to self-defense gurus and on and on. We needed everyone else to know..."
"No one can know about my past," I cut her off, voice maybe a little too shrill considering she was someone I wanted to get along with, but my need for self-preservation so strong that there was no way not to be a tad bit snippy.
"Well, duh," she said, rolling her eyes a little. "But just for our own confidence-level, y'know? It's cool to have a certifiable badass around. I mean, Helen is the shit and Lea used to be a biker and whatnot. But, all said and done, Dusty and I are almost painfully normal. Sorry, Dust. I know you have your drug and agoraphobia thing, but before that you were a school teacher. And while I have that fucked up backstory and run a phone sex business, I'm kinda just a boring mom and wife now."
"You might not be a bomb-maker, but you seem pretty badass in your own right. Who else could boss the Mallick men around?" I asked.
She smiled at that as Lea turned to me. "So now that you're retiring, what are you planning to do? Because, ah, we just lost another girl to maternity leave. I mean, you're cool with telling men their itty-bitty baby-cocks are the most pathetic thing you've ever seen and not worthy of your pretty pink va-gay-gay, right?"
"Lea!" Dusty snapped, blushing for me.
But I couldn't help it, I was laughing. "Oh yeah, totally. I say that all the time."
"Actually," Fee said, eyes dancing. "Those brothers of yours... all of them will be needing jobs, right?"
"They're all straight," I said, shrugging.
"Yeah, no. Get this. We have had a growing amount of female callers calling in and asking if we had any men working. I never realized there was even a market for it, but apparently it is big and growing. I was thinking of trying to branch out into that, but I have no idea where to find men who would be willing to dirty talk lonely women all night." She gave me a shrug. "I don't know your brothers, but if any of them would be interested, send them my way."
I couldn't see Kingston, Nixon, or Atlas being into it, but for a strange reason, I thought maybe Rush would find it interesting. Maybe I would mention it. He was the one I was most worried about. I knew King would land on his feet. Nixon and Atlas would likely flounder for a little while, but find their way as well. But because Rush was such a good wheel man, there was definite concern that he might look to using that skill, rent himself out to any of the other seemingly endless amounts of criminals in Navesink Bank. He was young enough that it might have still appealed to him. And the money, well, let's just say that since the wheel man is the one who kept you out of jail, they were paid well.
It would be tempting for him to go down that road once he realized the restrictions on income that came from going straight and having very little traditional work history.
I didn't want that to happen.
So if he needed to dirty talk women home alone with their cats, well then, so be it.
"I might have one to send your way actually."
"Awesome. That's a load-off. Now if Lea would change her damn mind about quitting," she said, small eyeing Lea who just shook her head at her. "She was the only one of my girls who knew what a 'snowmobile' was when a guy called in. The kinky bitch."
"And welcome to the Mallick family," Dusty announced, cheeks the slightest bit pink. "There don't seem to be a whole heck of a lot of boundaries they won't cross. You get used to it. Sort of," she said with a somewhat shy smile.
"Don't let her fool you with her sweetness," Fee declared, giving Dusty a shoulder-shove. "When we took her to the toy store, she stocked up. In fact, did I see a pair of..."
She lost the rest of her sentence as Dusty slammed her hand across her mouth. "A pair of safe sex pamphlets. That was totally what she was going to say."
"Of course," I agreed, laughing. "I totally pick up safe-sex pamphlets in pairs... you know... along with my handcuffs," I finished, smiling huge when her cheeks went fully red.
They were going to be fun.
It never occurred to me to think about sisters much. I was usually too busy with my brothers. I had been a tomboy. I enjoyed doing the things they liked. And I had always had my mother through my teenage years to do all the girly stuff with. But, I realized as I stood there and listened to them taking turns teasing one another, I had been missing out on the female connection for way too long. There was just a completely different dynamic with women than with men. You could flow from talk about the weather to hair care products to cock rings in a way that didn't seem weird or uncomfortable.
I hadn't been able to discuss sex with someone... well... ever.
My mom had died before I had lost my virginity and you did not, ever, talk about sex with your brothers.
Ew.
So I had missed out on all those talks, those belly-aching laugh moments, like the one that would take place twenty minutes later as we all started swapping stories.
"No... so..." Lea was trying to explain, but laughing so hard that she had to stop every few seconds because Fee kept cutting into her 'cherry-popping' story with hilariously raunchy commentary. "He, oh my God, stop Fee," she said, shoving her hand into the other woman who stumbled back into a Dusty who was laughing too. "No, he was trying to dirty-talk me, and he ended up asking me if I liked his doggy-dick instead of, I think, donkey-dick. Which is equally as terrible, but I laughed in his face because, well, come on! And he got all pissy, soft, and pulled out, yanked his pants on, and stormed off. And that, my dear ladies, was my glorious first time," she finished, spinning a hand in the air as she took a bow.
"Alright, alright. We had my kinda sad story," Fee said, shrugging it off. "And we had Dusty's kinda sweet story. And Lea's ridiculous story. What was your first-time story?"
"Not hilarious or sweet or sad," I admitted, shrugging. "I was just a little over eighteen, and he was nineteen I think. He got me in the backseat, yanked up my skirt, gave me a solid... thirty seconds. And voila- I wasn't a virgin anymore."
"Boo! Boring," Fee heckled, tossing invisible popcorn at me.
"Trust me, I know," I admitted, laughing.
"Fee," Mark's voice interrupted, almost startling me because I had been so wrapped up in girl-land that I had maybe momentarily forgotten he was even there. "Your hell beasts are trying to convince their grandfather that you totally let them watch Family Guy."
"Right, like they need to be exposed to any more potty mouths," she said, rolling her eyes as she moved to follow him inside.
"I'm going to go see what Mark has around here to cook," Lea declared. "Dusty, wanna help?" she asked pointedly. There was nothing subtle about it as they went inside and closed the door on Mark and me.
"Been out here a while. Wasn't sure if I should send a rescue party or not," he commented, coming up to me, and sliding his arms across my lower back, pulling me closer.
"Nah we were fine. Discussing how we all lost our virginity," I admitted.
"Damn, I miss all the good stuff," he said, pulling me tighter.
"I like them a lot," I went on, wanting him to know, wanting to assuage any stress he might have been feeling about me getting along with his people. "Fee is going to interview Rush for a job as a male phone-sex operator for lonely women."
To that, a low chuckle moved through him. "Gotta love Fee, always looking for new business opportunities. I hate to break this to you," he said, looking a bit guilty. "But this is looking like it is going to be an all-day thing. It usually is with my family."
"That's fine," I said, shaking my head, wondering why he thought he needed to apologize for that, knowing how important my own family was to me. "I'm happy to get to know them a little better. I didn't get to talk to your brothers yet."
Then his face lit the hell up.
And while he was stupidly good-looking all the time, he was almost other-worldly right then.
I found myself wondering what I could possibly do to get that look from him again. But as the day (and night) went on, I would catch him giving me that look often. When I laughed at something absurd that Shane said, or sat and discussed getting a memorial tattoo for my mother with Hunter, or looked through some of Eli's awesome artwork on his phone, or discussed business opportunities with Ryan.
By the time they all shuffled out, it was dark, Fee's girls were whiny and covered in chocolate from the dessert their grandfather had indulged them with, the kitchen was a mess, and I was a happy kind of exhausted.
"Leave it," Mark said when I went to reach for the plates on the island and bring them to the sink. "They can wait. I can't," he informed me, grabbing my hand, and yanking me toward his chest.
"Oh, no?" I asked, playing coy. "Can't wait for what?"
Coy went out the window the next moment when his hands went down my back to my ass, sank in, lifted me off my feet, wrapped me around him, shoved me back against the wall, and announced, "To have my cock back in that hot, tight pussy of yours."
So then after a lovely day getting to know his family, feeling almost a part of it already, making friends, he fucked me silly against his kitchen wall, then we dragged ourselves up to bed where he went down on me until I was sure I woke up everyone on the street, then he wrapped me up and we slept.
Perfect.
It was so perfect that it was painful.
And I woke up to see that Mark did not do anything by half.
And, again, it was perfect.