CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
GRACE
THREE YEARS LATER
“So, this is the infamous Wrightworth,” I say, staring out the window at Hunter’s former hometown. He’s told me countless times about this place, why he needed to escape LA, about the girl he left behind here. Seeing it in person makes those once distant stories surprisingly real.
I can tell Hunter’s a little shocked himself as he examines the view out the front window. Maybe it’s a side effect of living in the city too long, but I almost feel a bit anxious gazing out at all the trees and greenery around this place, the empty space and open air.
“What were you expecting?” he asks.
I settle in the passenger seat. “I don’t know. The world’s biggest ball of string, a golden cow or some shit. I mean, what’s this place famous for?”
“Skiing?”
“I know a far warmer activity that starts with ‘S’… One that doesn’t involve leaping from icy cliffs with a couple of ironing boards strapped to your feet.”
“I thought you were adventurous?”
I give him a testing look.
Greta saves him by giving a little squeak from the back seat, our two-year-old looking awfully tiny in her car seat.
“See, Greta likes it, don’t you, babe?” says Hunter.
A small, bubbly burp follows.
“Like mother like daughter.”
I have to admit the idea of birth had stressed me out. Taking a bullet seemed like it would be easier at the time, but in the end, I handled it like I do everything else: by manning the fuck up and getting on with it. No drugs, no epi, though I might have burned through every curse word known to man, threatened to tear Hunter’s balls off, the nurse’s head… Generally do harm. But all that bravado and pain soaked away when they placed Greta in my arms. My features softened, my eyes lit up and I finally understood what my own mother could not. I was spellbound, and so was Hunter, smitten from that very first second.
It’s been quite a turn-around for a so-called ‘kid hater,’ but every time I look at Greta’s tiny face and hands, the way she gurgles and goes about natural human processes, I realize why we made the choice. There’s something about a new life that overshadows the small, that envelops something bigger than two people. To borrow one of Hunter’s own idioms, it’s everything I never knew I was missing.
One thing I am sure of is that Greta’s going to be raised to be just as fierce as I am, a natural-born fighter. I pity the first boy to break her heart… If Hunter doesn’t get to him first. I thought he was protective of me, but when it comes to Greta he is helicopter dad with a D.
Hunter pulls over, nodding towards a wood-paneled single-story house amongst the trees. “My old place.”
We’re on a two-week East Coast jaunt. We’d still be working if Hunter hadn’t forced me out the precinct door. I’m thankful now he did, though, for our sanity and own peace of mind, because god knows this job can get to you.
This is our last day before we fly back to New York tomorrow.
I notice the tension in Hunter’s shoulders as he stares glassy-eyed out the window. “What is it? You’re nervous, aren’t you? About meeting your brothers in New York?”
He faces me and hasn’t lost a shred of that raw sexiness that drew me in. “Me, nervous?”
I pull back, swiveling sideways, the seatbelt pulling against my chest. “Ah, it’s me, isn’t it? Your nervous about your brothers meeting me?”
He looks away. “Of course not.”
“We’ve hung out with Cayden and Indy like how many times now? How bad can your other brothers be?”
He locks his eyes on me laughing. “You have no idea.”
HUNTER
There’s not exactly a line tonight to get into Employees Only, a semi-hidden semi-speakeasy and one of New York’s finer establishments. I enter the dark space with Grace and immediately spot Cayden and Colton by the bar.
Colton’s the first to speak, looking around. “Not exactly the Viper Room, is it?”
I laugh. “Hanging out at places like that on a detective’s wage? You’re dreaming.”
Colton ribs Cayden. “Not everyone can roll around with a Platinum card like this guy.”
Cayden scoffs. “If you can pry it out of Indy’s cold hands. She’s become something of a compulsive shopper lately, crazy as that sounds.”
“Hi,” says Grace and the boys immediately apologize, taking turns to greet her.
Colton, the sly bastard, plants one on a little too close to her mouth. “The infamous Grace,” he says.
“Speak of the devil,” says Cayden, as Indy swings up to the bar, stopping to say hi to Grace.
“Alright,” she says, leaning against the bar, “what’s he been saying about me?”
Cayden kisses her cheek, pouting. “Only that you’re still the finest piece of ass in the room,” hand up to Grace, “no offence, Grace.”
Grace shrugs. “None taken.”
Colton holds up a cocktail and passes it to me. “A Cosmo for you, brother.”
I push it away. “You can take that Cosmo and shove it right up your polished a—”
Colton leaps back, looking to Grace. “Whoa, what have you done with the real Hunter?”
Grace squeezes my ass, a hand on my chest. “Oh, this one’s quite real. Trust me. What about you? Where’s Harper?”
Colton starts sipping at the Cosmo, clearly not caring what it is as long as it’s alcohol. With no kids around, I’m pretty sure I’ll be wheeling my brothers out of here tonight. “Someone had to sacrifice themselves so we could enjoy this little shindig.”
“So you left her at home with the kids is what you’re trying to say?”
Colton throws his hands up, backing away. “Hey, hey, and where’s your child tonight, do tell?”
“With a professional babysitter,” I add.
Colton hands me a highball glass. “Here. Have a real drink,” he says, reaching back to the bar and passing the girls mojitos.”
I look into my glass but can’t make out much in the dim light. “And dare I ask what this is?”
“A Moscow mule,” says Cayden.
“You know, to carry your candy-ass home,” winks Colton, throwing the back the last of the Cosmo.
Cayden raises his glass. “To Dad. He could be an asshole, but he came right in the end.”
“To Dad,” we all repeat, drinking.
Dad’s heart attack was a shock to us all, the suddenness of his passing. He’d lost almost everything but had somehow found peace in it, become something half close to a normal grandfather to our fast-growing brood. The way we’re going, soon there’ll be enough Beckett kids to form our own football team.
It is nice to see my brothers again, though. We’ve all got our own lives, our own cities and families. We’ve all had success in different ways, but if Dad is to be credited with anything, it’s providing us all with a backbone, a dogged desire to press on no matter what the odds. It’s just a shame Mas…
“What. The. Fuck?!” exclaims Cayden.
I turn and find Mason standing there with his wife Jeanie, the two of them looking quite the country couple.
Colton looks down. “Holy shit. Are those cowboy boots?”
Jeanie leans forward to speak. “He’s really into square dancing at the moment. He didn’t tell you?”
We all explode with laughter.
Cayden’s holding onto the bar for support, crippled, tears streaming down his face. “Fucking square dancing. What next? You going to become a bull-rider?”
Jeanie smiles. “He does look excellent in a pair of chaps,” and we break into a laughing fit all over again.
Cayden pushes past me, kissing Jeanie and then Hunter on the lips, pulling him into a tight embrace. “Good god, bro. What have they done to you out there?”
“Hey, at least men are men out there.”
Mason introduces himself, actually calls Grace ‘ma’am’… much to the collective amusement of his brothers.
“Ignore them,” his wife, Jeanie, tells her, taking Grace by the hand, “One Beckett is bad enough, but get them all together and it’s like a darn country fair—heavy on the clowns.”
“So, what did I miss?” says Mason.
“The toast, for one thing,” replies Colton, signaling the bartender, "but fear not. There are more to come.”
Mason nods at me, shaking my hand. “What are we drinking to then?”
A wide smile breaks out over Cayden’s face. “To the Beckett boys… and their giant dicks.”
“And egos,” Indy whispers to Jeanie and Grace, “forever may they grow,” the three of them happily toasting to themselves amongst smirks.
GRACE
By 2am the bar hasn’t started to clear out, but the Beckett brothers are in full flight, the subject turning to Greta and how she came to be.
It was almost three years ago now Hunter and I were in Tokyo, not long after the ‘big clean,’ as we’ve come to call it. I’d researched the place in and out, spent so much time on Trip Advisor I was basically an employee.
Hunter was such a fish out of water in Japan. It was hilarious watching him trying to decipher the subway, snake his way through the never-ending train station at Shinjuku. And the food… I’m pretty sure he still doesn’t know what he was putting into his mouth half the time.
Hunter’s friend James had been working in and out of Tokyo for six months, so we did have something of a guide, and a way for Hunter to be a bro while I headed out to make the most of the sights and sounds.
It was funny then when Hunter took me completely by surprise, leading us to what at first seemed a rather non-descript bar in the commercial district. The moment I saw the name, however—Ura Mado, the classic Maki Asakawa song—I knew where we were. This bar played only Maki Asakawa. The bar itself wasn’t much bigger than my bedroom closest, but the ambience, the quality of sound… I couldn’t get enough.
We sat quietly in the corner together sipping on Old Fashioneds and listening to Maki’s smoky vocals with a handful of similarly hip patrons all too happy to make our acquaintance. I’d never experienced anything like it. We went straight back to the hotel and made love—no spanking, no bondage. We simply enjoyed each other’s bodies over and over and over again until the sun rose over a hazy Tokyo skyline and its infinite sprawl.
And that is how we ended up pregnant.
I know Hunter is dying to tell his brothers giving the way he’s leaning into the bar, tapping his fingers on it like any surface when he’s nervous. I know these small tells and ticks now, know him so intimately I feel as though I could slide into his skin and he’d be none the wiser. Instinctively, my hand goes to my growing stomach, the second new life we’ve since created inside it. We don’t know the sex yet, though Hunter seems to think it’s going to be a boy, or “a girl with a penis” as he so eloquently put it.
I pretty much flipped the fuck out when I saw those two lines on the pregnancy test, as it was far from planned, but I’ve come around to the idea, a play buddy for Grace, the sister, or brother, I never had.
“Aaron Parks,” says Hunter, cupping his ear towards the speakers in the corner of the room.
“Who?” asks Cayden.
“The jazz artist.” He catches Cayden’s continuing confusion as he looks to Colton. “Oh, shit. I’m sorry. Didn’t they tell you? They don’t play Backstreet Boys at this place.” He goes to step away. “Or did you want me to go chat to the DJ, see if he can rustle you up some Katy Perry?”
Colton shoves him in the shoulder. “God, jazz? Since when did you become so cultured?”
Hunter draws me to his side, kissing me on my forehead, a hand sliding over my belly. “Since this one opened my eyes, and ears, to it.”
“He only thinks he’s cultured,” I tell them.
“Hey, you guys should see what cultural shit we get up to in the bedroom,” continues Hunter. “There’s this Japanese erotic art of Shibari, where you take these silky ropes and—”
Colton jumps forward and covers Hunter’s mouth, the others making gagging and choking noises.
Cayden’s got his head in his hands, rocking back and forward on his heels. “Fuck me, brother. I do not want to know. None of us do.”
HUNTER
We don’t get home ’til 5am, but when we do we’re still semi-drunk—a foreign sensation when you’re a parent.
“Did you have fun with your brothers?” asks Grace, leading me to the bedroom and stumbling over one of Greta’s talking dolls in the process.
‘Mama!’ it bleats.
My own balance ain’t so grand, but we manage to half-fall, half-stumble to the bed. “I did, but not anywhere near as much fun as I’m going to have with you.”
I take my time undressing her. I do it slowly, methodically, making sure I fold each article and carefully place it aside. Her breathing becomes shallower, the anticipation building.
She knows the drill by now, lying stomach down on the bed.
I cluck my tongue in disapproval. “You’ve been a naughty girl, haven’t you?”
I sit on the edge of the bed, even the shift in weight drawing a slack moan from her mouth. “What are we going to do with this naughty girl?”
I rake my hand softly down her back, planting a kiss behind her between her shoulder blades.
I bring my hand down on her ass. She breathes out, the pain folding over into pleasure. I love seeing her like this so distanced from the day-to-day, so… vulnerable.
I alternate between stroking her and spanking knowing each touch will be magnified in this moment.
I spank her once more.
Thwack!
A rosy imprint of my hand burns brightly on her left buttock, a marker. It’s not cold, but she shivers all the same.
Her arousal becomes apparent when I run my hand between her legs, into the heated seam of her sex that always seems so ready for me. I press my lips to her buttocks, my cheek against the warm skin there my hand swatted, alive and tingling. Her hands twist and writhe, caught by my own at the base of her spine.
“Do you want my cock?” I query, well used to playing the Dom by now, the trust between us implicit and natural.
I help her up, turning her until she’s on her knees, her lips parted, breathing raspy and strained. The scent of her arousal is unmistakable.
I unzip my pants and take out my cock.
I brace my hands on the back of her head and thrust forward into the hot glove of her mouth.
Her tongue lathes the underside of my member, attempting to wrap itself around my length, a velvety cushion.
She takes all of me, the head of my cock close to the back of her throat.
“Fucccccccck. Meeeeeeee,” I stammer, my head falling forwards, lost in the sensation.
Enough.
I scoop her up and toss her into the middle of the bed, climbing down to lie there. I help her straddle me until with she draws in a tight breath, exhaling as he sinks down onto my length. Her hips meet my own and we lock fingers as one.
She rides me with a steady pace, using the muscles in her thighs to lift and fall. I break the grip and allow my hands to play with her breasts, tweak the tawny pillars of her nipples until they’re long and tight, filled full of arousal.
She looks down at me, her eyes darkening with pleasure. She increases the pace of her rhythm, drawing me close to orgasm before slowing, teasing me over and over—‘edging,’ she calls it. She lifts as far off my cock as she can, sliding slowly, painfully, back down until she’s taken me in totality.
I grasp her hips and force her down further, driving lightly upwards until the entire length of my cock is encased inside her slick heat.
I grip her buttocks hard. A whimper escapes her mouth as she rides me, her pussy tensing and releasing in turn.
She bites her lip in a vain attempt to keep her orgasm at bay, moaning out my name.
I won’t allow it.
I flip us over, drawing her leg up high against the side of my body and driving deep. I run into her as far as I can go. I’m merciless, pounding into her, fucking her as fast and hard as I’m able.
She comes, her hips rising to meet my thrusts, her pussy tightening around my cock in wet constriction. She shivers and convulses as I continue to pump into her, screaming through my gated fingers.
I don’t stop, continuing to fuck her until she tumbles over the precipice once more, coming for a second time on my command.
I jerk forward once, twice, three times before I empty myself inside her.
*
I’m seated behind a large mahogany desk. Its surface is well worn, with ruts and grooves and random scratches that all have their own stories to tell. I imagine it’s been here as long as the precinct, perhaps longer.
Grace smiles at me from the other side of the desk. “So, how does it feel?”
I run my hand across the top of the desk, try to recall Captain Johnson sitting in this very spot before Grace and I tied up that entire sordid business. It seems like eons have passed, and yet, here we are.
I lean back in the chair and place my feet on the desk, basking in it. “Have to say, it feels good—real good.”
Grace angles herself forward, the leather in her pants tightening audibly and some distant flash of déjà vu coming to the fore. “This is going to be a lot of work, you know, a lot of extra hours…”
“I’m well aware, but this is too important, don’t you think?”
It is. The last captain steered this ship well, but the decks still need to be scrubbed clean. Together, Grace and me, I know we can do it once and for all. We did it before. We can do it again.
Grace spins the plaque at the front of the desk around to face me. It reads ‘Captain Beckett.’
She stands and pushes my feet off the desk, almost causing me to fall back before I manage to right myself. “Alright then, big boy. How about you get out of my god-damn chair?”
I stand, smiling to the side and bowing as she takes her rightful place. “It’s all yours, Captain.”
Of course, there was never any doubt in my mind Grace would make it. There’s a ferocious determination in everything she does, from spoon-feeding our baby girl to slapping cuffs on the criminals of this city. Never once has she been afraid to get dirty, but this? This is all her… as much as she likes to tell me it was a ‘team effort.’
We both spend a moment looking at the framed photo of our small family taking pride of place on the corner of the desk. It was taken right here in NYC not long after Greta was born, that post-natal glow still filling Grace’s face. I look pretty damn happy myself, and why not? Finally, I have it all, a home and purpose and a partner to share it all.
If you had told me back in my glory days at Abbotsleigh banging sorority sisters and drinking the bar dry I’d wind up here, with a man-eater like Grace, I wouldn’t have believed you, but now I cannot imagine anything else. Because my family is my world. It’s the kind of pure, unconditional love I would have laughed right out of the room once upon a time.
Here I was thinking my sexual drive was at full throttle all these years, but if Grace’s got a limit, I’m yet to find it. I don’t know anyone who wears leather that well—in the bedroom and out. And the stamina… My god. I’m surprised my cock hasn’t been worn down to a stub. Pregnancy only ramped it up even further. Day, night, in public. It. Did. Not. Matter. ‘Insatiable’ doesn’t begin to cover it.
So I look at her on the rightful side of that desk smiling at me in that playful way that suggests she still can’t get enough of me, and I’m happy, so fucking happy we’re here.
“You like what you see?” she says.
“I do.” I place my hands on my thighs. “What’s up first, Cap?”
She reaches across to a pile of case files and selects two at random, briefly flicking through them. “I’ve got a Wall Street murder or a Russian drug ring? What would you prefer, Senior Detective?”
I lick my lips. “I’d prefer to see you naked, kneeling on that desk, spreading your cheeks and begging me to fuck you senseless.”
I don’t need to remove her pants to know how wet she’ll be at those words.
She nods to the office windows. “Close the blinds, will you, Detective?”
“Why’s that?” I tease.
She stands, placing her hands over the desk and pushing her ass out. “I think the baby factory’s back in business.”
I can’t stop the smile from spreading as I move to the blinds, shuttering them. “And the price of admission?”
She slides a hand down her pants. “One cock, extra-large.”
I creep forward as her hand bottoms out in the crotch of her pants. “I think I can arrange that.”
She reaches out and pulls me forward, placing her lips on mine. Her mouth moves to my ear, her hot breath beating against the shell of it. “Good, because everyone knows there’s only one real way to break in an office.”