Honeymoon from Hell III (5 page)

“
What exactly happened?”
she asked, wrapping her hand around his and did her best to pretend
that she wasn’t blushing like a schoolgirl just from touching
him.

“
Tradition
,” Craig bit out between
clenched teeth as he stood there, seething along with the rest of
the men in the room.

“
Okay…” she mumbled slowly,
not even trying to hide her confusion as she glanced around the
room to take in the angry and slightly embarrassed expressions on
her brothers and cousins’ faces. “Then why exactly are you here?”
she asked, wracking her head to try and remember a time when the
men in her family had forced the newest member of the family to go
through the “Welcoming,” twice.

Normally once they welcomed the newest man
into the fold and the rules were thoroughly explained, they usually
just left him alone unless he forgot to follow one of the family
rules. Either the guy raised his voice to his wife, stepped out on
her, fucked up as a father, etc. and the men in her family would
step in and handle it. If there was one thing that the men in her
family made sure of, it was that everyone, young and old, was taken
care of and if you were given the privilege of being allowed to
care for one of them, you were expected to do your job and do it
well.

Then again, this was Connor they were
talking about here so…

“
What did you do?” she
asked, closing her eyes in resignation as she waited to hear what
her husband did, because as badly as she wanted to believe that it
was her brothers and cousins that had done something seriously
fucked up, she knew her husband too well to even consider any other
possibilities.

His warm chuckle only confirmed her
suspicions.

“
I took the golden
opportunity to get to know my in-laws a little better,” he said,
sounding amused as he shot her a wink over his shoulder, which
earned outraged gasps from the big babies still glaring at
him.

“
He went too
far!”

“
I felt dirty!” Johnny
cried, wrapping his large arms around himself as he backed up
against the wall and shuddered at whatever memory was running
through his head at the moment. “Dirty. So, dirty,” he mumbled to
himself, staring down at the floor as another shudder tore through
him.

“
There are things that you
just don’t do, you sick bastard!” Bryce snarled, taking a
threatening towards Connor only to have Craig grab him by the arm
and stop him.

“
Not in front of her,”
Craig bit out even as his glare told her just how much he’d love to
get his hands on Connor.

It was at that moment that she realized that
all of her brothers and cousins looked like they’d been dragged
through hell and back. Their clothes were torn, they were covered
in dirt, debris, their hair was a mess, all of them could use a
shave, their eyes were bloodshot, they looked exhausted and each
and every single one of them was looking at her husband as though
he were the devil himself.

“
Why don’t we take this
conversation over to Dad’s place,” Bryce suggested with an
anticipatory gleam in his eye that she didn’t really care
for.

Not at all.

“
Sure. I’d love to go for another ride,” Connor
said, giving her hand a gentle squeeze as he stood up, but she
wasn’t in the mood for any more games, especially not tonight when
he still owed her a real wedding night.

Keeping a tight hold on the sheet covering
her breasts with one hand, she reached over and grabbed the short
link of his handcuffs and yanked him back on the bed. Chuckling,
because he’d always enjoyed fucking with someone’s head, he quickly
shifted onto his back, brought his cuffed hands in front of him and
pushed back until he was lounging on the bed by her side, looking
as though he didn’t have a single worry in the world while the
grumpy bastards continued to glare at him.

“
Tell me what happened,”
she said with a heavy sigh.

“
He crossed a line!” Trevor
snapped, taking a step towards the bed only to have Jason and Bryce
grab him and pull him back. “There are just some things that you
don’t do, you sick bastard!”

At that, she looked at Connor and waited for
an explanation.

With a shrug, he admitted, “I locked him in
a spider infested cellar and cut the power so that he couldn’t find
his way out without walking through at least a hundred webs.”

“
You traumatizing bastard!”
Trevor snapped as he absently brushed his shirt and arms off,
probably imagining spiders crawling all over him, she mused with a
sad shake of her head, because really, it could have been a hell of
a lot worse.

“
He stole the spark plugs
out of our trucks and left us in the middle of nowhere!” Reese
snapped as his twin narrowed his eyes accusingly on him and added,
“Then he stole our supplies and hid them, forcing us to hole up in
that old abandoned house on Resin Pond,” making her frown with
confusion, because she’d thought that old house had burned down
years ago.

“
He trapped us in that
house, stole the batteries out of our trucks and hooked them up to
a stereo and blasted fucking Justin Bieber day and night!” Brian,
her normally laidback brother, snarled with a haunted look in his
eye that she’d seen so many times in the eyes of some poor bastard
that had made the mistake of coming between her and Connor.
“Fucking
Bieber
!”

“
When we finally escaped,
the bastard followed us through the woods, taunting us every step
of the way!” Bryce snapped, flexing his hands into fists, obviously
struggling against the urge to wring Connor’s neck while she sat
there, trying not to laugh since she didn’t think it would help the
situation, but heaven help her, there was just something about
seeing Connor fucking someone else over that brought a smile to her
face.

Still…

She shouldn’t laugh.

She really shouldn’t.

These were her brothers and cousins she was
talking about here. They’d kidnapped Connor to protect her and make
that he knew what was expected of him, but then again, anyone who
knew Connor knew that even when they used to make each other’s
lives a living hell that he would beat the shit out of anyone who
fucked with her. If there was one person in the world that would
always take care of her and protect her, it was Connor and her
brothers knew that, which of course made this attempt to “teach him
their ways,” kind of sad, yet sweet.

“
Since I really didn’t feel
like putting up with their bullshit for the next fifty years or so,
I decided that it was imperative that they learned what would
happen if they ever came between us again,” he said, shifting to
get comfortable as he reached over with his cuffed hands and took
her hand into his, making sure not to interfere with the hold that
she had on the sheet covering her.

“
I see,” she said, biting
her lip to stop herself from smiling, because she could only
imagine the hell that he’d just put her family through.

“
Are you fucking kidding
me?” Johnny demanded, catching the action.

“
After the bullshit that he
put us through you actually have the balls to laugh at us and mock
our pain?” Brian demanded, looking incredibly pissed, which of
course made it even more difficult not to laugh.

“
We did this for
you
!” Jason gasped.

“
And this is how you thank
us
?” Trevor finished for him, sounding
completely insulted, which of course was just too much, because
once she started laughing, she couldn’t seem to stop, which of
course made all the men glaring at her husband shift their pouts
and glares on her.

“
Thank you?” she managed to
ask through snorts of amusement. “I didn’t ask you to kidnap him,”
she pointed out, but they didn’t care.

“
It’s tradition!” Craig
snarled as though she cared.

“
We were protecting you!”
Johnny snapped.

“
We could have been
killed!” Jason added, shifting his glare back on Connor, who’d
apparently decided to ignore them and focus on tracing her hand
with his fingertips, looking completely enthralled by the
action.

“
I left you water and
bread,” Connor murmured absently as he brought her hand to his lips
as he locked eyes with hers, making her breath hitch, as he pressed
the softest, sweetest kiss to her palm.

“
You left us one bottle of
water and a can of brown bread with absolutely no way to open it,
you bastard! You starved us!” one of the men said, but she had no
idea who since all of her attention was on the man that she loved
and missed.

“
Damn you’re beautiful,”
Connor whispered reverently, pressing one last kiss to her palm
before he tilted his head and leaned in to-

“
Oh, come the fuck
on!”

“
We don’t need to see
this!”

“
Oh, I’m going to be
sick!”

“
This is so wrong,” she
thought she heard Johnny say as well as a few gagging sounds, but
she could care less as Connor leaned in and brushed his lips
against hers, slowly teasing her until she couldn’t take it anymore
and released her hold on her sheet, reached up and threaded her
fingers through his hair and held him close as she sat up, kicked
the sheet away and straddled his lap and took up where they’d left
off.

Chapter 4

“
They’re gone,” he said, smiling against Rory’s
lips as he allowed her to push him back down on the bed as she
straddled him.

“
They were gone the second
you kissed me,” she explained, panting hard as she threaded her
fingers through his hair and held on as she deepened the kiss and
as much as he would love to make sure that the assholes that he now
had the pleasure of calling his in-laws weren’t coming back, he
couldn’t do that, not with his wife sucking so sweetly on his
tongue and rubbing her large bare breasts against his
chest.

“
What did you do to them?”
she asked, not really sounding like she cared as she spread her
legs further apart and ground down hard against him, making him
realize that he’d never fully lost his erection, which at any other
time probably would have embarrassed him to know that he’d given
his in-laws an eyeful, but not now, not when his wife was grinding
against him and quickly bringing his cock back to full
attention.

“
Nothing much,” he
whispered on a moan as she ground down against him hard enough to
push the top of his sweatpants down and expose the sensitive
underside of his cock to her soft, flat stomach, making him groan
on contact.

“
Nothing much, huh?” she
asked playfully as she continued to tease his cock with her soft
stomach as he lay there, helpless to do anything but enjoy
it.

“
Just a little male
bonding,” he said absently as he reached back with his cuffed hands
and grabbed hold of the headboard, deciding to let her have her
fun.

“
Male bonding with my
brothers and cousins?” she asked, shifting so that she was
straddling his stomach and placing her pert ass on his cock and
making him hiss with pleasure. Smiling, she leaned over and brushed
her lips against his and asked, “Where did they take you?” while
she ground her beautiful ass against his cock.

He chuckled even as she managed to wring
another groan out of him. “I can’t share that with you, baby.
Sorry,” he said, using his hold on the headboard to pull himself up
so that he could kiss her.

“
Why’s that?” she asked,
teasing his bottom lip between her teeth as she shifted so that her
wet slit slid across the tip of his exposed cock.

“
Because one day we might
have a daughter and whatever bastard is lucky enough to marry her
is going to have to learn what will happen if he ever hurts her,”
he explained, because even though he felt that their efforts had
been wasted on him for the simple fact that he’d rather die than
hurt her, he had to admit that he liked their methods.

He’d tear apart anyone that hurt his wife or
children with his bare hands and the fact that the Bradfords were
not only the same way, but were more than prepared to back it up
actually eased some of the terror that had plagued him since he’d
decided that he couldn’t live without Rory. He could honestly say
that he wasn’t a man that frightened easily, but just the thought
of something happening to Rory or their children because he wasn’t
around to protect them absolutely terrified him.

From what he knew about the James boys and
what he’d learned about the Bradfords over the past few months,
there was no doubt in his mind that if something happened to him,
every single Bradford and James boy would step up and do right by
Rory and their children. They would be protected, never want for
anything and always have someone there to take care of them.

It was more than he could have ever hoped
for and for that he would be eternally grateful. That didn’t mean
that he was going to let her family fuck him over and put him in
“his place.” They needed to know from the start that Rory was now
his responsibility and he wouldn’t tolerate any interference. He
was pretty sure that they’d figured that out over the past
week.

If not…

He was more than prepared to go through
their “Initiation” again, he thought with a chuckle as he used his
hold on the headboard and raised his head up and latched onto one
of her large nipples, earning one of the sexiest little groans that
he’d ever heard her make. He sucked and teased her large nipple
until it was hard in his mouth. Then he teased it a little more
before he released it and shifted his attention to her other
breast, licking and kissing every square inch along the way until
he had the nipple in his mouth and making her moan louder.