Honeymoon from Hell V (5 page)

They apparently had a lot to talk
about, but it could wait until later. Right now she had other
things on her mind and none of them had to with talking.

*-*-*-*

No one would believe that he’d once
led an elite force of Marines if they saw him now, lying on the
bed, pretending to be asleep just to escape his pregnant wife’s
unpredictable mood swings. Then again, the first thing that he’d
been taught in training was to know when to retreat. He just wished
that he’d used some of that training wisely and had made a hasty
retreat out the door with his father and cousins instead of putting
himself at the mercy of his pregnant wife.

God, please don’t let her
start crying, he prayed, not normally a very religious man, but if
it would save him from hearing her cry then he would do absolutely
anything. There were few things in life that he couldn’t handle and
seeing Jodi cry was one of them and unfortunately for him and all
the men in his family, who also couldn’t stomach the idea of a
woman crying, she cried a lot.

He really wasn’t sure if this was
normal or not, but he wasn’t willing to risk his balls by
mentioning it to her. Whenever she cried he felt like the biggest
asshole on earth, mostly because his brothers and cousins would
shoot him glares telling him that they thought he was the biggest
asshole in the world for making her cry. He felt so fucking
helpless when she cried, which probably had more to do with the
fact that everything he said and did to make her feel better
usually resulted in making it worse.

Every time she saw a baby, she
cried.

Every time he smiled at her, she
cried.

Every time she had ice cream, she
cried.

Every time she was tired, she
cried.

She tried to fight it every fucking
time. He saw it in the stubborn set of her jaw, the way that she
tried to focus on something else, but nothing worked. Absolutely
nothing. He’d learned months ago to just shut his mouth, open his
arms and let her quietly sob against his chest while she apologized
for crying. One time he’d made the mistake of telling her that it
wasn’t her fault and that it was normal for pregnant woman to feel
a bit emotional…

That hadn’t ended well for
him.

It was also something that he tried
not to think about, mostly because it still gave him nightmares. It
was probably something that he would need years of therapy to
recover from, but he’d most likely just work through the emotional
pain by binge eating, he absently thought as he laid there, noting
that it was quiet.

Really quiet.

She wasn’t crying, which was all that
mattered, he told himself, but even as he continued to lay there
with his eyes closed, waiting for her to make a sound, any sound
that would clue him into her mood, he couldn’t help but promise to
turn his life around if he made it through this in one
piece.

That was of course after he hunted his
father and cousins down and killed the bastards for sacrificing his
ass so that they could make a clean get away. Seriously, what kind
of asshole left a disabled vet alone with a hormonal, pregnant
woman, who in theory had every right to be pissed off when she
found out that they’d not only drugged her, taken her across state
lines, but also managed to marry her all without her
knowledge?

Only an asshole in his family would do
something this fucked up, he decided, debating whether or not he
should risk cracking open one eye to see what she was doing. If she
was grabbing something to turn him into a eunuch then it would
probably be for the best if he saw that one coming so that he could
roll off the bed and drag himself to the door with the hopes that
someone walking by would hear his cries for help and save him
before it was too late.

Yet, even knowing that
there was a very good possibility that he might end up singing
soprano for the rest of his life if he didn’t move his ass wasn’t
enough to help him overcome the terror that kept him frozen on the
spot. He’d dealt with a lot of fucked up things when he’d served in
the Marines, but none of the shit that he’d gone through during the
war had ever terrified him as much as not knowing what his wife was
about to do to him.

He was fucking pathetic, but even
knowing that wasn’t enough to make him man up and open his eyes.
Maybe if he played dead she would take pity on him and leave him
alone? But, he knew better than to wish for the
impossible.

Forcing himself to open his eyes,
after several long seconds of debating the pros and cons of living
the rest of his life as a coward trapped on this bed, he slowly
opened his eyes and groaned when Jodi’s soft lips gently brushed
against his.

“
I missed this,” she
whispered against his lips, sighing with pleasure as she moved over
him until she was straddling his lap and the smooth curve of her
belly brushed against him.

“
I missed you,” he found
himself whispering back, loving the way that her lips curled
against his as he placed his hand on the swell of her stomach and
groaned when he his hand was met warm, bare skin.

“
I didn’t go anywhere,” she
reminded him as she teased his bottom lip as he traced her curves
that were a hell of a lot fuller than he remembered while she
continued to brush her lips teasingly against his.

“
No,” he agreed with a
chuckle that was of a pained groan as he slowly traced his
fingertips over the small of her back and down the curve of her
bottom, “but you were on the very top of my ‘Off Limits,’
list.”

“
I was taken off that list
a month ago,” she pointed out with a little moan of pleasure that
as she settled more comfortably on top of him, causing the part of
him that had missed her the most to harden, desperate to feel her
sheath tightening around him as he slid inside her beautiful body,
but unfortunately he couldn’t allow that to happen.

Not if he wanted to get her home
safely.

They had to stop now before
it was too late, which unfortunately, it probably already was, but
he had to try to stop this before it went any further. When she
turned her head to deepen the kiss, he already knew that it was
probably too late, but even though he knew that it was probably
pointless to try and stop this before something happened that they
couldn’t come back from.

Since telling his extremely
pregnant wife, who was known to sometimes overreact to the smallest
things, that he wasn’t going to make love to her after waiting all
this time probably wouldn’t go well. He decided to take another
approach, one that was guaranteed to fuck them all over, but one
that was going to give them a chance to make it out of this thing
alive.

“
Welcome to Vegas,
Tink.”

Chapter 5

“
We have to go!” Danny
snapped impatiently from where he sat on the other side of the
shower door in his wheelchair, still glaring at her as he tried to
rush her to move her butt so that they could leave and head to the
airport, but this was Vegas!

She’d never been to Vegas,
but she’d always wanted to and now that they were here, he wanted
to leave?

Not a chance!

Not that she was a hardcore
gambler or even had any interests in gambling. She’d already
learned her lesson not to about parting so easily with her money
and promised herself a million times a day that she would never do
it again. So, finding a casino and emptying out the meager savings
that she’d been able to save thanks to Ethan’s help was not on the
agenda.

No, what she wanted to do,
well, more like needed to do, was to find a buffet and thankfully
Las Vegas was famous for them. As much as she’d like to say that
she’d never been this hungry before, sadly, she couldn’t. It seemed
as though every single minute of the day she was on the verge of
starving. It didn’t matter how much she ate, if she was tired,
sleepy or crying hysterically because she’d made the mistake of
going on YouTube to watch cute animal clips, she felt like she was
always starving.

She could be eating a large
pizza along with a family order of meatballs and spaghetti, garlic
bread and she would still be starving, wondering when the main
course was going to be ready. No matter how many times Danny or one
of his relatives told her that this was normal, she was terrified
that she was going to end up being the spokesperson for a Richard
Simmon’s video.

Of course there that other
part of her, the part that lived in every woman, that was ecstatic
over the possibility of being able to eat whatever she wanted,
whenever she wanted without worrying about getting fat. It was a
dream come true, one that she fully planned on taking advantage of,
regardless of the man trying to rush her through her second shower
of the day. Not that she felt like she needed it, but it seemed to
calm the babies down so that she could focus on other
things…

Like exploring Las Vegas,
something that the men who’d dragged her here seemed hell-bent
against happening, especially the man demanding that she move her
cute little ass so that they could go home.

She considered arguing with
him, but thanks to the last five months she’d spent sharing a
rental home with Bradfords she knew that the direct approach was
never going to work with him. She’d learned a lot from his family
and she was going to use every single trick that she’d picked up
from them over the last few months to get what she wanted
now.

And right now she needed to
hit at least five buffets in order to appease the babies making
their demands known by taking turns nudging her. One thing she’d
learned over the past couple of months, every Bradford male could
sense when there was food around. It didn’t matter if it was in a
plastic container, in the fridge, in a box or in an airtight sealed
bag, if there was food around and it was still semi-edible, a
Bradford would find it and since she was carrying two
Bradfords…

They were on high alert and letting
her know exactly what they wanted, which meant that she was going
to have to do whatever it took to get it. Taking everything that
she’d learned about dealing with Bradfords, she did what she had to
do.

*-*-*-*

“
Do something!” his father
snapped, looking completely helpless while he sat there doing his
best not to roll his eyes while his beautiful, very pregnant wife
sat on his lap, wearing one of his shirts and gym shorts as she
laid her head against his shoulder, rubbing her stomach and
quietly, oh so quietly, cried.

“
This is fucking
insulting,” Jason said, sighing heavily as he rubbed the back of
his neck and gave Jodi a pitying look.

“
What can we do,
sweetheart?” his father, apparently the biggest pushover in the
world, asked as he dropped to his knees besides Danny’s wheelchair
and took Tink’s small, dainty little hand in his. “Tell me what I
can do?”

“
This is fucking
embarrassing,” Trevor added, shaking his head in disgust as he sat
on the edge of the bed, giving Jodi a look that clearly said it
all.

She was trying to play the wrong
men.

A small sniffle.

“
What is it?” his father
asked, sounding desperate to do whatever it took to put an end this
sad display.

“
Well,” Jodi said with an
over-the-top sniffle that he just couldn’t ignore any longer and
rolled his eyes, because this was seriously fucking
pathe-

“
I was hoping that we
could go to one of the buffets and get something to eat,” she
mumbled with another one of those over-the-top sniffles as she
looked up, letting her bottom lip tremble a tad too much, but that
was okay, because Jason and Trevor were more than happy to take
over.

“
When’s the last time that
she ate?” Jason asked, kneeling in front of Danny’s wheelchair with
a concerned expression on his face as he carefully placed his hand
over Jodi’s where it rested on the large swell of her
belly.

“
Poor thing must be
starving,” Trevor added with just the right amount of concern as he
took a knee besides Jason and placed his hand on the other side of
Jodi’s belly.

“
I am,” Jodi whispered with
another sniffle that really was just too much, because there was no
fucking way that his father was going to take a chance of getting
them arrested, not with Jodi pregnant and him in a
wheelchair.

“
We can grab something on
the way to the airport,” he said firmly with a glare for his
asshole cousins who already knew better.

Hell, they’d already been
through this themselves and knew better to prolong this trip. He
needed to get her home immediately before anything seriously fucked
up happened. He’d already come close to fucking this up an hour ago
when he seriously considered yanking his zipper down, freeing him
himself so that he could fuck her, not giving a damn about the
repercussions. This was only supposed to be a quick stop, a fun way
for them to get married before heading straight home before the
curse could get them, but now…

Now it might be too late.

*-*-*-*

“
Another scoop please,”
she said, keeping one hand pressed against her lower back and one
gently rubbing her stomach, promising her babies that the wait
would soon be over.