Wild Aces (30 page)

I didn’t have to think about it. The memory was already there; it just wasn’t nagging me like Cody’s memories usually did. “Seeing Cody at the morgue on that metal table when they pulled the sheet off him. I held his hand before I left. It was so cold and so heavy.”

He sighed. “We’ve both seen some dark shit.”

“I hope we’ve seen the last of it.” I knew there was no way that could be true.

Trapper’s compound would always be filled with horrible, tragic stories, some worse than the ones he’d already told me. As long as he continued saving children—and I wanted him to—then darkness would haunt the both of us.

His hand tightened around my cheek, and his lips pressed against mine. I deepened our kiss, moving so that my nipples rubbed over his chest. They were hard again, throbbing for him to pull them between his teeth. My leg curved around his as he rolled me onto my back and climbed on top of me.

“Your phone is ringing,” he mumbled into my mouth.

“Ignore it.” I gripped his hair and pulled, yanking him closer, while I surrounded his waist with my legs. There was a blanket between us, and I tried wiggling it down. “Shit. It’s ringing again, isn’t it?”

“Yep.” His mouth left mine and swiped across my nipple. “If you don’t answer it right now, I’m going to keep moving lower until my tongue is in your pussy, and then you won’t be answering anything—unless it’s to tell me how badly you want to come.”

I quivered beneath him. “One sec then.”

I slid out of the bed and rushed around the room, trying to find the clothes he had stripped off me and my phone, which was somewhere with them. The screen showed it was Frankie.

“Hi, babe. What’s—”

“Brea, I need you!” Frankie barked. “I need you right now. Where are you? Can you come over? Can you come over right now?”

I glanced at Trapper as he leaned his head against my pillow, his body flat on my bed, completely naked, looking dark and yummy and ready to do whatever I needed him to in order to get me off.

“Yeah, of course,” I said with no enthusiasm whatsoever. “I’ll be right there.”

“Okay. Okay good. I’ll see you when you get here. Hurry, okay?”

“Frankie?” I asked, sensing the strange anxiety in her voice. “Are you all right?”

“Yes. No. I honestly don’t know…but I’m freaking out, and I really need you.”

“Sure, hon. I just have to get dressed, and I’ll be on my way.”

Trapper smiled as I hung up. “Someone is really trying to keep us from spending an entire night together.”

“Seems that way, doesn’t it?”

“Don’t tell me; it’s a work emergency.”

I laughed even though the last time he’d said that, it wasn’t so funny. “Something is going on with Frankie, and she needs me to come over.”

“Should I wait here?” He spread his legs, and his hard cock sprang up straight.

“Oh God.” I made myself look away and walked over to my closet, putting on the first pair of leggings I found and a baggy, comfy sweater. “I don’t know. It could be a while.” The only time I’d ever heard her anywhere near that frazzled was when she’d broken up with Reed. “How about you go home and wait for me…on your bed, naked, if you want?”

He laughed.

“And I’ll come to your place when I’m done. Sound good?”

“Yeah,” he said, all smoke and seduction. “I like that idea.”

I knocked on Frankie’s front door. Within a second, it was opened, and she was pulling me inside. I didn’t even get a chance to take off my jacket before she led me through the kitchen and up the stairs.

“What’s going on?”

Her eyes were filled with pure fear and panic, and she was moving faster than I could keep up with.

When we reached the top of the stairs, we turned down the hallway and went across the catwalk to her master bedroom.

Once we were inside, she took me to the bathroom and pointed at the counter. “Look.
Look!
”

There were at least twenty pregnancy tests lying there, their digital screens reading,
Positive
.

“Oh my God. Is that—”

“Yes!” she cried out.

“All of them are yours?”

“Yes!” she cried out again.

“Holy mama!” I shouted, wrapping my arms around her. “Frankie, you’re going to have a baby!”

“I…really am.” Her body started to shake. “Oh God.”

I knew what she was worried about, and I needed to steer her thoughts in a different direction. “I’ve gotta say, I’m pretty impressed you had that much pee to tinkle on all those sticks. That’s a lot of sticks. A
lot
.”

“Brea…” she breathed, her cries loud enough that I pulled away.

“What’s wrong? Aren’t you happy about this news?” I pushed all the hair away from her face and waited for her to answer. “Is something going on with Derek?”

“No. It’s not Derek.”

I looked behind me to make sure I hadn’t passed him in the bedroom. “Is he here?”

“He’ll be home in ten minutes.” She reached for a tissue and wiped her eyes. “He doesn’t know yet.”

I gripped her hand the same way she had clung to mine, and I sat her on the end of her bed. “Frankie, this isn’t like last time. This is completely different.”

“But I can’t stop thinking about the last time and how it felt, being pregnant as Reed and I were falling apart. I was so sick, and he was so unsupportive. Then I caught him cheating on me with Derek’s sister.”

“Listen to me, my bestie, Reed is no longer in your life. Derek is. Do you understand that?”

She nodded and cried even harder.

I took the tissue from her and dabbed at the corner of her eyes. “You have the most wonderful, supportive husband who loves you more than humanly possible. If I’m not mistaken, he’s been trying to get you pregnant since he put a ring on it.”

She was nodding, which told me I was making headway.

“He’s going to go absolutely nuts when he finds out about this baby. He’s going to protect it, just like he protects you, and he’ll love it more than anything in the world. You have to remember that.”

“You’re right.”

I saw the anxiety start to leave her as thoughts of Reed were replaced with thoughts of Derek. There was no comparison.

“This is supposed to be the most amazing time in your life, and it’s going to be. No more tears, no more sadness, no more comparisons to Mr. Dickhead. Just happiness, okay?”

She let out a massive exhale.

“Happiness…and chocolate.”

She laughed. “God, I’ve been eating so much chocolate lately.”

The tears were finally gone.

“You really have,” I said, taking the seat next to her. “I was days away from staging an intervention or buying you a damn test myself.”

“Wait—you knew?”

“I had a feeling when you puked those cookies out of the window of your car on the way back from Cody’s parents’. Work stress, my ass.”

“I just freaked out pretty hard, didn’t I?”

“It’s okay. If a baby were going to be pushing its way out of my vag in nine months, I think I might get a little loco, too.”

“My vag is never going to look the same, is it? Or my boobs.” She looked down and sighed.

“Nope. None of it will.”

“I might start crying again.”

“We’ll get it fixed.” I traced the air above her body. “
Aaaaall
of it can be fixed, girl. Your client, Dr. Peterson, does the best tits in Boston. We’ll have him give us a consultation on re
vag
ination surgery and see what he recommends.”

She looked at me from the corner of her eye.

“What? It’s a real thing. They stitch—”

“I’m having a C-section.”

“Perfect. It’s all solved then. No tears needed. Your pussy will remain just as perfect as it was when Derek met it.”

She was teary again. “I love you.”

“I know. So, stop stressing. You’re going to be a wonderful mom, and I’m going to be the coolest aunt ever. Baby Block is going to be wearing flannel diapers, just like his father.”

“Derek’s diapers are leopard print, just so you know.”

I snorted. “TMI, girl. T. M. I.”

The tears were back but not for the same reason. “I can’t wait to see him as a father, Brea. He’s going to be really great at it, isn’t he?”

I was reminded of Jameson and Rachel and the look on their faces when they stared at their baby boy. “The best,” I told her.

“Oh, shit, I think I just heard Derek come in.” She walked over to their bedroom door. “Hey, baby, is that you?”

“Yeah, I’ll be right up! I’m just going to grab something to eat!” he yelled.

“I’m outta here, Mama.” I gave her a quick hug. “Text me later, and tell me how it goes. Or text me in the morning since I might be too busy to reply tonight.”

I hadn’t had a chance to talk to her about Trapper and that we had worked things out. I would never tell her about the compound, but she knew what I’d heard at the apartment that night, so Trapper and I would have to come up with something to tell her.

“Too
busy
?” she asked.

“Yeah. I have news, too, but I’ll tell you all about it in the morning. We both have very important matters to tend to right now.”

I hurried down the stairs before she could ask anything else, and I stopped in the kitchen, catching him devouring a sandwich. “Hey, Derek.”

“Brea.” He waved me over, swallowing, as we kissed cheeks. “I don’t think I’ve seen you since the party. How’ve you been?”

I didn’t want to keep him long, knowing Frankie was upstairs, waiting with the most epic news ever. “Work is nuts, and Trapper is awesome. That pretty much sums it all up.”

“I was going to ask you about him.” He reached into the freezer and took out a pint of ice cream and a spoon from the drawer.

“We’ll set something up soon, so the four of us can hang.”

“We’d really like that.”

“Is that for you or your wife?” I pointed at the carton.

“It’s for Frankie. I’m taking it up to her.”

“Uh, I think you can skip it. I doubt she’s going to want ice cream tonight.”

“Yeah?”

I smiled. “Just head on up. She’s anxious to see you.” I waved good-bye and let myself out.

Trapper

“Hey,” Brea said. She jumped into my arms, her legs gripping my waist so fucking tight that I could feel the warmth of her pussy coming through her jeans. “I missed you.”

“Mmm,” I groaned. I kissed her as I carried her back through the door and into the living room. “Are you too sore for what I’m about to do to you?”

Other than the hours she spent at work and the few that I let her sleep, I’d been inside of her almost nonstop for two straight weeks.

“I’m sore but not too sore for you.” She chewed on my bottom lip while I set her on the counter, my hand shooting up the back of her shirt to unhook her bra. “Before you do that,” she said, “I have something you might want to see.” Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes hungry for more than just conversation.

My dick was so hard, it was about to burst through my fly. “What kind of news?”

“My hacker friend is back in the States, and he sent over everything he found on you. A courier just dropped it off a few minutes ago.”

“What does it say?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. I didn’t open it.” She lifted the envelope that was beside her on the counter and handed it to me.

It was so thin; it didn’t even weigh half a pound. “My whole life fits in that tiny package…”

“There’s nothing tiny about your package, baby.”

I smirked. She loved to talk about the size of my cock, especially when it was inside her.

“You’ll be getting it in a minute…once we get this over with.” I unsealed the top of the envelope. And then I froze. All the answers I’d been waiting on, all the details that separated me from my brother, were inside there. For something so light, it felt so fucking heavy.

“I want you to read it here, but I don’t want you to feel like you have to read it in front of me.” She ran her heels down the backs of my thighs.

The papers were now in my hands, the top sheet only listing my name, the address of my townhouse, and my date of birth. Nothing in this stack could be worse than what I’d gone through as a kid, and a lot of that, I’d already told her about. The rest she could probably guess, and she knew all about the compound. There was nothing left to hide, and nothing I wanted to hide from her.