Lani Lynn Vale Coup De Grace

Text copyright ©2015 Lani Lynn Vale

All Rights Reserved The purchase of this E-book allows you one legal copy for your own personal reading enjoyment on your personal computer or device. You do not have the rights to resell, distribute, print, or transfer this book, in whole or in part, to anyone, in any format, via methods either currently known or yet to be invented, or upload to a file sharing peer to peer program. It may not be re-sold or given away to other people. Such action is illegal and in violation of the U. S. Copyright Law. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return it and purchase your own copy. If you no longer want this book, you may not give your copy to someone else. Delete it from your computer. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the

author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Dedication To my mom. Thank you for reading my sex scenes and not gagging. Love you.

Acknowledgements Dearest FuriousFotog, you are a blessing. Thank you so much for taking these photos for me. They’re unbelievably beautiful. Andrew England- when I first started writing, you were the first person that I really took notice of…I always said that one day I would have you on the cover of one of my books, and here you are, lucky number 18. <3

Dearest readers, I know you’ve been waiting a long time for Michael’s book, and I hope you enjoy reading about him as much as I loved writing his story. As you know, this is the last in this series, but don’t fret. You’ll see more of them in future books such as Kilgore Fire Department and a future spinoff series of all the ‘Free Kids.’ <3 Thank you so much for reading this book, and all of my earlier work. Just know that it is you right now that made this possible for me. Lani

Chapter 1 I licked it. So it’s mine. -Fact of life

Michael “You’ll need to make sure you get to the house by six if you want to make it on time for dinner,” my father said tiredly. “You know how your mother gets when you don’t show up on time.” I winced. I did know how my mother got. Irrational is what she got. It’s as if she hadn’t been married to a doctor for the last thirty years. I can’t name one single time that my father got to any event on time, whether it be a birthday, vacation, sporting event, graduation, or hell, even a fucking birth. Not one time had I seen her lose it over my father being late, but her baby boy was late and suddenly the whole world stopped. “I’ll try to be on time,” I told him. “But I’m not promising anything. I have to work until five thirty; it takes nearly thirty minutes to get to your house from the station.

And that’s if I leave on time. I told her to make sure she held the party later, but she wouldn’t listen.” “Joslin wanted six,” my father told me hesitantly, opening the door to his office. “And that’s when Dean could be there.” I squeezed my hands tightly into fists, trying my hardest to not punch a hole in the wall with my fist. I had no earthly idea why my mother continued to invite my ex-wife. Dean was at least my fuckin’ brother, and I could understand why he’d have to be there. It was as if my mom didn’t care that Joslin was no longer married to me. Usually the family chooses the child over the child’s ex. We were together for a little over a year and a half when I found out she’d cheated. Granted, the reason she’d cheated had been my fault, or so she’d said, but that still didn’t give her the right to do that to me. We’d taken vows. And I’d at least meant them. Refraining from saying, ‘Fuck Joslin,’ I walked to the side doors of the hospital and to the ambulance bay with my father.

“I see,” I settled on. My father’s face looked pensive, as if he wanted to say something, but didn’t know how to say it. “Michael, I need to tell you something…” my father started. I would’ve stayed to listen, but the mic at my shoulder started squawking. “The nearest unit is needed at 5543 Pleasant Circle. Possible double homicide,” the dispatcher ordered. Sighing, I turned and offered my hand to my pop. “Gotta go, dad. I’ll try my hardest to get there on time, but I’m not promising anything,” I told him. He nodded, looking for the world like he was upset that he hadn’t said what he had to say, and shook my hand before saying, “Be safe.” My father, like my mother, hadn’t liked that I’d chosen to go into law enforcement. They’d spent thousands and thousands of dollars to get me through medical school only for me to quit to join the Navy. Once in the Navy, I’d continued my schooling. After I’d finished, and then got medically discharged due to some slight nerve damage in my left foot from a bomb exploding,

did I decided that the medical field wasn’t really something I was much interested in anymore. Which had pissed both my mother and father off. Immensely. But I’d hated it. I’d only done medical school because it was expected. None of my family could understand why I’d quit. My mother was a nurse. My father was a doctor. My brother was a doctor, and my sister was a nurse. They couldn’t see past the fact that I was happy. They could only see the millions of dollars I was flushing down the drain to be a SWAT officer. Not to mention they were hardcore Democrats, and I was most definitely not. My mind, however, screeched to a halt as I saw her. Nikki. She had long, rich brown hair, beautiful brown eyes, and stunning caramel skin. Today, she was in her scrubs. A dark gray color that, although it should look incredibly ugly, didn’t. She was a phlebotomist and on the IV team. A licensed

paramedic that worked as a tech in the ER. She went around doing IVs throughout the hospital, but mostly stayed down in the ER where she was needed the most. She was also studying to be a midwife, and from what I’d learned from Nico, her brother and another member of the SWAT team, she was well on her way to graduating. I was in love with the woman. No if’s, and’s, or but’s. So in love with her that I could barely be around her. She was in love with me, too…or had been when we’d first met. But I’d ruined that, like I always ruined every-fuckingthing. See, I was an asshole. A diagnosed asshole, but an asshole nonetheless. I was bi-polar. I take my meds religiously. Yet, there were times…like when I told Nikki that I didn’t want to have kids with her… that the asshole slipped through, and took hold of innocent people, tearing apart relationships as collateral damage. I’d not meant it to come out that way.

I’d actually meant it to come out the opposite way entirely. I didn’t want to have kids fathered by me. I didn’t want my children to suffer from what I had. Being bi-polar was only the tip of the iceberg. I battled with depression during the winter months. I had ADD. And swear to Christ I didn’t want to put a kid through that. I was a prime example of a person that shouldn’t have kids. But I was Nikki’s, even if Nikki wasn’t mine. At least not anymore. She would forever have my heart, but I’d never hold hers. It was better this way. I was so fucked up that I literally couldn’t handle anymore. And I didn’t want a woman like Nikki, someone so pure of heart, to have to deal with my shit. Because there sure the fuck was a lot of it. Watching her until she went inside, I finally pulled out

of the parking lot and responded to the suspected double homicide. And once again it reemphasized the fact that some people really shouldn’t have kids. Pulling into the yard that housed a double wide trailer, I walked up to the front door where an elderly couple was standing. The old man had his hands wrapped around the old woman’s shoulders, and he was holding her comfortingly. As if, if he were not careful, she might very well fall apart. Stepping out of my cruiser, my feet crunched in the gravel. As I made my way to them, I took a survey of my surroundings. The land surrounding the trailer was clean and well kept. Flowers lined the sides of the mobile home with red bricks surrounding the flower bed. A bass boat sat to the side underneath an awning, with a trailer that had two four wheelers on the back ready to ride to the dear lease at a moment’s notice. An infant swing swung on the front porch, being pushed

by nothing more than the wind. And I got a really, really bad feeling. The moment I got within speaking distance, both of them started speaking at once. “They’re dead!” The woman cried, covering her mouth with her hand. “Shot her, and then himself,” the man said gruffly. “The baby too. We didn’t touch anything.” Bile already making the climb up my throat, I said, “Please go stand next to my cruiser.” They both readily complied, and I was thankful. I could tell that the man was a hard man. He had a Marine Corps tattoo on his right forearm, and what distinctly resembled a knife wound just above that. His eyes were hard and his demeanor even harder. But whatever he saw inside had rocked him. Taking a deep breath, I stepped over the threshold of the mobile home, and immediately turned around to lose my lunch over the side of the porch. I’m not ashamed I have a heart. But any man would’ve lost it over what I’d just seen. Taking a few deep breaths, I said a silent prayer, and

once again stepped over the threshold. This time I was able to take in more of the scene. Earlier I’d stalled over the child. This time I was able to move past the child that was in front of a sliding glass door across the room to the man that crumpled against the far counter. He was on his ass, a revolver had fallen just to the right of his hand. He had a large hole at the top of his head where the bullet had exited. Moving past him, I saw the legs of a woman on the other side of the island. Walking carefully into the room, I skirted around the island and closed my eyes the moment I saw the woman. She was beautiful. Long blonde hair laid around her in a halo. Cute skirt and skin tight top clinging closely to a very pregnant belly. “Fuck me,” I breathed, dropping down to my knees. Although I knew it was futile, I checked for a pulse on each of the parents. But Rigor Mortis had already set in; I knew they were gone the moment my fingers met their skin. Really not wanting to check the child, but knowing I

had to do it anyway, I walked carefully over to the baby. He was dressed in a red onesie that had little puppy dog prints on it. His little feet were covered in a tiny pair of red socks, and I found myself thankful. It masked the sheer amount of blood that was surrounding him. His and his mother’s were mingling, and you couldn’t tell whose was whose. But as my fingers met his cool skin, and I felt the rapid beat of his pulse, my whole body froze in shock. He was alive! Mother fucker. He had a gunshot wound to his face, but he was alive! Scooping him up, I placed him gently over my shoulder and started sprinting out the door. I was thankful as hell to see that Bennett, another member of the SWAT team and fellow officer, was pulling into the driveway. He saw me coming and his eyes flared. I didn’t waste a second, however. I ran to his passenger side door, fell inside, and said,

“Drive!” He drove, and the last thing I saw before I turned my attention to the little boy in my arms was the horrified looks on the two elderly people as we peeled out of the driveway, spraying dirt and gravel in our wake. “Why aren’t we waiting for the ambulance?” Bennett yelled, taking a corner going way too fast. “Because we’re two minutes tops from the hospital, and it’ll take the ambulance at least five to get to where we are. It’s easier and faster to drive, and this baby may not have that long,” I told him honestly. He didn’t say another word, and I didn’t either.

Chapter 2 Damaged women are strong. And crazy. Don’t forget crazy. -Coffee Cup

Nikki “Nikki!” Lennox called from the nurse’s station. I looked up from the man I was currently getting an IV on, and raised by brows at her in question. “Nikki, Paxton’s going to get that IV for you. I need a hand. Now,” Lennox ordered. Her eyes were haunted, and I swallowed at the look. What the hell was going on? I’d felt it the moment that the trauma had come in. The entire room had gone into overdrive. Not one to usually participate in trauma’s due to my lack of credentials, I stayed out of the way, helping where I was needed. Handing off the IV for Paxton to tape and finish up, I patted the man’s hand and hurried around the foot of the bed. My first indication that something was seriously wrong

was when I walked into the room and saw a man’s black booted feet at the end of the exam table bending over the foot of the end of the gurney. Then I followed it up to see the cargo pants that KPD wore. But what really gave me pause was the fact that the man wore long sleeves. Nobody, and I mean nobody, wore long sleeves in the middle of a Texas summer. Unless your name was Michael ‘Saint’ Perez. “What do you need?” I managed to ask Lennox, looking away. I’d yet to see what was on the gurney, but I knew it was bad. Michael’s entire body was shielding whatever it was, and I knew it would be bad before I rounded the end of the gurney. “I need you to get an IV in him,” she said softly. That’s when Michael moved, and I nearly lost my legs out from under me. “Sweet Mary mother of God,” I whispered in devastation. Michael’s eyes were blank.

No emotion in them whatsoever. But I could tell he wasn’t doing it because of me. He was doing it because he knew that if he showed even the least bit of emotion, he’d lose it. Just like I was about to do. Taking a page from his book, I steeled up my defenses and said, “22 gauge.” Then I went to work on getting an IV in a baby less than ten months old, with quite a bit of blood loss, and a gunshot wound to his head. All the while Michael, the man I’d been in love with for over two years, watched me, holding a kid in his arms and talking to him like he was his father. Heart panging, I found a vein, and started an IV. I’d done it many times, and it was rare that I missed. Once the access was started, I backed away, watching as the trauma team descended in mass. Michael, though, didn’t leave. Even when his ex-wife showed up and pressed her entire body against his to get a fucking gauze pad when she could’ve gotten one out of her pocket. Bitch. God, she made my life a living hell.

Literally, day after day she made it a point to torture me, and I didn’t know why. She didn’t know that I liked Michael. Hell, only a few people knew that I even knew him. What Joslin didn’t like about me was the fact that everyone liked me. I was, by nature, a nice person. I got along with everyone. I was a team player, and I could work with damn near anyone. Her, though, I couldn’t work with. Not only because she refused to, but because she hated me and I refused to torture myself. So when she started to push in close to Michael, I wanted to smack the hell out of her. But, as the professional that I was, I backed out of the room, and turned to see where I was needed. I was the newest ER Tech. I was a licensed paramedic. But a paramedic that couldn’t be in an ambulance because I got motion sickness. Something I’d not figured out until I’d taken my first job.

Lucky for me, I was starting with another licensed paramedic to watch over me, because I spent my entire time puking, effectively ending my career before it’d even started. I’d completely disregarded the medical field after that, going back to my father’s office where I’d been a secretary, with my tail tucked between my legs. But when my best friend, Georgia, came back into town, she convinced me to give it another chance, and here I was, on the IV team and being a helpful person in any way I could. “What happened?” I heard asked from behind me. I saw Paxton, a PA that worked with us, looking at the room that I’d just managed to get the hell out of. “Gunshot wound to the head,” I whispered, trying really hard to forget, yet not managing to accomplish that very well. “Fuck me,” Paxton breathed. I liked Paxton. He was a very sexy man with dark brown hair that curled over his ears, and a beautiful blue set of eyes that could make any person’s heart start to flutter. His heart only fluttered for men, though.

Specifically, his significant other that he’d met just a few months ago through a mutual friend of the two. “Yep,” I said, turning away and washing my hands in the sink that sat right next to the exit that the paramedics used to transfer patients in and out. “I’m going to run to Starbuck’s. Want anything?” Paxton shook his head. “Nah, I just had a candy bar. My ass can’t take any more calories today,” he said sheepishly. I rolled my eyes. My ass definitely couldn’t take it either, yet I couldn’t find it in me to give a shit at the moment. I definitely took after my curvy mother. I had what my sisters liked to call ‘child bearing hips.’ Big boobs, big hips, toned thighs (that, might I add, were still on the bigger side of acceptable) and a chin that was questionably close to what they called ‘double.’ My friends and family didn’t see what I saw, the imperfections. They said I was beautiful. I said I was chunky. To-ma-toes. Tom-a-toes.

Don’t ask me why I did what I did next. It could’ve been because I was crazy. Or it could’ve been because I knew he needed it, but I did it with no ulterior motives. “I want a twenty ounce amaretto latte, and a twenty eight ounce black Americano,” I ordered. She young teen smiled, busying herself steaming my milk and shaking cinnamon sprinkles on my frothy milk that collected at the top of the drink. “That’ll be eight fifty,” she said, holding out her hand. I shoved a ten in her hand and said, “Keep the change.” She smiled. “Thank you.” Taking my two coffees, I walked back down the hallway to the ER. When I turned the final corner that would take me into the ER, I ran straight into a brick wall of flesh. Instinctively, I lifted my hands up to save the coffee, and inadvertently padded my collision with my breasts which pressed up against a hard, well defined chest. They instantly pebbled. “Oh!” I said in surprise. “Fuck,” a deep voice hissed out, hands moving to my hips to keep me steady.

That voice always had the capability to send shivers down my spine. “Michael,” I breathed, smiling timidly at him. “Nik,” he sighed. “Sorry, I wasn’t watching where I was going.” Bringing my cups down, I stepped back, and instantly regretted the loss of his heat. I knew, though, that the longer I stayed there touching him, the harder it’d be to move away. “I got you this,” I said, shoving the coffee in his direction. He caught it before I could spill it all over his chest, but to be honest, his shirt really couldn’t get much worse. Not with the massive amount of blood I could see soaking it. He’d have to throw this one away. It may be black, but there was no way he could get the blood out of this one. The white lettering that designated him a KPD officer was stained red, and I had a feeling that it wouldn’t come out. Not with any amount of scrubbing. “Thanks,” he said, sounding surprised. “You look like you needed it,” I muttered, walking

around him to the door that led into the ER. He smiled sadly. “‘Preciate it,” he muttered, staring at the coffee like it was the answer to all of life’s questions. Seeing him like that made me remember the last time he’d done that. It’d been at a SWAT meeting that’d turned into an impromptu party when I’d shown up with a box full of tamales from my mother.

*** Two years ago “Holy crap that man’s freakin’ hot!” I said to my best friend in the whole wide world. Georgia was freakin’ beautiful. Just as beautiful now as she had been when she’d left. And I’d missed the absolute crap out of her. Georgia smiled over at me. “Which one?” She asked cheekily. I knew that was right. They were all overly hot. Except my brother. He was just my brother, and eww. That was just wrong to think of that… on so many levels I couldn’t even list them all. “Everyone but Nico. He’s ugly,” I told her. She gave me a roll of her eyes. “Your brother is beautiful, and you damn well know it.” I shrugged. “I was talking about Michael,” I stated, watching as he leaned forward on his chair and laced his fingers between his knees. Georgia rolled her eyes.

“Why are you always going for the bad ones?” She asked, forcing a beer in my hand. I blinked. “I don’t like beer,” I said, extending my hand to her, as well as the bottle. She gave me a pointed look. “Go take it to him. He asked for it.” Butterflies started to churn in my belly, and I smiled at my best friend. “I love you, you know.” Georgia’s eyes sparkled with unshed tears. “Don’t make me cry. Take it to him before I do.” Sticking out my tongue, I walked across the space separating Georgia and me from the men. I knew he’d clocked me from the moment I left Georgia. He wasn’t so much as watching me, as he was aware of me. When I arrived at his side, he turned his face up to me and looked at me, not smiling. “Your beer?” I offered it to him. He took it from me carefully. So carefully that he didn’t touch a single piece of my skin in the transfer. “Thanks,” he muttered, smiling half-heartedly.

“’Preciate it.” I had seen him before. Noticed him at SWAT events. Watched him while visiting my brother. That was the night I became aware of him. That I became obsessed with him. That was the night that my world changed, and I wished upon a star, while standing under the star-lit sky with Michael next to me. Hours after handing him that beer, he told me about his ex-wife. About his job. About how his wife blamed him for not wanting kids, as for why she’d cheated on him. That was the night I fell in love with him. Head over boot heels.

*** “Do you need some clothes?” I asked softly. He shook his head. “No. I’m gonna go straight to the station and change into my workout gear. Thanks for the offer, though.” Smiling, I punched in the code that would get me through the door, but stopped when Michael called my name. “Nikki?” I turned to find him staring at me. His eyes full of pain. “You…you want to catch dinner and a movie this week?” He asked hopefully. I blinked, then a small smile split my face. “Yeah, I think I’d like that.” He nodded, turned, and walked out of the building. Not once glancing back. And there I was left in the hallway, practically bouncing on my toes in excitement. Then I turned around, and the smile slowly fell from my face when I saw Joslin standing there, her eyes full of fire. Choosing to ignore her, I walked past her with a

muttered, “Excuse me.” But I knew that wouldn’t be the end of it. Not even close.

Chapter 3 Friday. My second favorite F word. -Coffee Cup

Michael Needless to say, I was very late showing up to my mother’s party. By over an hour. I was wearing a white t-shirt and black jeans that had so many holes in them that they could technically qualify as shorts. And my tattoos were showing. Something my mother was definitely not going to like. But it couldn’t be helped. I could either go home and change, and make her happy because I was covering my tattoos and be later. Or I could be late-ish and come uncovered. It was a lose-lose situation, and I really could care less at this point. I wanted to have this dinner about as much as I wanted my nuts cut off. Alas, I loved the hell out of my mom, and would suffer greatly for her happiness.

Kind of like having to share a fucking dinner with my ex. She was the worst mistake of my life, yet my mother refused to tell her to fuck off. Pulling up to my parent’s house, I got out and dropped to my feet. I drove a jacked up Ford F-150, much to my parent’s consternation. We were a car family, pure and simple. Or at least they were, not me. I loved my truck. I could get it dirty and not worry about the interior because that was what trucks were for. Shoving the keys into my pocket and turning to grab the pie I’d had in my truck since this morning, the coffee cup that I’d downed the moment I got into my cruiser fell to the floor. My eyes lit on it, and I smiled, thinking about how Nikki had given it to me. She knew me well. Or as well as I let her know me. She knew me better than my entire family, and she’d only ascertained the information in about ten total meetings.

She’d gotten more from me in one night than Joslin had gotten from me in a year and a half. “About time you showed up,” my brother, Dean, said lazily from the glider in the middle of my parent’s yard. Bending down, I picked up my coffee cup and placed it gently into the cup holder of my truck before gripping the pie and slamming the door. “Yeah,” I muttered, walking up the front walk. “Heard about your day. Sorry man,” my brother said sincerely, blowing out a breath of smoke he’d just inhaled from his cigar. My brother and I weren’t what you would call ‘close.’ We were family, of course, but that’s where that ended. He was the prodigal son. The one who did everything right, while I did everything wrong. And sometimes it was hard not to resent that. Really hard. “Thanks,” I muttered, opening the door once I came to it. The first thing I noticed was that no one was in the living room where they usually were, and that I could smell dinner wafting from the kitchen. The smell turned my stomach.

Eating was the last thing I wanted to do right then. Not with the memory of Baby Nathan’s blood pouring out of his body as I held him on the way to the hospital. “He’s not coming, I think we should just eat,” Joslin said huffily. I rolled my eyes as I made my way down the darkened hallways that would lead to the kitchen and formal dining room where I assumed they were all gathered. “He’s coming. He texted me when he was leaving the hospital,” my sister, Hannah, defended. Hannah and I were the closest in age. Irish twins. She was born ten months before me, in the same year. Me, being the baby, was the surprise that everyone still liked to point out was the accident. “Thanks, Hannah,” I said, walking into the kitchen and placing my pie on the countertop. “I’m here, so the party may begin.” The last was said once I was in the dining room, which meant everyone turned to watch me walk in the room. My father and Hannah didn’t bat an eyelash at my attire. My mother and Joslin, though, did.

Not that I cared. Nor was I surprised. Taking the seat to the right of my dad, and directly next to Hanna, I placed both hands in my lap and waited, like the good boy I was, for dinner to be served. Which only happened once Dean made his way back inside from his smoke break. All the while, I spoke with my sister about her daughter, Reggie. Reggie was a boisterous two and a half year old that was with her ex-husband for the night. “Reggie told me I was to ‘watch my step’ today because I was telling her what to do. Can you believe that? I bet Joshua taught her that one, too,” Hannah said snottily. I snorted. Needless to say, Hanna and her ex didn’t get along. Not even a little bit. “Actually,” I amended. “That was me. I’m sorry. I said that to her two days ago when I was watching her.” Hannah sighed. “I guess I should be happy you didn’t teach her how to say cuss words, I suppose.” My father snorted. “You and Michael were cussing by the time y’all were three and four. Mainly because your

Uncle Paddy thought it’d be funny to teach you them. It was real exciting to slam on my breaks to avoid hitting a car and have the two of you say ‘fuck you’ and ‘what the fuck’ respectively.” Hannah giggled while I laughed. My mother, on the other hand, didn’t. Apparently, she didn’t find it funny. “Alright, we can eat now,” Joslin cooed as Dean made his way into the room, breaking the silent death glare I was getting from my mother. Once grace was said by my father, he started to serve himself, and passed the dish around the table. Once I dished up two pieces, I passed it to my sister, and then so on. We didn’t do a sit down dinner often, but when we did, we were expected to actually sit down at the table instead of in front of the TV like we wanted to. “It’s good, Beth,” my father said around a mouthful of food. My mother smiled. “Thanks.” I looked down at my untouched food, and couldn’t say the same. It reminded me of the gore from the double wide.

What I’d later learned was a cop from a neighboring city, and his wife, who was a stay at home mom to their ten month old. And as I picked at my food, I couldn’t help thinking about the cop. What had happened? Had he slipped through the cracks? Had he needed help, and no one noticed? Would I have noticed had he been my friend? If someone had intervened, would the mom still be alive? Would that baby growing in her belly still be sheltered in her mother’s womb? “Michael, Joslin tells me you had an interesting day,” my mother said, bringing my attention from my plate to her. I shrugged. “Yeah, I guess so. Nothing special.” Joslin, never one to let something go, sat forward. “You saved that baby’s life. You’re the reason that he’s alive! You’re the talk of the hospital,” Joslin crowed. I shrugged, not answering. I really, really didn’t want to think about it anymore. Like really. So much so, that if she continued not to catch the hint, I

might have to leave. “Well, I have some news,” my brother said, breaking the awkward silence. I turned my attention to him, and saw him watching Joslin weirdly. “We’re engaged!” Dean smiled, holding Joslin’s entwined hand up with his. I blinked, surprised. My mother, who loved Joslin to pieces, stood up and clapped loudly. My father and Hannah, though, turned to me, watching me for a reaction. I shrugged again. I didn’t care. I should warn Dean, though. They didn’t know why Joslin and I had broken up. They only thought that the dissolution of our marriage had happened because we’d fallen out of love. Joslin had practically begged me not to tell them because she and my mom had grown so close. “Congratulations!” My mother crowed excitedly. “You okay?” My father asked worriedly.

That was when I realized he’d known. That was what the hesitation had been about earlier. “Fine, why?” I asked. Hannah looked at me, almost as if she was waiting for me to break apart. “You’re sure?” She asked persistently. I nodded. “Yeah. It’s good for them,” I lied. I really should’ve told them why we’d split. Yet, I couldn’t because Joslin had acted like…well…Joslin. “Mom,” I said, standing. “Do you mind if I have a sandwich? After today, this isn’t very…appealing.” I had to eat no matter what. My medication couldn’t be taken on an empty stomach or it wouldn’t be absorbed correctly. And if it wasn’t absorbed correctly, then we’d be in a very different situation than we were now. My mom looked at me, and I mean really looked at me, and she saw right through my flippant attitude and immediately dropped Joslin’s hand and started hustling to the kitchen. I followed her, keeping my eyes on my mother’s back instead of on Joslin’s annoyed face, and Dean’s pissed off one. Whoops.

Spoiled their big reveal. My bad. She may love Joslin and Dean, but she loved her baby boy more. Tattoos, disappointment, and all. “They told me about today,” she whispered once she was in the kitchen. “I…I don’t like it. I feel like I should’ve done more. Been faster. I don’t know. He was a police officer,” I told her. That tid-bit hadn’t been released as of yet. So when she gasped and whirled around, a block of cheese in one hand, and a Tupperware of cold cuts in the other, I realized I’d surprised her. “What?” She asked in horror. I nodded. “The murder suicide was with a cop and his wife,” I confirmed. “God, that’s horrible. And I heard the doctors talking. The baby will live, but they’re not sure about what cognitively was effected yet, correct?” She asked, placing the food on the counter and making me a sandwich. When she would’ve reached back in for the tomatoes I stopped her. “None of those, please.” She looked at me, looked at the tomato that she knew I loved, and nodded, placing it back on the shelf in the fridge

and closing it with her backside. “And yes, that’s what I heard when I called to check on him earlier. They’re keeping him in a medically induced coma until they’re sure the swelling is down to a manageable level. They’re contacting the paternal grandparents, too.” I knew that would be her next question. My mom had a bit of a soft heart for those who didn’t have family. Which was why Joslin was so loved by her. Joslin’s parents weren’t what one would call ‘quality’ people. They both smoked weed and neither had a job. I wasn’t even certain how they funded their extracurricular activities. Then again, I’d never asked seeing as I was a fuckin’ cop. She smiled at me. “That’s good. Is he on the ped’s floor or in ICU?” She asked. My mother worked on the pediatric floor. That’d been where she was working when she met my father, who was a pediatrician, thirty five years ago. My sister worked on the ICU floor, and Dean was a

general surgeon. “ICU for now. Ped’s when he gets better,” I answered, accepting the sandwich she offered me. Her nose scrunched when she caught a closer look at my tattoos, and I barely restrained the urge to roll my eyes. What was the big fuckin’ deal about the tattoos? I thought they were fuckin’ great. She, on the other hand, thought they were ugly. Whatever. “So, when did Joslin and Dean start dating? I hadn’t realized they were even together,” I asked, taking a bite of my sandwich. It felt like a mouthful of sand as I chewed and swallowed. I washed it down with a large slug of sweet tea that my mother handed me, and finished the sandwich in three bites while my mother worked the corner of her lip with her teeth. “Well?” I asked again. She sighed. “They’ve been seeing each other for going on a year now, Michael.” I blinked. “No shit?”

She narrowed her eyes. “Michael, you know how I don’t like when you curse.” Being on the ped’s floor really kept my mother from using bad language day in and day out. She rarely, if ever, used them. And hated when her family did. “What’s the big secret?” I wondered aloud. My mother pursed her lips. “Joslin said you’d be upset, and she’d like to keep it quiet until they were ready to share the news, and I went along with it.” I raised my brow at her. “You do realize, right, that I’m your child and not her. She was in the family for less than a year if you want to count the amount of time we spent separated. Why keep her secret from your own son? It’s not that I’m torn up about it, I’m just disappointed in my family for keeping it from me. I’m not going to fucking break.” “Language!” She snapped. I threw up my arm. “Thanks for dinner, ma. Maybe you can let me know when you’d rather put me ahead of my ex. I’ve got some awesome stories that I think you’ll find extremely interesting,” I said, walking to the back door. “Mikey,” my mother said worriedly. I held up my hand. “Save it.”

With that, I left and didn’t look back.

Chapter 4 I hate you. Not in an ‘I hope you die’ kind of way, but more like I hope you develop an allergy to chocolate and cheese kind of way. -Coffee Cup

Nikki “Hey there, Nikki!” Joanna said from her position behind her desk at the Pediatric ICU nursing station. “How have you been?” I smiled. “I’m good. I just came up here to check up on that little boy. How’s he doing?” She smiled sadly at me. “Lonely, I’m sure. But I’m short two nurses and we’re nearly at capacity.” I brightened. “Do you mind if I sit with him for a while?” “I think he’d like that,” she smiled. Taking her words to heart, I followed the directions to his room, and walked in on a starkly white room with a crib in the middle of it. Well, a hospital bed, crib. It really wasn’t much of a crib.

It didn’t have that homey feeling like most cribs had. This one was cold, metal, and bland. And the tiny boy in the middle of it, hooked up to hundreds of tubes and wires, broke my heart. I loved children. I loved them with a passion and fierceness so powerful that I could barely see straight. And I’d never have any of my own. So I soaked it up by spending time with other people’s children. And it looked like this little guy could use a friend. Walking over to the crib, I took a seat at the chair, just to the side of it, and watched him. His little head was wrapped in gaze from about the nose up, only one eye revealed. His hands were taped to little boards so if he were to move, he wouldn’t pull out the IV lines they had in both hands. His feet had monitors attached to them with a bright green wrap, and his body was veiled in a bright red hospital gown made for tiny humans such as him. Picking up one of the books that was on the shelf across from my seat, I leaned back in my chair and started

reading to him. I must’ve gone through five or six books before I realized I wasn’t alone. I looked up from my book I was reading to see Michael leaning against the doorframe, watching me. “Hey,” I said, surveying him. He looked better than he had before. His white t-shirt stood out starkly against his tattooed skin. I’d never seen his arms bare before, now that I thought about it. “Hey,” he said carefully. “I was just bringing him some of his things…you know, so he wouldn’t be alone.” “That was nice of you,” I whispered softly. “Come in.” He did, albeit a little reluctantly. When I noticed, I stood, offering him the chair. “It’s about time I went anyway. I just wanted to come check on him, see how he was doing,” I whispered softly. Michael, who’d been surveying the boy, looked up. His beautiful eyes pierced me straight through every time he gave me the full force of them. “You don’t have to go,” he said softly. “I’m not staying

long. I have to go.” Wasn’t he being nice? You see, Michael and I had a long history. Well, it was more like four months total of history, but that history was enough to last a lifetime. I patted him on the forearm, a little bit of smartass filling my tone. “Well, then I guess you can walk me out.” After placing a kiss to the tips of my fingertips, I pressed it against the boy’s hand, and looked at him longingly. How could someone ever shoot their own child? What kind of monster was capable of that? Saying a silent prayer, I walked out of the room, very aware of Michael watching me the entire way. I’d convinced myself he wasn’t going to follow me, but the moment I walked into the elevator, the doors closed, and he was there. Ninja much? “You like kids,” he muttered, settling himself in the corner of the elevator by the numbers. A statement, not a question. One he knew the answer to already, seeing as that’d

been the thing that’d drawn our relationship to a sudden rocking halt.

*** 18 months ago Nervously, I looked into the mirror and inspected my attire. Today would be my eighteenth date with Michael, and I felt that it was the one. The one that would change everything. Today would be the day that I gave myself to him. Lock, stock, and barrel. We’d only been dating for a little over four months, but it was enough. I would be breaking my rule of twenty dates before I slept with him, but that was only because I knew. I knew I was about to sleep with the man I intended to marry. A knock sounded at the door, and I hurried through my room to my front entranceway, and threw open the door. Michael was standing there, long sleeved button down shirt, as always, and a smile on his face. “You look beautiful,” he breathed. I smiled at him and opened my door.

“I made your favorite,” I told him as he walked through. I’d found over the last four months that Michael had a love for Mexican food. A great love for it. And he really liked home cooked Mexican food. I’d gone through my mother’s entire cookbook making him food and, over time, we’d discovered that his favorite was one of the most simple. Fajita’s, rice, and beans. “Score!” Michael said as he made his way through the living room and headed straight towards the kitchen. “The rice and beans are done. The only thing I’m waiting on is for you to grill the meat,” I informed him. He turned around and grinned, pinning me to the spot with those baby blues of his. “So we have time,” he murmured, “for me to do this?” Then his body crowded mine against the counter, and I forgot how to breathe. “Do what?” I asked breathlessly. He chuckled, then his mouth was on mine. He tasted like heaven, mint with a hint of the Dr. Pepper he’d just finished drinking.

My hands went underneath his shirt as I said, “I’m ready.” He blinked, then abruptly circled his arms around my lower legs, and lifted me off my feet. “Jesus,” he breathed, turning around and walking quickly to my bedroom. He didn’t bother with the lights, only laid me down on the bed before following me down. “Are you sure? Because I’m about to lose control here, and I don’t want you to regret anything. Regret me,” he whispered. In answer, I started stripping his shirt from his body, and then started working on his pants. He lifted up and resumed his own disrobing, allowing me to shimmy my dress up and over my head. All my careful planning for the night that included my outfit, down to the straightness of my hair, was out the window once his naked body pressed against mine. “I’m so sure I can’t even stand it,” I told him, widening my legs to allow his hips to slip between them. He growled against my mouth, hand moving up to cup my breast. “Good,” he rasped, moving up to his knees.

When I heard the sound of a package ripping open, I stopped him. “I’m on the pill,” I breathed, arching up to him. “And I’m clean.” He continued rolling on the condom. “I’m clean, too. But I always wear a condom. No matter what. Less chance of having kids that way.” I nodded, slightly upset that I’d wasted all that money going on birth control when he wasn’t even going to utilize the benefits of it. Then I was filled completely with him, and I forgot to be disappointed. Because he was anything but disappointing.

*** That next day, in my brother’s kitchen, had been the showdown that had ended our relationship. I wanted kids. He didn’t. Well, that wasn’t exactly what he’d said. More like he wanted kids…just not with me. That simple. “You…would…would you be willing to adopt?” He asked softly. I blinked. “What?” I asked in surprise. He looked down at his hands, inspecting his fingers as he said, “Would you be willing to adopt? Or have kids that weren’t mine? Maybe by a sperm bank or something.” I considered that for a moment, letting what he was saying sink in. “Are you asking me if I’d be willing to adopt a child and still be with you?” I confirmed. He finally looked up at me, and my breath caught. His pupils were dilated and I was fairly positive it wasn’t because he was on drugs. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

“I miss you.” Three simple words that had the power to defeat me. “Michael, us breaking up…it wasn’t over something minor. It was huge. Pivotal. But it wasn’t even just the fact that you said you didn’t want kids with me. It was the fact that you were so final about it. You wouldn’t talk to me. You wouldn’t share your feelings with me. Hell, but you fucked me with your t-shirt on, and wouldn’t let me in! Then you just shut down and didn’t even explain,” I said fiercely. He let all that he was feeling seep into two words. “I’m sorry.” I just shook my head. “It’s going to take a lot more than just ‘sorry’ to make everything alright.” “Will you…will you come with me. Somewhere? I want to show you something,” he said softly. “I have to go to a meeting tomorrow at eight. I can’t stay out late,” I tried. He shook his head. “I’ll keep you there as long as you want to be there. The minute you want to go home, I’ll take you.” “My car’s here,” I countered. “I’ll drive you back up here in the morning,” he said pleadingly.

I looked at him for a long while before I came to my decision. “Fine. Just…don’t hurt me again, Michael. It hurt enough the first time to last me a thousand lifetimes. I don’t think I could survive it a second time,” I whispered hoarsely. “Promise me.” He made a sound in his throat that hurt my heart, but I didn’t relent. I watched him and waited for him to promise me, and promise me he did. “I swear on my life that I will never intentionally hurt you again. I promise.”

Chapter 5 Life’s a bitch. Oh, no. Wait, that’s you. My mistake. -Secret thoughts of Nikki Pena.

Michael “This is my favorite place in the world,” I admitted softly as I pulled my truck up into the front row parking spot of Peek’s Tattoo Parlor. “It’s a tattoo parlor,” she said in surprise. I tossed her a grin as I opened the door to my truck and dropped out. I didn’t know what the fuck I was thinking. All I know was that this day had been complete shit, and I’d had to do a lot of thinking. Something I’d been avoiding doing for quite a long time now. Nearly a year and a half to be exact. From the moment that I let Nikki misunderstand why I didn’t want kids, I knew I’d made a terrible mistake. But, at the time, I thought I’d been doing a good thing. She would have a terrible life if she stayed with me, and there was no one on earth that I’d want to have to deal with my shit.

But then I’d held that boy, while he’d drained his lifeblood on my chest, and I knew that I couldn’t deny it anymore. I loved her. And I’d do anything to have her. Even have a child with her if that was what it took. I was tired of being lonely. And when I walked in on her reading to the baby, I knew I’d make her mine again. No matter what it took. It all started with letting her into my world. Letting her see me. And that started here. “So, I guess I need to start by telling you why I do the tattoos,” I started, swallowing convulsively before I flayed myself open. “When I was twelve, I started cutting myself.” She gasped in surprise and whipped around to stare at me. I put the tailgate of my truck down, and hopped up, holding out my hand to her. She took it, no reluctance whatsoever, and that bolstered me to say what I had to say next. She came in between my legs and leaned into me, looking up at me with her heart in her eyes.

I leaned my head against hers for a long moment before pulling back and looking up at the stars. “That was the first time my parents realized something was wrong with me. I didn’t try to kill myself, per se, I just knew that something was wrong, and pain made it feel better,” I explained, not looking down into her eyes. “That was when I was diagnosed with depression. Three weeks after that, I was diagnosed with bi-polar disorder. Bi polar two, to be exact. By the time I was fourteen, I was diagnosed with ADD. Right now I’m on medication for my bi-polar disorder and ADD since they believe that those are the two causing most of my problems.” When I finally got the courage to look down at her, it wasn’t horror that I saw, but understanding. So I felt like I should continue. “Surprisingly, none of that affected my schooling. The manic side of my bi-polar disorder kept me from falling behind with the other things affecting me. I always strove to be the best. The depression kicked in when I wasn’t the best,” I explained. “My youngest sister is bi-polar,” she said, surprising the fuck out of me enough to look down at her again. And the understanding in her eyes about killed me once again. “When I turned eighteen, I got a job in a tattoo shop to

help fund my schooling. My parents paid for nearly all of it, I only had to cover the books,” I explained. “That’s when I found that the pain of the needle fed that need for pain in less destructive ways, and I haven’t looked back since.” “Schooling? I thought you were in the Navy,” she said. I curled a sliver of her hair that’d fallen free of her bun behind her ear, cupping her neck once I did. “I went to school for my medical degree when I was seventeen. Graduated with that when I was twenty five. Joined the Navy when I was twenty three, while finishing that up. Then realized that I hated being a doctor, so I just…quit.” I knew the next thing out of her mouth before she even said it. “And what made you not want to be a doctor anymore? Seems like a lot of schooling on your part for you to just give it up,” she whispered, laying her head against my chest and looping her arms around my waist. I held my breath, and tried to hold the pain in, yet it didn’t want to be held anymore. “I witnessed an abortion that changed the course of my life and also ruined me for the medical field,” I said woodenly. “If someone could just kill an unborn child in that way, one that had fingers and toes, and clearly defined

features, then how could they say they were an upholder for human life? Wasn’t what they were doing the exact opposite?” “Oh, Michael,” Nikki breathed. “Do you want to tell me about it?” I knew Nikki was catholic. She went to church religiously every Sunday. In fact, as a way to get closer to her, I’d started going to conversion classes, and attending Sunday mass at the very church that she went to just so I could breach some of the gap between her and me. The fact that abortion would never be uttered from her lips really held great appeal to me. Because abortion had been a determining factor in how I’d live my life from the moment I turned twenty three. Even now, twelve years later, I can still remember what that baby looked like. I looked at it every day in the mirror. “It’s gory. And not a good story,” I warned her. She pressed further into my arms, and said what I needed to hear. “Tell me.” So I did. “I was asked if I wanted to, and since I’d never

witnessed one before, I thought ‘sure, why not.’ Well, the why not became a ‘what the hell have I done’ pretty fuckin’ quickly. I’d heard about abortions during one of the many lectures. Knew the basics of it. So I go in there, and there’s this woman already on the table with her legs high and wide in the air.” I cleared my throat. “She was asleep, and it was then I realized that the baby they were doing the abortion on was a viable fetus, but the mother just didn’t want her.” “I watched as they hooked the vacuum up, maneuvered the small hose up her vagina, and started to suck away.” I coughed. “Instantly, there was blood, and that’s about when I turned around and refused to watch anymore. I’d just witnessed a child murdered right in front of my eyes.” “God,” she breathed, a sob catching in her throat. “That was the first tattoo I got,” I said, grabbing her hand with my own and moving it to rest over my heart. “That’s when I met Peek.” She moved away, placing distance that I didn’t want between us, between us, and held out her hand. “Show me your Peek.” And that’s what I did. Hopping off the truck’s tailgate, I made my way inside, hand in hand, with Nikki. The first person to greet us at the front counter was

Alison, the woman that’d been working the front desk for as long as I could remember. She was also Peek’s old lady. Peek was a member of an unofficial motorcycle club, and one of the grumpiest men in the entire world. Yet, he respected a man who could speak his language. And Peek’s language was the art of tattoos, and I had a lot of tattoos. “Mikey!” Alison said happily. “You ready to get that blank spot on your back filled in?” Before I could answer, Nikki spoke up. “Actually, he’s bringing me here to get my first tattoo!” Nikki said excitedly, as if we’d actually planned for that to happen. When I went to say something, she placed her hand over my mouth and shook her head. “Really? Mikey’s never brought anyone here before! I’m so excited to meet you! You’re Nikki, right?” Alison asked with a happy laugh. Nikki turned curious eyes to me before returning her attention to Alison. “Yeah, I’m Nikki. I hope you’ve heard good things,” she said honestly.

I knew I should stop this before it went any further, but I decided to let it be. What was said was said, and I didn’t have anything to hide. Nikki would find out soon enough what I’d done even without Alison’s help. Alison smiled. “Oh yeah. Michael told us all about you when Peek was doing the piece on his back.” Nikki blinked and turned to me, but Alison didn’t notice. She was too busy going on and on about all that I’d said that night a year and a half ago. The night I’d been drunk out of my mind. “What’d you do?” She asked warily. I shrugged and turned around, giving her my back. “Right above my belt,” I told her. Slowly I felt my shirt lifted, and then she gasped. I knew what she saw. It was kind of hard to miss. “You have my name tattooed on your ass!” She squealed. I snorted and turned around, giving her a dry look. “It’s on my waist, not my ass. I don’t have anything on my ass. I can always get one if you want,” I offered

suggestively. She wiggled her fingers at me. “Turn back around,” she said. “I wasn’t done looking.” I did as I was told, and felt her tracing the letters of her name that was inked into my flesh with her fingers. “Why?” She asked softly. I shrugged. “Seemed like a good idea at the time,” I said lamely. She laughed, making my heart soar. “I’ve heard of women putting their man’s name right there, so he can, ya know, see it when he does her from, ya know, behind. But I’ve never seen a man do it,” she tittered. I let my shirt drop and turned back around to see her eyes now fixated on my crotch, and I barely resisted the urge to cover it with my hand. “So,” I said teasingly. “What are you getting on that virgin skin of yours, Nik?” We’d talked about it once, a lifetime ago, but times changed. As did opinions. Nikki, though, was predictable, proving to me she hadn’t changed a bit.

“Have you seen those huge eyed stuffed animal Ty Beanie Babies?” She asked Alison. Alison nodded. “Yeah, who hasn’t?” Nikki smiled. “That’s what I want.” I shook my head. That woman. On our first date together, I’d won her one from one of those machines where you used the claw to grab the stuffed animal out of the overpriced machine. She’d fallen in love with it, and I’d started calling her ‘Owl’ later that night as I saw the resemblance between the owl’s eyes and Nikki’s. When she’d joked that she was going to get a tattoo of the owl, I’d called her on it, and we’d made a bet that she wouldn’t. But then, as time went on, we’d forgotten about it. Then things had gone down, and suddenly there was no more Nikki and Michael. Well, I’d forgotten about it. Nikki, apparently, had not. “Do you have a specific one you had in mind?” Alison

asked. Nikki smiled and dug into her bottomless pit of a purse for her phone, unearthing it after emptying not only her wallet, keys, and a makeup bag, but also a pair of flip flops, onto the counter. I could do nothing but shake my head. “That woman.” “Oh!” Alison said excitedly. “I love it!” Alison was a forty four year old woman with graying blonde hair, but right then, with the way she was giggling like a teenage girl, she could’ve passed for one of the young girls that Peek had just shown out the door. “What are you squealin’ about, woman? You know how that hurts me ears,” Peek growled teasingly. Peek was fourth generation Irish. He had a thick accent, but when he was talking to his wife, the accent got thicker and thicker as he crooned his sweet words to her. Or yelled at her. “How ye doin’, boyo?” Peek asked slapping me on the shoulder with his large hand. Peek was a six foot four inch powerhouse that towered over my six foot two frame. I wasn’t skinny by any means.

I had muscle on top of muscle. Peek, on the other hand, was a bull where the rest of us were most definitely not. He was a volunteer firefighter for the Uncertain, Texas Fire Department as needed, and he worked at his tattoo parlor in Kilgore, Uncertain, and Gun Barrell City on a rotating shift. He was also a member, and president, of the Uncertain Saint’s MC. Peek had started the MC a long time ago after the death of his and Alison’s one and only son. Apparently it’d been due to drugs, but I’d never broached the subject any further than what he was willing to give. I’d met him that first night, twelve years ago, and he’d helped me cope with my decision to leave medicine, as well as my parent’s outrage over the fact. He’d also introduced me to the Chief of Police, Chief Rhodes, on my next shore leave. We’d hit it off, and I’d found myself a job with Kilgore Police Department the minute my feet met even earth once again. “I’m doing well, Peek. This,” I said, holding out my hand to Nikki, who ignored me as she showed Alison pictures of nephews. “Is Nikki.”

Peek smiled, moving closer until he was directly behind Nikki with his body turned towards me, remembering just as Alison had. “I’m glad to hear that, boyo. What’re ye doin’ here?” Nikki turned when she heard Peek at her back. Eyes wide in wonder she said, “I’ve never met an Irishman before.” Peek turned to her and gave her a leering grin. “Would you like to?” Rolling my eyes, I moved until my arm was around Nikki’s neck. “She’s spoken for, big guy. And I’m fond of Nikki’s eyes,” I said looking pointedly at an innocent looking Alison who had the grace to look chagrined. A few months ago, Peek had been working on a client, a young female who was getting one of the most-hated-byPeek tattoo’s ever, a butterfly, when the young client had grabbed Peek’s crotch. Alison, having witnessed the incident, flipped. Then threw the girl and her half-finished butterfly out the front door. I’d been the one to take the call when the girl had called to report the apparent ‘assault,’ which were actually just a few scratches on her face. “I can’t help that that girl was a dumbass who thought it

was appropriate to grab a man’s, a married man’s, crotch,” Alison said stubbornly, before tossing a glare in her husband’s direction. “I can’t help that me package is irresistible!” Peek said in his Irish brogue. Nikki laughed, covering her mouth to contain her giggles before turning laughing eyes on me. “You ready to get that tattoo done, Owl?” I asked softly, ignoring the two bickering people to our sides. She nodded. “Yeah, I think it’s time.”

Chapter 6 If she even looks at me I’ll fuck her face up…with my killer glare, and hellacious cold shoulder. -Nikki to Lennox

Nikki “Hello?” I answered my phone. I sounded tired. I’d literally been in bed for less than four hours, tops, and I was dying to go back to sleep. “Nikki?” Lennox whispered softly. “Where are you?” My eyes blinked open tiredly, and I rolled over to look at the clock. “In bed,” I moaned. “Why?” “Uhh, because you were supposed to be here thirty minutes ago. You told me you switched with Damon, and neither you or Damon is here, and Joslin’s on a fuckin’ rampage,” Lennox said hurriedly. “She’s telling everyone she can that you’re not here yet. I’ve been stalling, but you need to hurry!” “Crap,” I whispered, jolting up out of bed. “I’ll be there in ten minutes.” Pulling a brush through my hair as I went to the

bathroom, I hurriedly pulled on clothes and rushed through my morning routine that would normally take forty five minutes, condensing it down into five. Which meant my hair was curly instead of straight like I usually styled it. It meant that my makeup was non-existent and my clothes were wrinkled because I’d had to pull them out of a pile of clothes on the foot of my bed that my cat loved to knock down when she could. And it also meant that I was wearing the wrong colored tennis shoes, because I couldn’t find my work pair. I was sure I’d get reprimanded for it, but if I’d known ahead of time that I’d get written up for it and nearly lose my job, I would’ve called in sick. My phone rang again, and I nearly panicked. I was religiously late. To everything. Birthdays, work, parties, dates. If it had a possibility for me to be late, I was late. Luckily, it was just my sister, Noel. “Nik-Nik, can I borrow your car? I have to have the brakes fixed on mine, and I need to drive to Tyler for school,” Noel said pleadingly.

I rolled my eyes. “As long as you fill it back up with gas, and bring it back in time for me to drive home from work later.” “Deal,” she said. “I’ll come get it from your work in about ten minutes.” I closed the front door to my apartment behind me and started to hurry down the hall to the stairs. “Make it fifteen. I’m running late.” She laughed. “Why does that not surprise me?” “Watch it,” I teased. “See you later. Be careful today.” With that, I hung up and started to run down the stairs. I was going to be later than I’d said. Twelve minutes later, I was pushing through the doors of the ER with my bag over one shoulder. Since I didn’t have any food in my bag, because I hadn’t had time to make anything last night nor this morning, I stored my bag underneath the nurse’s station and made my way up to Bryan, the charge nurse. “Bryan,” I said, catching his attention. “I’m sorry I’m late. I had a really long night.” I didn’t tell him why I had a long night, however. And he didn’t ask. He nodded. “Don’t make a habit of it, Pena.”

I nodded, then winced when the movement pulled the skin at my back, reminding me once again of the tattoo I’d gotten just hours ago. And Michael. “Bryan, when have we become allowed to wear colored shoes?” A snotty female voice belonging to Joslin, asked. Bryan looked up from his charting to Joslin. “We’re not allowed to wear colored shoes. You know the rules, white only,” Bryan said, sounding slightly annoyed. I walked away, knowing where this was going before I’d even had time to process the fact that Joslin was aiming for me today. “But Nikki’s wearing shoes like that,” Joslin tattled like a two year old. Bryan’s eyes turned to me, taking in my shoes. Then quickly turned back to his charting. It was the soft throat clearing from Joslin that had him sighing and looking at me. “Go change them, Pena,” Bryan said tiredly. What the fuck was that? “You want me to go home to change them?” I asked for clarification.

He nodded. “Yeah. Now.” I shrugged. “That’s fine with me, but it’s gonna take me another hour or so to get back. I lent my car to my sister for the day. I’m sure she’s already picked it up by now. So I’ll have to call her for a ride home.” Bryan growled in frustration. “Nikki,” he said, standing up. “Follow me to the break room. We need to talk.” Stomach clutching, I followed Bryan out the double doors and down a side hallway that led to our break room, all the while Joslin’s laughing eyes followed me out. I refrained from flipping her the bird, but only just barely. I was already in trouble, and I was fairly positive Joslin would just tell him what I’d done anyway. So I put on my big girl panties and followed dutifully behind Bryan. Once we were in the break room, he sat on the edge of the table and crossed his arms. “I’ve already had to talk with the director about your constant lateness,” he said without preamble. I pinched my lips closed. I had no reason. I was late.

End of story. And always would be. “I’m sorry,” I said sincerely. And I was. Not for just past incidences, but for future incidences as well. He sighed and rolled his head up to the ceiling. “You need to get your ducks in a row,” he said. “I have a feeling that the only reason they’ve kept you is because you’re such a good worker. You’re always staying late, always picking up shifts and willing to move when we ask you to. But that doesn’t make up for the fact that you’re constantly late, and you need to try harder to get that fixed, otherwise I’ll be obligated to report this to the director, okay?” He asked, sounding tired. I nodded, uncrossing my arms and placing my hands in my pockets of my scrubs. “Sure.” I wouldn’t make any promises, though. That was just me. I was late. “I’ve also had a complaint about you from a few of the staff members for going off on coffee breaks too often,” he said carefully. A few staff members my ass!

It was only one staff member! And that was because she’d just come back from sucking some man’s cock! Whore! “I see,” I said carefully. “And does this staff member happen to have a vendetta against me or something?” He blinked. “Um, no,” he answered lamely. Liar! “Well, I only went on one coffee break yesterday, Bryan. And that was right after I had to put an IV into some kid who’d just been shot in the head!” I all but snarled. “Excuse me if I can’t handle that and needed a fucking break!” He blinked, surprised at my outburst. “I wasn’t aware that was why you’d gone yesterday. I’d only heard what she said to me. I apologize,” Bryan said truthfully. Ah-ha! She! Well that could only be one person! “Stupid cunt muffin,” I muttered as I turned around to

leave. “Fucking her way to the top.” I stomped my way down the hallway, passing the entrance into the ER, and then came to a dead stop when I saw Joslin’s fucking hand on my Michael. He was looking at her with concern as she wiped a fake tear from her eyelid, and I lost it. It’s hard to say where I came by my temper. My papa liked to say that it was my mom’s. My mom liked to say that it came from my dad. Wherever it came from, it was legendary. However, legendary temper or not, I needed my job, so I had my tantrum in the bay where the ambulances parked instead of in the hallway in front of the stupid bitch. “Stupid son of a whore. Puta needs her brain scanned if she thinks she can fuck with me. I’m a Pena, goddammit! And that pendejo has another think coming if he thinks I’m going to stand for this after last night. Motherfucker!” I hissed loudly as I marched out of the sliding glass doors. And right into a group of bikers that were looking at me funny. In their lead was Peek, and he had a mocking smile on his face that was perilously close to being slapped off. “What are y’all looking at, fools?” I snapped, pushing

through them. They moved, I’m sure some of them trying not to laugh. Others, like the tall dark and handsome one with the caramel skin and the laughing green eyes, as well as Peek, didn’t bother to hide the laughs that bubbled out of their throat. “What’s got your panties in a wad, Owl?” Peek laughed from behind me. I flipped him the bird as I stomped across the parking lot, not missing the fact that through the glass walls that lined the back hallway I could see Michael standing with Joslin, in much the same position as before, but now he had his hands on her head. I made it all the way to the parking lot before I realized I’d forgotten that I didn’t have a car. Then I saw the shiny Dodge diesel with the black rims and electric blue paint job that Michael had gotten sometime in the last year, and bad Nikki came out to play. Let’s just say that my brother taught me a thing or two in his time, and with nothing else better to do, I’d honed the skills until I could get into anything, and drive anything. The newer vehicles were equipped with keyless entry, and you had to have a remote in the vehicle to start it. Michael, though, had made a whoopsie yesterday.

He’d told me about a spare key he kept in his toolbox. I’d never thought that I’d need to know that…but right now it came in really fucking handy! Reaching under the wheel well, I ducked my head above the tire and looked for the black box, finding it within seconds. The box came off the metal it was attached to easily enough, but the entire thing was covered in dirt and grease, effectively making my hand completely covered in the gunk. Not that I cared. I was on my way home. I’d take my time and come back dressed, really dressed, and take it from there. Although I’d probably abandon Michael’s vehicle a couple of blocks over from my apartment. It wouldn’t do to have him knowing it was me. Pressing the unlock button, I opened the door and hauled myself inside. “Is there a reason a man has to lift his truck so big?” I muttered to myself, slamming the door. Pressing my foot on the brake, and punching the start button, the diesel motor rumbled to life with a quiet purr.

Looking left and right, as well as at the door where I guessed Michael would come out of if he knew his truck was leaving him, I pulled out of the parking spot that Michael had so nicely backed into for me. Then I was on the road and two minutes from where I’d decided to park my newest acquisition when the red and blue lights lit up my mirror. “Son of a bitch!” I said, cursing myself and my stupidity. “You’re always doing this, Nikki. Always with the bad decisions.” To make matters worse, it was my stinkin’ brother behind the wheel of the cruiser that was pulling me over. His surprise was as great as mine when he saw me behind the wheel. It took him a few minutes to speak, but when he did, it wasn’t nice. Not that that was unusual for Nico. He was a major dick sometimes. “You are one stupid bitch,” he sighed. I took the nearest thing to me that I could reach and threw it at him, which happened to be a water bottle half filled with Gatorade. He easily caught it and glared.

“You do know, right, that half the force is now looking for his truck?” He asked with a raised brow. I shrugged. “I was mad.” He blinked. “You were mad…so you thought it’d be a good idea to steal a man’s truck?” “I didn’t steal it. I borrowed it,” I said stubbornly. He just shook his head. “Get out.” “No.” “Yes,” he said through clenched teeth. “Make me!” I countered. I was sitting in the back of Nico’s police car when Michael pulled up twenty minutes later. Nico was leaning against the hood, tired of hearing me yell at him, and I was mad. I’d probably be fired, too. I knew I wouldn’t be arrested for ‘borrowing’ Michael’s truck, but Nico was an ass and put me back here because he wanted to, not because he had to. Michael dropped out of another cruiser that pulled up nose to nose with Michael’s truck, and got out. That’s when I closed my eyes and got comfortable. Leaning my back against the door, I crossed my arms

over my chest and stretched my legs, with my forbidden colored shoes, across the seat. I was trying not to think about what I would find on my clothes if I had a black light. The inside of this cruiser was disgusting, and if this never happened again, it’d be great. It even smelled bad. Tapping on the window across from me had my eyes snapping open, and then shutting just as quickly. The door opened and Michael’s deep, sexy voice said, “Get out.” I shook my head and closed my eyes. “Nope, sorry. Can’t. My brother’s the arresting officer. I’ll have to deal with him from now on.” Michael’s eyes narrowed. “I’m not going to say it again, Nikki.” “And what are you going to do if I don’t listen? Sit there and stare at me? Yeah. No,” I said, closing my eyes once again. Then my ass was sliding across the seat by way of Michael’s massive hand wrapped around my ankle. I screamed, turning over onto my belly as he got my legs out of the car, and then latching onto the door as I was

pulled all the way out. Michael’s hands went to my hips as he pulled harder, and my grip on the door started to give. “Let me go, you big douche bag!” I yelled. “Help!” We were on a deserted street in the middle of downtown, so the fact that I was yelling ‘help’ when there was no one around was quite comical, and apparently Michael thought so. He laughed. The bastard. “Let me go! I hate you!” I yelled, starting to kick when he tossed me over his shoulder. He smacked my ass, and I screeched. “You bastard!” I snarled. “You already said that,” he said laughingly, walking past my brother and the other officer who brought him, which happened to be James. My brother’s mouth twitched as I passed, and the bottle he’d handed back to me as he shoved me into the car sounded like a great thing to throw at him again had I had it. Except Michael had made me lose it with his caveman tendencies. When he got to the passenger door to his truck, he

unlocked it with the keys in his hand and yanked the door open forcefully before depositing me unceremoniously on the seat. I gasped in surprise, and then glared at the closed door that had just slammed in my face. “Pendejo.” I muttered, then tried to open the door. It didn’t open, mostly because my brother was there to stop me. I flipped him off and he laughed. “I’ll get you back for this,” I said, pointing at him warningly. He lifted both hands and shook in fake terror. I narrowed my eyes, and then smiled as I pulled out my cell phone. “Hello?” My best friend answered. “Georgia,” I said when she answered. “You know last week when you asked Nico what he had for lunch, and he said salad? Yeah, it was really a burger from Jucy’s. He lied to you.” Her outraged gasp, and then the click of the phone in my ear, followed by the instant ringing of Nico’s had me nearly laughing in hilarity. “Karma’s a bitch!” I yelled when he answered the

phone. Georgia was on a diet, which meant that Nico was on one, too. Except Nico didn’t want to be on a diet, and every day he was on shift he ate out because he was so hungry. He paid in cash because she could see their bank account, and I’d caught him at Georgia’s favorite restaurant just last week where he’d made me promise not to tell. Like the good sister I am, I didn’t tell. Until he put on his bastard hat. Then all bets were off. “That wasn’t nice,” Michael said from my side. I’d heard him open his door, of course, but I was ignoring him so I didn’t bother acknowledging him. Crossing my arms over my chest, I stared straight ahead and refused to even think about him. “Put your seatbelt on,” he ordered as he started the truck. I ignored him. “Nikki,” he said with a sigh. “Put it on.” I didn’t. Growling in exasperation, he unbuckled his own seatbelt, reached across me.

His forearm caressed my breast, and my nipple tightened. The traitorous bitch. Once he had a hold of the belt, he reached it around me and buckled it into place next to my hip. He smelled good. Not that I would admit that. And my nipples were still tingling. Michael went back to his seat, rolled down the window, and started backing up. “Thanks!” He yelled at the two men watching us leave. I snorted. Screw them, too. I’d be talking with James’ wife, too. I was fairly sure I could find some dirt on him to wipe that smirk off his face. “What crawled up your ass?” He asked once we were on the road. I turned my head to look out the window and stayed silent. “Stop being childish and talk to me. What you did today could’ve turned out a lot different. You’re lucky it was your brother to pull you over and not someone that didn’t know you. Things could’ve gone to shit easily,” he growled.

I turned to him then. “You wanna know childish? How about your wife telling everyone at work that I’m a piss poor employee, and then tattling on me because I’m wearing the wrong shoes. The same ‘rule,’ and I say rule with the upmost reluctance because nobody follows it, that everyone breaks. Which I then get sent home for,” I snarled. He blinked. “She’s not my wife.” “Well, you fucked her and you were married to her. Nearly the same thing,” I told him. “It’s not nearly the same thing. I’ve been divorced from Joslin for way over two years. We have no relationship whatsoever, and she’s marrying my brother,” Michael said matter of factly. I tried hard not to react to the fact that she was marrying Michael’s brother, but failed. “She’s what?” I yelled. Well if that didn’t take the wind out of my sails, I didn’t know what would. Michael shot me an amused look, and it only made that fire burning down in my belly become hotter. He was so sexy. His black hair was shaved tightly to his head on the

sides, and had about a half inch on top, and his face was clean shaven, though it hadn’t been last night. He was back in his trademark black t-shirt, and a pair of jeans covered his legs. “Yeah, you heard right,” he nodded. I blinked and turned back towards my window. She was such a hoe! Bryan. At least three doctors that I knew. And Michael’s brother? For real? How did the woman have that much energy? “I thought you had to work today,” I said accusingly, not turning away from the view. “I do. At twelve. It’s only nine thirty in the morning,” he answered. “I was up there to come see you, when I didn’t find you at your apartment, but Joslin was telling me you were sent home.” I clenched my hands into fists. “She is such a bitch,” I snarled. He snorted. “And you’re just now figuring this out?” I snorted. “You were touching her.” He sighed. “There’s something wrong with her. She doesn’t understand the word ‘no.’ She’s devious and vindictive. I’ve learned over the years that the easiest way

to deal with her is just let her have what she wants. Or, at least, let her think she got what she wants. Gentleness seems to throw her off, so that’s why I do that. I’ve learned to be just as manipulative as she is out of necessity.” I rolled my eyes. “Well, I think if you want to continue this relationship, you are going to need to figure out how to not touch her, because I don’t like it. Not even a little bit.” He smiled, revealing brilliant white teeth. “Noted,” he agreed immediately. Then he turned back to the road, and I was left contemplating my brashness of stealing his truck. “I sometimes don’t think before I act,” I admitted softly, looking at my hands. He snorted. “That’s an understatement.” “I’ll try not to steal your truck again,” I said softly. “You won’t have the opportunity to steal my truck again,” he laughed. I raised my brow at him. “You think?” I asked. He smiled. “I know.” When we pulled up to my apartment, I pulled out my keys and offered them to him.

He took them, thankful that he hadn’t asked, and started up the stairs. I’d realized over the course of our four month dating life, and again last night, that Michael liked to be cautious. It didn’t matter if we were gone ten minutes or five hours, when we got back to my place, he was going to take a look through the house to be sure that everything was fine before he left me. I followed behind him, bemused, and walked into the door just as he was coming out of the kitchen and disappearing into the bedroom. I had a one bedroom apartment that I loved to hate. I was on the top right of a four apartment unit, and I hated every second of it. The neighbor to my right stole my parking spot. The neighbor to my bottom left liked to take my clothes out of the shared laundry room. And the neighbor directly below me liked to have loud, wall banging sex. Not that I knew how he did it since I was above him, and I was fairly sure he couldn’t fuck on the ceilings. Regardless, he did it, and I was impressed. But also a little sleep deprived at times. The interior of the apartment was nothing special. White generic walls, beige carpeting. Plain crappy

countertops and appliances that should’ve been updated last decade. My furniture, however, was nice. I spent a lot of time at home, and I wanted to be comfortable while I did it. Which was why I’d spent nearly an entire paycheck on my couch, and the next paycheck on my TV. My bed wasn’t as nice as my couch, which was why I found myself sleeping on the couch more often than not. “What’d you get sent home for?” Michael asked, breaking into my thoughts. I turned to him and crossed my arms over my breasts. “I couldn’t find my ‘appropriate’ shoes for work this morning, so I wore my regular tennis shoes, which Joslin immediately brought up to our boss, and I got sent home to change them. Although that was over an hour and a half ago, so I might not have a job to go back to,” I admitted. He moved forward, running his hand along the back of the couch. Visions of our one single night together started to filter through my brain, and I barely restrained the urge to cross my legs to try to circumvent the throb between my legs. “You’ll have a job to go back to,” Michael told me.

“As for your shoes, those are in my truck in the backseat. You took them off last night and forgot to take them in with you. Which was what I was bringing back to you when you stole my truck.” I laughed. That man! How freakin’ funny he was! “That would’ve saved me a lot of time and heartache,” I told him. “Why didn’t you just text me?” I asked. “You told me to lose your number, remember? Since I’d never memorized it, and you deleted it from my phone, I didn’t have it. Unless I wanted to call Nico, and today was his day to take a standardized test with the department, athough it was canceled, thank God. So I wouldn’t have been able to do that. So I brought them to you instead,” he explained, his eyes eating me up. I sighed. Turning to my kitchen, I put my bag down on the table and went to the fridge to grab my lunch, which I’d forgotten and shoved it into my bag. “Well I guess you didn’t have to bring me all the way home then. I’ll just have to go change my clothes now because I feel like I swam in a cesspool after being in the back of Nico’s cop car,” I said, heading to my bedroom. Stripping my shirt off on the way, I tossed it to the floor

of my bedroom and went to my closet for a new one. I stepped out of my shoes and pushed my pants down my hips when I felt a pair of hands settle on either hip. “I’m pretty sure that I should’ve stayed in the living room,” he whispered against the back of my neck. Tingles started to run down my spine, and this time I didn’t try to stop my thighs from rubbing together. Just the sound of the man’s husky voice had me replaying our one night, remembering what it felt like to have him inside of me. The way his rough hands felt against the sensitive skin of my breasts. The way his beard tickled the lips of my sex as he pulled his cock from me and ate me to completion right before slamming back inside of me and coming hard in two rough strokes. “Why?” I asked breathlessly, widening my legs when his hand started to move between my thighs. “Because you’re about to be even later.”

Chapter 7 You’re too short to be that full of shit. -Michael to Nikki

Nikki I gasped in surprise when he spun me around and moved forward until my back met the shirts I had hanging in my closet. Hangers screeched in protest as our bodies forced them to press against the wall. One of my hands went around Michael’s shoulders as the other went to the pole currently holding up every shirt I owned. “I’m gonna be picking these up later,” I gasped right before Michael’s mouth met mine. I moaned as his tongue swept inside, rubbing teasingly along mine as he forced his mouth down harder on my own. When I felt his hands move between us, I lifted my hips slightly, allowing my aching core to rub against his hard abs as he unbuckled his pants and let them drop to his ankles. I gasped when he took hold of my hips and forced them

back down. His cock ground against my panty clad pussy, and I couldn’t help the involuntary jerk of my hips as pleasure ripped through me at the simple touch. “Michael,” I gasped, throwing my head back to pillow in my shirts. His mouth skimmed along my collarbone, and moved down until his lips glided over the swell of my breast. I had on a modest white bra that was the single one that I found comfortable to wear all day while working, and I was fairly sure it probably wasn’t what one would call attractive. Yet, I forgot to care when he tugged the cup of the bra covering one breast down with his teeth, then followed that by sucking the tip of my nipple into his hot, wet mouth. “Oh, Jesus,” I breathed, hips moving jerkily as tiny sparks centering in the tip of my nipple coursed through my body. My stomach clenched and I moved both hands from his shoulders down. One hand went to my panties as the other grasped the hard length of his cock. Pulling my panties to the side, I lined the head of his cock up with my entrance and waited.

Michael didn’t disappoint. As he switched breasts, pulling down the other cup with his teeth and nipping the tip of my nipple with his, he surged inside of me. My pussy convulsed as it tried to adjust to his size, but he didn’t give me time. Once fully seated inside, he pulled slowly back out before sinking back inside of me roughly. I bit my lip and moved my hands up to the side of his head, watching as he let the tip of his tongue circle the diameter of my nipple. He started thrusting in and out of me, filling me to the point of pain, before he retreated once again. Hangers snapped and shirts fell all around us as his hips powered into me, his cock kissing the entrance to my womb with each thrust. “Please,” I said, needing more. I opened my eyes when he stopped, and my eyes widened when he pulled out completely and dropped us down to our knees. I turned around as he urged my hips to the side, presenting him with my ass. My hands were resting on my pile of shoes as I looked

over my shoulder and watched him pull my panties down over my hips. My pussy clenched with need at the look on his face as he devoured the sight of my core. I could guess what he saw. My pussy lips red and puffy. My entrance leaking with need as it begged him to fill me once again. My panties down around my knees where he’d hastily yanked them. My ass round and full. I wiggled my hips and pressed back slightly as he continued to look for too long. “Michael,” I whispered. “Please.” My pussy clenched when he looked up, my eyes catching his. They were on fire. The blues nearly completely black as his pupils dilated. He moved forward on his knees until his cock met my entrance, and unhurriedly he sank inside. I moaned and dropped to my elbows as he pushed his hips forward until every last bit of him was buried in my channel. This position allowed him to sink deeper inside of me,

and I swear I could feel him in my belly each time he filled me. His thumb brushed over the pucker of my asshole, and I practically came with just the single taboo touch. I clenched down so hard on him that he let out a strangled groan, and finally lost the control he’d been trying desperately to hold on to. I screamed when he pulled out and thrust into me so hard that my knees left the carpeted floor. Not in pain, though. In pleasure. “Yes!” I keened, pushing back with my own hips to meet his powerful thrusts. He growled at the way my pussy clenched down on his cock and gave me a small smack on the ass when I tried to reach between my legs to help my orgasm along. “No,” he said sharply. “That’s mine.” I didn’t bother to argue with what was his. I remembered how he liked it. It’d been a very long time since I’d last had his cock, but I knew he only wanted my pleasure to come from him. He wanted to be responsible for bringing me to orgasm.

He wanted to make me come so hard that I screamed so loud I aroused the neighbors. My hand dropped and I let the side of my face rest along the length of one of my house slippers as he pounded inside of me. My orgasm was just around the corner, and he could feel it. “Come,” he ordered. I laughed. “You can’t just tell me to come. You have to make me.” So he did. By inserting his thumb into my ass. I shot off like a freakin’ bottle rocket, surging so high and far into oblivion that I couldn’t see my way home again. Distantly, I was aware of him pulling out of me and roughly fisting his cock against my back as he shot his come down the length of my back, but I was too busy coming to wonder why. His thumb twisted inside of me and my orgasm, which I’d thought had been on the downhill slide, started to move forward again. By the time I was back in my own skin, I was in a

boneless heap where I’d collapsed, shoes digging into my upper torso and not one single care in sight. “I think you broke me,” I told him, feeling him withdraw his thumb. He snorted as he stood, and I watched as he drug his pants that were still around his ankles, back up his legs and over his hips. He zipped them, but didn’t button them as he walked away, leaving me in my indecent position in a pile of sexual haze. He came back short moments later with a wash cloth, and started cleaning my back free of his release. Once done, he shoved his hand underneath my hips and lifted me up and back. When my back met his front, I leaned my head to the side, exposing my neck for his seeking mouth. “Thank God you’re on the pill,” he said in his gravelly voice. I looped my arm around his neck. “How do you know I’m on them?” I asked curiously. I wasn’t surprised that he knew I still was. He was a cop for God’s sake. If he wasn’t observant and smart, he wouldn’t make a

good cop. And there was one thing I knew of for sure, Michael was a damn fine cop. “Because I saw them in your purse last night when you were handing your phone to Alison,” he explained. “Just remember to take them, because after fucking you bare like this, I’m fairly sure I’ll never be able to do it again with a condom.” His admission made me smile widely. Then my smile died as I heard my phone ringing from the kitchen. “Shit,” I said, standing up and yanking my panties up as well. The new position placed Michael’s face right at eye level with my ass, and he took full advantage of it as I looked down at the mess we’d made of my closet. “Shit,” I said, bending down to look through the mess. I found a shirt, followed by a pair of pants, and threw them on, all the while Michael massaged my ass and inner thighs, working me into another tizzy before I realized it. “Michael,” I said pleadingly. “I’m already late. Please.” He growled in frustration as he said, “I have to get to

work shortly too. Goddammit.” I smiled as he let my hips go and stood, but only to replace his fingers with his cock. He ground his hips into me. I was thankful that he was still wearing pants, because had he been naked, I’d probably be asking him to fill me once again. “Michael,” I pleaded once again. He sighed and stepped back. Immediately, I missed his body heat, but I had a job and commitments. “Thank you,” I told him, turning around as I settled the shirt onto my body. He smiled. “Anything for you,” he said painfully, rearranging his cock in his pants as he buttoned and buckled his belt. A smile curved the sides of my lips as I walked into the bathroom to inspect my face. Where I then decided that the ‘just fucked’ look looked good on me. And it wouldn’t hurt to allow Joslin to see just what she was missing.

“Ready?” Michael asked once I exited the bathroom. At my nod he led me into the kitchen where I grabbed my bag and headed out the door.

*** Thirty minutes later, with Michael’s essence still leaking out of me, I ran into work, throwing a kiss over my shoulder at Michael as I sped inside. He caught it and waved, making me smile. I’d asked him to wait for me to make sure I still had a job, and he gave me an ‘okay’ sign as he leaned back in his seat and finished programming my number into his phone. I still can’t believe he ever listened to me. Hell, it seemed surreal…all of it. Just a few days ago I was puttering along, trying to stay afloat with classes, work, and studying. Now here I was, blowing off study time so I could go on a date with a man I never thought I’d have a chance with again. “Good, you’re back!” Lennox cooed, rubbing her hands together in excitement. “There was a lot of excitement here an hour or so ago. Cops were everywhere, and then there was this man, Michael, I don’t know if you’ve met him but he has brown hair and blue eyes. He was yelling at someone about his truck being stolen. Then he forced the security guy to go through the camera feed, but the feed was down because the security guard spilled coffee on the hardware last week and completely fried the whole

system.” I blushed. “Did they find out who stole the car?” I asked innocently. Lennox shook her head. “No. They didn’t, or at least we didn’t see who it was. They ran out of here like their asses were on fire earlier when they got some call about a BOLO, which I later learned was a ‘be on the lookout’, and we haven’t heard anything since.” Whew! That would’ve been bad to have the hospital know what I’d done. I was already on shaky ground as it was! “Well, that sucks,” I managed to say lightly while squirting a large dollop of antibacterial soap into my hands. “You heard why I had to leave?” Lennox nodded and we both looked to where Joslin was standing across the room. She was with a new intern that I’d never met before, leaning into him and patting his arm while fake laughing. God that woman was such a hoe! And I still hadn’t forgiven Michael for touching her earlier. I didn’t give a shit if that was the only way to get her

unsettled. He needed to find a different way. “I wonder what her problem is? She usually only reserves that kind of treatment for the women who try to steal her thunder,” Lennox wondered. “That’s ‘cause Joslin is a show hound that likes to have all the attention on her,” Melissa, one of my favorite nurses, snarled as she threw down a chart on the counter next to my hand. “I’m dating Michael,” I told Lennox by way of explanation, completely ignoring Melissa’s pissed off mutterings. Then a fountain of understanding welled in Lennox’s eyes. “Well, that’s going to be interesting for you,” she managed to say. “You can say that again. That woman needs the stick that’s lodged up her ass removed,” Melissa grumbled. “She just told Bryan that I was flirting with a patient, and that I needed to learn to be more professional. Motherfucker, but I was just telling him he had cute kids! I didn’t say he had a cute cock or anything!” We both looked at her in surprise at her outburst. “That woman needs to go,” I muttered. “Surely there are enough people around that can complain about her to

someone she hasn’t fucked.” The three of us fell into a fit of giggles at the thought. There probably wasn’t a single man…or married man for that matter…in the entire hospital that she hadn’t had some of. Which was the entire problem. For all of us.

Chapter 8 You touch my tats, I touch your tits. -T-shirt

Michael Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. The sound of my Glock echoing off the cavernous walls of the gun range made me feel at peace. Almost as good as I felt when I had Nikki wrapped in my arms, in fact. Shooting was a peaceful feeling. One that let me shut my mind down and just have fun. I had to log so many hours in the gun range a month anyway, so it worked out well that I loved doing it. What I didn’t love was the man at my back whining about the dirt he was getting on his clothes. “I didn’t tell you to come,” I grumbled to my brother. “No, but you didn’t react like I thought you would at dinner when we told you. I expected anger and you gave us nothing. Then left. I just wanted to make sure you were okay with this,” Dean said stubbornly. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang.

Placing the gun on the table in front of me, I took the magazine I’d just ejected from the gun and started to reload it. “Michael, are you even listening to me?” Dean asked in frustration. I ignored him. I didn’t really know what he wanted me to say. I’d already told him exactly what I thought about the matter: mostly that I didn’t care. Not one single bit. And he refused to think that I didn’t. So we were at an impasse. I didn’t care. He cared too much that I didn’t care. “Michael! Focus!” Dean roared. I slammed the magazine into the gun, cocked it, and let off eight more shots, trying hard as fuck to ignore him. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. “Michael! Get out of your fucking head and talk to me!” Dean snarled, yanking my arm with the gun in it around so I faced him. I holstered the empty gun and exploded.

“I am out of my fucking head, you moron! I’m not that fucked up mess I was when I was fifteen. I’m not ever ‘in my head’! Now keep your fucking hands off me, and for God’s sake, don’t yank a man’s arm when he has a gun in his hand!” I yelled back, getting into his face. Dean stood his ground. We were both the same height. I was bigger, but only because I lifted weights. Dean was in shape. Excellent shape. But he wasn’t me. So when he raised both arms, reared back, and pushed me, I only went back inches. Whereas when I did the same, he fell flat on his ass. “What the fuck do you want from me?” I snarled, looking down at Dean. Dean glared and stood up, brushing off his ass and his ‘brand new suit’ he just got. “What I want is permission. I want to make sure this won’t cause any contention when she marries me,” he insisted. I sighed and raised my hands up to my face, letting my fingers curl into what little hair I had. “It’s not a bone of contention, Dean. I don’t love her

and I haven’t for some time. When she cheated on me, that was it. Any and all love I felt for her was wiped off the face of the earth,” I said tiredly. I never should’ve let Torres have my shift. I should’ve taken the overtime and stayed at work. This was bullshit. I’d rather be doing anything but this right now. He’d ruined a perfectly good day with his insistence that I wasn’t ‘okay.’ Dean looked stunned. “You’re lying. She told me you wouldn’t have a kid with her, that’s why y’all got divorced.” I laughed humorlessly. “I wouldn’t have a kid with her, that’s true. But what made me divorce her wasn’t that she wanted kids. It was because she slept with about fifteen men while we were married, and I only found out because she was sloppy and let some new doctor call her at home. He left a voicemail telling his ‘girl’ that he couldn’t make dinner, and that they needed a raincheck. Which got me curious since she was supposed to be at work at the time,” I told him honestly. And damn but it felt good to get that shit off my chest! I’d been holding that inside for a long time now.

It was hard to let my family think I was the bad guy for not wanting kids. My mom resented me for that, I could tell. But I didn’t know how else to not tell anybody what had happened without Joslin being shunned from the family, so I kept my mouth shut. “You’re lying,” Dean said without venom. I could tell he believed me. “Want the private dick’s files? I’ve got about two hundred photos of it happening in real time, too,” I offered. He narrowed his eyes. “Why would you not tell us this? Why let us think badly of you?” I smiled without humor. “Mom loves Joslin. And Joslin has nobody else. I was just being nice,” I told him. He sighed. “Goddammit. That’s not what I wanted to hear.” I shrugged. “Sorry man.” He looked at me for a few long moments before he said, “I love her, man.” I nodded. “If you want to be with her, that’s good with me. I don’t care. Just be aware of her faults. And I won’t tell you I told you so.”

He flipped me off. “Fuck off.” I smiled and patted him lightly on the back. “Now get the fuck out of here and let me enjoy the rest of my day.” Grudgingly he left, and I couldn’t help but smile at the big brown stain on his ass from where he’d fallen in the dirt. Served the fucker right for pestering me. Turning around, I loaded my gun once again and started firing off shots at the piece of paper floating down range. I was having a damn good time until I got a call, and what I heard made my stomach nearly drop to my feet.

*** “What’s going on, Luke?” I asked him as we walked, side by side, down the hallway to our conference room. Luke opened the door and ushered me inside ahead of him. I came to a stop just past the entrance when I was faced with multiple men in suits. “What’s going on?” I asked again. Luke walked past me and had a seat next to Chief Rhodes, who I was surprised to see was also in attendance. “Take a seat, Perez. We have some things to discuss with you. Nothing you did wrong, though, so stop looking at me like that,” The Chief grumbled. Smiling slightly, I walked to the chair on the other side of the chief and took a seat, leaning back in my chair and crossing my arms over my chest. The chief pushed over a file folder that was nearly an inch thick, and I took that to mean that he wanted me to open it and have a look. And when I did, I wished I’d at least braced myself first. “Goddammit, chief. Fuck you,” I said, pushing the file

away from me and closing my eyes to control my urge to vomit. “He’ll do,” the man I sat across from said. He was in his early fifties and had brown hair peppered with gray throughout. He was a thin man, and probably didn’t reach much over five and a half feet tall. The other man at his side was burly with black hair and a deep tan. He was in his mid to late thirties with green eyes and a goatee. I glared at the two of them. “What the fuck is going on?” I growled. I hated fucking games. Just tell me what the fuck is going on already. “This is Special Agent Troy Palmer, and this,” The Chief said, indicating the black man. “Is Special Agent Dane Elliott. They’re here to speak with you about the Cox case.” The Cox Case was the murder suicide I’d first responded to. “Yeah, so?” I asked tiredly. Hell, was I tired. I was living off of only hours of sleep, and I could really use a few hours of shut eye before

I had to deal with them and their shit. Crime, however, didn’t wait for it to be convenient for all those involved. Which Agent Palmer explained in the next second. “We’ve discovered a few similarities in about ten murders throughout the Ark-La-Tex involving cops and their pregnant wives,” Agent Palmer said without preamble. I blinked. “What?” He pushed the file back to me, and I looked down at it, only now realizing what I’d thought was the murder I’d walked in on just two days prior wasn’t the one I’d thought it was. It was a different one. “Holy shit,” I said, surprised. “Are they all positioned this way?” It was nearly identical. The only thing different was the color of the tile floor they were laying on. “We have reason to believe that you might have seen the man who did this on your way to the scene. We’ve had three witnesses saying they saw a man walking his dog down the street just down the road from the crime scene.

Black hoodie. Black jeans. Black dog.” I thought back to the day I’d driven to the crime scene. Remembered passing the mobile home park sign, then seeing a black dog off to the side of the road that I passed. I remembered thinking that the owner needed to get the dog the fuck out of the way when he heard lights and sirens blaring. “Yeah, I saw him,” I confirmed, thinking back to the man in question. “Black hoodie. Black pants. Red shoe strings in the shoes. Dog had a red collar with black lettering on it. Black lab.” Agent Elliott took notes on his pad of paper as I spoke. The other one just watched me closely. “Any cars in the area?” he asked. I shook my head. “Actually, no. I passed four houses before I got to theirs and hadn’t seen a single one. The couple had two cars in the driveway as well as a red midsized sedan belonging to the elderly couple. I did pass an abandoned car with hazard lights on pointing in the opposite direction I’d been going, but I also saw a man walking away from the car in a white t-shirt and khaki pants.” The agent nodded. “Good. Thanks.”

“We have reason to believe that the man’s a practicing doctor in the area. Or a nurse. Or a midwife. Possibly a registrar at the hospital. Each woman that’s been killed, their only connection, is them being in the same doctor’s office that practices in the Ark-La-Tex. It’s a large one that has over eight offices and seven doctors serving it. Only four of the doctors travel over the state line, and we’ve made a note of those four in this chart,” Agent Palmer said, sliding the three of us a stack of papers. I scanned the names on the list as well as the pictures. I didn’t recognize any of them. “So what do you need from us?” Chief Rhodes asked bluntly. They both shook their head, but Palmer was the one to answer. “Nothing. Not yet anyway. We’ve already been privy to the reports, photos, and crime scene data. We just ask that, if you encounter another one of these, you call us. We’ve been working this case for a little over two years now, and so far we have just as much now as we did then. A bunch of nothing,” he said simply. I looked down at the papers in front of me, recording the faces of all the four doctors into my memory bank so I’d have it later if I had need of it. “As for why you’re here, Officer Perez, it’s just so that

we can congratulate you for saving that child. He’s our first survivor, and I never wished more that a baby could talk than I do right now,” he said dejectedly. I completely agreed. I’d wished the same thing. I didn’t know what kind of heartless person could shoot an innocent baby like that, but whomever it was needed a single shot to the heart as his final coup de grâce. “So is it a coincidence that all these men are cops?” Chief Rhodes asked as he looked through his own folder. I flipped to the page behind the one I’d stopped looking at and saw what he was talking about. Longview Police. Kilgore Police. Shreveport Police. Gun Barrel Police. Gilmer Police. Bossier City Police. Benton Police. Tyler Police. Waskom Police. Hallsville Police. “What the fuck?” I exhaled. Not only did they kill pregnant women and babies, but the fucker was a cop killer as well. “So you have nothing, is what I’m understanding?” I asked carefully. The two of them nodded. “Nada.” I linked my fingers together, and steepled them while

tapping the first two together. I was a fidgeter. Like major. I couldn’t sit still for anything, something I’d learned to live with. It drove my friends and family nuts. It was what it was, though. Nothing I could do to change that. “I have a couple of people that might be able to help us, and Luke’s brother in law is a part of The Dixie Wardens MC. They’re in the town of Benton, Louisiana. One of the cities you named. He can talk to them and see what he can dig up. I can do the same through my resources. Go from there,” I offered. Both men looked at me, moved their eyes to Luke, then settled them on Chief Rhodes. “You vouched for them. If this gets leaked to the press, there’ll be a public outrage. You understand that, right?” Agent Palmer confirmed. Agent Rhodes nodded. “My boys wouldn’t give this kind of information to just anyone. I trust them implicitly.” Finally, the two nodded and stood to leave. “Keep us informed, and we’ll do the same.” With that they left, and the three of us sat there silently

for a few long moments. “If this gets out, I’ll kick both of your asses,” The Chief rumbled. I smiled down at my hands before standing. “I’ll get it done on my part. Luke, you gonna talk to the Wardens?” Luke nodded and stood, pulling out his phone. “Yeah, I got it.” With that, we all split up, me heading to Free, and Luke heading to Louisiana. It was going to be a long rest of the day.

Chapter 9 Dear teenagers, complaining about life is like a toddler complaining about nap time. You’ve only seen the tip of the monster’s dick. Just fucking wait! -Michael’s secret thoughts

Michael “Get up off the floor or I’ll make you get up,” I growled at the stupid teenager who’d tried to boost my truck. I’d had that bastard stolen twice, or nearly, in the same fuckin’ day, and this time I was not amused. “I didn’t do anything!” The boy yelled, refusing to move. With no other options, I moved the boy myself, all under the crowd’s watchful eyes as they watched the entire thing take place. Rolling him over onto his back I stared down at him in contempt. “What did you think you were going to do? How far did you think you could get? You nearly stole a police officer’s truck,” I hissed. “Not to mention I have GPS on it that I could’ve activated. Then there’s the fact that every

cop in the city would be looking for you because you don’t steal something from a cop without consequences. You’d have every single cop in the state looking for your dumbass. Not get the fuck up off the ground and go sit on the fuckin’ bench like I asked you.” He did. Reluctantly. Very reluctantly. The boy was fifteen, at most, with an attitude that said he usually got whatever the fuck he wanted. Well not fucking today. I’d walked into the convenience store to get my receipt, but decided that I could use a Gatorade while I was in there. When I turned the corner of the snack aisle, I came upon the fifteen year old shoving candy bars down his pants. He wasn’t even being conspicuous about it. They were so full already that you could see the large bulge, as well as the orange wrappers sticking out the top of his pocket. Then he ran. I had to give it to the boy, he was quick.

He’d made it past me and into the parking lot before I’d even pushed out the door toward him. Lucky for me, and unlucky for him, I’d caught him at my truck. All he’d seen was a truck running with the windows down. Sadly, I still had the keys in my hand and had turned the truck off before he could even get it into drive. He’d looked at me like I was the grim reaper, as he should since he’d been sitting in my truck. Then he tried to bail out the other side’s window, but only managed to fall on his face. “Why’d you steal those?” I asked, gesturing to the pile of candy bars and bottle of milk that was in a pile at his feet. He shrugged. “What’s your name?” I asked. A cruiser’s chirp-chirp of the siren going on and off quickly had me looking up as Miller, another member of the SWAT team, pulled up. He stepped out of the cruiser and moved his glasses up to the top of his head. “Saint,” Miller said, nodding his head.

I nodded back, choosing not to call him on the use of the nickname that I hated. I was not a saint. Far from it, in fact. Now wasn’t the time or place for it, though. “What’cha got, Saint?” Miller asked, taking in the scene. “Fifteen or sixteen year old male stealing candy from the 7-11. I caught him red handed, and he ran. Tried to get away fast by taking my truck, but he didn’t make it far. And here we are now. He was just about to tell us his name,” I explained lightly. Miller nodded. “What’s your name, boy?” The boy glared at Miller with all the heat and venom a fifteen year old could muster. I could’ve told him that he was wasting his time, but teenagers didn’t seem to have that comprehension when they were mad. When the boy refused, I shrugged and told him to stand. He didn’t. “You know, this can go one of two ways. One,” I said holding up a finger. “You can just cooperate. Stand up, tell us your name, let us check you, and we’ll get you booked

downtown. Or two, you can refuse to do all of those things, we can force you to do them, and you still go down town.” The boy glared at me, and then moved his gaze to a car at the far corner of the parking lot. Following his gaze, I narrowed my eyes when I saw what he was looking at. “Who’s in that car?” I asked, glancing back at the boy. He closed his lips tightly, then looked down at his feet. A shared glance with Miller had me walking over the pile of candy bars and milk to the car that was parked underneath the 7-11 sign. The closer I got, the more worried I became. Because I could see a car seat in the car. Two car seats. Holy shit. I opened the door with suddenly shaking hands, scared to death at what I’d find. I’d seen some bad shit in my time, but the moment I opened that door, I knew nothing could be worse. Two starving children looked up at me from hollowed eyes. Neither was crying, and neither looked particularly

scared of me. Interested. Hopeful, maybe. Scared? No. “Miller,” I called loudly. “Put him in your car and get over here.” Miller tossed a look over his shoulder at me. I stepped back to allow him to see the closest car seat, and his eyes widened. His mouth dropped open and he turned back to the kid that looked defeated. Now I understood why he’d stolen the candy bars. And the milk. I had no doubt in my mind now as to the character of the kid. Desperation makes a man do funny things. I picked up the smaller baby first. She felt extremely tiny in my hands. So tiny I couldn’t even gauge how old she was. Miller joined me as soon as I fit the baby into the crook of my arm, sidling up to my side. “What the fuck?” He asked in denial at what he was seeing. I nodded. “Yeah.”

It was more than obvious that the children hadn’t been well cared for. Their clothes were dirty. The car itself smelled horrid. The little boy in the car seat looked at the two of us with a smile, but that smile didn’t meet his eyes. The deep circles under his eyes, as well as the hollowness to them, showed that he was anything but healthy. “Get the other one,” I ordered. Miller circled around the car and picked up the boy from his car seat. The boy wrapped his skinny fingers around Miller’s mic cord, and smiled so brightly that it hurt my heart. The little girl in my arms cooed and I looked down in awe. As a police officer, there are times that you’re not going to experience nice things. Although this wasn’t the ideal situation, they were both alive, and had a fighting chance that they didn’t have before. Something I counted as a check in my win column. I felt like I was carrying air as I walked back to the

police cruiser. Miller didn’t look like he was carrying much more as he got on the mic. “I’ll need a bus here. Got two babies in need of some medical attention,” he said quietly, smiling down at the little boy who made a grab for his mic. The boy looked scared shitless the closer we got to Miller’s cruiser, and by the time I opened the door to the cruiser he looked like he was about ready to bail out. Straight through the glass window. “Alright son,” I said, dropping down to my knees beside him. “Tell me what’s going on.” He looked sort of green, but it was then that I noticed that his heart was in his eyes as he looked at the children. “They’re mine,” he croaked. I blinked. “They’re yours?” He nodded. “Yeah,” he rasped. “How old are you?” I asked. He swallowed. “Fourteen. Fifteen in two months.” My heart started to race. “They’re yours,” I stated for clarification.

He nodded again. “Yeah,” he confirmed. I looked up at Miller, then back at the boy. “What’s your name?” I asked softly. He looked down at his hands. “Madden,” he said quietly. “Madden, you’re not even old enough to be on your own yet. How do you have two kids? And why are you on your own? Where’s the baby’s mother?” I continued. He bit his lip, and looked up at me with eyes that were shining with tears. “I stole them from her. She wasn’t taking care of them,” he cried. “Not like they needed to be taken care of.” I refrained from saying that he wasn’t doing too good of a job either, and nodded my head. “Who’s the mother?” “She’s…she’s my stepmother. And I stole them away from her while her and my father were high. They were… doing stuff that I didn’t like. And she was smoking around the baby. I didn’t like that. I had to get them out. I had to. They would’ve died. She would’ve killed them,” he insisted pleadingly. “She already smoke and drank throughout her pregnancies. She didn’t even go to the hospital to have them!”

I looked down at the baby in my arms, saw the frailness to her, and started to get mad. Not at him, no. But at the situation. “When did you take them?” I asked softly. He bit his lip. “Last night.” Jesus, so this was how they were from her, not him. “Alright, Madden. How about you come take a ride on the medic with your kids. From there we’ll figure this out, okay?” He nodded, wiping his eyes with the back of his hands. “Thank you,” he croaked, voice cracking like all adolescent boys do at that age. Jesus, this was one sick, fucked up situation. Fucked Up. With a capital F and U.

Chapter 10 My brother has the best sister ever. -Coffee Cup

Nikki “Go get your newspaper!” I said hurriedly the moment I pounded through Nico’s back door. Nico glared at me, still holding the door open. Georgia, being Georgia, did what I asked and ran to the front walk to get the newspaper. “Why didn’t you just get the newspaper on the way in?” Nico asked. His hair was a freakin’ mess. “The twins keep you up all night?” I asked cheekily. He glared. “Maybe you should take them for a night. Give me a little break,” he muttered. I blinked. “I’ve offered no less than thirty times since they were born. I’d love to watch them. You’d only have to convince yourself to let them go.” My brother was attached to his family. No matter the bitchin’ he did, he refused to let the twins, or Georgia, out of his sight.

A few years ago, before he’d reconnected with Georgia, he’d gotten into a spot of trouble with a mafia boss. So much trouble that to save Georgia, he’d faked his death with the help of the CIA and the Texas Rangers. While he was ‘dead,’ he’d continued to search for the man responsible for putting his life and Georgia’s in jeopardy, finally finding him around the time the twins were born. Georgia, though, as well as the rest of our family, hadn’t been able to get over the fact that he’d ‘died.’ We still had nightmares. Georgia and I spoke about that quite a bit. Nico wasn’t without his own nightmares, either. Although we all talked a good game, the entire leaving thing was hard on us all, something that showed with the way Nico clung to his kids and wife and refused to let them get too far out of his reach. “Oh, my God! Saint’s on the front page!” Georgia squealed in excitement, jumping up and down in her nightgown. I jumped too, clapping my hands. “Isn’t that the cutest thing ever?” I asked in excitement. Georgia laughed and spread her paper out on the table.

Nico leaned forward to study the picture. “Nice,” he said, laughing. Michael, the ultimate ‘I’m not cut out to be a father,’ was on his ass on the back of the cop car holding the tiniest of babies in his arms. The baby didn’t even look to be a month old, at most. He was gazing down at the little girl holding a pacifier in her mouth. His eyes were gazing at the small bundle, looking for all he was worth like a devoted father. Something I knew he’d be if he ever gave life a chance. “Was this not something you could’ve called for?” Nico asked after he read the story. I shrugged. “Sure I could have. But then I couldn’t annoy the shit out of you like I’m doing right now.” He lowered his eyes into a glare, and I plopped down into his lap. He grunted as my weight hit him. “Jesus, I think you’ve gained weight,” Nico teased. I wrapped my arms around his fat neck, although it wasn’t really fat, and squeezed for all I was worth. “Ackk!” He said as air escaped his lungs.

I smiled down at him. “Now what were you saying?” I asked with a raised brow. He curled his lip at me. “Alright, Nik. Let me get dressed and we’ll head up there to see these babies,” Georgia said as she hustled out of the room. “Hey!” Nico said, standing. I held on for dear life, causing him to come down with me. Nico grappled for purchase, but I succeeded in pulling him down with my unexpected move of holding on while still going down. Nico landed beside me with a grunt, and I wrapped my arms around his neck from behind, wrapping lightning and thunder (my legs) around his upper torso and squeezing the life out of him. “God! You’re such a shit!” Nico growled, effectively knocking the wind out of my sails by rolling over onto his back and pinning me to the floor with his body weight. I didn’t let that stop me for long, though. Instead, I anchored myself even better, let go of his neck, and started attacking his armpits with the tips of my

fingers, ticking him like a lunatic while he writhed and shook with laughter on the ground. “God! Stop!” He yelled loudly. I was like a tick, though. I stayed and stayed until I had no strength left to hold on, then, like any smart woman, I ran. Like the wind. I pushed off of him with inhuman strength that resembled a lumbering donkey, and sprinted for Nico and Georgia’s door. I made it, too. Slammed it right in Nico’s face and locked the door before he could reach me. Then I promptly fell on their bed that was littered with clothes and other baby paraphernalia, and collapsed in exhaustion. “Y’all fight all the time,” Georgia said from the closet. I nodded. “Yeah, we do.” “I don’t know why y’all can’t just be normal siblings,” she said observantly. Nico was the only boy with six girls…it was bound to happen.

I wasn’t a bad sister. I was a normal sister! “You’re just jealous that your brothers won’t give you the time of day,” I teased. I was lying. Georgia’s brothers loved the hell out of her. They just had a different relationship than Nico, my sisters and I did. It didn’t mean it was wrong that they tried to baby her. It was understandable, really. Especially how Georgia held their family together after the death of their two youngest brothers. “So what’s going on? Why do you want me to go to the hospital with you?” Georgia asked. I gave her a droll look. “You’re a social worker, Georgia. Why the hell do you think I want you up there?” I laughed. She flipped me off and took a huge step over her Saint Bernard, Hamburger, that was taking up half the closet. “You know we’re not just ‘assigned’ these things. They have to come to us. You’d have more luck calling in Shiloh,” Georgia explained. Georgia was a social worker with an adoption agency

that placed children in their forever home. Shiloh, James’ wife, on the other hand, was a child protective service social worker with the state of Texas, working in Gregg County. Which was why I’d invited her to come as well. “I already called her. We’re picking her up on the way,” I told her. Georgia smiled. “Good,” she said solemnly. “Tell me what happened?” I sighed. “From what I got from Michael, as well as what I got from the hospital yesterday, a lot happened. The boy, who’s also the father of the two children, is fourteen. His step-mother raped him repeatedly over the years, and then got pregnant with his babies. She then had said babies, and used them to keep the boy quiet about it all. The father was none the wiser to it all, but basically that was because he was high out of his mind,” I told her. “After the second child was born at home, addicted to God knows what drugs, and then totally failed to be cared for, the boy took it as his cue to get the hell out. He stole their car, took the kids, and had been parked in that gas station parking lot for about twelve hours before Michael caught him trying to steal candy and milk for the kids.”

Georgia stopped and turned half way through the story, but by the time I was finished recounting it, tears were in her eyes, as well as in my eyes. “Holy crap, that poor boy,” she said, voice devastated. I nodded. “That’s where the SWAT team was last night. Doing a raid on that house. The judge who’s overseeing the case is the son of a man that abused him, so he wasn’t tolerant at hearing what happened to Madden.” “Madden is also the name of the boys father?” Georgia clarified. I nodded. “Yeah, that’s him.” “What’d they find at the raid last night?” Georgia asked. Nico came through the door, shoving a lock pick into his pocket as he threw the door opened. He walked past the bed and pushed me hard enough that I fell backward, causing me to laugh. He shot me an ‘I’ll get you back’ look, and turned to his wife. “If you were interested in that, why didn’t you just ask your husband?” Nico asked cheekily. Georgia sat down on the bed beside me and slipped her socks on before shoving her feet into tennis shoes.

“Probably because I’m still mad at you,” she said, tossing him a fake glare. I snorted. “I told you I was too tired to change that diaper! I didn’t steal your hamburger, and I didn’t pour hot sauce in your tea! It was a freakin’ diaper! One!” He said, raising his hands in the air for emphasis. Rolling my eyes, I got up and tugged Georgia’s hand. “We’ll be back, brother dear. Take care of the babies and the diapers, until we get back,” I ordered. Then we left, all under the very annoyed glare of Nico. “So, what’d they find?” Georgia picked up where we left off. I closed the front door behind me and walked with her to my car. My beautiful baby. It was a sky blue Volkswagen Beetle convertible. Georgia got into the passenger side, and I dropped into the driver’s side before I told her. “A lot, actually. Drugs. Enough drugs that they think they were dealers. Dirty needles. Cocaine and weed. Horrible living conditions. Both parents were high as hell. Neither one of them even knew the kids were missing -

that’s how gone they were,” I told her, backing out of the driveway and turning left to head to the highway. Georgia hummed. I looked over at her. “What?” I asked, moving my eyes back to the road in front of me. A tractor was taking up three quarters of the road, and I contemplated passing him on the shoulder when he finally moved over, allowing me to pass. And in all that time, Georgia stayed silent. “What?” I asked again. “They’re going to split them up, I can see it now,” she said softly. I winced. That’s what I was afraid of. Madden was a good kid, but he was in no way, shape, or form, ready to raise two kids, seeing as he was only a kid himself. “That’s why I’m bringing in the big guns,” I replied. She frowned. “I’ll try, honey. But I can’t promise a single thing,” she explained. “I can’t make any promises.”

I nodded in understanding. “I know. I just want you to try the best you can. Work with Shiloh. Anything is better than what they had. I just feel so horrible about the situation.” She patted my hand as I stopped at the stoplight that would lead us to the hospital. “And what about that other little boy? How’s he doing?” She asked. I smiled happily. “Much better, actually. They said he opened his eyes yesterday. I was going to stop in and see Nathan since I’ll already be up on the ped’s floor,” I informed her. “But we have to be back at your house by twelve so I can make my one o’clock class. Okay?” Georgia nodded. “Yeah, that sounds good. Then I can be there in time for Nico to go to work, and we won’t have to call your mom to watch the kids.” I held up my thumb in a ‘good’ gesture, and opened my car door. I blinked at the cop cars that were lined up at the front entrance of the hospital. “What’s going on?” I asked the woman that was standing in front of my parked car. The woman turned and shrugged. “I don’t know.

They’re not letting anybody in or out.” Picking up my phone, I called Michael. “Hello?” Michael answered. He sounded distracted, but that wasn’t going to stop me from getting inside. “Hey,” I said. “We’re outside the ER entrance and there’re a bunch of people outside the doors. What’s going on?” He cleared his throat. “There was another murder,” he said softly. “Give me a few minutes to come down and I’ll escort you inside.”

Chapter 11 Don’t make fun of a woman with big lips. She’s probably thick and tired of it. -E-card

Michael “Where was this one from?” I asked Agent Palmer gruffly. Agent Palmer offered me a file folder, and I steeled myself before opening the offending folder. What I saw did not disappoint. “Goddammit,” I said, clearing my throat. “Why another one so fast?” “All of these have happened within the last three weeks. Roughly every three days. This is correct with that timeline,” he admitted softly. “Well that would’ve been news you should’ve shared yesterday seeing as this happened today and here I am again,” I muttered, staring at the scene in front of me. I wasn’t a detective. I didn’t have the patience to be one. Being a detective took dedication, time I didn’t have,

and serious patience and perseverance. I had the dedication and the perseverance, but not the other two. Which was why it was confusing to me that I was here at a crime scene looking at the carnage that was left behind. There weren’t any bodies left because those had gone to the hospital the moment the first responders arrived. The man, the killer, had fucked up. He’d done them in a good neighborhood. The type of neighborhood that, if they were to hear gunshots, the cops are called almost immediately. First responders had arrived within minutes, and both the woman and the man that’d been shot had been rushed to the hospital. They weren’t expected to live, although the last I heard they were both rushed to surgery. There wasn’t much they could do when the couple was shot in the head, but they still had to try. “Who is this one with?” I asked, surveying the scene. “Wolfgang Amsel worked for Karnack Police Department. His wife, Abby Amsel, was an accountant for Roscoe and Rush Accounting firm. Abby was eight and a

half months pregnant with her first child,” Agent Palmer informed me. I nodded. The name sounded so familiar, but I couldn’t place the name with a face. “What doctor’s office do these women go to?” I asked, the thought suddenly occurring to me. “The Women’s Center of East Texas for this one. The others are various ones of the Ark-La-Tex,” he said. “But all of their systems interconnect since the doctors float throughout the offices.” I turned my head to look to the kitchen counter. On the counter was the officer’s service weapon, badge, and various accessories he wore on his utility belt, car keys, and his phone. But the thing that drew my eye was the badge. When a law enforcement officer has fallen, there’s a tradition that other officers wear a thin line of blue over their badges to commemorate the fallen life. It’s usually only worn during the period of mourning, but over the years, it has come to be a show of respect for all law enforcement officials, civilians and public servants alike.

“You see this?” I asked Palmer. Palmer looked over and pursed his lips at the sight. “Yeah.” The badge had two strips of black duct tape arranged in an X across the badge, as if he was saying he took care of that particular officer. “Asshole,” I growled in anger. “I concur,” Palmer agreed. Then a thought occurred to me. “Did you check the tape for prints?” I asked. Agent Palmer nodded. “Yeah.” “What about the back of the tape?” I asked. I wasn’t a crime scene tech, but that would be a place that I’d look for prints. Agent Palmer pursed his lips. “They’ve already collected the evidence, but I’ll just take that to the techs and see if they can find anything,” Palmer said as he took an evidence bag out of his pocket, then used the tip of his pencil to hook the badge and drop it into the bag. Once zipped, he said, “That’s why I wanted you here. I noticed the other day you had a good eye. Nobody else could tell me much about the suspect, but you did.”

I shrugged, uncomfortable with the flattery. Palmer’s phone rang, and he pulled it from his pocket before answering it with a muttered, “Yeah?” “You’re fucking shitting me,” Agent Palmer said in surprise. “No fucking shit? Alright, we’ll come down now.” Palmer was already headed out the door, and I followed behind him quickly. The officer at the door, who was guarding the door for us, nodded as we passed. When Palmer hung up the phone he looked at me with elation in his eyes. “The cop,” he said nodding to the house. “Made it through surgery and is talking. He wants to speak with us.” Us? Why would he want to talk to me? I didn’t question it, however, only got into my truck and followed him to the hospital. When we arrived, the entire hospital was swarming with cops. Since the shooting had taken place, everyone and their brother was here, reporter wise, which meant that my fellow men in blue had to be here to take care of crowd

control. “Are you with the FBI?” One reporter asked as we started pushing through the crowd. “No comment,” Agent Palmer muttered darkly. “Are you the officer who responded to the Baby Cop Killer?” Another reporter asked. That question was directed at me. But I acted like I hadn’t heard, and kept pushing through right along with Palmer. Agent Elliott met us at the ER’s doors and held the door open wide as we crossed through. “Talk to me,” Palmer ordered Elliott. Elliott started hurrying to the elevators as he spoke. “He’s awake, first and foremost. He woke up viciously the moment the anesthesia wore off, but he can’t speak per se,” Elliott explained. “The bullet missed his brain completely. Apparently, at the last moment, Amsel jerked to the side. The bullet passed through the base of his neck and came out his mouth just perfectly. He lost a few teeth, and has a quite a bit of tissue and muscle damage in his neck, but he’s expected to make a complete recovery. Had to tell him that his wife died on the OR table. The baby didn’t make it either.”

I shook my head. That didn’t sound good, even with him saying he would make a full recovery. His wife was dead. His kid was dead. His life was forever changed. How could he ‘recover’ from that? I knew I couldn’t. If I lost Nikki, I’d be so fuckin’ lost it wouldn’t be funny. Even though I hadn’t had her the last year and a half, I still knew she was okay. Amsel, though, didn’t have that gift. He would forever live knowing he couldn’t protect his woman and child. Then I berated myself. Amsel may not have those problems. I just knew I would if our situations had been reversed. If it was Nikki carrying my child. Then I shivered. Nikki wouldn’t be carrying my child. No matter how much the idea of it turned me on.

“This is him. I got him a pad of paper to write everything down. I also had them fax the copies of all the members who work for The Women’s Center,” Elliott said, shaking his hand that had a thick pile of papers in it. When I made to wait outside, Elliott jerked his head. “You too. He asked for you.” My brows rose. “Me?” He nodded. “Yeah, apparently he knows you.” “How would he know I’m working on this case at all?” I asked. He stopped and turned. “He was the best friend of Darren Cox.” My mind shut down. Mother fucker. That guy. The murdered father in the crime scene that started this case for me. “Holy shit,” I breathed. Elliott nodded. “Yeah, needless to say he’s not doing too good.”

*** An hour later, with more information than Agent Palmer had in months over multiple cases, we walked out of Wolfgang Amsel’s hospital room. We still didn’t have a name. We did, however, have a hair color. Black. Which seemed to be the man’s trend. Amsel had explained that he’d just gotten off work and was in the kitchen eating the breakfast his wife had just cooked for him when someone had knocked at the door. She’d gone to answer it, and he’d looked up when she started backing up. He’d said that he heard ‘Turn around or I’ll shoot her!’ His service weapon had been at the island, half a room away from him, so he’d turned. And was promptly shot in the back of the head. He looked over in time to see his wife gunned down moments later by a man with black hair. Then he was gone. And he was left to watch as his wife fought for her life.

My phone rang when we made it to the waiting room, and I smiled when I saw it was Nikki. A little bit of happy in a big bowl of oh fuck. “Hello?” I answered the phone. “Hey,” she said worriedly. “We’re outside the ER entrance and there’re a bunch of people outside the doors. What’s going on?” I cleared my throat. “There was another murder,” I said softly. “Give me a few minutes to come down and I’ll escort you inside.” I’d known she’d be here. She couldn’t help herself. She’d been by to see Nathan Cox multiple times since he’d been there. And with what I’d told her last night about Madden and his two kids, I knew she’d be here as soon as she could. I’d planted the hint to call Shiloh and Georgia, though. Madden didn’t deserve that lot in life. He deserved to live a happy, easy life. Something he couldn’t do anymore. Not with two kids.

Two kids he was adamant he was not leaving. And he was most definitely not giving up. In the eyes of the law, a child is solely your child, no matter what the age. Although it got a little hairy when you couldn’t take care of your children. Something Madden couldn’t do by himself. The best way to make this happen was to place all three within a home that was willing to take them on. And that was where Nikki, Shiloh, and Georgia came in. “I gotta go let my girl in,” I told the two men in front of me. “She’s stuck outside the ER with a shit ton of cops and reporters.” They both nodded. “That’s fine. We’re leaving anyway. We’ll walk down with you,” Elliott said. Nodding, I hit the down button, and the elevator doors swung open. “Do you think what you got today will help?” I asked the two as the doors closed and we started to descend. Elliott shrugged, but Palmer nodded. “I think so, yes.”

I felt a relieved breath pour through me. “That’s good,” I told them. “Really good.” And it was. Cops didn’t deserve to have even more people against them. They deserved unity and support from the public, and with all the cop related shootings going on lately, it wasn’t looking good for us. “You know my number,” I said when the doors opened. The two of them nodded and exited the ER with me. Once outside, they went left, and I went straight to where I could see Nikki and the two women at her sides. “Hey,” I said, pointing towards the gap in the saw horses the police had erected. They all nodded and started pushing through the last of the crowd until they arrived at the gap. When Estevez would’ve stopped them, I put my hand on his back. “They’re with me,” I informed him. He winked. “Gotcha.” Both girls came around the barrier and I pulled Nikki against my side with my arm around her shoulders. “I need

a hug that’ll turn into sex,” she whispered against the skin of my neck. I squeezed her shoulders tightly, pulling her even deeper into me. Then, like a boss, I said, “I could give that to you…if you want.”

Chapter 12 Hello, my name is Nikki Pena, and I’m a liar. I’m also going to hell. -A liar’s secret thoughts

Nikki “Hello?” Michael answered his phone with a large bite of hamburger taking up the majority of his mouth. Michael grinned, and I could see chunks of food in his mouth, causing me to turn away in disgust. My stomach roiled, and I looked down at the barely eaten plate of nachos I’d ordered for lunch- one hundred percent sure that if I tried to eat them I’d be barfing in no time. It’d been four weeks since all the business with Madden and his children had gone down, and a little over four weeks since little Nathan Cox had been admitted to the hospital for a gunshot wound to his head. All four were doing fine, and Madden was with his children at a temporary foster home until we could figure out a more permanent situation. Nathan, however, wasn’t home. Although he was doing much better, he still wasn’t where he needed to be to be allowed release from the

hospital. Then there was the murderer out there killing cops and their pregnant wives. That was the worst. That part was so scary because I worried for my friends and family, since all of them were cops. Nausea started to slither up the back of my throat, and I hastily grabbed my cup of tea before taking several sips in a vain attempt to keep it down. “I told you to buy a four wheel drive,” Michael said, taking another bite of his sandwich. I closed my eyes as a ball of food and stomach contents started coming up my throat, and swallowed convulsively to get it to go back down. “Yeah, I’ll be there in twenty minutes,” Michael said with a laugh. “Don’t dig it down any more. I’ll be there.” I opened my eyes when I felt the table cloth move from him standing up. I raised an expectant brow at him, all the while trying not to let on just how badly I felt. “My sister’s stuck in her front yard. I have to go pull her out. Do you want to go or are you going home to study?” He asked hopefully.

I immediately started to feel bad. Although I’d spent time with him over the last month, I’ve not spent much time with him. We were together…just not together. I was there physically, just not mentally. I’d been studying for my final exam that would hopefully lead to me being a certified mid-wife in the state of Texas. A test that I was taking next week if all worked out as planned. I had been ignoring him, though, and I was regretting that. The only time we actually spent together, without me studying, was when I was laying in his arms at night. “I’ll go,” I said softly, standing up. A wave of exhaustion hit me the moment I stood and I swayed. Michael caught me by the elbow and asked, “Okay?” I nodded. “I’m really tired.” His brows raised. “That’s ‘cause you’ve been studying into the wee hours of the night, working so much you get overtired and waking up at the crack of dawn for more studying,” he admonished,

helping me around the table and easing me into the aisle. He didn’t let go of my hand until I was fully ensconced in his truck. “Buckle up, baby,” he whispered, running the rough palm of his hand up my thigh. I shivered at the familiar touch, and my core started to clench in anticipation. “Okay,” I said quickly, plugging my seatbelt in and squeezing my legs shut tightly to circumvent the need that was slowly starting to course through me. Nausea completely forgotten now that I could only think about how his cock would feel inside my…Nikki! Control yourself! I was a walking horny machine. At any given time of the day or night, I was ready to go. So horny, in fact, that I now masturbated in the shower to thoughts of Michael when he wasn’t there to take care of me. “What are you thinking about?” Michael asked, the look on his face comically knowing. “Nothing.” I muttered, trying my best to make the whole horny feeling go away. But it wasn’t of any use.

It was there to stay, and would be until either he, or I, took care of it. Jesus, I was becoming such a slut puppy! We’d driven about two miles and were just turning onto a dirt road when he suddenly pulled off into a corpse of trees, the truck bouncing awkwardly on the grass and gravel before he rocked to a stop. “Michael!” I gasped. Then I was being pulled across the seat, dragged into his lap until I was facing the windshield. I could feel the hard column of his cock digging into my ass, and I squirmed in excitement. “Do you know,” he murmured against my neck, “What it’s like to see you like this?” I shook my head and arched my body when he started to move his fingers from my hips, up my rib cage, to come to a stop at my distended nipples. Nipples that had become so sensitive lately that I could barely breathe when he touched them. Even the minutest of touches had me soaring in seconds. “N-no,” I said, gasping for breath. He growled against my neck.

“I can always tell,” he told me. “I could tell two years ago, and I can still tell now. You have a tell, baby.” I moaned when his mouth moved up the column of my neck to dip his tongue slightly into my ear before licking around the outer shell. “A tell?” I asked breathlessly. My eyes closed as his other hand went down until he reached the hem of my skirt and slowly started to work it up. It wasn’t long before my ass was bared, and he noticed I wasn’t wearing panties. “You rub your legs together and flip your hair from side to side. Your nipples get hard, and your eyes start to dilate,” he informed me, moving his hand until his fingers zeroed in on my pussy. Three fingers coasted through the lips of my sex and immediately found purchase inside me. “So wet for me, too,” he growled. I nodded, lifting my hands to play with my other breast. “Yeah, all of it’s for you,” I told him honestly. “All I can think about is having you inside of me.” He chuckled against my neck. “Do you know what it’s like to have a boner in the same room as your woman’s

brother? It’s not fuckin’ easy, and it happens all the time with all the dirty texts you send me day in and day out.” I laughed breathlessly. “Yeah, I’m really sorry about that,” I lied. He snorted at my lie. “Yeah, I’m sure you are.” Then his hands went to his belt behind my back, and I felt his belt being released from its clasp, and his pants pulled down over his hips. When his cock popped free of its confines, it rubbed deliciously against the cheeks of my ass before he said, “Sit up.” I nodded, lifting up until he could position himself at my entrance. Then he pulled me down, filling me so swiftly and quickly that I immediately started coming. I don’t know what’s wrong with me, but even the idea of him taking me so roughly had me seeing stars. “So fuckin’ responsive,” he growled as he took my hips and started roughly pulling me down on him. I made a keening noise in my throat in agreement, and he laughed. “Lean forward so I can watch you taking me. Hold onto the steering wheel,” he ordered me.

I did, leaning forward until my breasts were pressed up against the horn and swiftly picked up the pace again, working fast to bring him to release. “So perfect,” he whispered, running his hands over the expanse of my ass. I moaned again. “Yeah, you fill me so good,” I said, slapping my ass against his thighs, taking his big dick as far as I could get him. His hand ran up the length of my spine to settle on my shoulder, then slammed me down using the purchase he had, urging me to go faster and faster. On one particular thrust he started to come. I felt his belly tighten, then his cock started to jump as he shot his release into my waiting channel. And that was all I needed, once again, to come. My eyes crossed, and I threw my head back. Michael fisted my hair as it tickled his belly, holding me steady with it when I finally came down from the high he’d just delivered to me. “Fuckin’ beautiful,” he whispered fiercely. I smiled and leaned back until my back rested against his front.

He wrapped both hands around me and buried his face into my neck. “You’re killing me lately,” he whispered laughingly. I snorted. “I can’t help it. That’s all I think about. Your cock,” I teased. He chuckled and leaned forward to grab the stack of napkins we’d gotten from Chick-Fil-A the night before. Handing half to me, I placed it on the front of my vagina while he took the back, doing his best to catch the come that started to leak from my pussy the moment it was free of his cock. I fell to my side in the passenger seat and did my best to clean myself of his come before retaking my seat. He’d already tossed his napkins in the little bag hanging from his steering column. “Here,” I said, offering the soiled napkins to him. He gave me a ‘yeah right’ look and took the bag off his steering column, offering it to me. “There.” I smiled and shoved the napkins into the bag before handing it back to him. He took it reluctantly and replaced it before starting the truck up once more and backing out of the makeshift

driveway. “We’re going to be late,” I told him. He tossed me a look. “We’re not going to be late. You can’t be late to somethin’ like this.” Instead of answering, I stayed silent and watched the trees pass by, my nausea starting to return now that the horniness wasn’t there to overwhelm the nausea. “You can be late to something like this if your sister’s been sitting in the driveway for the last hour waiting on us to get there,” I retorted. He rolled his eyes, not that I could tell that he’d done so. I, at least, heard the derision in his tone. “My sister can wait as long as it takes, seeing as I told her not to buy the house in the first place because it was in a flood zone. Then I told her not to wait on getting a driveway because if she did, the whole thing would flood and she’d tear up her yard. Then when she didn’t get the driveway, I told her to get a four wheel drive. Do you know what she got? A two wheel drive Jeep. Who the fuck gets a two wheel drive Jeep?” I could tell that he really wanted to know, and I didn’t have an answer for him. The answer was: nobody.

What was the point of a Jeep if it didn’t have four wheel drive? Not that I’d side with him. Women needed to side with each other, otherwise men would take over the world. Or, at least, Michael would get a fat head thinking he was always right. “She lives out in the boonies, too, which means it’s a drive from wherever I’m at,” he told me as he turned down a dirt road. “And it’s a fixer upper, so I’m there every other weekend, it seems like.” He wasn’t there every other weekend, which I told him. “You’re not there every other weekend. Because you’ve been with me for a month now, and I’ve never met her, and you spend your weekends with me,” I told him dryly. He winked at me, and I felt shivers race down my spine. But then we hit a pot hole causing the truck to dip down low. And the nausea welled back up my throat. “Pull over!” I pleaded, hand going to my mouth.

He read the state I was in quickly with a quick scan of his eyes, and pulled over. Not that it was much. But it was enough. He stopped the truck quickly, and I had enough time to throw my door open before I lost the lunch that I’d barely eaten. My head felt like it was a million times too big as I threw up everything I had in there, then started dry heaving. I guess Michael was worried about me falling out of the truck because his hand went to the waist band of my skirt to hold on while I violently puked. Head pounding, I lifted up. Only to come face to face with a cow. He was on his side of the fence, but still, the surprise of it all had me squeaking in surprise. “You okay?” Michael asked. I turned to him, then back to the cow. “Yeah, I’m okay now. I’ve been nauseous since breakfast,” I told him. “Stomach bug?” He asked worriedly. I shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe. We have so many sick people come through the hospital every day that it’s possible. But I haven’t a clue. I just hope it goes the hell

away.” Reluctantly, he let my skirt go, and turned back to face the front of the truck. “Maybe we should take you home,” he said. “It wouldn’t be good to pass whatever you have to Reggie.” I waved my hand. “I’ll stay in the car. You’re all the way out here, and I’ll be fine as long as you don’t mind.” He shook his head. “No, I don’t mind. Just don’t spread your cooties to me.” I snorted, and pulled the door closed, tossing a glance at the cow who looked a little bit sad to see me go. I leaned my head back against the seat, and closed my eyes as Michael started moving the truck back down the road. At a much slower pace this time. “I won’t spread my cooties if I can help it,” I laughed. His hand captured mine, and he held it on top of the middle console for another two miles. Then he pulled into a…yard. There wasn’t any driveway. None at all. And with all the rain we’d been getting over the past two months, her yard resembled more of a lake rather than a yard.

“She drives a jacked up two wheel drive Jeep…” I said unsurprised. “Why would she lift a two wheel drive?” Michael burst out laughing. “Exactly!” He tried carefully, but the moment he pulled into her yard, his tires sank and started to spin. “Gonna have to put it in already,” he muttered, doing something on the floorboard that I couldn’t see. I couldn’t see it because the woman that was coming out of the little brown house was beautiful. I could clearly tell she was Michael’s sister. She had the same beautiful brown hair, and even from this distance I could see that her eyes were the same translucent blue. “She looks just like you,” I observed as he pulled a uey in her yard and started to back up. Mud splattered and slammed against the windows, causing me to laugh at the situation. I’d been mudding before. Hell, I was raised in East Texas. If you hadn’t been mudding, that was because you hadn’t lived here long.

But I hadn’t done it in so long that I’d forgotten the way you slipped and slid. Mud had zero traction. It helped that Michael’s truck was so big. And his tires were so mean looking. He rolled the window down and placed his hand on the window’s ledge while he lined up to his target. Because he had it backed up to Hannah’s Jeep in no time, and was bailing out before I could ask him if he needed me to do anything. I was studying the horses across the street when Michael’s voice yelled for me. “Nikki!” I stuck my head out the window and turned around until I could see him. “Yeah?” I asked curiously. Hannah and Michael were standing close, both of them looking at me. Michael’s was teasing, and Hannah’s look was calculating. She was sizing me up. I waved to him, and she cracked a smile.

“He told me to stay in the truck so I didn’t spread my pukey cooties to you!” I informed her. Hannah smiled. “Appreciate that. If I catch it, it’ll mean Reggie will catch it!” She thanked me. “Are y’all done?” Michael snapped impatiently. I blinked, but wisely kept my mouth shut. But I did nod my head. “Good,” he muttered. “Now get into the driver’s seat and back it up a little more.” I saluted him, and he narrowed his eyes at me. Scrambling over the seat, I scooted the seat up to where I could reach the pedals easily, and backed the truck up. Promptly saturating them both with mud. I slapped my hand over my mouth. “I’m sorry!” I yelled. Michael didn’t laugh, but Hannah did. Great guffaws that had her doubled over in hilarity. “Do you want to pull yourself out?” He growled to his sister.

She shook her head and stood up, but she still had streaks running down her face where the tears from her laughing washed the mud away. “Jeez,” she said, walking to her Jeep’s door. “You’re no fun.” “That’s right, I’m not.” I raised my brow at him, but he couldn’t see me because he was busy attaching the chain he’d produced from his toolbox to both vehicles. I contemplated Michael’s sudden change in demeanor. He’d done that quite a few times in the month I’d really been spending time with him. Three instances where all of a sudden his mood would just snap from one extreme to the other. Going from really happy, to pissed off at the slightest thing in a matter of seconds. Quite frankly, it was fascinating to witness. Not that I’d tell him that I found his disease fascinating. I’d learned to roll with it, though. I had sisters. Enough said. Also, it was easier not to call attention to it and act like

nothing was wrong. That was the fastest way to get him back on track, and I knew he was grateful that I didn’t heckle him about it. “Alright, Hannah. I want you to give it some gas when you start to feel the tug on the chain, okay?” He confirmed. She nodded, and he started to the driver’s side door, so I moved before he could ask me to. I was in my seat when he opened the door, and I had to look the other way so he wouldn’t see the smile on my face. “I know you’re laughing at me,” he growled. “I’m not laughing,” I lied. He snorted and threw it into drive. The tightening of the chain sounded, and both of them started giving it gas. Then, all of a sudden, Michael stopped. “She’s going forward,” he said, covering his face with his hands. “Please tell me she’s not. Because I’ll be embarrassed to call her my sister.” I hopped out of the truck, and my white tennis shoes immediately sank into the mud. It came all the way up to my lower calves, but I got out to circumvent the argument I knew was about to ensue.

“Hannah!” I whispered loudly. She turned and let off the gas. “Backwards!” I whispered again. Her eyes widened, and then she covered her mouth with her hand. “Shit!” With pink cheeks, she pushed it up into reverse and started to go backwards. Michael then started to go forward, and immediately pulled her out of the dirt with little to no effort at all. He drug her all the way to the road where he pulled over and parked just to the side of the road and got out. “You need a driveway,” he growled. Hannah fell out of her Jeep because she was parked on the incline that lead to a ditch, causing her to trip and nearly fall on her face. Her baby brother, though, saved her before she could even make it to her knees. “You’ll need to keep parking here where it’s packed ground, otherwise you’ll keep getting stuck,” he told her, setting her on her feet. I crossed my arms over my chest and turned to look at the dog that was peeking out the door behind me. “Hey big boy,” I said to him.

He was old. He was a black lab that had a white mask covering the entirety of his face. He moved slow as he made his way to me. I went down to my haunches, holding out my hand for him. He nudged my hand, and I started to pet his head. “You’re a sweet baby,” I told him, scratching behind his ears. “That’s Mogley,” Hannah said from behind me. “He’s a sucker for some lovin’s.” I smiled. “He’s sweet. I used to have a black lab like him named Nike. My dad had to put him to sleep when he was fifteen because he couldn’t walk anymore. Too many Frisbee tosses, I guess.” “Mogley’s a whiz with a tennis ball. He used to be my ex’s, but Joshua didn’t want to take care of him anymore when he started to lose his desire to duck hunt,” she said sadly. What a dick. How could you just get rid of a dog who was too old to do what you asked of him? Certainly not me!

I’d kill for a puppy, but my apartment’s pet deposit was outrageous, and you couldn’t have a dog over twenty five pounds. And, although I loved small dogs, I couldn’t handle the high pitch barking that came with them. I much preferred a dog that would protect me. Play with me. And genuinely have fun with me. I’d have that again someday. “He’s a sweetheart,” I told her. Michael came up to the porch and offered Mogley a scratch on the head before he started stripping off his boots, followed quickly by his pants. “Got anything I can change into?” He asked. I blinked when he stripped right down to his boxer briefs. “What would you do if I didn’t?” She asked laughingly. He glared at her. “Drive home in my underwear,” he said simply. Of course he would. Although, men could get away with that. They could get away with almost anything. Whereas, if a woman had tried to drive home in

nothing but a bra and panties, she’d get into trouble for it. “I have some of Joshua’s old clothes in the spare bedroom. They won’t fit you well, but I’m pretty sure there’s a pair of old shorts and a t-shirt or something,” she told him. He grunted and walked into the house, completely ignoring me. “Hmmm,” I said once he left. “He’s in one of those moods,” she explained softly. I nodded. “He’s fine.” She looked at me carefully. “You know,” she said simply. I blinked. “Know what?” I asked innocently. “That he’s bi-polar.” I nodded. “Yeah, he told me.” Her eyes widened in understanding. “He loves you,” she whispered. “And you love him.” I blinked. “Well…” I did. I just didn’t want his sister to know. I was waiting. I sensed that that was somehow crucial to our budding

relationship. If I spooked him, he would run. Which was why I was denying, with everything I had, what I sorely suspected wasn’t food poisoning or a stomach bug. I was pregnant. Very pregnant. Because since I’d hooked back up with Michael, I’d not had my period. I was so regular with my period that I could set a timer to it. I could tell you within the hour of when I was going to start, because it started at the same time every month. Which meant that the first time we were together we’d conceived a child. A child that he didn’t want. A child that I had to convince him that he could have. Who could be healthy. Who could be a good person, just like he was. Whether he wanted to admit he was a good man or not. “You love him,” she confirmed, nodding her head. “Good. He’s a good man.” See? I knew he was.

“I know,” I told her. “He’s a really good man.” “He’s a sap for a little kid, though. As you can see, he’s collecting them once again,” she said with a snicker. “A year or so ago, he saved a little boy from a car crash, and stayed with him for four hours while he was cut out of a car. Now Jackson is Michael’s biggest fan. They still hang out with each other every once in a while. Hell, he’s Reggie’s best friend. He’s all she talks about sometimes.” That knowledge that he loved kids gave me hope. I’d already known that, of course, but it was good to have it reiterated. “How old is Reggie?” I asked, gathering up Michael’s clothes and boots and putting them into a trash bag that Hannah had magically produced out of a planter/secret hiding spot between two chairs on her porch. “She’s two and a half, going on eighteen,” Hannah laughed. “She’s Michael’s little mini-me. Imitates everything Michael does, and it drives my ex-husband bonkers. I love it.” I laughed with her. Which was how Michael found us. He wasn’t in a bad mood any longer. No, he was in a great mood.

Which he proved when he said, “I like it when my two favorite girls get along, smiling and laughing.” I gave him a thumbs up. “Well, we were laughing at you. Does that make you feel any different?” He shook his head in the negative. “No, it doesn’t. As long as you’re getting along,” he announced. I raised a brow at him, studying his attire. He was in a black pair of jogging shorts that were seriously too tight on him, mostly because I could make out the outline of his cock through the shorts. And although it was a very nice outline, it wasn’t something I wanted the world to be seeing. His shirt wasn’t much better, but at least it was something. I was happy to see his tattoos in the daylight, though. Normally, I only got to see him when we were at his house or mine. And it was only in the privacy of our bedroom. Michael wasn’t like normal men. He didn’t go without a shirt. He always had one on. Always. Unless he was going to bed or getting out of the

shower. “Why wouldn’t we get along?” I asked curiously. Hannah was the one to answer. “Joslin and I didn’t get along. At all. She was selfish and stuck up. She also hated the fact that I called her on her shit when I picked up ER rotations. Something she really, really didn’t like,” she answered. “Ahh,” I said. “That makes sense. She hates me because I do that, too.” Hannah grinned. “Looks like we have a ton of stuff in common. And guess what! We can gang up on her at family dinners and Christmases! Because my big brother is being stupid and marrying the cheating hoe!” Michael’s head tilted to the side. “How’d you know she cheated?” Hannah looked at him as if he were stupid. “Michael, baby brother dear, I’m not stupid. I work in the same hospital she does. And her stink doesn’t just stay on the ground floor. It permeates to all the floors. Trust me.” I had to agree. Joslin was somewhat famous. She was the hoe of the hospital, and everyone knew it. They may not know her by sight, but they knew her by

name, and that name wasn’t really pretty. “They call her Whoreslin instead of Joslin,” Hannah informed him. He blinked. “And she’s alright with that?” He asked in disbelief. My eyebrows shot up. “She doesn’t know she’s called that,” I told him. He blinked. “If everyone calls her that, she has to know. The woman is far from dumb,” he told me. I shrugged. “No matter. Whatever she is, is not dumb. But she also has no care of what others think of her. She’s going to do what she does without another thought on what anyone else thinks.” “So will you be on time for dinner tonight?” Hannah asked, changing the subject. I was glad. That subject always had the ability to make me depressed. A year and a half of working with her, and I still hated it. The fact that I was about to meet his parents, though, wasn’t much better.

In fact, the nausea was back full force at the thought of meeting them. I’d met parents before, but I never knew what to say. I wasn’t a very outgoing person. I could talk to someone, of course, but I always said or did something to make myself look stupid. “We’ll be there on time, I think. Unless something with the team comes up,” Michael said, lifting his arms high above his head to rest on the lip of the porch’s roof. His way too short shirt rode up exposing his taut belly, and my mouth started to water. His belly was covered with tattoos, but I could still see the defined ridges of his abdominals peeking out. The man was seriously ripped. And it never hurt to see his tattoos. Something which made me so happy to see on display since they were made for people to see. Not that he agreed with me. It’d been the subject of many discussions, and I’d finally decided to just let it be. He could do what he wanted to do, and I’d be there to support him. “Well, it’s not like you have any control of when you

get a SWAT callout. It is what it is,” she said, waving her arm at the idea that he’d be late for that. “Mom will get over it.” I sensed that this was also a sore subject, him being on the SWAT team, and I made a mental note to ask him about it later. “Alright, Hannah. I’ve got to run. We’ve got a lunch with the boys, but I’ll see you later this afternoon,” he said to his sister. Hannah walked forward and hugged him, effectively getting him muddy once again, but not nearly as much as he’d been before. He scrunched her hair and kissed her forehead before he let her go. “Be careful,” he whispered to her. Hannah nodded. “I will.” Then, before I could think or say anything to the contrary, I was picked up. One of his arms swept my legs out from under me, and the other went behind my shoulders to catch me as I fell. I squealed and looped my arms around his shoulders, hanging on for dear life, even though I knew he’d never drop me.

“I’m too heavy!” I protested. He snorted. “You’re not heavy. You’re petite. Which is the opposite of too heavy,” he said with that annoyingly sweet tone of his. I could hear the way his feet sank into the mud with each step, and I couldn’t help but object. “Michael, my feet are already covered in mud. Why are you carrying me?” I asked. He laughed. I leaned my head down to rest against his neck. “Whatever,” I said teasingly. He squeezed me tighter, and I’d never felt safer or more content in my life.

Chapter 13 Don’t put off tomorrow what you should’ve done today. Maybe I will…tomorrow. -Fact of life

Nikki “Michael!” I gasped, my head going back as he roughly pulled my hair, exposing my neck to his mouth. He ran his tongue from my collarbone all the way to my ear lobe, which he sucked into his mouth, running his tongue along the outer shell. “We’re going to be late,” I said desperately. He wasn’t listening, though. He was already pulling my jeans down my thighs, pushing them down with both hands as he bent me over the side of the bed. “I’ll be quick,” he rumbled deeply, making my eyes roll back in my head when his bearded cheeks ran down my slit as he traced the length of my sex with his tongue. “God,” I breathed, pushing back involuntarily as he thrust his tongue into my waiting pussy. The scratchy beard covering his chin dug deliciously into my clit, and I was on the verge of coming when he

pulled back so abruptly that I cried out in frustration. “Alright, we can go now,” he said sternly. I looked over my shoulder at him, saw the gleam in his eyes, and knew he was joking. Narrowing my eyes I gave him the stink eye. “You’ve already got me on the brink. How about you just finish the job?” I asked, wiggling my ass for effect. He grinned and slowly worked the zipper of his jeans down, unbuttoned them, then lowered his pants from around his hips just enough that he could free his erection without much maneuvering. I licked my lips causing him to grin at me. He knew how much he affected me, and I didn’t care one bit. “Michael,” I urged, pushing my hips back against him. His eyes darkened, and he lined his cock up with my entrance before slowly easing inside. I gasped and threw my head back. My hair flipped over my back, and Michael caught it, fisting it into his hands as he pulled back his hips. Then he sank back inside, pulling my hair to urge me to move back against him at the same time. I obliged, throwing my hips back so hard that a loud

smack filled the room where our hips collided. He grunted. “That’s the way you want to do this?” He asked casually, as if he wasn’t driving me crazy with his slow movements. “Yes!” I screamed. He obliged that, too. Pulling his hips back until the meaty head of his cock stayed notched in my entrance, he rammed back inside of me so hard that my knees lifted from the bed. “Ahhh,” I moaned, lightening coursing through my veins as the erotic staccato of his movements lit me up like a firecracker. Pleasure was building in my core. My previous orgasm barreling back towards the finish line as he slammed into me, harder and harder until the only thing I anticipated was the delicious pain that shot through me each time he sank inside of me. His free hand, that wasn’t pulling back on my hair, found a home on my ass, squeezing it tighter and tighter until I was sure he’d pull my ass off. But soon I didn’t care because I was coming. The erotic pain, the pure pleasure, and the excitement

smashed through me all at once, and I spontaneously combusted. Or so it felt like. Maybe it was an orgasm. But I wouldn’t call what I had with Michael ‘normal.’ What we had was fan-fucking-tastic. “I’m coming,” I gasped. “Please!” He knew what I wanted. His hand left my hair, and the other left my hip. One traveled to my clit while the other went to one of my breasts: pulling, plucking, and tickling. My personal bottle rocket exploded into a full blown fireworks finale as I clamped down on him so hard I heard him curse and pump his hips impossibly faster. “Jesus,” he grunted. Then I felt the hot splash of his come pouring into me, filling me up, and marking me as his. He pushed forward one final time and stayed planted, panting with exertion. “You know,” he said. “I don’t even muster up this much sweat when I run.” I groaned.

“I can’t complain.” And I couldn’t. If I had to deal with the sweat to get the pleasure I just had, then I’d take it every day of the week and twice on Sundays. He pulled out of me, leaving me feeling bereft. I was on my belly on the bed, and I could feel his essence leaking out of me in a gush. Yet I didn’t have the energy to care at that moment. “Get up, woman,” Michael slapped my ass. I flipped him off, no doubt leaking come all over the bed. I’d change the sheets when we got home. There was no way I could move right now. Well, that is unless Michael were to pick me up. Which he did only seconds later, wrapping his big hands around my waist and standing me up. “Clean up, pull up your pants, and let’s go. I can just hear my mom screeching now,” Michael teased. Horror filled me. “What?” I said frantically. “Are we late?”

Of course we were late. We’d just had sex when we should’ve been leaving, Nikki Pena! “Gah!” I said hurriedly, placing the palm of my hand between my legs to catch any stray drops that might leak out as I hobbled to the bathroom, my pants still around my ankles from where he’d left them earlier. Michael laughed as he watched, sitting down on the bed to holster his gun and tie his shoes. Twenty minutes later, and only ten minutes late, we pulled up to his parents’ house. It was gorgeous. It was one of those plantation houses with white paint, huge white pillars, red shutters, and a large front porch that housed rocking chairs. “This is nice,” I said in awe. I’d grown up on a farm. We’d lived in a five bedroom house with seven children. My brother, being the only boy, had gotten a room by himself while my sisters and I all had to spilt into three. It looked like this house had no less than ten bedrooms. Plus a maid’s quarters.

And a pool house. “Yeah,” he agreed, opening his door and hurrying around to mine. “It was good.” I hopped out when he offered me his hand, and started up the front walk. “I’m nervous,” I whispered to Michael. “And we’re late!” He patted my hand. “It’ll be alright.” I knew it would be. He’d make it so. But that still didn’t help the nervousness that was tearing up my insides. Or was that the nausea that hadn’t gone away for three days? Because I felt like I was going to die. Of nervousness. Or maybe anorexia since I was so stinkin’ hungry. I’d met his parents on the ped’s floor, of course, but only long enough to chat with them since they’d both been working at the time. Meeting them at their house, in their territory, on their baby boy’s arm, was a different thing entirely.

“It’s going to be okay, I promise,” he told me, as we walked up the front walk of his parent’s house. “Are you sure my pants aren’t too tight?” I asked worriedly. His eyes went from the front door to my ass, and I could see his pupils dilate. “No baby, they’re fuckin’ perfect,” he murmured, licking his lips. “Maybe we should go home. Call and tell them you’re still sick…” I laughed, knocking him with my elbow in the ribs. “We did that before we came,” I teased lightly. Then the door in front of me opened, and a beautiful woman, with Michael’s blue eyes, opened the door, and at her back was a man with Michael’s brown hair. With a few gray hairs that only added to its awesomeness. “Michael, you’re late,” his mother said reprovingly. Then her eyes lit on Michael’s bared arms, and I winced. That’d been me begging him to wear a t-shirt. I should’ve let him wear the long sleeve one he wanted to wear. “Ma,” he said, walking in with me behind him. “We were held up trying to find a matching shoe.” And we had been.

That’d been what had started the whole thing tonight. I’d been looking under the bed, and he’d been looking at my ass instead of for my shoe. “Nikki!” Hannah called from further beyond. “I’m glad you could make it!” I smiled genuinely at Hannah, then melted even further as the little girl in her arms launched herself at Michael. “Uncle Mickey!” Reggie screeched. Reggie was a ball of sunshine and happiness wrapped up in a hot pink dress and brown curls. I wanted her! How cute was she? “Uncle Mickey! Spin!” Reggie screeched again. The rest of us watched as Michael spun Reggie in a circle, arms extended out in front of him while he held her suspended in the air. She screeched and yelled, hollering and hooting as she did the ‘airpane.’ “Alright, children. That’s enough. How about some dinner?” Elizabeth chastised them gently. Michael swung one more time, then came to an abrupt stop.

He placed Reggie on the floor, and we all watched as she started to stumble as her equilibrium came back to her in slow increments. Michael caught her before she could face plant, and laughed at her. “You did better, Reggie-Roo,” he said, pulling her tightly into his chest. I could tell he loved her. Dearly. And I couldn’t help a pang of sadness at the sight. I wanted that to be our kid together. “What’s for dinner?” Another voice called from the living room. I looked up, startled to see another man there. He resembled Michael in color. He had the same tanned skin and brown hair. But that was where their similarities stayed. This man had a more ‘baby’ face with a very lean build to him. He didn’t look much like the rest of the family, like Hannah and Michael did. “I made lemon pepper chicken and garlic mashed

potatoes with asparagus and a pound cake for dessert,” Elizabeth smiled, happy that someone had asked her what she’d made. I noticed how the man nodded, and the woman plastered against him grimaced. I’d forgotten that Joslin might possibly be here. Or more like shut it out. I really didn’t like the woman, and I must’ve unconsciously protected myself from thinking about it all day, because until just now, I’d completely forgotten she’d be here. Michael wrapped his arm around my shoulders, pulling me into his side as he said, “Smells great, mom. I hope you made some sweet tea, though. I’m thirsty.” Elizabeth gave her son a droll look. “What do you take me for, a Yankee?” She jeered. I snorted, and covered my mouth with my hand at the jab. Joslin was from up North. I knew that because she always liked to say how Texas ‘wasn’t New York.’ Well, thank God for that! “Well, lead the way, ma. You’re complainin’ about

how I was late, yet here you are lolly-gaggling,” Michael teased. Elizabeth narrowed her eyes at her son. “Watch it,” she waggled her finger at him. Dinner was excellent. And not a thing went wrong the entire time. I kept my eyes on my own plate, smiled at everyone, and acted like I was comfortable. But the whole time I wasn’t. Joslin did nothing but glare at me the entire time, and I lost patience with her about thirty minutes into the meal, and started glaring right back. “More chicken?” I looked up to find Dean holding the chicken dish out to me, and I shook my head. “No, thank you.” His eyes narrowed when I wouldn’t take the dish, and I looked down at my empty plate. “I’m filled to the brim, promise,” I told him. He sighed. “Dean doesn’t like it when the women in his life don’t eat as much as a small horse,” Michael mumbled around a bite of bread. “I keep telling him to get over it, but he has a phobia.”

I blinked. “A phobia?” I asked in confusion. I really was stuffed, so it didn’t matter if he wanted me to eat more or not. I wasn’t going to. Not with the way my stomach had been roiling on and off lately. “A girl he dated in high school used to be anorexic. So he thinks every girl he knows is,” Hannah muttered, smiling at her brother in humor. “I do not!” Dean denied. “You do,” Manuelo laughed from the end of the table. “So, Mom,” Joslin interrupted the conversation with her normal awesome self. “What are we doing for the holidays? I really want to go to Colorado to ski again.” I hated skiing. So hopefully Michael didn’t expect me to go with him. “We tried that last year and it didn’t go well; that’s off the table for this year,” Manuelo muttered, making me love him in that instant. “Plus, now we have another person to add to the mix we’ll have to start syncing our schedules now.” My heart warmed at the mention of me, and when Manuelo smiled at me, I knew he’d forever have my heart.

If anyone can take on Joslin like that, then I was all for him! “But last year the boys picked. This years the girls pick,” Joslin whined. Michael made his mouth busy by shoving another piece of bread in it, but I could tell he wanted to yell at her. Hell, so did I. I didn’t, of course. Surprisingly, it was Dean who said it. “How about we talk about this when it comes closer to time? It’s only April,” Dean offered. “Alright, well since everyone’s done, I’ll clean the dishes. Nikki, Joslin, how about you two help me?” Elizabeth asked nicely. I refrained from grimacing. Cleaning the kitchen was my least favorite thing to do in the world. Give me a mop or a toilet brush all day long, but the thought of touching food and smelling it really made me want to gag. Michael looked at me, gauging my willingness to do it, and started to say something, but I stayed his hand. “Okay,” I said brightly, standing up and reaching for

Michael’s and my plate. When I started to pull Michael’s plate away, he held onto it until I looked into his eyes. What I saw there was concern. For me. Smiling at him, I leaned down and kissed him softly on the lips, whispering, “I’m okay.” He looked into my eyes, studying me for long moments, then nodded. “Bring me some pie on the way back out.” I winked. “Yes, sir.” “See, that’s what I like to hear! Lizzie, when are you gonna learn how to obey like that?” Manuelo asked loudly. Laughing, I followed a grumbling Elizabeth, and an even more unhappy Joslin, into the kitchen. “Makin’ us look bad, my dear,” Elizabeth said once the door swung shut behind us. They had one of those swinging doors that I’d only seen in movies, and their kitchen was state of the art. “Man, I could knock out some tamales in here!” I said in awe. “You’re welcome to make them anytime you wish, as long as you share,” Elizabeth offered graciously.

“Deal,” I said, stopping by the trash to dump what remained on the two plates in my hand into the trash before walking them to the sink where Elizabeth was rinsing the dishes. Joslin took a seat at the table and started leafing through a magazine, leaving Elizabeth and I to fill the silence, which was surprisingly easy, considering. “So, what made you want to be a midwife?” Elizabeth asked, offering me a rinsed off dish to load into the dishwasher. “I’m a paramedic. The first call I ever took when I was on my own was a forty week pregnant woman having her baby in a closet in her bedroom. It was during one of those storms that threatened to hail and damage everything in the affected area with its high winds. They’d just rung the tornado siren when we showed up,” I told her. “So we get there, and she’d already moved to the closet with her freaking out husband at her side. That’s where we delivered her. And I’ve been hooked ever since.” “Those are the types of stories I love to hear. As you know, I work on the ped’s floor. It can be depressing at times to hear some stories,” Elizabeth said, handing me a handful of forks. “Dean and I have decided to try invitro fertilization,” Joslin announced from her spot at the table.

I froze, as did Elizabeth. “Y’all haven’t really given it that long,” Elizabeth hesitated. “We’ve been trying for over a year, so Dean went to get tested and they discovered he had a very low sperm count. They suggested invitro, but even then they’re not sure that he’ll be able to fertilize my eggs. We’re going to ask Michael if he’d be willing to donate sperm…” I dropped the plate I was holding and stormed out of the room. I was so mad that I could spit nails, and when I found Dean and Michael in a tense huddle in the corner of the living room. “Michael!” I yelled, storming to him. He turned around to look at me in concern, then his eyes narrowed when he saw Joslin’s smiling face at my back. “What?” he asked worriedly. “We need to talk. Outside … now,” I told him quickly. “I told her that we’re going to ask Michael to donate sperm,” Joslin announced to the room as a whole. Michael turned stiffly and stared at me, ready for what he knew was coming.

Because let me tell you a little something about me. I’m a hothead. I react first, speak second, and think third. It’s gotten me into trouble my entire life. “You will not have a kid with anyone but me!” I yelled loudly, punctuating my point with a finger jab to his chest. Michael’s eyes glittered. “I’m not having kids with anyone, so it’s a moot point,” Michael said, crossing his arms over his chest. “But Dean, you said he’d agree!” Joslin whined. “My baby brother is not having a kid with you. That’s fucked,” Hannah put in her two cents. “But it wouldn’t be his kid and mine, it’d be mine and Dean’s,” Joslin continued to whine. “Yeah right. You know damn well and good that if it’s Michael’s DNA, he’ll have a responsibility to that kid, even if you want him not to,” Manuelo said seriously. “It’d be our kid! He wouldn’t have any say to it!” Joslin dug herself deeper. Michael’s body became tense, and I knew he was about to say something harsh. “Michael and I are serious, and I’m really not

comfortable with having a child of his running around with y’all. Not to say that you wouldn’t be capable parents,” I told Dean. “But what’s a part of Michael is a part of me. So would y’all be comfortable with sharing this child with me and Michael? Because I know I wouldn’t be comfortable doing that with y’all.” “I think that we need to talk to Michael without you here,” Dean said softly. “Joslin, why don’t you go finish cleaning the kitchen with Nikki and…” “No, she’s right. I won’t be having any kids. But if I were, it wouldn’t be with Joslin. Sorry,” Michael said, shoving his hands into his pockets and looking around the room at all the occupants. Manuelo and Hannah, I could tell, were firmly on my side. Elizabeth, I could tell, was conflicted. She wanted both of her boys to be happy. And I knew I’d made an enemy out of Joslin first and foremost. There wouldn’t be any turning back from that. Dean, however, looked oddly happy. Like he hadn’t wanted to have children with her. Nor her to have any children with anyone else.

Beep-Beep-Beep-Beep. I glanced at Michael as he pulled his pager out of his pocket. “Gotta go,” he muttered, looking at the readout. “Nikki, come on. Let’s go.” We left within seconds, and I was so happy I could scream. “I cannot believe,” I said, plugging my seatbelt in, “That she asked you that.” Michael snorted. “She always wanted kids. And I think Dean was in the process of telling me he didn’t want kids either, when you burst through the door like a hot fire poker was shoved up your ass.” I winced. “That sounds painful,” I admitted. He shrugged. “I wouldn’t know. I’ve no doubt that it would be, though.” He pulled out of his parents subdivision, flipping the lights on that I hadn’t realized were there. “Wow,” I said, looking up at the flashing lights that were mounted to his rearview mirror. “Does it make sounds, too?” He hit a button on his steering wheel, and the sound of

a loud air horn, followed by the distinct buuuurp-burrrp most police cars used filled the night air. Surprisingly, people moved out of our way fairly quickly. “You can take my truck back to your house,” he muttered. “I’ll get someone to drop me off at my place.” I blinked. “You’re not coming back over?” Was that a whine I detected in my voice? Yuck, I hated whining. “No, there’s no telling when I’ll be back,” he told me as he pulled into the station. Then, without another word, he disappeared, leaving the truck running and me surprised and a little bit hurt. He’d always come to my house after his calls before. Why was this time any different? Had what I said been out of line? Surely not. But hell, what did I know?

Chapter 14 Show me your kitties. -T-shirt

Nikki “Where are you?” Michael asked. I looked at the doctor’s office where I was currently waiting for my appointment, and lied through my teeth. “I’m at the store. Do you need anything?” I asked sweetly. He grunted. “No. I was just hoping you were home so you could bring me my spare pistol. Something is wrong with mine and I guess I need to take it in to get it fixed.” “No, I’m not there. I’m sorry,” I told him honestly. “Damn. I can’t get away. I’m about to go into a meeting, and I have a SWAT seminar in Longview at twelve,” he sighed. “I can bring it to Longview for you, as long as that’s okay. I have to go to the mall anyway,” I offered. He made a sound of contentment. “That sounds good. What do you need at the mall?” Pants because mine don’t fit anymore, was what I was thinking, but what I said was, “New pants. Mine have

something defective with the button.” Not totally a lie. The defectiveness with the button came up because I couldn’t get the button to meet the hole that was designed for it. I’d had to use a hair tie to hook the two together, and eventually Michael was going to notice that I could no longer button my pants. I was going to buy myself some time, though, by buying some bigger jeans. It’d been three weeks since I’d gone with Michael to pull his sister out of the mud. Three weeks since I’d met his parents. And three weeks since I’d finished school. But I’d been busy. I’d ‘graduated’ just two days ago, although it was just a formality. I’d taken my certification test that was required in the State of Texas, and I was now a licensed certified midwife. “Ms. Pena?” A young woman’s voice called, making me look up from the contemplation of my fingernails, which were sorely in need of a manicure.

Sadly, I knew that wasn’t going to happen any time soon. I didn’t have time. And when I did have time, I’d rather nap. This pregnancy that I wasn’t announcing was really draining the hell out of me. I stood and walked over to the woman. “Are you ready?” She asked with a smile. I nodded. “Yep.” I was. There was no denying it anymore. None. If all my calculations were correct, I was well past the ‘I just missed my period’ stage. Which was normally when women felt it safe to announce their pregnancy to the world. Something that I hadn’t, nor wouldn’t, find the courage to do anytime soon. “Alright, we’ll get your weight and blood pressure, then you’ll take that cup right there,” she indicated the cup on the counter. “And fill the cup up to the…” “First line, yes I know. I’m a midwife,” I told her,

smiling happily. It never got old, saying that. “Oh! I want to do that!” The woman crowed. “I’ve been thinking about it. Is it hard?” I smiled. “It’s tough, yes. I think the ‘hardest’ part though, is waking up in the middle of the night when the women start giving birth. But I’m not going to go that route with the home births. I’ve already got a position lined up with Good Shepherd. I’ll be assisting the doctors there. I’ll be on twelve hour shifts, ready to play catcher if the doctor’s cannot make it in time,” I told her. Her eyes lit. “I didn’t know they had that option,” she said, gesturing to the scale. “I’ll seriously have to look into it. I took this job because of the baby aspect. I just love meeting the little ones.” I could relate. Delivering babies never got old. I’d helped deliver a baby in the parking lot of the ER. The woman had pulled to a rocking stop in a big, jacked up Chevy truck with her frantic husband at the wheel. The husband had been white as a sheet, and I could see

why the minute I opened the door to the truck and saw a baby practically on the verge of being born, staring at me from the woman’s vagina. The baby was literally staring, too. His head was in the sunny side up position, which meant the baby was coming into the world facing the sky rather than the ground like he was supposed to. It also meant that it hurt a lot more. Which the woman that’d been birthing the boy was letting us know with her eloquent play on words. I’d lifted my arms just in time to catch the boy as the woman had given one valiant push. The baby slid from the mother’s birth canal into my outstretched hands, and there’d been no looking back since. “Okay, you can step down,” the woman said. “Sit here, please.” After checking my blood pressure, and filling the dreaded plastic cup, she showed me to a room. “I’m sure you know by now what this little gem is!” She said, holding up a Doppler. I nodded, sat down, and lifted my shirt. “Sure do. Have at it.” “You said you were twelve weeks, so that should be

more than enough time for her to develop and allow us to hear the heartbeat.” I closed my eyes and listened to the sounds of the Doppler at work, amazed at how different it was from this end. “Ahh,” the woman said. “There it is.” I smiled, and tears filled my eyes, as I listened to mine and Michael’s baby for the very first time. And I fell in love. Hopelessly devoted to this little life inside of me. “One forty two. Perfect perfect!” She said. “Alright, my dear. My name’s Dalia if you need anything. The doctor should be in with you in about ten to fifteen minutes,” Dalia explained as she headed to the room’s door, and then closed it quietly behind her. Well, at least I didn’t have to sit here naked while I waited. This visit was late. Most women usually went in when they were four to six weeks pregnant. Seeing as I was twelve, I wouldn’t have to have the normal vaginal ultrasound. I could have the one that would run over the outside of my belly.

Which also meant I wouldn’t have to get naked. I busied myself with a magazine on birthing a child, all the while I tried to tell myself to calm down and not freak out. Freaking out had been a major part of my life as of late. How did I tell Michael? Would he be okay with it? Would he ask me to abort it? I knew one thing, though, and that was that this baby was mine, and I loved it already. And if I had to give up my relationship with Michael because he couldn’t see past his fears, then I’d do it. It’d be hard as hell, but I’d do it. And I planned on telling him tonight after we had dinner with our families. Maybe I’d pour a few drinks into him, too. Maybe that would help him stay calm and help him realize that having a child wasn’t the end of the world. The door to the room clicked open, and I looked up into the eyes of an older man in his mid to late sixties. “Hello,” Doctor Jones said, offering his hand. “I’m Doctor Jones. It’s nice to meet you.”

I smiled at him and offered him my hand, too. The moment my hand touched his, I felt a little zing of discomfort pulse down my arm, but I hid it with a smile. “Nice to meet you, too.” He took a seat on that little rolling chair, and I was never more thankful that I wasn’t naked than right at this moment. Because if this man would’ve been doing stuff between my legs, I might very well have screamed. There wasn’t anything that I could put my finger on that made me so nervous and uncomfortable. He was normal looking for the most part. He did have a slight bald spot at the very top of his head, and he had too much of a leer in his smile. But other than that, he was a normal man for that age. There was nothing that truly stuck out about him, but I knew I wouldn’t be coming back to this doctor if I could help it. The way this practice worked, though, was that I had to see all of the doctors in case of the event that my primary OB/GYN was busy with another patient or out of town. I had to meet with them all, and this doctor, Dr. Jones, was the first one available.

So I’d taken the appointment, even though he wasn’t the doctor that I wanted to speak with. Luckily, I wouldn’t have to take another appointment with him. “Alright, well your pregnancy test came back positive, so you are indeed pregnant. Today we’ll be doing a sonogram on you to double check the dates, but with what I heard about you being a midwife, I’m fairly positive that your calculations on your gestation are correct,” he grinned. I hid my wince once again with a smile. “Yeah, I’m fairly positive myself.” He nodded. “What does your husband do?” Instead of telling him that I wasn’t married, I just smiled and told him, “He’s a police officer.” Something in his eyes flared, but was gone just as quickly as I saw it. “Well that’s nice, I bet y’all are excited,” he said, standing up and walking to the sink to wash his hands. I leaned back and lifted my shirt when he came back to me, his hands moving to my belly. He pressed into my abdomen, and I had to clench my core tightly when the movement made the state of my bladder go from bearable to Defcon One.

“Everything feels alright,” he said, moving back until he was standing at the sink. “I’ve written a prescription for prenatal vitamins, as well as some nausea meds if you feel that you’ll be needing some, since I read in your chart that you’ve been experiencing quite a bit of nausea and vomiting.” I nodded, and he smiled, that leer tilting up just the corner of his lips once again. “Alright,” he said, standing up and heading to the door. “If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to call if need be. Do you know where the sonogram room is?” I nodded, and he winked. “Alright little lady, you’re more than welcome to go! See you next month.” I held my shiver in check until he’d closed the door, and I let out a breath of air. Then an irrational rage swept through me. If that bastard boyfriend of mine didn’t have to be so irrational about children, then I wouldn’t be freaking out right now alone. I’d have him holding me, telling me we’d never see that fucker again. Because I knew damn well that Michael would’ve felt the same coming from him as I had. I left the little room, waving at Dalia as I headed in the direction of the ultrasound room.

I found the room, and immediately realized that I’d fucked up. Because Memphis, the wife of another member of the SWAT team, was smiling brightly at me. “I just knew it!” She crowed happily. “I knew it!” I blinked. “Knew what?” I asked carefully. “When I saw your chart. I bet Michael’s so happy!” She cheered happily. Wrong. Michael didn’t even know! “Umm, Michael doesn’t know,” I told her softly. Her eyes cleared of their happiness. “What?” She asked. I was sure that was a shock to her. Downy, her husband, was a really good man who’d been over the moon at hearing that Memphis was pregnant. She probably didn’t even realize that some men didn’t feel the same way that hers did. “Yeah, I haven’t told him yet,” I informed her. “And I’m not sure I want to…or how to.” She blinked. “But why? He’s Saint. He’s the baby whisperer. He loves children.”

Yeah, I could see this going really wrong. “Michael doesn’t want kids,” I finally said. “I don’t know how he’ll react to hearing that I’m pregnant, nor if he’d be happy about it. If I’m being honest, I’m fairly sure he’s going to flip out and leave me.” “Oh, Nikki. I’m sorry,” she whispered forlornly. I shrugged. It was what it was. I’d deal with everything else once it happened. Tonight, though, I’d tell him. I didn’t want him finding out from a friend when it should be coming from his woman. At least I could give him that.

Chapter 15 Nobody cares about your problems. We’ve got enough shit of our own to deal with. -Michael to a suspect

Michael “Surprise!” I said, throwing the door to the restaurant that I’d rented for the night open, revealing all of our family and friends. Nikki’s mouth dropped open in surprise. “What…why…what…” she stuttered, flabbergasted. I smiled. “Congratulations on your certification, best friend,” Georgia said, wrapping her arms around Nikki and hugging her tightly. “Oh, my God!” Nikki jumped up and down, then turned and barreled into me, knocking me off balance. “You are the best man ever.” I huffed out a laugh and let her go when her parents made their way over to us. “Mom, dad!” She cried in happiness. And that’s when I knew.

I did all this just to get that very smile on her face. “You did good, suck up,” Nico said, slapping me on the back. I snorted and turned, offering him my hand. He took it and narrowed his eyes on me. “I can see now that you’ll try to worm your way into my parents’ hearts. But it won’t work. I’m the favorite,” he deadpanned. I blinked. He was serious as far as I could tell. Or maybe he was just that good at holding onto his composure. “No you’re not!” A young woman that looked a lot like Nikki, but had yet to develop all the luscious curves said. “I am!” Nico glared at her. “What the fuck are you wearing, Nila?” She looked down at the short skirt that clung to her toned thighs. “A skirt. What’s wrong with it?” “Uh,” Nico said, slapping his head and looking to me for direction. “I know you have a sister. Does she dress like a harlot?” I shook my head. “No. Not anymore, at least. She had

a baby at sixteen, though.” Nico’s eyes turned murderous. “You will not have a baby! And ruin your life! Pull your skirt down.” “Our babies ruined your life?” Georgia asked with laughter filling her voice. Nico’s ‘babies’ were now one year old’s, but Nico still acted like they were born yesterday. “Yeah, when was the last time we had se…” Georgia slapped her hand over Nico’s mouth before he could finish your sentence. “…you will watch your mouth around our friends, you randy bastard,” Georgia hissed at her husband. I cracked up and turned to Nila. “It’s nice to meet you, finally, Nila. I’ve heard a lot about you.” Nila smiled. “And I you. Although all that Nikki and I have spoken about is the fact that you can give it to her…” “Not you, too!” Georgia kept right on hissing. “What is wrong with you Pena’s? Obviously, Nikki has the right way of it, finding a man to get her the hell out of this fucked up family.” Nico laughed, as did Nila. I, though, froze. Was she talking to Georgia about getting married?

I hadn’t actually thought much past the summer, but the thought of being with Nikki forever really made me happy. Like, manic happy. Which also worried me. I didn’t want to marry her yet. We needed time to get to know each other. She’d never even witnessed any of my manic/depressive episodes. I, at least, needed to get through this winter with her, then I could think about marriage. Right now, I was just happy having her in my arms, knowing she’d be there when I woke up. “Michael?” Nikki called to me. I looked over to see her parents and her studying me. I turned and walked away from the arguing siblings, offering my hand to Sol, once again. “How’s it going?” I asked. He smiled. “You did a good job, keeping this from her. I was just telling her that you were the one to organize all of this,” Sol said. Nikki looked from her father to me.

“You’re good at keeping secrets,” she teased. “I’m usually the first one to talk my family into opening the presents. Next time I’ll have to pay attention for the signs of you hiding something.” I snorted. “You’d never figure out if I was hiding something from you. You, on the other hand, are an open book.” Her eyes widened. “Really?” I nodded. Then her eyes narrowed. “I’m good at keeping secrets, though.” Then Memphis and Downy walked up, effectively ending our conversation. “Lolita! Did you bring me some tamales?” Downy asked loudly. Lolita blushed. “No, my Downy, I didn’t. But I’m making some tomorrow, so I’ll be sure to bring you some by the station.” Downy grinned. “Score!” he said, pulling his arm down quickly from head height. “Make ‘em hot! You know how I like ‘em!” Lolita rolled her eyes, and I turned to Memphis, only to see her looking at Nikki oddly.

She was staring at the glass of champagne in Nikki’s hand like it was a viper. “What?” I asked her. Memphis turned and looked at me with wild eyes. The first thing I noticed she saw was my bare arms, causing her eyes to widen further. “Holy shit!” She announced loudly. “You got a new one!” I looked down at my bare arms and grimaced. I’d gone without the long sleeves tonight for Nikki. I knew she liked when I showed them off. And, although I did it for her, I wasn’t comfortable with it. I didn’t like explaining why I had so many tattoos. Because with that explanation came the explanation of the fact that I suffered from depression and I was bi polar. Which only launched into more conversations that I didn’t want to have. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Nikki turn to place her champagne glass down on a nearby table and turn to me. I raised a brow at the move, but she only winked and walked away, talking to even more of her friends and

family, leaving me to explain to Memphis something that I didn’t even want to get into.

*** Two hours later, the champagne dilemma was brought up again. “Nikki, why aren’t you drinking any champagne? I bought it specifically for you!” Georgia asked, thrusting yet another glass at her. Nikki once again waved it off. “No, I’m not interested in champagne tonight. I want to enjoy this night, not forget it.” Somewhat mollified, Georgia took the drink to her lips and sipped, keeping her eyes on Nikki, studying her. I studied Nikki, too. She’d not had a drink in a very long time, now that I thought about it. Why? Making a note to question her later, I turned back to the conversation at hand. “So they’re making budget cuts? Where? Are they going to take away our new body armor? The vehicles that they promised? The overtime pay that they force us to take?” Nico asked in outrage at hearing what Luke had just said. Luke shook his head. “I’m only telling you the rumors

I’m hearing, and explaining why I’ll be attending the town hall meeting.” “Well, how about they lower the amount of pay the mayor makes, or some of the city officials? Why not take the budget cuts out of the fuckin’ flowers that they plant in the middle of the road. Or the new red lights they keep putting up that only do more problem than good,” Nico muttered darkly. Luke held his hands up in surrender. “That’s why I mentioned it. I want y’all to go to the meeting with me this Friday,” Luke said. After a few grunts of confirmation, Luke turned to me. “I’ve also wanted to talk to you today, too, but I could never get you. Have you heard any more about those murders?” He asked. We all knew which ones he was talking about. Everyone did. It was now public information after the fourth one in forty square miles and two weeks happened. “Wolf is up and talking, but he’s only been able to give the minutest of details. He can attest to the black clothes, the black hoodie, and the black boots. We know he had black hair, and he was about five foot nine or ten. Whipcord lean. About one hundred and eighty pounds,” I

told them. “But y’all already know that. Parker and Elliott aren’t sharing much else yet. Wolf is getting released on Monday, though. And, hopefully, he’ll be approved to adopt Nathan like he’s looking to do since he has no other family,” I informed them. Luke nodded. “I heard the boy’s finally doing better,” Downy said around a mouthful of cake. “When’s he get to go home?” I shook my head. “Only time will tell with him. He’s got some swelling on his brain that’s causing him to act a lot differently than he was before, so they’re waiting for that to go down some more before they make any plans of him getting released.” “Fuck,” Miller said, pulling his beer up to his lips and taking a sip. My sentiments exactly. “You’re pregnant!” Noel crowed. “That’s why you’re not drinking.” My heart froze in my chest at the declaration from Nikki’s little sister, and I started to pay a little more attention. “What? No! I’m not!” Nikki shook her head savagely. Even though she denied it immediately, I started to connect some dots.

Throwing up. No period that I’d seen as of yet. And I would’ve noticed any of the million times we’d fucked in the past month and a half. Weight gain. Why she needed new pants at the mall today. Why her nipples were so fuckin’ tender lately. I’d barely brushed them in the shower this morning, and it had her begging for me all over again. “’Scuse me,” I muttered, eyes connecting with Nikki’s. Her eyes widened slightly, flaring with something I couldn’t read, and then disappeared before she schooled her features. Then she excused herself from her friends and followed me out of the restaurant, then further outside. I didn’t stop until we were in the shadows along the side of the building. I could hear Nikki’s flip flops flapping against her feet as she walked behind me. The wind from the impending storm flapping her skirt as she hurried to catch up to me. But my strides were too fast for her.

She didn’t catch up to me until I stopped in shadows so deep that I couldn’t tell she was standing in front of me before I moved my arms out to catch her before she slammed into my front. “Now’s not the time for lying, Nikki,” I said breathlessly. I was breathless because I was freaking the fuck out. I was a doctor for fuck’s sake. I knew the signs. I was also smarter than I’d been acting. I guess I wanted so bad to give Nikki the benefit of the doubt that I ignored the signs. I never looked to see if she was taking the birth control. Mother. Fucker. “Michael,” she said, pressing her hand against my abs. And I suddenly forgot what she and I were fighting about. Mostly because her mouth was on mine, and her hands were wrapping around my neck. She held on tight as I started to fight her, but then she pressed those delicious hips against my raging cock, and I forgot that I was mad.

Forgot that my life had just changed. Forgot that she was trying to distract me. Because she did distract me. And I took the bait. Hook, line, and fucking sinker. My mouth slammed down on hers as I gathered her up into my arms. The slinky skirt that reached her ankles tangling up in her legs as I tried to lift her up. She and I both shoved the skirt up until it rested up around her hips, then I moved until I pressed her against the brick wall of the building we’d just exited. “Nikki,” I growled, grinding my dick into her pussy. “Yeah?” She asked, need evident in her voice. She rocked her hips against my cock, and keened when I hit her clit just right. “Please…just don’t lie,” I begged. She didn’t answer, which I guess that was answer enough. “Nikki,” I said, reaching between us to rip my cock free from the dress slacks and place it at her entrance. “Why?”

She shook her head. “I did everything right. I swear on my life, Michael. I did everything right.” My eyes closed, and my heart felt like it was breaking as she sank down slowly onto my cock. Her heat fisted my dick, covering each and every single inch of skin covering my length. My eyes closed, not that it mattered anyway since it was pitch black outside now. The lone light we’d been using for the minimal lighting it gave went out when a hard burst of wind screamed between the buildings. Nikki gasped, and I couldn’t figure out if it was because of the pure darkness, or the way I rammed into her, taking my frustration about the entire situation out on her pussy. “Michael,” she gasped, clinging tighter. “Take it,” I ordered. She leaned down and bit my neck, hard. And I exploded. It was all too much. The way she clenched around me. The way she smelled.

The thought of her carrying my baby. A baby that was a miracle in it’s own right, but would probably grow up to be just like me. “I finished without you,” I murmured into her hair. She petted my head, running her nails along my scalp and making shivers chase down my spine. “That’s okay,” she whispered softly. “Just don’t do it again.” I laughed humorlessly and pulled out of her, letting her feet fall back towards the ground. Once I knew she was steady, I let her hips go. Her skirt fell from my grasp as I did, and we sat there in an awkward silence. Me with my head against her shoulder, and her with her arms still around me. “What are we going to do?” I rasped, eyes clenching tight. A sob caught in her throat, and I knew that she didn’t do this on purpose. I knew it with all my heart and soul. And when she whispered, “I don’t know, but I love you,” I knew that I would do whatever it took to come to terms with this.

Because I had just as much of a part in the conception of this child as she did. And that’s what a man did. Stepped up to the plate.

Chapter 16 So tell me what you want, what you really, really want. -T-shirt

Nikki I knew he wouldn’t find me here. It was the one place I could go without anyone finding me. Salsarita Mamacita’s. My family wouldn’t be caught dead here. It was the poorest quality dancing place in town. Plus, Michael didn’t dance. He’d told me so. Many, many times. When I’d be dancing around the kitchen making dinner, he’d just roll his eyes at me in exasperation when I tried to get him to join in. Something about attending too many dances when he was younger or some bullshit excuse like that. It’d been two months since I’d told Michael that I was pregnant.

Two months since he’d fucked me, stayed with me throughout the rest of the night, and then disappeared without a trace. Well, not without a trace. I knew where he was. He called me, updated me on what was going on, but he wasn’t there. He was seeing a therapist. He was ‘coming to terms’ with the baby, as he said. He’d been on a case. I knew it was a bad case. I also knew it was a worthy case for him to be on, but I didn’t understand why it was taking him away from me like it was. And I was fairly sure he was just using it as an excuse to lick his wounds. Wounds that he believed I delivered against him. I was on birth control. I didn’t know what else to do to prevent a child other than abstinence…and that wasn’t going to happen with Michael. I hadn’t been on antibiotics, so it wasn’t anything stupid on my part. Nor had I forgotten any pills. I knew he didn’t want

kids. I would never trap him into keeping me, nor give him a child he didn’t want on purpose. So, needless to say, I was in a mood. A lonely mood. Because he wasn’t there. He wasn’t with me, and I needed him so bad that I could barely stand it. I’d been ducking his calls for three days now And I knew he either would plain old stop calling, or he’d pull his head out of his ass and come see me. Either one was a desired effect at this point. I knew he loved me. Knew it so deeply that I felt it with each call he made to me. Heard it in the tone of his voice. I took a gulp of my water, enough that I could technically say I was done with it since there was no way I’d be touching it when I got back to my table. I wasn’t going to be roofied. Plus, I wasn’t stupid. “Want to dance, mamacita?” I heard called over my shoulder. I turned from where I was swaying my hips along with

the beat to find a very beautiful man at my back. He was tall. He had a black leather vest over a red t-shirt with black jeans and a pair of black boots. I knew he spelled T-R-O-U-B-L-E. Did I care? Fuck no. Because I was a single lady, and single ladies had needs. No, not that kind of needs. Needs that made me want another human’s touch. Crave it. Needs that Michael should be fulfilling right now. Not leaving me to my own devices. Jesus, now I was depressing myself again. I turned, and the man’s eyes immediately went down to my stomach. Something I made no effort to hide. I was proud of this stomach. I was one week shy of four months pregnant, and I was definitely showing.

My previous flat belly was now gently rounded. And my jeans that I was wearing hugged my legs and hips like a glove. I had on black spiky heeled boots that came up to midcalf, and a skin tight black, low cut tank top that showed off the girls. It was an outfit that I knew would drive Michael wild if he saw. He wouldn’t, but I still hoped. “Yeah?” I asked sharply. His eyes moved up from my belly to my face and he asked abruptly, “You got a man?” I laughed. “Yeah, I have a man.” His shoulders seemed to slump. “Shit. I was hoping you’d say different.” I smiled genuinely at him. “Life’s a bitch like that,” I offered him my hand. “My name’s Nikki.” He took my hand, shook it twice, then let it go. “Name’s Dane. Can I get you another drink?” He asked, looking pointedly at the near empty glass. “Sure, but I’m going to dance right now. You may want

to wait because if it sits there too long, I won’t drink it,” I told him, taking a step away from him. He smiled. “I’ll do that. But I have a meeting that’s supposed to start in about fifteen minutes. I’ll have to take a raincheck.” I tossed a laugh over my shoulder and then disappeared into the crowd onto the dance floor. Shaking my ‘bon bon’ to some Ricky Martin, completely forgetting about the man and his ‘meeting’ by the time the fourth song, Pitbull this time, rolled around.

*** Forty five minutes later, I came off the dance floor with one thing in mind. A bathroom. Quick. I barreled through the door to my destination, and came to a sudden halt when I was faced with the most gorgeous woman I’d ever seen. And she was pregnant to boot. Flowing blonde hair that came down to her ass. A black skirt pulled up to just underneath her belly, a sky blue tank top, and gold gladiator sandals rounded out the outfit. She looked hip and trendy, something I never managed to do. My curves were too generous to look nice in what she was wearing. “Hello,” I said, skirting around behind her to go into the stall behind her. “Hi!” She answered back immediately. I did my business, but heard her leave before I made it back out of the stall. Washing my hands and fixing some fly-aways from the

bobby pins holding my hair out of my face, I smoothed my hands down my jeans and made my way out to the mouth of the hallway. I tried to decide whether or not to grab a drink from the bar again before going out to the dance floor once again when I saw them. And my heart stalled in my chest, coming to a slow, pounding stop before it started beating again at a rapid staccato. Because there, in front of me, was Michael. He had his arm around the blonde woman from the bathroom, laughing with her. Dane was across from them on a bench by himself, watching the two interact with crude eyes. He said something to them, and made his way to the bar. Where he ordered a water, and turned to smile at me. I didn’t smile back. Instead, I walked to him, dread in my every step, and took the glass from him. I’d never in my life wanted a drink as bad as I did right then. But, alas, I was pregnant.

And that was a no-no. Fuckers. “What’s wrong?” Dane asked as he took in the set of my shoulders, the way my eyes were flat without any emotion. “How do you know them?” I asked pointing at Michael and the mystery lady. “Colleague,” he answered. Wonderful. Dane was another cop. With a sigh, I walked to the dance floor, knowing Michael would see me as I walked past his table. Then I found the first person I saw, remembering that he’d wanted me to dance with him throughout the time I’d been there, and grabbed him. Startled at first, the man smiled when he saw who it was. Then started to grind into my backside. And dammit, I hated it. I wanted to want it so bad that I didn’t pay attention to my surroundings. I totally missed the man that was staring at me as if I’d just stolen his heart straight from his chest.

Missed the way Dane caught it all, and the way understanding lit his eyes. I also missed the way the woman watched me, knowing I was the one for Michael. When the man’s hands moved up to cup my hips, I slapped his hand away. Michael missed that, though, because he turned to talk to the woman, and hurriedly she moved out of the booth allowing him to head straight to me.

*** Michael “This has to look real,” Dane said to Lisette and me. I rolled my eyes. “We’ve already gone over this a million times, Dane,” I growled. “You aren’t even touching her. In fact, you haven’t touched her all night. How convincing is that?” Dane laughed. I ignored him, scooting closer to Lisette and putting my arm over her shoulder. “Better?” Dane studied the two of us. “Yeah, I guess.” I felt like I was betraying Nikki. Even sitting here, just like this, wasn’t good. I knew it. I should call and explain. But I was a coward. “What time do you want us to meet up at the doctor’s office tomorrow?” Lisette asked Dane. Dane shrugged. “What time’s your appointment?” I ignored them, pulling my phone out of my pocket once

again, disgruntled when I still had no reply texts or returned calls from Nikki. I laughed when Elliott said I texted like a girl, and watched when he got up to leave. “You don’t really want to do this,” Lisette observed. I shrugged. “It needs to be done. I just wish I didn’t have to lie to my girlfriend about it. She’d be devastated if she ever…” I watched as the woman I’d been dreaming about walked past me without a glance in my direction. Eyes down at the floor and a look of devastation on her face, I knew she’d seen me. Hell, how could she not? We were in the middle of the dance floor under the fucking lights for Christ’s sake. “Fuuuuck,” I groaned, turning my head to watch Nikki as she walked up to some punk of a kid, grabbed his arm, and started grinding her ass against him. I was stunned still, for long moments, and only came unstuck when the punk’s hand went to Nikki’s hips. She slapped his hands away, but he didn’t take the hint, grinding his dick into her ass and holding on when I knew she didn’t want him to.

“Move quickly please,” I urged Lisette. She’d seen the altercation, had followed my eyes to the dance floor and Nikki, and chose to move. Smart girl. I walked purposefully up to Nikki and her new friend, and roughly yanked him away from her. “Go find your own woman,” I hissed at the boy. The boy’s eyes narrowed, and I yanked my badge from my belt and held it in front of his face. “Now do you really want to try it?” I asked him honestly. I didn’t think he would, but I’d give him the option. I was itching for a fight. He shook his head frantically. “No.” Didn’t think so. I nodded my head. “Good boy.” When he stayed where he was, waiting for my next direction, I cocked my head towards the exit and said, “Why don’t you go ahead and go?” He went. And I was left with Little Miss Trouble Maker. “Really, Nikki?” I asked, amusement clear in my voice.

She narrowed her eyes. “Go fuck yourself, pendejo,” she snarled. There was my little Spanish hellcat. The one that only came out when she was well and truly pissed. I raised a brow at her, and then took in her attire. I liked the way her spiky heels brought her up to me. I liked the way she stared me in the eyes, all fire and innocence with a hint of prissiness. “Take it outside, buddy,” Elliott said from my back. I looped my fingers around Nikki’s wrist, noting that she’d gotten more delicate since I’d last seen her, and made a mental note to speak with her about that as well. First on the agenda, though, was setting her straight. I’d gone long enough keeping her in the dark. It was time to bring her into the light. Let her know what all she was about to get into. Because I’d just given my notice, so to speak. I wouldn’t be the FBI’s guinea pig. I would be my own man and I’d have my woman at my side. “Let go of me,” Nikki yanked her arm out of my grip

before we’d made it outside. I stopped, then pushed her into the handicap bathroom, slamming the door closed before she could protest. “Michael! Let me out!” She shrieked. I moved forward, until my body was pinning hers to the door, and she started to squirm viciously. Her shirt rode up, and I looked down, feeling the new hardness of her abdomen. Before it’d been soft and yielding. Now it was hard and round, causing me to lose my train of thought. I moved my hand down until it rested on the side of her belly, my hand cupping the small life inside her tummy. “You’ve gotten big,” I murmured softly. She froze. Then smacked me upside the head. “You don’t tell the woman you knocked up that she’s gotten big!” She snarled. I chuckled, then dropped down to my knees in front of her. I moved my hands up, catching the hem of her shirt, and pushed it over her belly as I slid my hands up to her ribs. My eyes feasted on the sight before me.

Her gently swollen belly popped out over the top of her pants. A black hair tie looped around the hole of the jeans, and then over the button, holding them closed. Her belly button was a little less concave, and I assumed, by the end of her pregnancy, it’d be an outie instead of an innie. I leaned forward, pressing my lips against the soft skin of her belly, and said, “I’ve been a fool.” Her hands found my hair, and I looked up to see tears streaming down her cheeks. “I’m so sorry, Nikki,” I told her. “I’ve only been thinking of you, though. This guy…whomever he is…he’s good. He’s gotten fifteen couples to date, and out of his thirty five kills, only two have made it. We have one witness, and he hasn’t been able to give us a fuckin’ thing to go on beside the build and color of the man’s hair. He never went to any of the appointments, so we’re all hanging on by a fricking thread.” “Why haven’t you come to see me?” She asked, devastation clear in her voice. I shook my head. “At first,” I said. “It was because I was trying to get my head on straight. Then I started seeing a therapist that the

department recommended. Then another murder happened, and well, I’ve been a fucking coward. I should’ve come to you. I actually have every night since I left you in bed that night two months ago…I just don’t come inside.” She glared. “Who’s the woman?” She snapped. “An FBI agent. She’s going to help us catch this man. She’s been posing as a new patient who moved here because her husband was transferred to another police department…but I’m not sure that’s going to work too well now since I was supposed to be that police officer,” I told her honestly. She glared. “And what does being a fake husband make you have to do?” She asked, clearly not happy with my answer. I shrugged. “Go to doctor’s appointments. Be seen with her in public. Stay in the same place at night.” Her eyebrows rose to her hairline. “And what about my appointments?” She asked. I saw where she was going with it, and I knew she wouldn’t like my answer. “I can’t go to them.” And I couldn’t.

Not if this was to be authentic and believable. “What about the birth of our child…will you be able to come then?” She asked calmly. “If he’s caught,” I said carefully. She dropped her hand from my face and stood there, looking up at the ceiling. Her tears had never abated, and I felt about six inches high. “Please get off me,” she said. “Please.” “We can have each other at night,” I told her. “I love you.” Those words seemed to make her snap. She pushed me away from her with enough force that I fell backwards, my ass planting on the ground solidly. And I was also far enough away that she almost had the door open. Almost. “This doesn’t change anything,” she growled, yanking on the door. I slammed my hand down to stop her progress. “It has to look real!” I yelled at her. “You want to have real, use me! I’m real! You put this

baby inside of me, maybe you should use me since I’m actually yours!” She yelled, waving her hands in the air in true Pena Tantrum fashion. My eyes narrowed, then I moved forward until I could only make out the whites of her eyes. “I can’t use you. Because you’re mine, and I don’t ever want you on that man’s radar,” I hissed, crowding her into the dirty, grunge covered wall once again. She pushed at my shoulders, but I didn’t budge. “Get off me!” She screamed, drawing the attention of the entire bar I was sure. I pulled back and let her escape, and immediately saw Dane. Dane had taken my place on the Lisette’s arm. He looked at me in concern, but he didn’t intervene. Nobody did, in fact. I followed Nikki out of the bar. Then followed her to her car. Then followed her straight to her apartment. When I got to her front door, I tried the handle, and was surprised to feel it unlocked. So she wasn’t too mad at me, otherwise she would’ve locked the door.

Right? Wrong. When I pushed the door open to her apartment, I was startled by what I saw. She was on her knees in the middle of the living room. She was facing away from me, her chest up tight to the coffee table as she looked at something with such focus that I wasn’t sure what to think. “Nikki?” I called, walking up behind her slowly. She looked over her shoulder at me, and I read the determination there. The understanding. The resignation. “Come look at this, Michael,” she said softly. As I made my way up to her side, I looked down, and my knees went weak at what I saw. “Are you kidding me?” I asked softly, dropping down to my knees beside her. My knees sank down into the plush carpet. The pretty purple carpet that Nikki just ‘had to have’ when we were at Lowe’s one weekend looking for paint thinner.

And I thought to myself, ‘this’ll look good in the baby’s room.’ “You need to choose, Michael. The killer and your duties, or me. Because I can’t do this anymore. I can’t put my life on hold, wondering how long it’ll be before you come back. Wonder if you’ll make it to the birth of our little girl. Wondering if this killer will take you from us. I just can’t Michael. So choose. Them, or us.” I closed my eyes, and made the easiest decision of my life. “I gotta go.”

Chapter 17 Run like Dean just saw you crash the Impala. -T-shirt

Nikki My emotions were swirling around me like a black funnel cloud of doom. I’d given him my ultimatum, and he’d chosen. It hadn’t been what I thought he’d choose, but he’d chosen, nonetheless. I walked up to the elevator from the parking garage, and depressed the button that would take me down to the ground level, allowing me to the cross the breezeway to my destination. Another doctor’s appointment. This would be my four month checkup, and the gender reveal. Even though I’d technically had that two weeks ago when I’d gone to Georgia who’d insisted on doing an ultrasound. See, it turned out, that we saw each other quite a bit, working in the same hospital.

I’d started my job on the labor and delivery floor a little over a month ago, and I’d had a freakin’ blast doing it. So far, I’d delivered twelve babies. All of them happy and healthy. The elevator dinged when the doors open, but I was in my own little world thinking about my job, which meant I didn’t see the man standing in the elevator until he spoke. “Going down?” An amused male voice asked. I looked up, and my heart started to race. “Michael,” I breathed, tears starting to form in my eyes. He smiled, and held out his hand. “Come on, or we’ll be late,” he said laughingly. I blinked, but took his hand and made my way into the elevator. “How’d you know where I would be?” I asked softly. My eyes stayed firmly planted on the floor, though. Because I didn’t want to believe he was here, and look up to see that I’d imagined it all. That would be cruel, but life was a bitch like that. “Your best friend,” he said.

I could hear the smile in his voice, and if Georgia had been in the room with me right then, I’d have punched her for not telling me. We rode the elevator in silence. Me not saying anything because I just didn’t know what to say. Him not saying anything because I was sure he was waiting for me to flip out on him. Something I wouldn’t do at my place of business. When the elevator doors opened, I made my way out with Michael directly at my back. I could feel his warmth from the top of my shoulders to the backs of my thighs. “Nikki, wait,” he said softly. The pain in his voice had me turning sharply, looking at him in worry. “What?” I asked. He closed his eyes, and I realized just how tired he looked. “I told them I couldn’t do it. And I’m sorry. I knew if I stayed there with you last night, I’d put it off, and I needed to get it done,” he answered. “Michael, I wouldn’t say what you did didn’t hurt, but I

understand. I gave you the night to think it over, and I meant it. I knew you’d make the right decision,” I told him. He nodded, his eyes shifting from my eyes to my lips where I was currently worrying the bottom one with my teeth. “I love you,” he said again. My heart melted at those words. The same ones that had come out of his mouth last night. The ones I hadn’t returned because I couldn’t. Today, though, knowing he would be staying with us. Giving us a chance. I said it back to him. Meaning it with all my heart. “I love you more,” I said simply. His rumbled laugh warmed my insides when he pulled me into his arms. “I’m gonna fuck up,” he promised. I snorted. “You and me both, big boy,” I shot back. “I don’t know anything about kids.” He informed me.

I looked up into his eyes and said, “Really? You’re pulling that card?” I turned on my heel and started walking inside, very aware of the man at my back. “Yeah, that card. I don’t, though. I really don’t,” he said. I rolled my eyes. “Michael, you make it your mission in life to save kids. Trust me, you know how to handle kids even if you think you don’t,” I told him gently. Michael smiled. “Whatever. So tell me about your doctor. I feel like I’ve missed a lot,” he changed the subject. I smiled. “Dr. Mead is my doctor, but we’ll be seeing the PA, Joanie Dooley, today. I have to see them all just in case my doctor is out of town or at a birth or something when I go into labor.” Michael nodded, but his eyes had clouded like he did when he was concentrating on something. “What?” I asked. He shook his head, and when the elevators dinged, signaling we’d arrived at the floor I needed for the doctor’s office, he froze.

I’d already walked out and turned the corner before I realized he wasn’t following me. “Michael?” I called, turning around and looking for him. I found him still inside the elevator, his hands on the doors to hold the door’s open. “What doctor’s office do you use?” He hissed. I reeled back at the vehemence in his tone. Blinking, I said, “Women’s Center. Why?” Michael yanked me to him, then further pulled me to the stairwell. “What, Michael? What is it?” I asked in alarm. He didn’t stop until we were three floors up, and I was breathing hard from exertion. He yanked the door open to the sixth floor, and pulled me right along with him. Once he saw that the coast was clear, he visibly relaxed. He let me go almost immediately, then pulled out his phone and placed a call. “Yeah, my woman’s been going to the Women’s Center for months now!” He hissed quietly into the phone, looking around him as he inspected the empty hallway. “Why

didn’t one of you fucking catch that?” I blinked in surprise. “Yes, she’s fine. And no, you told me you had the place under surveillance. You should’ve known!” He half yelled. I refrained from saying, ‘You should’ve known.’ Instead, I kept my mouth shut and pulled out my phone, taking a seat at a small chair that was next to a potted plant. I immediately saw that I’d be late if he didn’t hurry up, but I figured whatever it was was important if he had reacted the way he had at realizing I was going to a certain center. Then realization dawned. He’d only care about where I was going if the place was dangerous. And there’d only been one case he’d been working on lately that would’ve made sense to warrant this reaction from him. And I had a feeling I knew exactly what it was. And I was nauseous again. Mother fucker! A cold sweat started to pepper my skin, and I visibly started to shiver as I jumped to conclusions.

Michael continued his seething conversation with the person on the other end of the line, and I started to let my mind wander. Had I let some killer get close to my baby? What would happen to us now? Would the baby and I be in danger? Could I switch doctors? I’d have to drive out of town to go. The Women’s Center dominated the entire Ark-La-Tex. There was only one company in the area that worked with my insurance, and I had a feeling I’d be finding out what panic felt like very soon. Then sorrow started to fill me. Had all those women come here, given their trust to one of the doctors or nurses, then had their faith ripped away when they’d shot those poor women and their husbands? “This is it. We do this today, and tomorrow she finds another doctor. Do you hear me? I’m being one hundred percent serious. If anything happens to her, there’s not one thing on this goddamn earth that’ll save you from me. And no, I don’t fucking care that I’m threatening an FBI agent,” Michael growled.

Then slammed his phone shut. When he turned to me, his eyes immediately went soft. “I’m so sorry, Nik. Had I known, I would’ve never let you come. I swear on my life I’ll protect you,” he promised, dropping down to his knees beside me and wrapping his arms around my midsection. I moved my head, resting it on the top of his. “What’s in the past is in the past. Let’s look forward from now on. You, me, and this baby,” I told him. He squeezed me a little tighter, and I felt the now familiar flutter in my belly signaling our unborn child’s movement. “I love you,” he said, looking up at me with his heart in his eyes. I leaned down and smashed my lips against his. Our tongues dueled as he thrust his tongue into my mouth. His tongue slid along mine as his hands moved up my back, burrowing under the loose shirt I’d stolen from him. The one I wore to every doctor appointment because I liked to think that he was there with me. “You’re wearing my shirt,” he said against my mouth. I leaned my forehead down to his.

“Yeah,” I said simply. “It’s a little big on you,” he surmised. I laughed. “Yeah, you could say that,” I agreed. It was big. Really big. I’d tied it into a knot at my waist, at least making it somewhat flattering. I didn’t really care what I looked like, though. It was all for sentimentality. And by the look in Michael’s eyes, he knew why I wore it, too. “You ready to get this shit over with?” He asked quietly. I nodded. “Michael,” I hesitated. “There are some good doctors in this office. I’ve seen a doctor and a nurse practitioner so far, and my regular doctor, well he’s a sweetheart. His name is Doctor Mead. Him and his wife are the creators of this practice. Even Memphis works here.” His eyes widened. “Does Downy know Memphis works here?” I asked

carefully. “The place that y’all are investigating?” He shook his head. “Nobody knows. But he’ll know within ten minutes of me leaving the office. And I’m taking Memphis with me until they’ve discussed it.” I snorted. “Yeah right,” I laughed. “She won’t go with you.” “We’ll see about that,” he muttered, tugging me along to the elevator. Thank God. I didn’t think I could do those stairs again. Even if I was only going down them.

*** “Michael!” Memphis said, clapping excitedly. “You’re here!” Michael grinned at Memphis, his face lighting up with pleasure. “Yeah, I’m here,” he nodded. “Well, how’d the appointment go?” Memphis asked, patting the table. I handed Michael my purse, and he tossed it onto the chair. Something I could’ve done. “I had a coke in there,” I muttered darkly. He winked. “You shouldn’t be drinking coke. That’s what the doctor just said.” “Michael, you’re not my doctor. Dr. Mead is. He hasn’t said a word about my caffeine intake,” I growled. He was insufferable! He’d been going on and on, contradicting the nurse practitioner about damn near every piece of advice she’d given in the hour and a half we’d been here. Not one single thing had happened, thank God. But Michael must’ve been trying to provoke the woman.

Whatever his reason, he’d done it. I could see the usually sweet tempered woman losing her cool before my eyes, so I’d put a stop to the questions and smiled apologetically at her before I’d left. “Well, I am a doctor. There’s no reason you can’t listen to my directions,” he said sarcastically. I shrugged and hopped up onto the table, leaning back and exposing my belly. “Michael, today we’re doing a scan to make sure the baby is growing alright. Come stand right here,” she said, indicating a spot near my head. “You’ll be able to see this screen or that one.” She pointed at the large flat screen on the wall, and Michael took them both in before he looked down at me. “Does he know what you’re having?” Memphis asked happily, squirting a generous amount of lube on my belly before she started to run the wand over my belly. I looked at the screen where the black and white grainy picture filled it. “Yeah, he knows,” I informed her. “He still wants a boy.” Memphis laughed. “Weellllll, it’s most definitely a girl!” Memphis said,

gesturing to a point on the screen. “Hamburger means girl. And she wants you to see that she is.” Michael became transfixed with the screen as Memphis went along taking measurements, and showing us different parts of the baby’s anatomy. Then they showed the face, and I looked up to Michael to see his face avidly focused on the screen. His eyes scrutinizing her every feature. “She’s perfect,” he mumbled, knowing I was looking at him. He looked down, and I could tell he was on the verge of something big. Some huge emotion had a hold of him, and I had a feeling it was joy. “Well, let’s turn it to 3D,” Memphis said excitedly. “I can’t wait until mine’s big enough to see like this…oh shit!” Memphis eyes were wide. “Don’t tell Downy! I haven’t told him yet!” Michael laughed. “He already knows. He’s told everyone he can that you’re expecting again, darlin’,” Michael teased. Memphis’ eyes narrowed. “You’re kidding.”

Michael shook his head. “No, we’ve known for weeks.” She turned back to the screen, clicked a few buttons, and then replaced the wand to my belly. “Oh, I’ll be getting him back. He’s such a shit!” Michael snorted, and I burst out laughing, making the screen flip with my belly’s movement. When I finally settled down, she ran the wand over my belly once more. The orange screen was captivating as we saw our child in more detail. “It looks like an alien,” I surmised. “Like a weird alien.” Michael’s mouth met mine, and I couldn’t help the butterflies that filled my insides at his unexpected touch. I was happy that he was happy. And right now, that was all that mattered. Thirty minutes later, we were out the door, with Memphis in tow. “I can’t believe you’re making me come,” Memphis said in awe. “I didn’t think anybody but Downy was that stubborn.” Michael, who was driving, pulled into the police

station’s parking lot and parked in the back of the lot near the rear exit. “Believe it. This is beyond your capacity. And I have a feeling I’m about to be ripped a new asshole for not sharing this information before,” he muttered grumpily. Now that the excitement at seeing our baby had worn off, Michael was in protect mode. His sole focus was on the two of us, and what was about to come. He’d practically taken Memphis by force, and when Downy met us at the back door; I knew Dr. Mead had called him. Just like he’d said he would. Although Memphis had assured him that everything was alright, Dr. Mead still wanted to follow up just in case. Which was another reason I knew he was a good guy. I slid out of the seat, bending my knees to help with the impact as I dropped out of Michael’s massive truck, and landed on the balls of my feet. That wouldn’t work for much longer. I could just see myself now falling on my ass when I had another twenty pounds of baby added to my frame.

“What the fuck’s going on?” Downy asked, holding out his arm for Memphis. Memphis walked into his arms, burrowing her face into his neck and hugging him tightly. Michael had given her the bare minimum of what’d been going on to get her to leave with him, and she was obviously freaked way the hell out about the prospect of her employer being involved in something so vicious. “Inside. To home base,” Michael ordered. Downy’s brows rose, but nonetheless turned and followed Michael and I to what I later learned was the SWAT team’s shared offices. The first person I saw was my brother with his legs propped up on the long table in the middle of the room. I walked up behind him and hugged him hard around the neck. “I love you,” I said to him. He raised his arm up and circled it around my back as best he could do from his current position. “Love you,” he said. “What are you doing here?” I gestured to Michael. “They’re killing our women.”

Chapter 18 Whiskey is my spirit animal. -T-shirt

Nikki That announcement dropped like a bomb in the quiet room. “I need to call Trance. And we need to get Sam in here,” Michael announced. Trance was a police officer for Benton, Louisiana. And Sam was an ex- Army Ranger who lived in Kilgore with the rest of us. He was a badass, as was Trance. I couldn’t figure out why they needed to be here, though. “How about you tell us how they’re killing our women, and then we’ll go from there?” Downy asked shortly, curling Memphis into his body. I sighed and took a seat. I was sort of interested in hearing what Michael had to say. I’d gotten bits and pieces, but I still wasn’t fully up to par with what Michael knew. And apparently, the boys in front of me weren’t either. Which pissed them off.

Greatly. Michael started talking, and by the time he was done, not just Downy was fuming. They all were. “What the fuck, man? My woman works there!” Downy roared. I reeled back. Downy was normally such a good natured man that it was a complete and utter surprise to see him get so worked up. It shouldn’t have surprised me, though. Memphis was Downy’s world. Anything that put her into danger would be a bad thing in his book. Downy shook his head. “We’re not even sure that’s where the threat is coming from. We only know that there is one. And that the connection is the women. I didn’t know until today, though, that that was where Memphis worked.” Downy calmed down slightly, taking a deep breath before he said, “Fuck me.” “Not now, darling. We’ll get to that later. After you rub my feet and brush my hair like the princess that I am,”

Memphis said soothingly, rubbing Downy’s belly like she was coaxing a big beast into sleep. I snorted out a laugh, then turned in my chair to face my brother. He’d been awfully quiet, his face a mask of shadows as he studied the wall behind Michael’s head. Then my eyes narrowed on the awful, heartless man and my mouth opened so I could roar at him in outrage. “You didn’t tell me!” I yelled loudly. “Why wouldn’t she tell me? I’m her best friend, and you’re my favorite brother!” Nico didn’t even flinch as he turned his eyes to me. “It’s been rough. She wasn’t sure she was pregnant at first,” he said simply, shrugging in indifference. “Still not sure.” I narrowed my eyes at him. “I can’t believe you wouldn’t tell me. I tell you everything!” He gave me a droll look. “You tell me nothing,” he retorted. “I tell you what you need to know! You’re delicate!” I countered. He laughed, which was what I’d been trying to accomplish.

Turning back to the room at large, I realized my mistake. These men didn’t find me and my mouth as funny as my brother did, and I could tell by the looks of annoyance on a few of their faces. I closed my mouth and inadvertently scooted closer to Nico, because mean, lying, betraying brother or not, he’d always have my back. Which he proved in the next moment by wrapping his arm around my shoulder and kissing the top of my head. Have I mentioned I love the hell out of my brother? “Alright, well how many of you have used this particular doctor’s office?” Luke asked, pinching the brow of his nose. “All of them,” I muttered under my breath. “It’s the only one in Kilgore.” Silence. I closed my eyes when I realized the silence was back and they were all staring at me. Shit! I pulled out my phone and kept my eyes glued to it, leaning my head against Nico’s shoulder as I listened to them talk, trying my hardest not to butt in where I wasn’t

wanted. A text from my sister, Noel, came in while I was in my latest level of Candy Crush. Noel: I got a really weird call from your mother. Me: She’s your mother unless it was something awesome. Then she’s my mother. Noel: She wants to know why you aren’t paying your doctor’s bills. My brows furrowed. Nico’s phone buzzed, and I looked over at him to see his eyes furrow. “What?” I asked him. “I just got a really, really weird text from mom telling me she wanted to know why you weren’t paying your doctor bills. She asked if you were low on money,” Nico said. Michael, who’d been talking up until that point, stopped and turned to me. “You didn’t tell me you were having trouble paying your bills,” he left that hanging, and my face flushed in embarrassment. “I’m not having trouble. In fact, I’ve already pre-paid for the hospital as of last visit!” I replied huffily. “What the

hell? Why would anyone call my mother? That’s like against the law or something…isn’t it?” Silence fell among the room, and something huge in the air started to radiate around me. Testosterone paired with fury started to fill the room, and I looked around at the men surrounding me as they comprehended something I hadn’t. “What?” I asked, settling on Michael whose eyes had gone flat. He blinked. “Call your mother. Ask her who called.” Surprised at the way he’d spoken to me, with zero emotion at all, I did just that. I called my mama. Dialing her number, I put it on speaker phone and set it on the desk in front of me, keeping my eyes focused on Michael. He didn’t look right. In fact, he looked like he wasn’t my Michael at all. “Nikki?” My mother answered. “What is this about you not paying your bills? You told me Michael was helping you pay when I offered to help you. Why would you lie about that? I only wanted to help you.” A blush rose to my face and I dropped my eyes from

Michael’s flat ones the moment she called me on my lying ways. No, Michael hadn’t helped me pay. In fact, I’d paid all eight thousand dollars that I owed out of pocket myself, and I hadn’t asked him for a thing. Something I was regretting right now if the fury that was coming off of him was anything to go by. Shit! “And you know, I’ve supported you even though you sinned. I will always support you. Which is why when you get the bill in the mail, I want you to bring it to me and let me pay for it,” she chastised me sternly, the only way a mother knew how. “And I told them where you and Michael worked, as well as Michael’s home address because you shouldn’t lie about something like that. Bill collectors are not fun to deal with. They’ll call you any time of day.” I rolled my eyes. Why wouldn’t she have just asked me herself, instead of sending a text to every one of my sisters? “Why would you have given them my work address? And Michael’s? He’s not even on the chart at all. They shouldn’t even know his name.” Had she been hoping that I wouldn’t hear it from my

siblings? “Lolita, this is Michael. Nikki’s paid up in full as of last week. Was it a man or a woman who called?” Michael asked abruptly. “Oh, Micahel! I didn’t know you and Nikki were together. How are you?” My mother asked, her Spanish accent getting a little thicker with affection now that she wasn’t yelling at her daughter. “I’m okay, Lolita. Now was it a man or a woman who called?” He asked again, a little less polite this time. My mother didn’t notice, or if she did, she didn’t care that he was being short with her. “It was a man. He said he was the doctor, believe it or not. I couldn’t believe it when I spoke with him, but he seemed to be a really nice man,” Lolita chattered. That’s when things started to make sense. This wasn’t about any bills at all. This was about a killer. A killer who’d just put his sights on me.

Chapter 19 What do we want? Coffee. When do we want it? Right the fuck now. -Coffee Cup

Michael “Got a warrant to search his place yet?” I asked Luke. Luke shook his head. “Not yet. Judge Maddox is out of town, and we had to go to Bender. He’s not our team’s biggest fan since the last warrant that was served was the one where that old lady broke her hip.” I winced. That had been a complete clusterfuck and a half. We’d served an arrest warrant on a kid who’d been selling drugs out of his home, and we’d served it flawlessly, arresting the boy within seconds of breaching his home. Then the old woman had come out using her walker, and promptly tripped over her grandson who’d been lying on the floor in the middle of the living room, breaking her hip and arm in the process. It’d been horrible, and I’d felt horrible, but in our defense, we had told her to stay where she was until we

could get the boy out. She hadn’t listened, and now we were still hearing about it three months later. My eyes moved from Luke to the corner of the command room where Memphis and Nikki were on a computer looking at baby shit, of all things. I smiled slightly, but it just as quickly fell from my face as I thought about how bad this all could’ve gone without my knowledge. All because I was trying to protect myself. Well, look where that got me. My woman in trouble. My child in danger. Me in danger because I was fucking around. Not to mention all of my colleagues and their wives. I didn’t deserve to live sometimes. I was a failure at life. Then I shut those thoughts down, realizing them for what they were. I’d forgotten my meds. Shit!

“I need to go run by my place. I forgot to take my meds,” I told Luke. “I’ll be back in about ten minutes.” Luke nodded. “Got it,” he replied, keeping his eyes on his phone. I got up, walking out without saying a thing to anyone else. They were all pretty mad at me. As they should be. I was no good. Fuck! Stop! By the time I’d arrived at my house, I’d gone through quite a bit of self doubt before I got to my meds. I had the bottle in my hand and had just popped the pill when I realized that I wasn’t alone. Rookie mistake. Turning stiffly, I found myself faced with a man in all black. “Where’s the wife?” He snarled. That’s when I thanked my lucky stars that I hadn’t told Nikki where I was going, and hadn’t asked her to go with me like I’d contemplated.

Thank Christ! The gun pointed at my head didn’t instill any fear in my heart like the thought of the gun pointed at Nikki’s head. I’d had this feeling before. The thought that I was going to die. Nineteen times. Each of those times I remembered with picture perfect clarity. And I was sure, if I made it out of this alive, that this time would be no different. “Call her,” he ordered. “Fuck you. I’m not calling her,” I told him, crossing my arms across my chest. I knew if I could stall him, Luke would figure something went wrong. I wouldn’t have left and stayed home with the chance of that warrant coming in. John, our computer expert, had already traced the calls to Lolita’s phone, and come up with the Women’s Center. There were six people on duty at the Women’s Center at the time of the call, and only two of them were men. And one of them had been in the room with a patient for the entire time it took to place the call. So we’d done our

research. And had come up with one man. We’d applied for the arrest warrant for Stan Jones, M.D. And I had a feeling that was who this man was in front of me. “So, Stan. What are you going to do to me?” I asked, crossing my arms across my chest. Stan froze. “How do you know my name?” He asked stiffly, regripping the Glock in his hand. I shrugged. “You fucked up.” Simple words, but they really pissed him off. “I did not fuck up!” he snarled. “I did everything right!” See, serial killers had a certain way they did things. They didn’t deviate. Which was why I knew he wouldn’t shoot me until my ‘wife’ was here. “What do you have against cops?” I asked calmly. Stan’s eyes narrowed. He had a hoody on, and it was covering his head, but since he was facing me, I could still get a pretty good

indication of what he looked like. About five foot ten, hundred and eighty five pounds. Brown or really dark green eyes. Brown hair. Tan skin. Small hands with no wedding band. Black pants. Black lace up boots. Black hoody. “You don’t need to know why. Just suffice it to say that this earth should be rid of you and every one of your kind,” Stan hissed. My brows rose. “Really?” He sneered. “Really.” I laughed. “Got it. How about I take a guess?” I asked. I recalled the notes in the case. The details of each doctor. Stan’s page listed him as widowed. Also listed him as not having any living children. “Did we kill your wife?” I asked. It was heartless, yes, but it was effective. “Don’t you say her name!” He bellowed. I refrained from saying that I ‘didn’t say her name at all.’

Bingo. “Did a cop take your kid, too? Or did your kid take his own life because your wife died?” I continued cruelly. Stan shook his gun at me, waggling it around as he started to scream at me. “It was all you! You! She did nothing to you! All she did was get pulled over, and then one of you,” he hissed. “Shot her because he thought she was going for a gun. She didn’t even know how to shoot a gun!” He ended that explanation on a shrill scream. I felt sympathetic. Of course I did. Accidental shootings happened. It sucked, extremely, horribly bad, but it happened. Cops, on a daily basis, had to deal with so much shit from everyone that, at times, we expected everyone to be bad. When we pulled someone over, we aren’t happy to do it. We’re wary. When we pull you over, are you going to be accepting of why we pulled you over?

Will you rant and scream at us for doing our jobs? Will you pull your gun on us? Pull out a knife from some hidden place inside your car and stab us with it. Will your passenger do something? A car to most people is just that, a car. A car to a police officer is a weapon. It can run over us. It can hide larger weapons. It can get you away from us and put other people, innocent people, in jeopardy. It can house more than one person who could potentially harm us. So you see, there are multiple facets to look at when a police officer pulls someone over. All of this is running through our brain. We have to be extremely cautious, doing what we do. Whether this was what happened with Stan’s wife or not, I would never know. But even if it was or wasn’t, that didn’t give him the right to take out his hurt and pain on every single police officer that he came into contact with. “I’m sorry, Stan,” I said seriously. And I was. I was sorry he had to experience something like that.

I would hope had the same thing happened to me that I would find the strength to move on. To make this world a better place. I wouldn’t, however, start shooting and killing innocent people. Especially ones that were carrying our next generation like these innocent women were doing. “You can shove your sorry’s up your ass,” Stan snarled. “Sit down in that chair right there. We won’t have to wait much longer. I called your woman’s mother. I know she gets home around this time.” I closed my eyes very briefly, thankful that this time wouldn’t be one of those times. She was safe at KPD headquarters. Thank God. Stall. That’s all I had to do. It’d been thirty minutes since I left. And I knew Luke had seen right through my hasty exit. He was very aware of my shortcomings, and I’d made sure that he was up to date on my state of mind. He was aware that something wasn’t right, and I knew he’d come to check on me if I was gone longer than thirty minutes.

My disease and conditions were all about checks and balances. I was very open with everything about me…to the right people. I needed those people in my life to keep me on the straight and narrow. Luke. My parents. My sister and brother. A few doctors. Nikki. I smiled slightly. She had no clue just how much she helped. “Why are you smiling?” Stan asked, ruining my good thoughts. I shrugged. “No reason.” His eyes narrowed. And to keep him talking, and me breathing, I continued to ask questions. “Why the cop’s wives. Why babies?” I asked carefully. He sneered. “Why would I want to bring more of those bastards into this world? Not by my hands, no sir.” He shook his head. “I wasn’t aiding in any more births to people like

you.” I shook my head. The degree of his hate was staggering. To take his problems out on innocent children was just jaw dropping to me. “What would your wife think about all of this?” I asked softly. Stan’s eye twitched, and it was long moments before he answered. “Well, I’m not sure why she would even matter anymore. She’s gone, and I’ll never need to know what my wife thinks about any of this,” Stan’s voice broke. “Because she’s so gone. Gone, gone, gone.” “She’s not gone,” I said softly. “She lives on in your memories.” Shit, now I was quoting Big Hero 6! I knew I shouldn’t have watched that movie with Reggie! “She tells me I should think before I act. I don’t know how to do that,” he admitted, looking down at his hand and dropping his gun to the floor. I didn’t move. Not time yet.

My heart rate picked up when I saw the movement in the side window of my place. A distinctly blonde head popped into the side window before disappearing just as quickly. Luke. Good. Only a little bit longer now. “Women have a way about them. They think they’re right…but most of the time they are right. I’ve found that out myself just the other day,” I told him, thinking back to the night Nikki saw me with Lisette. “They’re smart creatures, women. They instinctively know what is best for us, and they move heaven and earth to make us happy.” And Nikki did do that. Every day. I saw that now, with the threat of my life being taken from me from a man that felt such pain over the loss of his own woman. Stan’s eyes moved to the table, and my breath caught in my throat when I caught sight of the sonogram picture that I’d dropped there when I arrived home. I’d seen it in the cab of the truck, and on instinct had grabbed it to make sure it wouldn’t get ruined.

Now the man that wanted to take her away from me was staring at it like it was the lowliest of life forms. “Cops don’t deserve to have a happy life,” he muttered darkly. “You don’t deserve to live.” He dropped down scooping the gun up off the floor and pointing it for real this time and I knew my time was up. He wasn’t going to wait, and if I didn’t do something, I’d be lying in a pool of blood. “May you rot in he…” Boom! I closed my eyes, sick to my stomach. The smoking gun still in my hand. Stan was dead before his body even met the floor. “Shit!” Luke said, rounding the corner of the back hallway with his gun in his hand. “You scared the shit out of me, man!” I raised my head and looked at my boss, and one of the best friends I’ve ever had. “I don’t think we need that warrant anymore,” I said softly. Luke’s face lit in a brief smile before he moved around the table where I was sitting and took a knee on the floor beside Stan’s prone body.

“Dead,” he confirmed, standing up. “Gotta call this in.” With that, he put his phone up to his ear and reported the shooting. Slowly, I placed my gun on the table by my right elbow, and moved to stand. Blood was slowly filling up the floor beneath Stan’s body and I had to step over it in order not to track it throughout the house. “Want me to go outside?” I asked. Luke shook his head. He was the assistant chief as well as the SWAT team leader; so, as the more superior officer, I wanted to make sure I was where he wanted me, seeing as I’d just shot a man. “We always miss all the fun!” James, with his sniper rifle in tow, whined. “Sorry I couldn’t provide that for you,” I said with semi-amusement. “He fucked up. His usual MO is to make the cop empty his pockets and get rid of the sidearm. Had he done that with you, he might still be alive,” Luke muttered, arms crossed across his chest as he glared at the dead man at his feet. “Fuckin’ paperwork. Did you get anything out of him?”

I nodded. “It was because of his wife. She was killed by a police officer during a traffic stop,” I explained what I knew. “Fuckin’ A,” Miller growled. “You found me faster than I thought you would,” I admitted to Luke. “Put a BOLO out on his car. Stan drives a shiny Maserati. It’s hard to miss something like that driving down the road. Officer Lyons saw it the moment he pulled into the RV park to turn around. Was parked off to the side, as if he was broken down,” Miller explained. “Luke called you to tell you we had the warrant, you didn’t answer. He started to head this way because he said you didn’t look right, and then passed the same RV park where the car was found. Put two and two together. Made twelve. End of story.” I shook my head. Amazing. “Two and two make four, not twelve, dumbass,” Foster tittered from the front door. Neither had breached the front door since they knew it was a crime scene, and I was talking through the screen door. The entire team was occupying my patio furniture.

James was kicked back in the lounger. Miller and Foster on the couch. Bennett, Nico, and Downy were on the final three chairs with the umbrella over their heads, eyes closed. And I had an irrational desire to tell them how much I loved them. Would that be weird? To have their support, and to know they were all there for me when I needed them was exactly what I needed in that moment. All my self-doubts were gone. And it its place was relief and thankfulness. Relief that I had lived to breathe another day. And thankfulness that I’d have good friends and a good woman around to do it with.

*** Later that night Nikki walked into her bedroom, glanced at me, and went straight to the bathroom. She was mad at me. Hell, I was mad at me. I’d left her thinking I’d be right back, and she hadn’t known where I’d gone. I hadn’t said goodbye. I didn’t even wave. She also hadn’t known that my life had been in danger. She only found out two hours later when I’d arrived back at the station and had promptly been whisked into questioning to answer a shit ton of questions. I’d been put on administrative leave, pending an investigation, but I knew nothing would amount to that seeing as I had Luke to back me up one hundred percent of the way. Nikki had been told by her brother what had transpired, and let’s just say that she hadn’t been happy. Not even a little bit. When I’d gotten out of questioning, I’d found that Nikki had been taken home by Georgia. By the time I arrived home, it was four hours later and

pushing ten o’clock. She hadn’t been asleep, though. Far from it. She’d been sitting on the couch watching the news. Which happened to have me as the breaking story. “Michael?” Nikki asked, removing her shirt from her body. My eyes took in the bounty before them. Nikki had always been beautiful. But right now, with the moon at her back streaming through the blinds, and her hair a curly mass falling down her back and draping over her shoulders, I’d never thought she was more beautiful. She had the beginnings of a belly, and the pink belly button piercing had a star attached to it, resting on the soft swell...a belly button ring I’d never seen before now. “Yeah baby?” I asked, swallowing tightly. The next thing to go was the black bra. Although nothing special, it held up her breasts perfectly, placing them up and together, allowing my eyes to feast. And when Nikki lost it, her breasts bounced free, making my semi-hard erection full blown as all the blood

rushed to my dick. Her panties were the last thing to go. When she bent over, her breasts hung, swinging enticingly as she slipped the panties free of her feet and stepped out of them, one by one. I about lost my ability to speak as she put one knee into the bed and started to crawl up between my legs, stopping when she met my hips. “Make love to me,” she ordered. Swallowing thickly, I sat up slowly and gathered her face into my hands, placing my lips softly on hers. “Okay,” I whispered, before breaching her lips with my tongue, curling mine around hers. She moaned and leaned forward into the kiss, giving me her weight. I rolled with her until we were on our sides. My hands still in place against her cheeks, I let one slip down, tracing down her shoulder, curving around her breasts, following the line of her side until it came to a rest against the back of her thigh. She moaned when I let my hand move further back to flatten around the curve of her ass, fingers dipping into her overheated core.

“I’m sorry, baby. I never dreamed that would happen,” I told her. A sob caught in her throat and she kissed me harder. “You scared the shit out of me. I thought you were going to die,” she said desperately between kisses. I moaned when her hand found my throbbing erection. “Guide it inside you,” I said, spreading the lips of her ass with my fingers and pushing forward with my hips. She angled my cock to let the head rest at the entrance of her sex, and we both flexed towards each other the moment our skin met. She gasped into my mouth as my cock filled her to the breaking point. “You fill me completely,” she whispered fiercely. “Don’t ever leave me like that again, okay? Always say goodbye.” I promised her, and then continued to promise with my body. The way my hands ran along her skin. The way my cock thrust in and out of her. Our lovemaking was slow, steady, and beautiful. Something we both needed right then. And long minutes later, when I felt her pussy start to clench around my cock, I let go, too.

Shooting my essence into her waiting heat, filling her up with cock, my come, and my love. “I love you, Nikki. I promise not to leave without saying goodbye…as long as you promise me something in return,” I panted against her lips. Her eyes opened, and I stared into her beautiful brown orbs as she asked, “What do you want me to promise?” I leaned forward, ran the tip of my nose along the bridge of her nose. “That when we’re married, you’ll forgive me like this every time,” I told her sweetly. She laughed, and I rolled until she was once again on top. My flesh, that was still seated inside of her, started to throb once again at the new position, but what she said next had my entire focus, not the state of my dick. “Are you asking me to marry you, Michael Perez?” She smiled happily. Her hair spilled over her shoulders, tickling my chest. I shook mine. “No.” Her eyes, which had been happy, veiled slightly, so I hurriedly explained. “I’m telling you that you’re marrying me,” I said,

reaching under my pillow to pull out a hot pink velvet covered box that I’d picked out. Her eyes widened as she watched me open the box, and then continued to widen as I pulled out the ring for her and held it out to her. She raised her hand, offering me her finger. It fit her perfectly, sliding over her knuckle and coming to rest just right. “You will marry me, Nikki Pena.” I ordered her. She leaned forward and placed her lips against mine. “I thought you were never going to ask,” she teased. I smacked her ass, causing her to jump in surprise. Inadvertently making my hard cock ram into her to the hilt. Her eyelids lowered slightly and I smiled. “Not sure about the asking part yet…It’s just a formality. I only expect one answer, and one answer only,” I informed her. Her eyes narrowed. “Is this what I have to look forward to for the rest of my life? Bossiness?” I grinned. “Yeah, that’s what you have to look forward to. Plus

loving all night long. Babysitting whenever you need it. A hug when you want it. Kisses in the middle of the night. Gas in your tank. Your groceries brought into the house. Pants put into the hamper. Steaks cooked on the grill,” I listed out my attributes, purposefully making them sound really enticing. She narrowed her eyes. “It’s not babysitting if it’s your own kids,” she countered. I snorted. “Whatever you say, darling mine.” “As long as you know that, I’ll marry you.” I laughed and rolled with her once again, pushing my cock into her and grinding my hips against her. “I’ll remember that.” “You bet you will, big boy.”

Chapter 20 For fox sake. -Coffee Cup

Nikki “Alright,” Memphis said, laying on the lounge next to me. “How did we all end up in this predicament?” I laughed. There was no other recourse. Seven women were in attendance with me today, and all but one were pregnant. Georgia, Memphis, Lennox, Mercy, and Blake were all in different stages of pregnancy. Although, I was on my first pregnancy while the rest of them were on their second. Seemed the men of Kilgore SWAT liked to keep their women barefoot and pregnant. Fighting crime during the day and making babies at night. I laughed and rolled over onto my side to face Memphis and the other ladies. Today we were having a spa day.

I was getting married in less than four hours, and the SWAT ladies were having a pamper day while the men did some fishing. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said, running my hand over my belly. Two months had passed since Doctor Stan Jones had been formally charged for killing fifteen officers, their wives, and three of those officers’ children. “You know exactly what she’s talking about, hoe,” Georgia said, stretching and wiggling her toes. I smiled. Yeah, I did. “Guess maybe one of us needs to learn control,” I surmised, sighing in appreciation when the man at my feet rubbed a particularly good spot on the heel of my foot. “Hey, I noticed that Dr. Jones name was scraped off the paint at the door this morning when I went to my appointment,” Reese said before she took a drink of her Dr. Pepper. All eyes turned to hers, and her eyes widened in alarm. “I’m not pregnant! It was just my yearly pap, I swear!” When all eyes stayed on her, she held up two fingers. “Scout’s honor.” “Scout’s honor is three fingers, not two,” I replied

helpfully. “Well, whatever it is, I just had my yearly. I got my tubes tied after the little hellion arrived,” Reese promised solemnly. That was the truth. Her son was a little hellion. Just like his daddy, that boy was. “Yeah, they took his name off of everything,” Memphis said. “Printed new business cards. Changed the signs out front. Painted over the wall with his face on it. Updated the website. Anything with ‘Jones’ on it was probably burned.” I didn’t doubt that. After Dr. Jones was killed, they found evidence linking him to nearly every crime scene in his house. The clothes that he wore. The gun that he used. Hell, even the dog that he took with him. He sure was arrogant, but in the end, justice was served for those officers, their wives, and the children. “That’s not a surprise. They’d had to do a lot of ass kissing to keep most of their clients. The only thing they had going for them was that they dominate the area. We’d have to drive to Dallas to find a doctor in our network,” I told them all.

Mercy made a sound of agreement. “Same here. We’re using Miller’s insurance, and they wouldn’t accept anyone else unless we wanted to pay nearly twice as much for out of network.” I grimaced. “Let’s change the subject to something better. Nikki doesn’t need this on her wedding day,” Blake yawned loudly. I snickered. “Tired, Blake?” I asked teasingly. She rolled her head in my direction. “Yes. That man of mine doesn’t care that my hours aren’t the same as his. He only sees my ass in the air and wants to touch it. Then touching leads to other things. And then I’m out two hours of sleep. Sleep that I needed because his baby seems to think I’m a superhero, demanding all this energy, food, and drink.” “You’re not having a boy. Boys are horrible,” Reese said, closing her eyes and smiling fondly at something only she could see. “Boys aren’t horrible. But, I do feel fine,” Lennox said. We all rolled our eyes. Lennox thought that everything was ‘fine.’

She loved being pregnant…most likely because her first pregnancy was a breeze, despite the complications from when she was hurt by a deranged woman. She just had no clue how bad a pregnancy could be because she was always floating on cloud nine with the unicorns, her glowing skin, and ample energy. She was still in the ‘I have a positive pregnancy test’ stage. The stage where she was floating on air, and loved to put on pregnancy clothes. Clothes she didn’t need yet. “Hey, what color are you doing?” The man between my legs asked. “Purple and pink,” I said. “Alternating.” He rolled his eyes. Pietro was used to my quirks. I’d been seeing him every two weeks for a year now. He knew all about Michael. Knew all about my family. Knew about my love of color. My job. The new home Michael and I were building. A home that should be done very, very soon, in fact. “Why do you always get the muscled guy who has good hands?” Georgia asked, narrowing her eyes. I shrugged. “I found him first.”

“Ladies, ladies. No need to fight over me. I’m just loyal to my girl here,” he teased. “Nikki delivered his baby. That’s why he loves her so much,” Georgia informed the rest of the ladies. I did. He was my second baby. Him and his wife, Trudy, had been contemplating a home birth over a hospital birth for over six months before they’d finally decided to call my mentor, Annalise, in for an evaluation. And three months later, I’d delivered my second child ever as a midwife with Pietro at my side. Twenty minutes later, I was done and heading to get my hair and makeup done when I was called by our contractor. “You’re officially done!” Alex crowed. I screamed. “Yes!” We weren’t sure if it’d be done in time, seeing as I’d been so nitpicky about everything. I’d had to choose the tile, the paint, the stain for the wood floors in the kitchen, cabinets, counter tops. I’d wanted to be a huge part of everything, and I was. Which annoyed the hell out of Michael. He was all for customization, but I didn’t think he knew what he was getting into when he offered me the huge book

of paint chips. But he knew now. “That’s great!” I exclaimed. “What do you need from me?” “Nothing. I just dropped it all off at your parent’s place. The keys are yours, my dear!” Alex informed me. I smiled. “Wonderful. I’m so happy, thank you so much, Alex.” After hanging up, I immediately called Michael. “Guess what!” I said, bouncing up and down in excitement. “They finished!” Michael’s smooth, deep voice sent shivers through me. “That’s good, baby. He said he’d do it.” I closed my eyes and enjoyed the way it felt to listen to his voice. The way joy spread through me. The way I couldn’t wait to wrap my arms around him. My fiancé and soon to be husband. “You catching anything?” I asked after I composed myself. “Sun. That’s about fucking it,” he growled. “But that’s the way of it, isn’t it?”

I agreed. I hated going fishing, just for the sheer fact that we never caught anything. Or maybe we would had I any patience. “Well, I just wanted to tell you that. Go back to catching your sun,” I said softly, as Pietro made his way into the room with his huge package of bobby pins, hair rollers, and other odds and ends to start fixing my hair. “Okay, baby. Love you,” he murmured. “Love you more.”

*** The moment I saw him as I walked down the aisle, a smile burst over my lips, and my hand came up to cover my mouth. “Oh, my God,” I said, turning to Georgia with wide eyes. Her eyes were filled with her own tears of laughter as she caught a look at my man as well. “Jesus,” I said, shaking my head. “What the hell is wrong with that man?” He wasn’t lying about catching sun. He caught a whole lot of it. Georgia snorted, and my father gave out a strangled laugh of his own. “Let’s get you to him, honey. He’ll think you can’t handle him for better or for worse if you’re not careful.” Georgia was the final one to leave, and I was left with my father. “You look beautiful, baby,” he said softly. I smiled at him, seeing the truth in his eyes. “I’m not going anywhere,” I told him. “I’ll still see you every Sunday for lunch after mass.”

He smiled. “I know. You’re just my first little bird out of the nest,” he said, running his hand over my hair and smoothing back a stray curl that’d fallen from a pin. “Nico was your first little bird,” I said laughingly. He shrugged. “Nico can take care of himself. You’re my first girl. And you’ll no longer have my name. You’re the first bird I’m setting free.” Hugging him tightly, I let him go and turned to face the now closed door. “Alright, I’m ready,” I said with a nervous sigh. “He’ll be good to you, baby. You’ve tamed the beast,” he said before the attendants opened the doors to the church. I looked up at him, and I caught the first flash of a camera as it captured the moment forever in time. “I know. But he tamed my beast, too. Let’s do this.” With a smile, he offered me his arm, and I placed my hand delicately on his sleeve. “I love you, papa,” I told him. He leaned down and kissed my forehead. “Love you too, baby.” I could already hear my mother crying, as well as my bridesmaids.

“Jesus,” my father said in despair. “It’s like an estrogen fest in here. It’s choking me.” I brought my flowers up to cover my snorted cough at those words, and turned to face my future husband once again. Man, these would be some horrible pictures. But I’d cherish them for the rest of my life. We finally made it to the end of the aisle, and my eyes connected with Michael’s. I barely caught the words as the priest asked the words, “Who gives this woman to this man?” My father’s deep voice said, “Her mother and I do,” and suddenly I was in Michael’s arms. “Michael,” I said trying not to laugh. “Why wouldn’t you wear any sunscreen?” He shrugged, grinning unrepentantly. “I was just worried about which fishing poles I was going to take. Not about anything like sunscreen.” I raised a brow at him. “What exactly did you expect to happen?” He shrugged and fell silent when the priest started to give us a blessing. I looked shyly at the man I was seconds away from

pledging my life to, and I knew this would forever be one of the best memories in the world. “I love you, Michael,” I said soft enough so that only he could hear. “I love you, too,” he replied back, uncaring that the pastor gave him a dirty look. He didn’t have anyone to please except me, and the same went for me. We no longer wanted to worry about anyone but ourselves and what it would mean to each of us. And that’s the way we would do it from now on. Nobody needed to know why Michael was tatted up head to toe. Because we only lived by one motto now. And that was to live and let live.

*** Five hours later “Michael! I’m too big!” I yelled as Michael’s hands went around my waist as he opened my door. “You’re going to hurt yourself.” He ignored me, sweeping me up into his arms and walking steadily towards the house. “You forgot to close the door to the truck,” I said lightly, wrapping my arms around his neck and leaning my head against his face. “I’ll get it later,” he murmured. “Later…like tomorrow later…or later like later this night later?” I teased. “Because we live in the woods now. There’s no telling what’ll be in the truck come morning.” Michael knew I was right. He’d had this new house of ours built in the boonies with absolutely nothing around. Literally, the closest WalMart was forty minutes away, if that tells you anything. “Fuck,” he growled, turning on his heels and walking back to his truck. “You could put me down,” I suggested lightly when a light sheen of sweat started to dot along his brow. “I’m fine, Nik. Quit worrying,” he muttered just before

slamming the truck door closed with his boot covered foot. It slammed closed with a bone shattering thud and he turned on his heel to head back towards the house. “You really don’t look fine,” I said laughingly. “Nikki,” he gave me ‘the look.’ “I’m fine. I can bench press three hundred and fifty pounds and squat twice that. Trust me, I’m okay.” “You can squat seven hundred pounds?” I asked skeptically. “Yes,” he answered. “With your legs?” I countered. He shot me a look, and I shut up. There was no way he could squat seven hundred pounds. That was unheard of. He was in a good mood, though, so I wouldn’t pester him about it…today. “How are you going to get the door open?” I asked once he reached the front door. A set of keys fell into my lap from where he’d tossed them from his hand across my back. “It’s the pink key,” he said, a smile in his voice. It was indeed pink. With purple flowers on it.

I assumed that one was mine, but whatever. “Why didn’t we just go in through the garage?” I asked while I unlocked the door. He grunted. “Because I’m supposed to carry you over the threshold. It doesn’t work the same way if I carry you through the garage,” he muttered, sounding slightly breathless. “Okay,” I said slowly, drawing the word out. “Whatever you say, my dear.” He pinched my ass just as I swung the door open, causing me to jump and squeak, followed by him cursing. “Hurry up and carry me over before you break your back,” I squealed. “I’m not going to drop you!” He roared. I had to smother a laugh as the moment he walked through the door, he unceremoniously dropped me to my feet and walked off towards the kitchen. “Hey!” I said indignantly. “You were supposed to carry me up to our room and ravish me!” Wasn’t that how it worked in movies? My husband must not have gotten the memo. “Where are you going?” I asked, following behind him.

“To get something to eat. That dinner we supposedly had was shit,” I heard him mutter from in front of me. I smiled as I ran my hands over the walls. They were beautifully done. As were the floors and ceilings. We’d gone more ‘home and country’ rather than modern. We wanted our house to be warm and inviting, and our contractor accomplished that to a T. When I breached the door to the kitchen, I found Michal standing at the fridge with his head stuck in it. “We don’t have any food in there,” I muttered. “What do you think you’re going to find?” He backed out of the fridge with turkey, cheese, mustard, pickles, lettuce, tomatoes, and mayo, causing my brows to shoot up to my hairline. “Where’d that come from?” I asked in surprise. He shrugged. “If I had to guess, your parents or mine. Whatever, I don’t care. I’m just glad there’s food. I can’t believe you expected me to live on so little,” he muttered. He was right.

The food we’d had catered had ran out because I hadn’t prepared for the sheer amount of food that all of Michael’s friends would eat. Turns out, muscles required about twice the protein of a normal full grown adult. Who knew? “Make me one?” I asked, pouting my lip for added bonus. He gave me a look that clearly said, ‘What do you take me as?’ So I raised my hands up in a placating gesture and walked around the counter. “Love you, Mikey Mike,” I said before kissing his cheek and patting his ass. He tossed me another look before kissing my upturned lips. “Why do you insist on calling me that all of a sudden?” He asked with amusement. I shrugged and circled the counter once again to leave the room. “I could call you hubby now, I guess,” I said just as I was leaving the room. “That’s not any better!” He yelled at my back.

I snickered as I made my way around the house, checking to see if everything I wanted was up to par. It was. The furniture had been delivered while we were getting married, and while the rest of us were celebrating at the reception, my sisters came over here and made the beds, and I assumed brought over a few staples for us. God, I loved them. Especially when I crossed the threshold of our room and saw the bed already made, ready for my tired body to crawl into it. Which was what I did. Falling asleep nearly instantaneously.

*** Michael “Nikki,” I said, looking around the room for my wife. “Here’s your sandwich….” I trailed off as I spotted her curled up around a pillow. She had half the comforter covering her, seeing as she was laying on it, causing me to smile. Guess I’d be sleeping with the sheet tonight. Not that I hadn’t gotten used to it. I loved sleeping with Nikki, although she did move a lot. I’d had to sleep a few times during the day when she was gone, since I’d had a late shift, and I’d slept like crap. Placing the sandwich on the nightstand, I went to the bathroom, stripped out of my police dress blues, and brushed my teeth. Turning the light off, I walked slowly to the bed, relishing at the way the new carpet felt between my toes before I flipped off the lamp, tugged the cord at the ceiling fan, and plunged the room into darkness. I crawled into bed carefully, as not to wake Nikki, though I shouldn’t have bothered.

Nothing woke Nikki anymore short of a freight train barreling down on us. She slept anywhere. In the car. In my office chair. Halfway through dinner. It was actually quite endearing. As I settled around her, curling her into my body as best as I could, I closed my eyes and said my prayers. A nightly ritual that I would repeat for the rest of my life. Thank you God, for my wife and unborn child.

Chapter 21 The only kids I want are Sourpatch. -Nikki during the throes of labor

Nikki “Alright, Jasmine. When you feel the need to push, I want you to bear down, bring your knees up to your chest, and push down from your bottom. Almost like you’re doing number…” She held up her hand to stop me. Jasmine nodded miserably. “I don’t know why you let me say no drugs. I like drugs.” I smothered my smile and started laying out sheets. My big ‘ol belly was in the way, but there was nothing I could do about that. I’d been a married woman for a little over four months, and I was nine months pregnant. Our little girl would be here very soon, and it was times like this, with other women giving birth to their own little miracles, that I started to feel envy for them. I felt like I’d been pregnant for forever! “I need to poop!” Jasmine yelled in alarm a few moments later.

I smothered another smile and moved closer to her on my stool. “That’s the urge to push. Bare down,” I instructed. She narrowed her eyes at me. “But what if I…” She gestured with her hands. I waved a dismissive hand. “Shit happens.” She burst out laughing, but then, just as suddenly, she started to scream as she curled around her belly and gave it all she had. My own stomach cramped right along with hers. “Okay, one more push and the head should be delivered,” I told Jasmine. “Tony, do you want to come catch the baby?” Tony shook his head frantically. Like all first time fathers, he was a nervous wreck, and anything dealing with childbirth was a very scary ordeal to him. “Alright, well it’s up to you, Jasmine. Show me what you got…”

*** Two hours later “Pick up, pick up, pick up,” I chanted to my phone as I called Michael once I was leaving Jasmine and her newest addition. You got my voicemail, leave a message. “Fuck!” I said, walking quickly to my car before it happened again. ‘It’ being those regular pains that signaled that I, myself, was about to have my own baby. I’d been having them on and off all day long, but it’d only been since Jasmine started to push that they began to become regular and consistent. At least my water hadn’t broken yet. Although, that wasn’t a good indication of progress. There were some women that went all the way up to delivery before their water broke. My next call was to Doctor Mead, my OB/GYN. Or his office, anyway. Although I did have his home number, I’d play the good little in labor mom and call the office like everyone else was instructed to do once they were in labor. “”Hello?” A bored woman’s voice came over the

speakers in my car. “This is Nikki Perez, I’m in labor,” I said a little breathlessly. Another pain had consumed me, and I had to pull the car over to avoid wrecking. “How do you know you’re in labor?” The woman asked with annoyance. I clenched the steering wheel and said through clenched teeth. “Because I’m having regular contractions, and I go breathless each time one hits. Now, relay the message.” “What did you say your name was again?” The woman asked snottily. The pain finally loosened it’s grip on my uterus, and I started moving forward again. I knew I’d get a good two minutes of reprieve, which might get me all the way to the ER before I had another. “Nicole Perez, but my maiden name is Pena. Sometimes they have to pull it up underneath that,” I told her, pulling around an old woman going fifty in her maroon Lincoln Towncar. “I found it, Dr. Mead isn’t on call today, Dr. Shepherd is. I’ll transfer you to…”

I interrupted her. “No, call Dr. Mead. There should be a note in my chart. My husband refuses to have anyone but Dr. Mead take care of me. Trust me, he won’t let Dr. Shepherd touch me if you call her,” I explained quickly, excited to see the red and blue sign that denoted the emergency entrance of the emergency room up ahead. I turned into the lot and parked before the next pain hit. “I’ll try, but that’s not protocol. He won’t even answer if it’s not an emergency…” I hung up on her. “Fuck it,” I panted, pulling up Dr. Mead in my contacts and pressing dial. “This is Dr. Mead,” he answered three rings later. “This is Nikki Pena Perez. I’ve gone into labor. I’m at the ER right now,” I told him quickly. “I’ll be right there. Tell the doctors I’ll be there in twenty minutes or less,” he said quickly. “10-4,” I agreed and hung up my own phone. I grabbed my purse and bailed out of my car before I tried calling Michael again. Luckily, this time, he answered. “Yeah?” He was breathless.

“I’m in labor,” I panted, hoofing it all the way to the ER doors before another pain nearly took my feet out from under me. “Where are you?” He asked sharply. “The ER,” I told him, happy that my contraction had left me, but unhappy because another one was right on its heels, which meant that I was getting closer to delivery. “I’m less than a minute apart.” Something which I proved moments later when another contraction slammed into me. This time, I really did have to go to my knees because I was sure if I didn’t, I would fall on my face. “Ma’am, are you alright?” A woman’s voice called from the doorway. I looked up into Lennox’s familiar eyes. “No, I’m pretty sure I’m having this baby, and my asshole isn’t here yet,” I told her. Then a commotion from the ER’s entrance startled us both enough that we looked up only to see Michael running out with a bandage covering his eye. “Michael!” I screamed, panicked now that my eyes caught sight of all the blood staining his shirt. Michael dropped down to his knees beside me,

gathering me into his strong arms as he said, “I’m okay.” “Isn’t that something I should be saying to you?” I asked, raising my hand to look at the wound being covered by the bandage. He grimaced and helped me stand by putting both arms underneath mine. “Suspect knocked me over the head with a wrench,” he explained. “Now tell me about you.” I panted as another pain hit me and said, “I’m having your baby.” He laughed. “Generally, that’s what labor usually indicates,” he teased as he helped me to a wheelchair that Lennox pushed out. “You have the entire emergency room in an uproar, little lady,” Lennox crowed as she held the chair as I sat. “Why?” I asked with worry. What had I done to warrant such a reaction? “Michael here has everyone scared as hell of him. Something he proved weeks ago when he told the charge nurse that, under no circumstance, was anyone but his parents, him, Dr. Mead or me to touch you when you go into labor without him being in the room. Not to mention

he threatened them,” Lennox laughed. “So guess who your personal helper will be until Dr. Mead arrives!” I shot my husband a look, but he shrugged as if he could care less what everyone thought of him. “Please, ignore him. He won’t bother anybody,” I shook my head. “Plus, we’re heading up to Labor and Delivery anyway. So we’ll never even see anybody in the emergency room. How’d you get to leave the ER for this?” “Thank God,” Lennox said as she walked with me to the elevators. “I got to help because your husband decided to have a talk with my boss. She agreed, so here I am!” I just shook my head and closed my eyes as another pain washed over me. “Another one?” Michael asked, looking down at his watch. I nodded, too breathless to speak. “Yeah.” “A minute and a half apart. Epidural or no epidural?” He asked. I closed my eyes and tried to block out the pain…but I couldn’t. Which answered the question he asked rather quickly. We’d been fighting over the epidural or no epidural question for months now, and I’d told him that I’d have to

wait and see. He’d insisted on a birth plan, and I’d shook my head, telling him that babies did what they wanted to. There was no rhyme or reason. No woman’s pregnancy was the same, and I couldn’t base a birth that hadn’t happened yet on a hunch. Now, I was sure. “Epidural,” I insisted through gritted teeth. I felt like my uterus was trying to force its way out of my vagina. God, it hurt. And I was sure that Michael was only getting one kid, because this motherfuckin’ hurt. “One kid, Michael. You better enjoy this one,” I informed him. He smiled. “We’ll see.” “No, we won’t. We really won’t. I’ll never be able to forget how this feels. It’s like razor blades tearing through my uterus, and a pair of needle nose pliers trying to rip the spasming organ out through my cun…” Michael slapped his hand over my mouth as the elevator doors opened. I’d been screaming, and apparently he didn’t want me to scream ‘cunt’ in general population.

Lennox had no problem laughing her ass off, consequently forgetting she was supposed to be pushing my wheelchair. Michael, exasperated, took over the job and pushed me to the nurse’s station where they immediately gave us a room. “What? Did you threaten them, too?” I asked with a narrowed eyed look over my shoulder. Michael smiled. “You’ll never know.” I rolled my eyes. The man was incorrigible, and he couldn’t help himself sometimes. “Are you going to let any of the nurses take care of me?” I asked dryly. “You’re horrible.” Michael helped me into the bed once he’d locked the wheelchair’s wheels, and I sighed in relief to have my feet up. “Yeah, as a matter of fact, he is!” Hannah crowed as she came into the room. I rolled my eyes. “You know, it’s really, really weird to have your sister in law’s hands up your cooch.” Hannah smiled. “We’re all adults here. If you can handle it, I can handle it.”

I just shook my head. “I haven’t seen you on this floor in a while. How perfect that you’re on shift today,” I said dryly. Hannah grinned. “In reality, I wasn’t supposed to be on this floor today. But I’m scheduled on this floor for the time being until you’re back from maternity leave.” She gave me a pointed look that said she’d known where I was today. Something I’d told her but not my husband. I blushed. I was supposed to be on maternity leave. But when Jasmine had begged me to continue seeing her once I’d graduated school, I could do nothing less. Even if it meant I had to deliver her kid while I was in labor with my own. Something Michael hadn’t realized I’d done yet, since I’d left while he was at work and conveniently forgot to tell him. “That’s cool,” I said, changing the subject. “Alright, Hannah, check her out so we can see where we’re at,” Michael ordered. Hannah shot him a disproving look. “I know how to do my job, boyo.”

His brows rose. “You’ve been talking to Peek.” Hannah grinned and lifted up her shirt to reveal her belly to us. She’d gotten a tattoo of Reggie’s name on her lower hipbone in bold, beautiful scripted letters. “Wow, that’s awesome,” Lennox and I parroted at the same time. Michael smiled. “It hurt, didn’t it. I told you not to go there with your first tattoo.” Hannah shrugged. “Hurt like a motherfucker. But Peek gave me a shot of Jack Daniel’s to tide me over. And kept them coming until it was done. When I left I could barely stand. Had to call a cab to take me home.” I gasped as another contraction tore through me, bringing everyone’s attention back to me. “Alright, you know the drill,” Hannah picked up a gown and tossed it at Michael. “Help her in that, and we’ll step outside the curtains. Let us know when you’re done…and what the fuck happened to your face?” I coughed to cover up my laugh. She’d just now noticed that after being in the room with him for ten minutes? Michael ignored her and swung the curtains closed

himself before walking over to me. “You ready for this?” He asked softly, his eyes taking in my every feature. I nodded and started to strip my shirt over my head, followed by my sports bra. Michael’s eyes flared as he caught sight of my swollen belly and big breasts, but managed to stand still as I stood and pushed my maternity yoga pants over my hips, followed closely by my panties. I offered him my hands, and he slipped the gown on over my chest, covering my nakedness without one lewd touch or comment. He must really be scared, I thought. Which stood to reason. I was scared to. Really scared. But the thing about Michael and me was that we’d both gone through hell together, and had come out the other side. We had our scars. We had our doubts. But we also had each other, and as long as I had him at my side, we could get through just about anything.

“I love you, Mikey Mike,” I whispered, knowing it’d draw a smile from him. And he didn’t disappoint. He smiled, eyes sparkling. “I love you more, Nik.” “Impossible,” I whispered fiercely. “Nothing’s impossible when it comes to you. You showed me that,” he said just before pressing his soft lips against mine. “You ready for this?” I nodded and touched the side of the bandage covering up the right side of his forehead. “Have you had this taken care of?” I asked, feeling another pain coming. He nodded. “Ten stitches.” I winced. Not only because that was a lot of stitches, but because it felt like this child of ours was trying to claw its way out of my vagina like a tiny Hulk. “Epidural,” I insisted. He smiled and helped me sit back down before yanking the curtains open. Lennox and Hannah turned from their discussion,

hurrying up to my bedside. “Alright, lay back and let me feel you up.” I covered my face with my hand as Hannah snapped gloves into place over her hands. “Sit back, I’ll try to make this good.” I huffed out a laugh as I moved until I was flat on my back, moving my enormous beached whale body until I was in position, then slowly open my legs. Hannah didn’t waste any time doing her thing, and I was grateful. “You know,” Lennox said from her positon by my head. “I’ve never seen a pregnant woman so calm before.” I didn’t say anything to that. I was freaking the fuck out. Michael, though, didn’t need that from me. I was sure he was already nervous enough, and I didn’t want him to regret having a kid. He didn’t need yet another insecurity, and I wouldn’t be the one to give it to him. “Do you remember what I do for a living?” I panted. “You’re at six centimeters and fifty percent effaced. Doing good. You can still have an epidural, but I’d

recommend making that decision quickly,” Hannah said, taking my gown and covering my knees. Lennox sat the head of the bed up, and I looked to Michael to see him staring at the wall. “What is it?” I asked him. “I can’t tell you how disturbing it is to see my sister’s fingers up your…you know,” Michael informed me. I smiled at him. “You’re better at it, if it makes you feel any better.” He made a gagging sound. “Disgusting.” I snickered as Hannah tossed her used gloves in the trash and washed her hands. “I’ll go get the on call anesthesiologist. We’ll get your shit knocked right out.” “Should she be talking like that?” I asked, eyes closed as I tried to breathe through my next contraction. “Motherfucker, this hurts like a bitch!” The room stayed silent for long moments while my question and subsequent comment hung therein the air around us. “What?” I asked, opening my eyes to squint at Michael. He just shook his head. “Nothing.” Lennox busied herself hooking up the monitor, starting an IV, and drawing blood while Michael and I watched the

screen to monitor my progress. “That was a big one,” Michael said a few minutes later. I grunted. I knew it was a ‘big one.’ Simply because I’d felt the motherfucker. But I tried to be nice about it. “Uh-huh,” I agreed tiredly. Then Michael and Lennox started talking about medical jargon that was too advanced for my exhausted brain to process, so I ignored them and tried to sleep during my contractions. Something I realized wasn’t working very well. Especially since two of my favorite people in the world, under normal circumstances, wouldn’t shut the fuck up. “Go away,” I muttered. The talking stopped, and I ordered my husband to do my bidding. “Go call your family and mine. Let them know what’s going on. And stop talking over my body. It’s annoying,” I ordered them.

Michael chuckled as he bent down and kissed my forehead. “Yes, ma’am.” “Okay, Nikki. This is Amy Jones, the nurse anesthetist. She’s going to do your epidural for you. This is Eddie Gonzales, he’s the anesthesiologist that she works under. They’re here to answer any questions you might have. Okay?” Michael froze on his way out the door, but then I started having another contraction. “Get out so she can do her job,” I ordered my ornery husband. Amy’s eyes followed Michael’s progress, brows raising to see what he’d do. Michael chose correctly, though. He offered his hand to the two of them, said, “I’m going to call my family,” and left the room. “Eddie and Amy,” Hannah said. “Is there anything you need from me? I have another patient that’s in the final stages of pushing.” Amy shook her head when Eddie looked at her. “No, that’s all, thank you.” I knew Eddie, and the moment Hannah left the room he walked to my bedside.

“You ready for this rodeo to get started?” He asked teasingly. Eddie loved to tease me. We worked well together, trading barbs back and forth like two children in a play yard battle. He loved the Yankees, and I was a Texas Rangers fan all the way. Which tended to make us butt heads from time to time. “Well, I was all ready to have you teasing me while giving me the epidural,” I grunted, toes curling when the next pain hit me. “But I guess since you’re too good for me I’ll settle for Ms. Amy.” Amy didn’t smile, but Eddie did. “I have a C-section with triplets in about fifteen minutes. I’m sorry, but she’s cooler than you are,” he admitted openly. I laughed. “Yeah, that’s what they all say.” He winked. “I’ll check back in with you later.” I nodded and watched him leave the room. As my face turned to Amy, I was immediately struck with just how different she looked now that Eddie was out of the room. Like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde different.

“You okay?” I asked her worriedly. She walked to the door and closed it slowly. “Don’t you need a nurse?” I asked. “And your stuff?” She didn’t answer as she drew the curtain and turned back to me, walking towards me with a new purpose that set my instincts on edge. “Your man fucked up,” the woman whispered to me. “You’d think with how cautious he was being with the doctors that he’d pay a little more attention to who was about to inject all sorts of fun drugs into your spinal column.” I looked at her nametag and realized with a sinking feeling that she had the same last name as Dr. Jones. Her name was Amy Jones. Wife or daughter? I couldn’t tell. And why had I never seen her before? I worked on this floor, and it was kind of a rule that I saw everyone on it seeing as I was a midwife. It was good business to know my colleagues. “Don’t you mean my epidural space?” I asked worriedly. My hands were sweaty, and my thighs quivered as I

prepared to launch myself from the bed. Only before I could, Amy Jones produced a gun. “Don’t move,” she hissed. “I don’t really need your cooperation. I think I’ll just do it the quick way.” My body froze. “There’s oxygen in this room, not to mention my husband is right outside,” I tried to reason with her. “Surely you know that you’ll never get out of this unscathed.” She shrugged. “I don’t really care. At this point, I just know you need to be gone, as well as him, before I go. You’ll be my final couple. How does it feel?” She said soothingly, bringing the IV tubing that was going into my right hand up to her stomach. I could see the syringe in her hand, and knew she was about to give me something. Which was why I yanked my hand to the side hard and quick, ripping tape, hair, and skin as I forcefully removed the catheter from my vein. She glared at me disapprovingly and shook the gun at me for emphasis. “I told you not to fucking move!” She whispered

forcefully. I moved. I couldn’t help it. It wasn’t in me to lay back and take what was coming for me. “Hey, I just got word from Dr. Mead. He’ll be here in just a few minutes. He got held up by a train on 18…” Lennox’s voice trailed off as she got a load of the situation she’d walked in on. She looked to me, then back to Amy before raising her hands up near her head. “Don’t shoot her.” Amy kept the gun pointed at me, but she was glaring at Lennox, which was why she never saw me move close to the emergency ‘code blue’ cord and yank it from the wall. The alarm in my room started to shriek. And people poured inside. Nurses, doctors, techs. Michael. The sheer amount of people that’d entered the room had overwhelmed Amy, but she was smart and put the gun away before anyone could see her. Michael’s eyes fell on me, and I started to scream. “She has a gun!”

Amy was quick, though. Using the commotion to her advantage, she ran, skirting past multiple nurses who were standing there stunned. Michael, though, wasn’t stunned. Far from it. He was following her out the door almost as quickly as she’d left it. Lennox walked up to me, placing a towel to the wound at my hand that I just now realized was pouring blood onto the floor. “You’re a mess,” she whispered soothingly. A sob caught in my throat, and the pain that I’d somehow been able to disregard in this entire debacle hit me again tenfold. “God,” I slumped. Lennox caught me and moved me towards the bed, and I went willingly. “You’re hand’s a mess,” she said, eyes scanning the wound. I nodded. “Yep.” “I should’ve done what Michael wanted and not gotten the epidural. Then we wouldn’t be in this mess right now,” I said worriedly.

Lennox started to clean off my hand with an alcohol swab. Which was ridiculous since I needed a lot more than an alcohol pad to clean up this mess. Maybe a towel or something. Then I forgot all about the mess I’d made and started focusing on the massacre that was happening between my legs. It burned, but it didn’t hurt anywhere near as bad as everything else attached to my body. “I feel like I need to push,” I said worriedly a few moments later. Lennox looked up into my eyes. “Your doctor’s not here yet,” she said worriedly. I closed my eyes. “Alright,” Hannah yelled. “This isn’t an exhibit. Everyone out.” “But that psycho’s got a gun!” A nurse replied worriedly. I wanted to roll my eyes. And I would have had I not been worried that I might suddenly make a big move and the baby would fall out of my vagina.

“I really….really need to push,” I urged insistently, ripping the blankets that Lennox had just replaced, off my legs. “Either back off or catch this baby, because it’s about to happen.” Hannah shooed out the rest of the people and Lennox and her stared at me with worried eyes. “I’ve never delivered a baby before,” Lennox said helplessly. “She’s in the custody of the police,” Michael growled, throwing open the door and slamming it shut behind him. It took him a few moments, but it wasn’t long before he realized that my vagina was out for everyone to see. “What?” I pointed down to my vagina. “Your baby wants me to push.” He shook his head. “Dr. Mead isn’t here yet.” If I could have, I would have beaten him. “Well you tell that to this kid!” I screamed. Michael’s eyes widened when something between my legs caught his eyes, and I moved my hand down between my legs and felt something that most definitely hadn’t been there before. “I’m crowning,” I said to the three of them.

I wished I’d had a camera to capture the looks on the three of their faces. “One of you need to come over here and play catcher, or you need to go get a doctor. Now,” I ordered them. Still, none of them moved. A doctor. A PA. And a nurse. And all three of them stared at me with blank faces. I can’t believe I was having to do this all myself! My body started to do what it was made to do, and soon I could do nothing but push and hope they got with the game. Because seriously, it fucking hurt! “Ahhhh! Michael get your fucking head out of your ass and catch this fucking kid!” I screamed. Michael finally came unstuck and put his doctor hat on…or at least his thinking cap anyway. He moved between my legs, then asked the stupidest question on earth at that point. “Should I put on gloves?” I would’ve kicked him had I not been holding onto my legs. Instead, I closed my eyes, pushed, and daydreamed

about shooting our kid out of my vagina and hitting him with her. Which seemed good in theory, but probably not good for real. My mind didn’t really care at that point. “How come nobody waited for your family to arrive… ahhhh! My eyes!” Nico screamed, covering his eyes as he got a good look at my vagina. I would be embarrassed…later. Right now, I couldn’t muster up the ability to care, though. “Move out of the way, hijo. I’ve got to get in there!” My mother yelled. I didn’t look at her either. I couldn’t. My eyes were on Michael as he did things between my legs that I hoped he and I could both forget later on. Then I swear to you, he stuck his hand into my vagina and I saw stars…and not the good kind. “Owww! What the ever loving fuck, Michael!” I shrieked. “The cord was around her neck,” he rumbled softly. “All better now. Push again when you feel the next

contraction.” I pushed again at the next contraction. But not because he’d said to. Because I needed to. My body wouldn’t let me not do it. “Owww, ow, ow, ow, ow,” I chanted over and over again. “Would you grow the fuck up, Nico?” Georgia asked, shoving him out of the doorway where he was still covering his eyes and facing the opposite direction of me and my ‘big ‘ol vagina.’ Georgia came to my side and swept my hair back off my face. “You’re doing good, almost done,” she soothed. I nodded, panting as the worst pain yet washed over me. “Fuck!” “Language, hija,” my mother admonished from my other side. When had she gotten there? “The head’s out,” Hannah and Lennox said at the same time, standing at the end of the bed and looking at the humongous child that was trying to come out and being incredibly slow about it. “Your amniotic sac is still

intact.” Then, suddenly, in a great rush of relief, our baby slid out. Michael made a hook with his finger and broke the amniotic sac, and suddenly I could hear my baby, who was very unhappy with being forced from her comfy, warm home. By her daddy no less. “Alright, Nikki! Let’s get this baby delivered! Son, move out of the way!” Dr. Mead ordered Nico. Once Nico moved, though, he came to a stop. “Well, I sure didn’t expect this! For your first child no less!” I laughed. What else could I do? “I’ve never seen that before,” Hannah said in awe. “Me neither,” Lennox agreed. “Oh, my God, she’s beautiful!” Georgia cried softly at my side. “Can I look yet?” Nico whined. “Alright, let’s get this placenta delivered. Daddy, are you going to cut the cord?” Dr. Mead asked jovially. I moved my eyes away from our daughter to Michael, who was staring at her in awe.

“Yeah, I think I will,” he rasped. Lennox handed him the hemostats to clamp the cord, and then a pair of scissors once he’d done that. Then, with the utmost care, he carried our little girl over to the warmer, where a team of nurses were already set up waiting for her. When they’d arrived, I don’t know, but they were there. And I was so happy I could scream. I delivered the placenta, and waited for them to bring the baby to me. But I kept waiting and waiting and waiting. I could see them all looking back at me in concern, then back at the baby. Michael was busy washing up at the sink, so he didn’t see what was going on, but I knew immediately something was wrong. “What’s wrong with her?” I asked urgently. “Tell me!” The nurses all looked at each other, and one of them, Lucille, broke off, picking up my daughter and carrying snugly in her arms. She brought her over to me, and I reached for her, pulling her into my arms like they’d taken the most precious gift away from me without plans of giving her

back. They gave me teasing bits and pieces of her until I was a whimpering, needful mess. The moment she was in my arms I felt at peace. She was absolutely perfect. Dark brown hair like me. Cheeks like Michael. Long fingers and toes like Michael. A heart shaped chin like me. Then she opened her eyes, and I immediately knew something was wrong. Because the entire iris of her eye was covered in a milky white, circular film. In both eyes. “What’s wrong with her?” I cried, looking up to Michael for help. He frowned and walked over, eyes on our baby, and immediately scowled. “What it looks like is a cataract,” he said, running his thumb over the baby’s cheek lovingly. His eyes met mine and they’d never looked more serious. “She’s fine,” he said soothingly. “A cataract isn’t fine!” I cried. “It’s not fine at all!” My raised voice must’ve made the baby annoyed because she started to cry.

Michael immediately reached forward and took her out of my arms, and I felt the loss like a punch to the chest. Michael brought our baby up to his chest and cradled her, brushing his nose along the top of her head as he breathed her in. “Look at me, Nikki,” he ordered. I peeled my eyes away from where his hand was holding her under her bottom, and looked at him. He wasn’t worried. Not even a little bit. And that was what I needed to finally gain some control. “What do we do?” I asked softly. He leaned forward and took a seat on the side of my bed, running his hand along the length of my cheek. “We let the pediatrician look at her. We talk to my father. My mother. But we do it all together. Because we can do nothing less,” he whispered. A tear slipped down my cheek, and I looked down at my hands. Seeing them trembling, I took a deep breath and said, “I love you Michael. I’m sorry for freaking out.” He pulled me to his chest, and my head rested next to the entire length of our baby’s body, and I just knew

everything would be alright. Why, you ask? Because Michael said it would, that’s why.

*** Four hours later “So you’re saying she’ll need to undergo surgery for this within the first three months of her life,” I asked the pediatrician I’d painstakingly chosen out of many in the East Texas area. He nodded. “Having those taken care of is imperative. If you don’t, it could become malignant. It could stay the same. Or they could mean she’s blind for the rest of her life. And this is an easy fix. It’s relatively painless, but it is something she’ll have to be put to sleep for. Which is always a risk.” I closed my eyes as tears started to form. “Thank you, Dr. Rush,” Michael said, offering his hand. “We’ll follow up with the doctor in Dallas next Tuesday, like you said. We really appreciate you coming out and seeing her on your day off.” I smiled through my tears. That was awfully nice of Dr. Rush. Most doctors didn’t do things like that. Which was why I’d chosen Dr. Rush in the first place. Bringing my knees up to my chest, I moved Carolina up until she was resting on my upraised legs, and stared at her.

She was so beautiful. And perfect. And it broke my heart that she had to have this done at such a young age. But I didn’t have to worry about that now. I had five full days with my little beauty, until I had to see that doctor in Dallas with her, and I was going to love her so hard. Michael put his arms around me and hugged me to his chest, pressing his lips against my cheek. “I’m going to go home and change my clothes,” he rumbled softly. “And bring up your bag so we can get little miss priss dressed. Anything you need while I’m out?” I shook my head. “No. Not unless you want to grab me a number one from Whataburger.” He leaned back and gave me a grin. “I think I can handle that,” he teased. Kissing me once more, he moved his lips to our little girl and brushed his lips over her hair. “The two best things that ever happened to me,” he whispered, then left the room without another word. Picking up my phone, I started to take a few hundred pictures of my little beauty when a knock sounded at the

door. I looked up, and smiled. Because at the door was Wolfgang, or Wolf as I liked to call him, and baby Nathan. Although Baby Nathan wasn’t so much a baby anymore. He was a toddler who was full of mischief and love for all things furry. “Wolf,” I said softly, smiling at him once he breached the doorway. “Come in, come in.” Wolf smiled. “I’d have waited to come see you, but I have to be at work in a couple of hours, and I didn’t know if I’d get to see you before you got out. How are you doing?” He smiled as he looked down at the baby in my lap. “He did good,” he rasped, a deep seated hurt evident in his voice. His own child would’ve been six months just a few weeks ago. “Would you like to hold her, Wolf?” I asked softly. He swallowed, and looked into my eyes. “Yeah, if that’s okay.” I held out my hands for Nathan, and he handed him to me.

Nathan immediately wrapped his chubby arms around my neck. “Take her,” I said softly. Wolf did, reaching forward and scooping Carolina up with nimble, practiced hands. “She’s beautiful,” he rumbled, cradling Carolina to his chest. “She is,” I agreed, turning away from the devastated look that came over Wolf’s face. “How ‘ya doing, Nathan?” Nathan offered me a slobbery smile as he played with my hair. “Fish,” he babbled. “Fish?” I asked him. “That’s his new favorite word,” Wolf explained. “That and ‘cup’. Seems he only says what he wants.” I smiled. I remembered that with Nico’s twins as well. “How’s work going for you?” I asked softly. Wolf spoke without looking up from Carolina. “A lot longer than I realized it’d be,” he muttered. “I find that I miss the hell out of Nathan while I’m there.”

I smiled. That tended to happen when you had children. I’d witnessed it with all of the SWAT team, as of late. They all wanted to get home to their kids and wives. The parties had gone from all nighters to ‘we need to leave by eight p.m. to get the kids in bed’ kind of parties. Although, it was nice to see all these reformed badboys turned family men. That’s the way it was supposed to be. “How do you like the new mayor of Uncertain?” I asked. “Michael said they got a Sheriff and Mayor in the same day. He said it’s been kind of crazy.” Wolf nodded. “It’s been a clusterfuck. It’s going to take some doing to get things settled.” I wasn’t surprised. Texas was a true Republican state, and to have two Democrat officials in high positions in the city was really getting on a lot of the city’s nerves. I was still surprised that it’d happened in the first place. “Cup?” Nathan asked, tapping my face. I looked to him and smiled. “I don’t have your cup, big guy.”

Nathan frowned, and my eyes were drawn to the barely noticeable scar on his forehead. He’d had plastic surgery done on his head about eight weeks into his hospital stay. Then four more reconstructions after that. And they’d done a wonderful job. Such a wonderful job, in fact, that you could only see that something had happened when he frowned or cried. Wolf got up, drawing my attention to him. He really was a big man. Today he was in his leather jacket that I never saw him without. He had some extensive damage to the back of his head and neck, which made him grow his hair longer than I’d ever seen on any police officer before. He wore the leather jacket to cover up the scarring on his back and neck. Another thing I’d heard from Michael. I’d never seen it myself, but it broke my heart that he wore it. “I gotta go,” he rumbled. “I just wanted to come see y’all and make sure you were okay.” So he’d heard.

“Don’t do anything, Wolf,” I reprimanded him. His eyes looked up to mine, and I could see the determination here. “We’ll see.” He placed Carolina into my arms and reached for Nathan. “I can’t promise anything, though.” I looked into the sweet face of my little girl once he left the room, and came to a decision. I’d do everything in my power to help make that man happy. Even if I had to throw one of my sisters at him. They were tenacious. “You and me will get him there, little girl,” I said, running my finger down the bridge of her nose. She stirred, and my heart filled with just a little bit more joy. I was so happy I could scream. I had the man I loved with all my heart. A baby with that man. And a life that I loved. And in a few months, when Carolina’s surgery was behind her, I would be complete. I couldn’t ask for a thing more.

Epilogue I missed you. Let’s have sex. A lot. -Michael’s secret thoughts.

Michael “You left the toilet seat up again,” Nikki grumbled from her bent over position. She was loading the dishwasher and I winced. I was supposed to do that last night. She’d asked a million times, and I just plain forgot. Fuck. “And you forgot to take out the trash again,” she continued. I sighed. The woman was a freakin’ mess. I didn’t complain about her inability to put things away. Like the pitcher of tea. I hated drinking hot tea. And I didn’t like the way ice watered it down. Yet did she make more of an effort to put it away? No. So I drank my tea with ice now because it was inevitable that she’d forget to put it away.

And don’t even get me started on her makeup, hair products, curling irons, and God knows what else. The first thing on our remodeling agenda, if it ever came to it, was a duel sink for him and her, because I couldn’t tell you how many times I’d wished I didn’t have to put away shit on the counter to shave my face or brush my teeth. I didn’t tell her any of that, though. We’d learned, over the last four years, how to pick our battles. “I can’t fix the plumbing because you bought a male end, and I need a female end.” I said. “What do you mean? What’s the difference?” Nikki asked, turning to study me. I was a fucking mess. I’d been under the house, fixing the plumbing that’d decided to fucking combust last night. And she’d been bothering the fuck out of me for the entire morning to fix it so she could have running water for the party we were throwing for Madden. Madden hadn’t had an easy life. He’d had a lot of struggles, but in those struggles, he’d come out on top.

After Madden’s children had been released from the hospital, the three of them had gone to a foster home with Dean and Joslin, of all people. After the whole asking for sperm from his brother debacle, Joslin finally gave up on ever having a baby with Dean. She actually gave up a lot of things, in fact. Mainly other men’s dicks. And with that new attitude on life, Joslin turned into a half decent person. Joslin and Dean had helped raise not only Madden’s two children, Sophia and Tawny, but also Madden himself. They’d given Madden the opportunity to just be a kid while helping him raise his children. And as of this afternoon, he was officially a high school graduate. “Michael, are you even listening to me?” Nikki yelled. My brow rose. “Yes, I’m listening to you. But you’re not saying anything that I haven’t already explained to you. Five times, in fact.” She narrowed her eyes at me. “Well then, maybe you should enlighten me…one more time.” I grinned at her.

“You need an anatomy lesson?” I clarified. She narrowed her eyes at me. “No. I need you to explain to me how plumbing parts have male and female ends.” I charged forward and pinned her to the counter, my sweaty body plastering up against hers. Nikki had put on a little bit of weight over the last four years, but not one bit of that weight did I not love. In fact, I was fucking ecstatic to have a little more of her to hold onto while I fucked her. Something I was about to prove during the anatomy lesson I was about to give to her. “A female end,” I said, pressing my hands against her. “Is wider. It allows the male end to fit inside of it.” I punctuated this comment by pressing my erection into her hip. She gasped and her eyes widened. “You…you didn’t say that when I left,” she stuttered. I leaned past her and turned the water on, picking up the bottle of soap and washing my hands behind her back. She licked her lips, and I knew she knew what I was about to do.

“The kids are about to wake up,” she hesitated when I slapped the faucet down to stop the flow of water once I’d was finished. I grinned. Then my hands went to her sides, and I ran my hands up and under her shirt, pushing it up and over her head in one fluid movement. Her hair fell from the haphazard bun she’d placed on top of her head, with a pencil of all things, and tumbled down her back and over her shoulders. Just the way I liked it. I didn’t bother removing the bra. That’d take too long. I knew the kids were about to wake up. They only gave us a solid two hours at most, and it was already going on an hour and forty five minutes. The next thing to go were her pants, panties going with it for expediency. “Michael,” she said breathlessly when I turned her around and pressed her over the sink. She grabbed onto the faucet for dear life, looking back over her shoulder as I unzipped my pants. “Yeah, baby?” I asked, pulling my dick from its

confines and running the hardened length up her pussy lips. She gasped and pressed back against me, helping me coat my cock in her juices as she involuntarily jerked her hips. “See, to fix this plumbing,” I said, pressing my lubed cock up against her entrance and pushing in. “I need a three and five eights male end. You got me a female end. To get full satisfaction on both ends, one won’t do without the other.” I could tell she wanted to laugh, but she was too busy moaning as my cock filled her to the brim. My eyes crossed when she clenched down on me. “Less talking, more fucking. We’re running out of time,” she panted. I agreed. Picking up the pace, I grabbed a hold of both hips and started to move in and out of her. Faster and faster, I thrusted. Each one harder than the previous. We worked well together. She knew what I liked, and I knew just the right angle that would set her off like a bottle rocket. Moving my hand between the counter top and her hips,

I found the bud of her clit and started to circle it as I ramped up my speed. “Michael,” she moaned. “Yes!” I gritted my teeth and closed my eyes as I felt her pussy begin to convulse around the length of my cock, meaning the end of me holding back. She did that to me, though. Undid me. Tore me down to rock bottom and built me back up again. I growled when my release hit me. Hot come poured from my cock and splashed against her insides, coating the two of us equally as I worked myself inside of her, until the last dregs of my orgasm abated. Then, right on cue, I heard the sounds of Clayton as he started screaming at the top of his lungs to be let out. “Shit,” I growled, reaching forward and to the side to yank the dish towel off the peg where Nikki insisted we hang it. “Not my good towels!” She cried. But it was too late. I’d already pulled out and placed the towel over her

entrance to catch my release before she could protest. “Dammit, Michael,” she growled, holding the towel between her legs and glaring. I raised my hands. “So now that you know what I need,” I said, buckling my pants. “How about you…fuck.” My pager went off, and I looked at it over on the table, then back to Nikki. “Dammit!” She cried when I walked to it. Wincing, I looked at the readout and sighed. “I’m sure the rest of the ladies will be able to come help you. Just remember not to run the water in the main bathroom,” I ordered as I started walking to our bedroom. Nikki followed me, moments later, with Clayton on her hip and a hardness to her eyes. “What are we supposed to do when we need to wash our hands?” She asked. I raised a brow at her. “Wash them in the kitchen. Put a bottle of the eighteen million bottles of antibacterial shit you have lying around every surface of the house. I don’t fuckin’ know,” I said, shoving my foot into my boot. She sighed. “You better be here by eight or I’ll kick your ass,” she

growled in mock anger. I knew she wasn’t mad. She knew what she was getting into when she married me. She knew that the SWAT team was a huge part of my life. And she accepted it…and me. “I love you, baby,” I said, kissing her softly on the cheek. She smiled. “I love you, too.” With a final kiss on Clay’s head, I rushed out of the house, only to come to a stop when my father and mother pulled up with Carolina. “Hey,” I called, veering around their car to my truck. They all waved, and Carolina’s baby blue eyes followed me. “Daddy, where are you going? I wanted to show you my new cat!” Carolina held up a stuffed cat with a huge, fluffy tail. It was in a box that distinctly marked it as a Build-ABear. I narrowed my eyes at my parents. “Nikki’s going to kill you.”

They grinned unrepentantly. Rolling my eyes, I blew a kiss to my little girl and said, “Daddy has to go to work.” She pouted, but blew me a kiss nonetheless. Just like her momma, she knew when daddy had to leave to ‘go save lives.’ “Take care of my girls, pop,” I ordered my father. He winked and helped my mother out of the car. “Will do, son, see you tonight.” I made it to the station twenty minutes later, and was just in time to see Luke and Bennett walking from their trucks. I caught up to them at the door to the station. “What do we have?” I asked them. “A multi-city wide fuck up, that’s what.” Wonderful.

*** Nikki “Momma, I got a cat!” Caro called the minute she made it through the front door. I smiled and handed Clay off to Elizabeth and caught Carolina just as she barreled into my legs. I smiled and picked her up, looking at her new cat. “Oh, yay,” I said, looking up into her crystal clear blue eyes. Every time I saw them up close my heart clutched. We’d had Caro’s cataracts removed from her eyes when she was exactly one month of age, and it’d been the most terrifying experience of my life. She’d gone through the surgery remarkably well, but the sheer horror of having to watch my baby be wheeled away from me was torture. Now, though, she was healthy and happy. And those eyes that looked exactly like Michael’s sure had a way of making my heart melt. Each and every time. “Yeah, Grammy and Poppop spent a hundred dollars on her. They said I better like her. And treat her well, because that was the last time they took me there,” Caro continued.

I smiled and winked at ‘Poppop.’ They were such suckers. I’d known, of course, the minute they’d said that they were taking Caro to the Boardwalk, that they were in for a rude awakening. Caro was my child. She could shop until she dropped, and did so daily. She could talk just about anyone into anything, which was why her room was filled with all kinds of toys, clothes, and shit she didn’t need. “Hey! Let go of my kitty!” Caro screamed when Clay latched onto the kitty and wouldn’t let go. “Caro,” I said sternly. “Clay is just a baby. You can’t yank stuff out of his hands like that. You could hurt him.” Caro stuck out her tongue at her brother, who was all of eight months old so the effect was lost on him, and crossed her arms. I smiled and looked down at my hands. She looked so much like Michael when she did that that I could barely stand it. “If y’all wouldn’t mind watching them, I have to go to Lowe’s…again…and get a coupling for the plumbing underneath the house. And pick up the cake,” I said, trying

valiantly not to blush and failing miserably. “Okay, dear. Don’t forget to pick up that prescription you made me call in,” Manuelo said. The blood in my veins froze. Motherfucker! Shit! Fuck! “Okay,” I said shakily, walking to the front table and clutching my keys in a tight fist. I was out to the car when I managed to quietly pull out my phone, open the door to my Tahoe, and slide inside. When I started the truck and started to back out of the driveway, I hit the call button and immediately called Michael. He didn’t answer, of course. I didn’t expect him to. But I wanted his voicemail anyway. This is Michael, leave a message. “Michael,” I said quietly. “If you managed to knock me up again today, I’m going to fucking kill you,” I growled, then slammed the phone button on my steering wheel. Ineffective but it made me feel better, nonetheless.

I’d run out of birth control pills two weeks ago, and had completely forgotten until just yesterday that I’d not been taking them. Michael and I lived busy lives. We both had some really odd hours, so on the off chance that we had been able to find time to do the deed, in the past two weeks, I’d forced Michael to use a condom. Something he absolutely loathed doing. Today, though, I’d completely forgotten. And I knew, like I’d known with Clayton, that he’d just knocked me up. There was something about Michael and his damn bad intentions that made me lose my mind. Forget that I didn’t want to be pregnant. But there Michael was with that ‘magic dick’ as my lovely friends liked to call it, and all my inhibitions flew out the window. And with it went my ability to drink. Shit.

*** Four hours later, with all my family and friends around me, I realized that maybe another kid wouldn’t be so bad after all. Especially not with Georgia and Nico’s fourth baby in my arms. “He’s just the sweetest thing I’ve ever seen!” I said, rubbing my nose along Heath’s head. Heath was all of two weeks old, and the very definition of his father. “You did good, big brother,” I said, smiling up at Nico. Nico winked. “I know.” “And so humble,” Georgia laughed. “Nico, humble?” Downy asked after taking a sip of his beer. The whole group laughed. And I looked around at my extended family. They were all there. Luke and Reese with their three children. Nico and Georgia with their four kids. Downy and Memphis with their two children.

Miller and Mercy, with their three. Foster and Blake with their two. Bennett and Lennox with their two. My sisters and their husbands and boyfriends. The Chief and his wife. My parents. Michael’s Parents. Joslin and Dean. Madden and his kiddos. My husband and children. Hannah and Wolf – although, that was a new thing. They’d spoken on and off for the last few years, but with the way they were acting, looking at each other but not going near the other, I knew something had transpired. I just didn’t know what, but I had a feeling that something would break soon. And then they’d be just as happy as the rest of us. And I was happy Ecstatically so. “Here you go, Mama,” Michael said, handing Clay over. He took Heath from my arms and handed me my own

little butterball, and I smiled as Michael gazed longingly into Heath’s little face. For a man that hadn’t wanted any children, he sure was adamant about having more and more. And as I looked around at all the children running and playing happily in the yard amongst their parents, I decided that just maybe another baby wouldn’t be a bad thing. As long as I had Michael, I could totally get on board with another kid. Because I loved him. With my whole heart and soul, and I knew he’d always be there for me. He was just that type of man. A man that always had his woman’s back, no matter what it took. That’s what true love was.

Coming Soon Counter To My Intelligence 1-6-16

Prologue Rules are meant to be broken…just not quite like that. -Coffee Cup.

Sawyer “Bristol, please let’s not do this!” I pleaded with my best friend. Bristol looked over at me with a raised brow. “Finals are over. You don’t have volleyball practice for two months. It’s time to stop being such a hermit and just be a college freshman like the rest of us.” I shook my head. “I don’t think this is going to be a good idea. I’m freaking out here, and I’m not even there. I don’t want to go.” Bristol looked unimpressed. “I’m going whether you want to or not. The decision is up to you,” she left that hanging in the air, and walked out of our shared dorm, closing the door quietly behind her.

“Shit,” I sighed. I really didn’t want to go. But it was more than apparent that Bristol did. I wasn’t one for parties. I was more comfortable curled up with a good book rather than going to a party or hanging out with friends. I loved Bristol with all my heart, and I knew she loved me right back. We’d been friends for as long as I could remember, and I knew that she’d always be there for me. Even if I wanted to be left the hell alone. Bristol had done her best to ‘get me out of my head’, as she liked to call it, but it would help if I actually wanted to be out of it. Which I most certainly did not. I was a very shy person. Between her and Isaac, my boyfriend, I was doomed. Something he proved in the next minute when a text showed up on my phone. Going 2 the party w/ Brooklyn. You better be there. Fuck! I looked longingly over at the new book I picked up at

the grocery store before I walked to my dresser and pulled out a pair of pants and a black spaghetti strap shirt. It wasn’t the greatest, but it’d do. I wasn’t there to impress. I was there because I was being forced.

*** “No, Isaac. I don’t want any,” I growled four hours later. I’d already had a beer, and it was one more than I’d wanted. I was a lightweight. After more than four, I wasn’t gonna wake up for a very, very long time. Which was why I always stayed with one and one only. Isaac, though, didn’t seem to care. “Seriously, I don’t want one!” I said, shoving it away. After this night was over, so were Isaac and me. He’d tried to publicly grope me and have sex with me, something we hadn’t done before, and wouldn’t ever be doing. He’d tried to get me to play beer pong, and when I wouldn’t, he played with a couple of other college coeds. When I drank the first beer I’d had, he thought he’d won the lottery and kept trying to force feed me more. “You’re such a fuckin’ downer. Get the fuck away from me,” Isaac slurred. I wanted to nut punch him. Repeatedly.

“Well, I think I’ll go home, then,” I hesitated. “Do you want me to give you a ride?” His eyes narrowed and he took a look around. The party had been a ‘bust,’ or so he’d said. I didn’t know if it had or not. Seemed there’d been a lot of people there for me, but they’d slowly drifted out of the main room until there were about fifteen of us left. “Yeah, I’ll go home. Let me go get one more drink.” I wanted to tell him no, but I knew that that was probably the only way I was going to get out of here. We were in his truck, after all. “I’ll go get Bristol,” I said, wandering away from him. I found Bristol in the kitchen doing things that I didn’t think were possible. Mainly those ‘things’ being drinking upside down with a tube shoved down her throat while a few of the football players yelled, ‘chug’ over and over. She even managed to look good doing it, too. “Uh, Bristol?” I called worriedly. “It’s time to get going, are you ready?” The football players looked up at me, curiosity in their eyes.

They’d been doing that all night and I had no clue why. I wasn’t anything special, but they were staring at me like I was the biggest piece of juicy steak they’d ever seen. “Bristol?” I called again. The closest football player finally lowered Bristol’s legs, and she hit the floor with a spewing laugh. Beer covered her from head to toe. “I think it’s time to go,” I said softly. Bristol nodded, so glassy eyed that I thought for sure she was going to fall over any second. With the help of the football players, I loaded a very boisterous Bristol, and a very touchy Isaac into his big three quarter ton truck. Isaac’s truck wasn’t my favorite thing to drive on the best of days, but it being night and slightly rainy, I knew it wouldn’t be fun at all. Regardless of my apprehension, I got into the driver’s seat, pulled the seat up so I could reach the pedals and the steering wheel, and started it up. “Remember, it pulls to the left,” Isaac slurred, leaning over the console to run his mouth along my neck. I cringed and pushed him slightly to fall back into his own seat.

“Let me drive, please,” I said pleadingly. Isaac laughed as he turned to Bristol who was sitting in the middle of the backseat, staring at us giddily. “I knew y’all would make such a great couple!” She cheered, clapping her hands like she was a seal at Sea World. I wanted to flip her off, but it took two hands to maneuver Isaac’s huge truck. Did I mention I hated driving it? He had huge tires on it. They were so big that they came up to my waistline. His truck was the size of a tank on steroids. His daddy bought it for him the day he turned eighteen. Now, two years later, it still looked brand new because he took such good care of his ‘precious baby.’ Three years ago, when I got my first car at eighteen, it’d been because I’d saved money, since I started working at fifteen. Although my parents were great, they weren’t the richest. In fact, they weren’t even middle class. We were the ‘barely making it’ class.

Even now, with me out of the house, they were still struggling to make ends meet. But they did have four other kids besides me. So it was understandable. But it was also probably why I’d be in debt until I was fifty. Paying for my bachelor’s degree in nursing wasn’t very easy. Thank God for student loans. Although they wouldn’t be my friends once I graduated. “Why are you going so slow, Sawyer? I feel like we’re crawling!” Bristol yelled, leaning forward on the console. “Put your seatbelt on or I’ll pull this truck over,” I said with as much venom as I could. Neither one of them ever wore seatbelts. And it drove me nuts. I heard two clicks, and I turned accusing eyes onto Isaac. He knew my rule! “Why is it so hard for y’all to follow that rule? I mean, seriously, it could save your life if we were in an accident!” I growled, turning back when I saw lights flash in front of me. I couldn’t stop.

The car that’d pulled out in front of me did it at the exact wrong time. Under normal circumstances, had he done that, I would’ve missed him. But I was in Isaac’s huge truck, which was hard to slow since it was so big. I was also driving at night. In the rain. Which meant that, instead of stopping when I slammed on the brakes, the truck didn’t stop. It slid. The brakes locked. Tires squealed. Isaac, Bristol, and I screamed. And we hit them with a deafening crash. It was terrible. I saw the whites of the man’s eyes before the truck tboned him. Saw the woman in the front seat turn to someone in the back. Then nothing. Absolutely nothing.

I couldn’t make my brain make any sense. And I wouldn’t know it until days later... but I killed every single person in the vehicle I hit. And it would all be my fault.

*** Six months later “After the evidence has been heard, and the defendant’s testimony, we find the defendant guilty of four counts of involuntary manslaughter,” the spokesman for the jury said. My world came to a stop. All my time. All my dreams. Gone. Every one of them. Four counts of involuntary manslaughter. I looked to my mother with tearful eyes. She looked back at me with the same. And I closed them, a single tear slipping down my cheek. “Sawyer Ann Berry, you’re sentenced to eight years in Huntsville. Dismissed,” Judge Abbott declared, finalizing that statement with a slam of his gavel. My heart hurt. I couldn’t breathe. Eight years.

I’d be nearly thirty when I got out! “Don’t worry, Sawyer. I’ll get you out. We’ll appeal it. I promise you,” my father’s good friend and my attorney, Donald Barber, promised. I looked at him and shook my head. “Just…just take care of my parents. They’re going to need you.” He smiled at me sadly. “I will, pumpkin.” My only hope, once the appeal was denied, was that I’d make parole. I looked over at my best friend, who understandably felt horrible, and my boyfriend…whom I hadn’t broken up with because he’d become my rock. Maybe not as much of a boyfriend anymore as much as a huge support system. The two of them had become my soul reason for making it through. They’d stayed with me, despite what I’d done. And I couldn’t thank them enough.

*** Four years later “Parole denied.” My eyes closed, and my heart ripped in half. The last thread holding it in one piece was gone. Most likely forever.