Epilogue
JETT
This was a very bad idea.
Teaching my cousins and siblings any game was a recipe for disaster, but doing it after we’d spent the better part of the day at one of Alex’s wine tastings was taking it to a whole other level.
I’d tried to warn Locke, but he was too naive for this crowd. The man was a baby lamb in a room full of rabid and tipsy wolves hell-bent on initiating him the Marian way.
“It’s not a horsey,” Lennon explained to Ella. “It’s a rook.”
“Knight,” Locke murmured, reaching for his scotch and taking another gulp.
The huge patio table on the deck behind my grandparents’ lodge in Montana was big enough to hold everyone.
The summer sun was setting behind the mountain, shooting warm rays across the yard and deck.
Chill music played softly from hidden speakers, and various dishes of appetizers dotted the table between practice chess sets.
“It’s literally a horse,” Ella said, holding the knight from the red set. “And it’s pretty. I’m naming it Frank.”
Locke finished helping my cousin Rosie with the yellow pieces, which she kept knocking over since she couldn’t stop staring at my hot fucking boyfriend.
“Eyes on your board,” I told her.
Locke’s hand moved under the table to my upper thigh and then quickly toward my inner thigh until his fingers were nearly brushing my balls. “Mm,” I hummed in a too-highly-pitched tone. “Mmhm.”
“Okay,” he said to everyone, as if he wasn’t causing a nuts situation under the table. “Who remembers the eight types of pawns?”
Tommy started rattling them off. “Positive, negative, requesting, offering—”
His fiancé, Foster, stage-whispered, “Kiss-ass.”
Their dog lifted her head from the floor by Foster’s feet, sniffed when she realized he wasn’t talking to her, and put her head back down with a huff.
Avery took a sip of wine while her wife raced around after their toddler in the grass. “I’ll trade someone all my pawns for their queen,” she said seriously, shooting me a wink.
“That’s not…” Locke took a deep breath. “That’s not an allowed movement within the game regulations.”
Gabe shot me a look before blinking innocently at Avery. “I’ll trade you my queen if you’ll let me have your first few moves.”
“No,” Locke said. “Let’s, ah… let’s play a round without variations first. Okay? Good.”
Benji nodded and focused on the board in front of him. “Agreed. And there’s no point in trading for the queen when she can only trade with the bishop anyway.”
I almost snorted.
Locke’s forehead crinkled. “No. The queen doesn’t trade at all. And neither does the bishop.”
Lennon leaned forward. “Unless it’s the blue one, right?”
Locke looked at me with wide eyes. The sheer frustration and overwhelm was kinda cute, I had to admit. “I’m not sure we should…”
“It’s fine. They’ll pick it up when we get going. Let’s start with a sample game. A trial run.”
JJ nudged his wife. “You start. You’re the one with the pink race car piece. That one always starts first.”
All of us waited a beat while the ridiculous line finally clued Locke in to what was going on.
Suddenly, his face cleared. “You assholes! Fuck, you’re all horrible human beings. I can’t believe you had me going.”
Everyone broke into laughter. Beau grinned over at him. “My baby girl was captain of the chess team in high school,” he said. “When all our friends were packing stadium chairs and coolers for football games, we were loading up the SUV with nerds.”
Locke glanced at Becca. “That true?”
She grinned. “I play a mean horsey.”
He turned to me with a look of betrayal and accusation. “Your sister is a chess nerd, and you didn’t think to mention it?”
“Why do you sound so surprised when I’ve already kicked your ass many times in the game?”
Mav rocked back in his seat with his beer bottle propped over his stomach. “He comes by it honestly. It’s a Marian thing.”
“Our cousin Wolfe is the only one I can’t beat consistently,” Becca bragged, but then I noticed the glint in her eye. “Jett’s easy to beat unless he’s playing with someone he’s attracted to. Then he takes it seriously.”
My face flushed hot as Locke’s expression made it obvious he was remembering the times I’d beaten him at chess. “That so, Jethro?”
“Pfft.”
As everyone continued to talk around me, I took a moment to wonder where the hell Wolfe was. He’d been a no-show at the bachelor party, and he was still in the wind. Uncle Jude had explained that Wolfe had taken off on a solo camping trip, but I knew he and Derek were starting to worry.
“You okay, baby?” Locke murmured close to my ear. “Did you need to go lie down?”
I snorted. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
“Yes. Yes, I would. And it beats the hell out of trying to teach anything to these fuckers. It’s a good thing I learned how unwelcoming your family is before I committed to you even more than I already have.”
I turned his chair out and climbed into his lap, wrapping my arms around his neck and ignoring all the groans and catcalls from the drunk Marians surrounding us. “Oh yeah? You thinking of jumping ship, Johnny?”
He pulled my face down to kiss me. I loved that he was never awkward or hesitant about showing me affection, no matter who was around.
“I can’t. I’m locked in now.”
I could tell he was teasing me. “Oh yeah? You on the hook?”
Locke had already explained everything to me about the Paxis Council, and we’d spoken for hours over several days about our shared interest in doing similar work on our own. Helping people with his money and mine. Our combined skills and connections.
A Paxis pair, of sorts.
He would continue to serve on the Paxis Council, but we would also look into doing the good parts, the helping parts, on our own. We already knew we could use many of our same contacts—him with the council and me with ESP—to help make the biggest impact.
Locke kissed me again on the mouth, the cheek, the ear.
“Can’t leave you now. I’d have to pay out your contract. It’s cheaper just to keep you.”
I wrapped my arms around him and squeezed. “So sensible with money,” I said. “I love that about you.”
“You giving me another hug lesson, Jethro?” His arms came around me just as tightly, and his voice was the deep kind of rumble that made foreplay look like child’s play.
His big hands moved up and down my back.
“I do think I need to go lie down,” I admitted softly.
“Mmm. And I think you deserve a little punishment while we’re up there. For letting your family play dirty tricks on me.”
I stayed in his arms for another beat. “I love you so much.”
“I’m gonna need you to prove that,” he said in a warm voice. “Get upstairs, baby. Let’s go.”
His hand smacked my ass as I stood up and tried to make my way into the house without everyone seeing my physical interest in Locke Maris.
He was right behind me, and when we got upstairs and into the privacy of our own room, I spent hours and hours proving my love to him.
Showing Locke that my heart belonged to him.
That I was his.
That he owned me completely.
And that I owned him right back.