Chapter 38 Whip
WHIP
Iwhistled the entire way home, like I was in some sort of Hallmark movie. I couldn’t wipe the cheesy grin off my face, and I did a little shoulder shake shimmy as I pulled into my driveway that was very unlike me, but I needed somewhere for the excitement to go.
Levi looked up from where he sat on the front steps and caught the end of it. “What was that?”
“I’m dancing.”
“Looked more like you had a mini seizure.”
“Fuck you.”
He cracked a grin and reached an arm for me. “Come here.”
I flipped him the bird and tried to get past him, but he grabbed me and dragged me down on the step next to him.
It didn’t take much convincing.
He leaned in, kissing the side of my neck. “You mad at me now?”
“I’m not a teenager. I’m not going to hold a grudge because you don’t recognize great dancing when you see it.”
Levi sniggered. “No? I figured if you were mad, then I would have to take you inside and blow you until you forgave me.”
I raised an eyebrow. “I think I am mad, actually.”
Levi pushed to his feet and offered me his hand. “Funny that. Come on, X took the kids to school. We have the house to ourselves for at least five minutes.” He glanced over his shoulder at me. “That’s all you need, right?”
“You’re really trying to pick a fight so we can have make-up sex, huh?” I muttered, though not really insulted because I was pretty sure I had more than proven to him I could get him off in less time than that, even if I did only have five minutes in me.
I’d drag it out today, tease him until he was begging. Just for being a smart-ass.
He was on me as soon as we shut the door. His hands in my hair, his tongue in my mouth, lips on my neck, my face, my chest.
Fingers found zippers, mostly his finding mine, and then he was on his knees, my cock in his mouth, taking every inch.
I leaned back against the wall, groaning at the feel of his warm, wet heat wrapped around me. It felt so freaking good, and yet I found my mind wandering.
I needed to babyproof the kitchen. I didn’t one-hundred-percent trust the twins not to get into the chemicals.
I needed a more secure gun safe. Or shit, maybe I should move it out of the house entirely? With kids here now, things had to change.
Did I even need a gun anymore? I’d never had one when my family was alive. I’d only picked one up the night I’d been so wrecked and filled with grief and loneliness. It had taken me another two days of no sleep and pure, gut-wrenching pain to follow the drunk driver who’d killed my family.
And put a bullet through his head.
Just like that, some of the pain had lifted. It was like I’d passed it onto someone else.
So I’d kept doing it, craving that release with every life I ended, until years had passed and my body count was higher than I cared to think about.
The sex work had been more of the same. With good things in my life again, how toxic my behavior had been really started to sink in. I’d explained it all away with expensive suits and claims I was helping people. When really, all I’d been doing was helping myself.
Going back to killing felt the same as going back to sleeping with random people for money.
I was pretty sure I didn’t want to do either anymore.
Unlike X, who I doubted would ever give up his knife, I’d known a life where I didn’t need more than the family who lived under this roof.
I had that again.
I had two kids who had needed someone to step up and take care of them, and I had done it without a second thought.
I had X and Levi and Violet, all of us under this one roof, nobody complaining it was too small, even though it definitely was.
But I was providing that for them. None of us wanted to leave the kids, and so this house that had felt so cold and lonely for the best part of a decade, now felt warm and cozy again.
Levi paused and looked up at me. “You okay?”
I’d almost forgotten what we were doing. “Shit. Yeah, sorry. Fine.”
He pushed to his feet. “You aren’t into it.”
I shook my head, drawing his hand to wrap around my cock. “No, that’s not it. I’m just distracted.”
He stroked me a few times. “By what?”
A stupid grin spread across my face before I could stop it. I tried to force it down, but I couldn’t.
Levi’s fingers stopped moving. “Okay, what the fuck is going on? First you’re seizing in the driveway—”
“Dancing,” I corrected.
“Debatable, but whatever. And now you’re off in la-la land. I’m pretty sure you’re not thinking about what I was planning to do to you once we’re naked and in bed.” He squinted at me. “That grin is starting to freak me out.”
I couldn’t hold it in another second. “Violet’s pregnant.”
He froze. Not just his hand or his mouth, but a literal full-body freeze, muscles locked tight, eyes not blinking.
X chose that minute to crash through the back door. “Hi, Levi. Hi, Whip.” His gaze dipped. “Hi, Whip’s cock.”
He moved through the kitchen like catching me and Levi in the middle of a blow-hand-job combo was an everyday occurrence. He grabbed a banana from the kitchen counter and peeled it, tossing the skin into the garbage and munching down on the soft fruit.
He frowned, pointing what was left of it at Levi. “What’s wrong with him? Levi, you’re supposed to stroke his cock. Not just hold it like a dead fish.” His nose wrinkled. “I’d show you how but I think we’ve established I’m not for the butt stuff.”
I removed Levi’s fingers from around my junk and tucked it back in my underwear.
Levi still didn’t move.
I snorted on a laugh and clicked my fingers in front of his face. “Levi. Blink once if you’re okay. Blink twice if I need to get medical intervention.”
He snapped out of it, but he still stared at me like X wasn’t even in the room. “Are you serious?” he whispered.
“Serious about giving you some dick?” X asked around a mouthful of banana. “I think we all know the answer to that.”
Levi twisted to look at X like he’d only just realized he was there. “Violet’s pregnant.”
X’s fingers loosened on the banana so much it slipped and landed on the floor. He didn’t even try to pick it up. But then he shook his head and laughed. “I’m sorry, I thought you said Violet was pregnant.”
Harold meowed from the corner of the room and then darted out from his hiding place between the wall and the couch to pounce on X’s dropped food.
“He did,” I answered. “She just told me.”
X’s whoop of glee was the complete and utter opposite of Levi’s quiet shock. His shout sent Harold screaming back to his hiding hole, and X chased after him. “Harold! You’re going to be a big brother! Again!”
Harold didn’t seem to care. He hissed at X and swiped a paw at him in indignation.
X gave up and grinned at us. “This is the best week ever. Two kids. A baby. And a murder!” He sighed dreamily, like those three things were all he’d ever wanted and someone had handed them all to him on a silver platter. “And bonus, I got to see Whip’s cock.”
I rolled my eyes at him, but it was hard to be a downer when all I could think about was a tiny baby growing in Violet’s belly.
And that maybe, just maybe, it was mine.
I squeezed Levi’s fingers as X pulled out his phone, claiming he needed to start a new Pinterest board for our baby shower and that he would send a link to us all so we could add to it.
“You okay?” I asked Levi.
He nodded, a little numbly. “It’s a lot.”
It was. Especially for someone like him who had never really been around kids, nor had expressed any desire to have them.
At least he hadn’t to me. I didn’t know what him and Violet had discussed.
“Nobody would blame you if you were freaking out a bit. You had no kids a week ago, and now we have three.”
Levi shook his head. “No, it’s not that. The idea of Violet pregnant…” He grinned at me. “I was shocked at first, but fuck yes.”
I chuckled. “What then?”
He glanced at X. “I’m just trying to work out what a Pinterest board is and what I’m supposed to add to one?”
Xbusily pinned baby things to his virtual board, with Levi and I both watching on over his shoulder, adding our own suggestions. The three-way debate over strollers was getting heated when a knock came from the front door.
I dragged myself away from our ridiculously overexcited baby planning session and opened it. Dax stood on the other side.
My heart fucking broke for him. He looked completely and utterly destroyed. “Fuck, man. We thought you were out of town, still searching. Come in.”
He shook his head.
Levi and X abandoned the laptop and came to join us.
We all just waited for Dax to say something.
“She’s dead, isn’t she?” he asked. “I’ve searched everywhere I can think of. I don’t know where else to go.”
I sighed. “We don’t know that for sure.”
Anger radiated from him. “Don’t bullshit me, Whip!”
Just as quickly as the anger had come, it disappeared. His voice dropped to something barely above a whisper. “Please. Just tell me she’s dead so this fucking pain can stop. I can’t keep doing this. I need to let her go.”
Levi’s mouth pulled into a grim line, and he said the kindest words he could have to a man in Dax’s situation. “She’s dead, Dax.”
I winced at the finality in his tone, but I knew what he was doing. Dax was clearly running himself into the ground, searching for the woman he loved. Even though Levi had nothing to go on, other than Travis’s word that he’d killed her, he was trying to give Dax some closure.
Dax shook his head miserably, and we all knew Levi’s words weren’t enough. “I need to see her body.”
I opened my mouth to say something, maybe try to convince him that he might never get that. Thousands of people went missing every year, and their loved ones never got that sort of closure.
But Levi was nodding at him. “I know, brother.” He glanced at me.
I didn’t need his words to know what we needed to do.