19. Mary
Mary
It had been three days since I invited them into my room and made a choice that still made my thighs wet. But fuck, I had two dicks inside me. Well, one wasn’t full inside me, and the other was losing its hardness, but still, I had two freaking cocks inside me and I wanted to do it again.
They wanted to feed me.
I was wearing Lincoln’s hoodie over my pajamas while Hudson placed a mug of ginger tea in front of me at the kitchen island.
“I didn’t ask for tea,” I said.
“You looked pale.”
“That isn’t a beverage request.”
“No,” Hudson said, unbothered. “It was an observation that led to one.”
Lincoln slid a plate toward me from the other side. Toast, sliced banana, a little dish of butter, and something that looked suspiciously like the prenatal vitamin I’d been avoiding because it smelled faintly metallic.
I looked at the plate. Then at him. “Subtle.”
Lincoln leaned his hip against the counter. He was barefoot, wearing gray sweatpants and a black T-shirt. “I thought so.”
“The vitamin is sitting on a napkin like a hostage with a ransom note.”
“Take it and I’ll release the toast.”
“Ah, clever.”
Hudson sat beside me with his coffee. “He’s been workshopping his technique.”
Lincoln’s mouth curved. “And I have a delicious fruit smoothie in the blender.”
The dreadful thing was that it worked.
I took the vitamin. Lincoln watched until I swallowed it, then pushed the toast closer with a satisfied nod.
Ten minutes later, the private elevator chimed. Maeve came in holding Mila’s hand, followed by Mac, who was wearing one sock, a dinosaur sweater, and a sour look on his face.
“What’s up with you?”
“Fergus pinched my sausage this morning, so I had to have a hash brown.” Mac plonked himself on the stool.
“He was goading the dog pretending it was a light saber,” Maeve said.
“I wasn’t going to kill him.” Mac’s voice rose.
Maeve looked at me and smiled.
Mila spotted Lincoln and lifted both arms.
“Oh, so that’s how it is,” Maeve said to her daughter. “I carried you for nine months, gave birth to you, and sacrificed sleep for you to choose a man you barely know.”
Lincoln held out his hands. “She knows we need the practice.”
Mila went to him without remorse.
Mac looked at my plate. “Are babies eating that?”
“The babies are eating whatever I eat.”
He considered that with pure interest. “So they like toast with bananas?”
I nodded. “Today they do.”
He picked a piece of banana off my plate. I reached across to the fruit bowl and gave him a whole one. “Thank you.” He peeled one side away. “When they come out, can they have teeth?”
I paused with my mug halfway to my mouth. “I sincerely hope not.”
Mac nodded. “I know. Mila bites, and it hurts.”
Hudson set a cup of coffee down in front of Maeve.
“Thank you,” she said and turned to Mac. “You did too when you were her age.”
“I did not.”
Hudson gave a small cough into his coffee.
Lincoln looked down at Mila, who had grabbed his beard with both hands.
I laughed. “She’s got you there.”
Hudson smiled at me over the rim of his cup, and the room shifted a little. It kept doing that now.
After breakfast, Hudson had a call, Lincoln had emails, and Maeve took Mila into the spare sitting room to take a call from her husbands.
I took Mac onto the terrace because he asked me to help him find “evidence.”
Evidence of what, he wouldn’t say.
Sienna, my new bodyguard, arrived today. Sienna had dark hair cut to her jaw, a face that looked unimpressed by men, and the calmest walk I’d ever seen on a person who carried a weapon.
Mac crouched beside a large planter of lavender and pointed at a muddy mark on the pale stone. “That’s a clue.”
“It might be a footprint. A very small footprint.”
“It’s from a villain.”
“Does your villain have very small feet?”
He looked at the mark again. “Maybe he’s an alien.”
I crouched beside him, one hand on the bench to steady myself because bending had become an activity rather than a movement.
“A purple alien,” I said.
Mac nodded. “Mama reads books with aliens on the front. They’re blue and purple.”
“Does she now?”
“Yeah, she hides them under her nest.”
“Ahh! Interesting. You really are good at investigating.”
I stayed crouched for a moment longer than necessary, my hand moving without thought to my belly. There was nothing dramatic to feel yet. No kicks. No proof beneath my palm. Only the knowledge from a screen.
Hudson came out five minutes later with his coat over one arm.
“Would you like to go for a walk?” he asked. “Maeve said Artem and Gregor are on their way to collect her and the children.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Is this a trap?”
“A very gentle one.”
“Those are often the worst kind.”
He helped me up without making a production of it. Then he waited while Mac shouted goodbye to the evidence and ran inside to tell Maeve the alien from her secret book had been near the lavender.
I said my goodbyes.
Sienna fell in behind us as Hudson and I took the elevator down and walked along the river. London opened around us in wet sidewalks, black railings, glass towers, and water moving beside us with a heavy silver gleam.
“Lincoln wanted to come,” Hudson said.
“But you elbowed him into a closet?”
“I asked for twenty minutes alone.”
“Very restrained. He accepted.”
“Yes.”
“Did you put it in writing?”
“No.”
“Growth.”
He almost smiled. “I thought we should have a few moments that aren’t medical, legal, or interrupted by family or food.”
“Both are needed.”
He gave me a grin. “So are lawyers. Of which, Mateus and Pax are coming for dinner.”
“Pax, that’s your brother?”
“Yeah. Otherwise known as Paxton when my mother is disappointed. Pax to everyone else.”
“And Mateus?”
“A friend. A very good lawyer. He works with Pax when the case has too many moving parts and not enough sensible people.”
“Like me.”
Hudson stopped walking.
I got two steps ahead before I realized and turned back. “What?”
“Not you.” The firmness in his voice made my throat tighten.
“I was joking.”
“I know.”
“Then you’re supposed to laugh.”
“Not when the joke is mean to you.”
I folded my arms, then regretted it because my breasts were sore. “You’re kind,” I muttered.
“I’ve been told.”
We walked again.
His hand brushed mine once, lightly. I stared ahead for three whole seconds then I took his hand. His fingers closed around mine. It was warm and steady, and holding mine as we walked beneath bare-branched trees while Sienna pretended not to be aggressively giving us privacy from fifteen feet away.
“I’m not good at this,” I said.
“At walking?”
“At being courted.”
“Neither am I.”
“You seem alarmingly competent.”
“I’m trying. That’s not the same thing.”
I looked at our hands. “What do you want from me?”
His thumb moved once over my knuckles. “Everything.”
“That’s a lot.”
He lifted my hand and kissed my knuckles. “We can start with a little.”
By the time we returned to the penthouse, Lincoln was in the private lobby with his shoes on and his keys in his hand.
“It’s my turn to have her time,” he said.
I looked between them. “Am I being passed around like a library book?”
Hudson made a low amused sound behind me.
Lincoln took me to a small cafe tucked off a side street and ordered chips with salt and vinegar, all because I’d mentioned earlier that I wanted them.
He sat opposite me in a booth and watched me dip chips into a milkshake.
“Don’t look at me like that,” I said.
“Like what?”
“Like I’m inventing cuisine.”
“You put salt and vinegar on your chips and now you’re dipping them in a milkshake. That is not normal.”
“Pregnant women have been making questionable choices since time began. It’s allowed.”
“Did you do this before you were pregnant?”
I paused with a chip halfway to my mouth. “That’s a dangerous question.”
“Only if you have questionable culinary tastes we need to work on after the babies arrive.”
I laughed. He joined me, and it was the way he looked at me that made my chest hurt.
He leaned forward and brushed his thumb over my lip. Then he moved his hand to his mouth and sucked off the milkshake he’d taken from me.
My heart fluttered. I could nearly imagine leaning forward and begging him and Hudson to want me forever.
Telling them how frightened I was. How often I woke convinced this was a mistake they would recover from before I did.
How much I wanted them to stay in my life, and not only for the sake of the babies.
Instead, I said, “Did it taste nice?” Why on earth am I so awkward?
He looked down. “Everything about you tastes nice.”
I took a slurp of my milkshake, because, again, awkward. My tongue ran over my lips.
“You’re sloppy.” He lifted his hand and swiped at the cold on my lips. Before he could raise it to his mouth, I caught his wrist and licked it off without thinking better of it.
His pupils widened.
The cafe noise faded under the sudden bloom of whiskey.
I released him and sat back, cheeks burning. “I did that on purpose.”
Lincoln’s voice dropped. “Keep doing it.”
“I plan to.”
He leaned back, jaw tight, eyes bright with amusement and very little restraint. “Good. I want to lick every drop from everywhere.”
Heat slid through me so fast I had to reach for my water. “You’re a menace.”
“Aye.”
“That wasn’t a compliment.”
“I took it as one.”
“I think I need a rest before I hyperventilate.”
He smiled. “Come on. Let’s go home.”
Home.
When we returned, I found Hudson in the penthouse study with Pax.
I knew it was Pax before anyone introduced him because he had Hudson’s cheekbones and the same intolerable posture, but where Hudson looked composed, Pax looked relaxed.
He was younger, early thirties maybe, with dark blond hair and sharp blue-gray eyes.
His suit was excellent. His tie was in his pocket.
He stood when I entered.
“Mary,” Hudson said, “this is my brother, Paxton.”
“Pax,” Pax said. “Unless I’ve offended you, in which case Paxton gives you an extra syllable to load with contempt.”
I shook his hand. “Thoughtful.”
His smile widened. “Hudson said you were quick.”
“Are you a lawyer too?” Mac asked Mateus as we walked to the dining room.
“I am,” Mateus said.