Chapter 26
Making everyone happy is impossible. Pissing people off is a piece of cake.
— Shayne’s secret thoughts
SHAYNE
I watched in horror as I stood there and practically allowed Elliette to sabotage my parachute.
“ How …” I shook my head.
“ Just watch.” Auden said as he cast his phone to the TV and played the video he’d pulled from the hangar.
There Quinn and I were, standing next to Tom .
Tom and Quinn were deep in conversation, and I stood back and answered a phone call from Ande .
As I was standing there, Elliette came up behind me, took a knife out, and made a few cuts.
I remember feeling the tug, but when I’d turned around, no one was there.
But she had been.
Behind the fucking pillar that I’d been standing against.
I groaned, pressing my hand to my forehead in disgust. “ How the hell would I miss something like that happening?”
“ Uh ,” Ande scratched her forehead. “ If it was our conversation, I could see how you would miss it.”
“ What’s that supposed to mean?” Keene questioned, looking angry.
Hell , the entire Carter clan was angry.
We all were.
And holy shit, I was now officially a Carter right along with them!
When Quinn had asked me to marry him, I hadn’t hesitated.
There hadn’t been a second thought in my mind at all.
I’d agreed, we’d gone down to the courthouse right along with the rest of his family, and I’d said yes.
Right then. Right there.
I was finished with my second-guessing of Quinn Carter .
After today, I would never, not ever, second guess anything when it came to him and our relationship.
You didn’t hide feeling like that. Not at that kind of moment.
“ I , uh,” Ande looked queasy.
“ She’s pregnant,” I said to the room at large.
“ What ?” Keene asked, standing up.
“ Pregnant ,” Ande confirmed.
“ How ?” everyone asked all at once.
“ That’s not something that happens through an IUD and a vasectomy,” Gable pointed out.
A couple of months ago, Ande and Keene had agreed that they were done having babies. They both lived very busy lives, and they were happy where they were at in life. So they’d both made the decision to make sure that they wouldn’t have any more children, ever.
Keene had gone the permanent route, while Ande had gone the long-term but still semi-permanent route with an IUD … at least they thought.
“ That’s a miracle,” Hollis said as she looked on. “ Seems like the Carter clan is getting quite a few of those lately.”
She looked pointedly at Quinn and I , followed by Ellodie .
Ellodie grinned. “ Welcome to the miracle club, friend.”
She held out her fist to me, and I bumped it with my own.
I groaned when I pulled away and got the first good look at my fingers. “ I broke a nail, too.”
That caused the entire Carter clan to burst out laughing, even Keene who was as white as a ghost.
“ I had my sperm count checked, though,” Keene said after a few long seconds.
That change in topic had me snickering.
“ Yeah , well, this baby was meant to be, because I went to the doctor and they said that I was well over two months along. This happened the night before you had your surgery, if we’re going by dates.”
Keene scrubbed his face with his hands. “ And your IUD ?”
“ Gone .” Ande scrunched up her nose. “ They couldn’t find it.”
“ Well , guess you’ll be Keene and Ande plus three.” Garnett looked back at me. “ Now , let’s talk about this fucking psycho, and what we’re going to do about her.”
Psycho indeed.
Within an hour, there was a city-wide BOLO —be on the lookout—for Elliette .
After evidence was collected—video footage and GPS location that put her cell phone in the area at the time of the tampering of my equipment—there was no going back from it.
She’d tried to murder me.
Long hours later, after everyone but Gable and Auden had gone home—they were currently on the couch in the living room, just in case— I was lying in bed next to Quinn and going over my day.
Remembering how helpless I’d felt as I’d fallen toward Earth , thinking that I’d ruined a lot of perfectly good years because of my fear.
Well , that wouldn’t be something that happened for me anymore.
And …
“ I’m never going skydiving again,” I said to him, knowing he’d been lying there overthinking just like I’d been. “ I’m … I’m never doing it again.”
It was something that I wasn’t going to get over.
Not ever again.
The helplessness. The utter horror that Quinn was going to have to watch me die.
“ I’m glad,” he rasped, shifting in the bed to pull me just a little bit tighter. “ I don’t think I’d have ever let you go again.”
I started to run my hand up and down the length of his abs, getting lower and lower each time.
It hadn’t been my intent to start stirring anything up for the two of us, but it was what happened.
“ I’m sorry,” he rasped. “ But I don’t think that I can do any of the work tonight.”
I twisted so that I was now on top of him, legs straddling his hips, and looking down at him.
“ Gasp ,” I teased. “ You can’t perform, Quinn Carter ?”
His hands ran up the length of my thighs, stopping when he met the crease of my hips before squeezing. “ I can let you do all the work, but I’m too sore.”
I leaned forward and allowed my lips to drag up the length of his sternum, remembering how it felt to be cocooned in his arms right before we hit the ground.
He’d literally wrapped himself up around me, cocooning me from the fall that was going to rip us apart.
He held on throughout, too.
I remembered the moment of impact. The haybales. The smell of straw in my nostrils. The intensity of the impact.
I remembered the jolt and the hiss of air that left his lips, and the groan that followed.
I felt his throbbing cock as it pressed against my bare pussy— I’d only worn his t-shirt to bed—and I smiled against his chest.
Then I felt the press of my tooth—or lack thereof—and grimaced. “ I hate to say this, but I’m vain enough that I want to get to the dentist tomorrow for a consult on getting my tooth fixed.”
He chuckled, his hands moving past my hip creases, underneath my shirt, to the smooth skin of my waist.
His hands spanned my belly, thumbs sweeping over my belly button and down, to right above my pubic bone.
“ Can you be completely honest with me for a second?” he asked, pulling me in tighter to him.
Excitement flared in me at the feel of him there. “ Yes .”
I’d be honest with him no matter what.
“ How do you feel after today?” he asked. “ And remember, I don’t want to hear what you think I want to hear. I want to know exactly what you’re thinking.”
I lifted forward, pulled his cock from between us, and notched it at my entrance.
Only as I sank down on him, and earned a groan from his lips, did I say, “ If I saw Elliette right now, I’d murder her. I’d pull that gun out from under your pillow and pull the trigger. I’d take her out without a single ounce of…”
“ Well isn’t that just convenient…” I heard a maniacal voice say from behind me.
I didn’t think. Didn’t question. Only reacted.
I reached for the gun, but it wasn’t there.
Mostly because it was in Quinn’s hand and already aimed at the female that’d entered our inner sanctum.
“ Don’t fuckin’ move,” Quinn ordered, gripping the gun so hard I heard the metal groan.
“ I second his assessment,” Gable snarled. “ Drop the gun.”
My pussy clenched on Quinn’s cock, shock and surprise at the sound of voices in the room that I thought was empty but for the two of us.
“ I’d rather fuckin’ die than…” Elliette snarled, whirling on Gable .
But , before anyone could move, Auden was there, disarming her before she could do a thing more than take a step in his brother’s direction.
The light was flipped on, and I was left staring in shock as Gable and Auden each stood naked but a pair of skintight underwear, in the room where I was currently stuffed full of their brother’s cock.
Elliette , upon seeing us, screamed, “ You fuckin’ bitch!”
Quinn did the strong man routine, jackknifed up, and maneuvered us so that he was over the top of me, still very much inside of me, and protecting me with his body again.
There was a scuffle, and then the sound of Elliette being dragged out of the room.
The door slammed closed, and I heard a body hit the floor right outside the bedroom door as a pair of cuffs clinked together.
It was a very distinctive sound, and I couldn’t stop myself from saying, “ Where do you think your brothers had those cuffs hiding?”
I turned my gaze to my husband—my God , was it a great feeling to be able to call him that—to see him staring down at me with mirth on his face.
He flexed his hips, and then started to push inside me in small pulses.
“ I thought you said that you couldn’t do any work tonight?” I asked breathlessly.
Embarrassingly enough, I was stupidly close.
All that had just happened, and there I was, ready to burst.
Jesus , was that all it took? Him inside of me, giving me that look?
I arched my back, my peaked nipples pressed against the fabric of my shirt, that was in turn pressed against his hard chest.
His gaze went to my mouth, and then he did this delicious slide of his hips, and I was moaning.
“ Not to break this up!” Gable called out. “ But police are here. Hurry it up.”
I rolled us both back over, me on top, and took over.
Despite what he said, he was still hurt.
He’d fallen out of a plane with me and lived.
The least I could do was get him off quick after he’d taken that fall for me.
“ Fuck ,” he squeezed his eyes closed.
I was close.
So close, in fact, that it took two falls of my hips onto his hard thighs and I was coming.
I vaguely saw the cords of his neck start to strain as he threw his head back before I fell too far into my own orgasm.
I heard him grunt out my name.
Heard him growl, felt his abs tighten.
And then the sweet sensation of his liquid heat filling me up as he came deep inside me.
The sawing of his breath in and out of his lungs as he let out a whined, “ Ow ,” had me rolling off of him.
Our combined releases rolled out of me and onto his lap, and I hurried to the bathroom for a towel before tossing it to him to clean up.
While I was cleaning up in the bathroom, he was getting dressed in our shared closest.
Our shared closet.
Our house.
The house that he’d built just for me.
My dream house.
Was this real life?
“ Hurry up, baby,” Quinn said as he popped his head into the bathroom and watched me clean myself up with toilet paper. “ I’ll be outside.”
And he was, waiting right there, the moment I exited the bedroom.
I couldn’t look his brothers in the face as I made my way to Quinn’s side and buried my face into him.
He laughed, pulled me in tight to his body, and continued the discussion of what went down tonight with the detective on the case.
And when he got to the part where I was having sex with him, and barely left out a single detail, I flushed a radioactive fuchsia and groaned, trying to practically crawl into Quinn’s body in embarrassment.
“ Quinn ,” I gasped, mortification taking a stranglehold on me. “ He didn’t need to know that you finished!”
Every fucking cop in the damn house laughed.
Even my father-in-law.
Fuck my life.