Mia said something and Drake’s head was tossed back as he laughed again. I loved watching him with her. He was so head-over-heels in love with our little niece that I knew with everything in me that he was going to be a great father. Just thinking about him holding our little girl when she finally joined us was enough to make my eyes sting with happy tears.
As if feeling my eyes on him, Drake turned his head and met my gaze. I saw those blue-gray eyes darken with need and then concern when he saw my tears. I mouthed, “I love you,” and the tension seemed to leave his shoulders before they even fully tensed.
“Crap, Lana,” Harper muttered beside me. “You guys make it hotter out here every time he looks at you.”
I couldn’t help grinning as I looked back her. “Says the woman who let sex-on-legs talk her into a quickie in the private family bathroom not two hours ago.”
It didn’t surprise me that after two years of dating the wildest sex addict in the rock world, Harper could still blush so prettily. I was sure that Shane loved it for an entirely different reason. My brother-in-law was crazy over my best friend and had straightened up his shit quick once he realized that Harper was his happily ever after.
“You wouldn’t have said no either, if it had been Drake doing the tempting.”
I laughed. “Nope. Wouldn’t even hesitate.”
“Ladies,” Nik chided as he turned from watching Jesse and Lucy go down the water slide for the third time in the last hour. Thank gods we got Front of Line Pass as a perk for staying at a hotel on site. The way my little sister kept finding rides that she liked, she would have been standing in line for hours to ride them as many times as she had been if we hadn’t had them. “I love you both, but I don’t need my head filled with you two having sex with those dickheads.”
I hugged him. When I had first met Nik I never would have thought that I would come to care about him as much as I did. He was as much my brother-in-law as Shane and Jesse were. “Just like we didn’t need to hear you and Emmie going at it all night last night, stud.” I grinned up at him. “And as sick as she has been, too. Wow. You both have some serious stamina.”
I wasn’t sure, but I thought that he was blushing. That made me crack up and I was wiping my tears away as he looked anywhere but at me and Harper. Nik Armstrong, blushing? It didn’t get much funnier than that. He had been—and still was—one of the most lusted after rockers in the world. I knew for a fact that he had been nearly as wild as Shane had been when it came to all those groupie skanks. But now he was in deep with Emmie and I knew that he would cut off his own dick to make her happy.
“What’s so funny?” Shane demanded as he came up behind us with a turkey leg in each hand. “Baby, you sure you don’t want anything to eat?” he asked Harper as he handed me one of the turkey legs.
“I’m good.” She wrinkled her nose at the smell of the turkey leg, but my mouth was already watering before I could even take a bite. Damned pregnancy cravings.
“So, what had you two rolling over here?” Shane asked as he wrapped his now free arm around Harper’s waist.
I pointed my turkey leg at Nik. “We were critiquing Nik on his stamina last night. And he’s actually blushing.”
“Lana!” Shane covered his ears. “I don’t need pictures of him and Em haunting me. That’s so fucked up.”
I snickered again but didn’t say anything else because my mouth was too full of deliciously roasted meat. Nik grumbled something under his breath and pulled his phone from his pocket. “I really hate you bitches sometimes.”
“Love you, too,” I assured him.
By the time Jesse and Lucy finally gave up on the water slide, I had given up on teasing Nik. Lucy was starting to lose some of her steam and Jesse was carrying her by the time we decided to head back to the hotel. I was glad to get back to the hotel and the penthouse that we had been calling home the last two nights.
In the elevator I snuggled into Drake. His arms came around me instantly and my panties grew damp when one big hand skimmed down my back and squeezed my ass. I made a small purring sound that I didn’t even know I could make and felt his dick harden against my thick stomach. With both Lucy and Mia asleep in their fathers’ arms, I wasn’t going to think twice about kissing him.
Lifting up on the tips of my toes, I licked his bottom lip. “I love you,” I whispered against his neck. “I love you.”
Jesse made a growling noise and I shot him a mock glare. “You don’t see me making rude noises when you go all ape over my sister, do you?”
“I still don’t see what you see in that asshole.” But his ever-changing eyes were lit with amusement and I knew that all that old anger he had held against Drake was long gone. “But I guess you’re stuck with him.”
Drake’s hand tightened on my ass. “And I thank all of Em’s gods every day for that.”
As soon as the elevator opened up on the top floor, I was ready to take Drake into our room and do naughty things to him. But it seemed that the universe had other plans for us.
As soon as we opened the door to the first penthouse it seemed like we had walked into a war zone. The first thing I noticed was the luggage sitting by the door. Then her country accent filled my ears and my heart twisted because I had missed Dallas like crazy. I hadn’t gotten to see much of her in the last few months because she had been so busy with her final semester of nursing school.
The growling voice of Axton Cage greeted me next and I let out a sad sigh. I had my suspicions on why Dallas had called it quits with the rock god, but she had never really admitted anything to me. I suspected that Harper knew but we were both too loyal to talk about it without first talking to Dallas.
Harper grabbed my hand and pulled me through the penthouse, eager to stop the argument and to see our friend. When I caught sight of her for the first time in what had to be months my mouth fell open. It just wasn’t fair that she was so beautiful. Even tattooed and pierced as she was, that girl was hot as fuck and if I ever decided to go that way, I would so hit that.
“Dallas!” Harper exclaimed when she saw the woman who had been her rock growing up. “Fuck, I’ve missed you!” She threw her arms around the blonde, and inked up arms wrapped instantly around Harper’s waist, holding on tight.
I watched Axton as he kept his gaze trained on Dallas. He hadn’t been the same since Dallas had broken it off with him. Maybe it was because I had gotten to know him so much better over the last few years, but I had seen that his eyes had lost some of their light. I had noticed that when he thought the world wasn’t watching, he looked almost depressed at times.
Sure he had been carrying on like he didn’t even remember Dallas’s name. I had seen him leaving the studio with groupie after groupie when America’s Rocker was done recording for the day. But I could see that he just wasn’t happy. I felt sorry for him, actually.
Now, with Dallas in the same room with him, despite her just gutting him with words I was sure that I would need a dictionary on country slang to understand, I saw more life in his eyes than I had seen in what felt like forever. I didn’t know if it was a good thing or not, but I was hoping that Axton got his head out of his ass soon and would try to get his girl back.
Harper
“Bitch, I missed you!”
I laughed and hugged Dallas tighter. “I missed you too.”
“Dallas!”
We turned to see Linc coming into the penthouse, dressed in nothing more than a pair of basketball shorts. He pulled us both into his arms, swinging us around like we weighed nothing at all. To him, we probably didn’t. I clung to his shoulder with one arm while I wrapped the other around Dallas’s shoulders.
My eyes closed, savoring this. It felt so good to have them right there holding me just then. For a long time these two were my only family other than my stepdad. Dallas, and then later on Linc, had been my rocks. There wasn’t anything I wouldn’t do for either one of them.
“Dude, I’m getting seriously jealous over here.” I heard
Shane chuckle from somewhere behind me.
Linc let us go and turned to face my fiancé. “Ah, sorry bro. I’ll hug you too.” He winked and everyone burst out laughing.
“I’d watch that,” Dallas said and glanced from one hot guy to the other, taking Linc and Shane in from head to toe. “Yeah, I’d pay good money to watch that.”
“Well I wouldn’t,” Natalie said as she came into the living room from the direction of the bedrooms. “That’s just gross. He’s my brother.”
Shane wrapped his hands around my waist and I melted against him. It was still hard to believe that he was going to be my husband in two days. I felt like an entire lifetime had passed since he had first kissed me and ran for the hills. We had come so far in the past two years, but my love for him only seemed to grow with each passing day.
“Okay, I need a shower and lots of water. I need hydration after that long-ass flight.” Dallas picked up her cosmetics bag and lifted the handle on her huge roller bag. “Where am I sleepin’? And if you say with douchebag over there, I’m throwin’ someone out the window.”
“It’s a king sized bed, hotness,” Axton said and winked at her, acting his normal conceited self. “And you don’t take up too much room.”
Natalie stepped forward before Dallas could drop her bags and punch him—if that was what she happened to do. Knowing Dallas, it was hard to tell what she could have done to him. A knee to the balls. A punch to the face. Maybe even suck his face. She was always surprising me. “My room has two queens. If you want to stay in my room, that’s cool.”
“Or mine,” Linc assured her. “I don’t mind sharing.”
Dallas nodded. “I’ll go in with Nat. She doesn’t snore.”
“We were planning on just ordering room service for dinner,” Lana told her. “So take your time. I’ll order you a steak or would you rather have pizza?”
“Both. I’m starvin’.” She gave Lana a peck on the cheek and followed Nat down the hall. “And tea. Extra sweet.”
“Extra sweet,” three people said at the exact same time as she did. I wasn’t surprised that one of them was Axton. Natalie and Linc shot him a grin and Dallas turned to give him the finger before disappearing down the hallway.
Nik disappeared down the same hall and a few minutes later Layla joined us. After ordering what seemed like enough food to feed a small country, we settled down and watched television while we waited. With Lucy still sleeping soundly in her room and Mia conked out too, everyone was quiet. I sat on Shane’s lap who was seated between Drake who had a half-sleepy Lana draped over him, and Layla who was getting a foot massage from the beast of a rocker sitting on the floor in front of her. If it hadn’t been so cute I might have laughed at the sight of the bad-ass rocker doing something so sweet for his very pregnant wife.
Linc, Natalie, and Axton took up the other couch and I let my eyes drift to the rock god. Because of my loyalty to Dallas, I hadn’t let myself get too close with him after their breakup. Sure, because Axton was such close friends with Shane and Drake, we had all hung out a lot. But I just hadn’t bothered to get to know him better. In my opinion he was a dick, having torn Dallas apart because he was still in love with Gabriella Moreitti. And he still saw that bitch from time to time from what I had heard at work. Just a few weeks ago one of my photographers had gotten a picture of him walking out of a hotel with her and his bandmates.
Shane tugged on a lock of my hair, forcing my attention back to him. He gave me that sexy as hell grin I love so much and I didn’t try to resist the temptation to kiss him. “If I weren’t so hungry, I’d beg you to take me to bed,” I whispered in his ear, making my man practically tremble as I let my teeth skim over his lobe. “But I’m starving and after that mind-blowing session back in the park, I need nourishment before I will be able to go again.”
“Where is that damned waiter?” Shane demanded to no one in particular and I giggled as I snuggled closer to him. “I’m ready to eat.”
“Calm down, brother,” Drake told him. “They said forty-five minutes and it’s only been twenty.”
The food arrived ten minutes later, and I signed the receipt making sure that the waiter got a generous tip for being so quick. I wanted—needed!—some alone time with Shane before we went out for the night. This was our last night over at the Halloween Horror Nights and I wanted to thank him for being so strong as we walked through all the houses, something I have always wanted to do. Some of the houses had some serious gore to them, and Shane and gore… Yeah, that didn’t mix well.
Shane had been the one to suggest this as our bachelor/bachelorette party, knowing that Halloween was possibly my favorite time of the year. I had a thing for scary movies, and getting to walk through the houses with some of my favorite horror characters was just short of paradise for me. He was always thinking of me, always giving me what I wanted before I even realized I wanted it.
Why had it taken me so long to realize that this man loved me unconditionally?
Feeling a little sad—and yeah, maybe a little mad at myself for all I had put him through—I picked at my food, no longer hungry.
Strong fingers grasped my chin gently, lifting my head to meet that blue-gray gaze that never failed to melt me inside and out. Shane didn’t say a word, just raised his brow. I swallowed hard, feeling stupid and emotional and just wanting him to make love to me. I bit my lip, and he growled, “Love you, beautiful.”
“Bed,” I whispered.
That was all it took. That one word and he was up and I was being flung over his shoulder in one graceful move. “Later!” he called over his shoulder on his way to the door so that we could get back to the second penthouse and our room.
“Harp!” I raised my head to find Dallas coming back into the living room. She was freshly showered and dressed to make Axton suffer. There could be no other excuse for what she had on. A pair of cutoff jean shorts that could be described as nothing but Daisy Dukes. A top that tied around her neck and her back that showcased the fact that she wasn’t wearing a bra. Not that she needed one. Girl had the perfect rack and I half hated her for it. Her tattoos were abundant and just enhanced her long limbs. Her piercings only drew a person’s eye to her beautiful face. “You’re leaving me? I just got here, you bitch.”
I grinned. “I’ll be back.”
“Maybe,” Shane muttered, smacking a big hand across my ass, causing my sex to clench with need. “Depends.”
Dallas
As soon as the door closed behind Harper, I flopped down on the couch beside Lana who was still curled up on Drake’s lap. I rolled my eyes at her. “You’re pregnant, woman. Not helpless. Drake, dude, let her feed herself at least.”
That just got me a giggle from my friend and a frown from her husband, as he lifted yet another bite of what looked like eggplant parmesan to her lips. I rolled my eyes again, figuring I would be doing that a lot over the next few days. Linc, seated on the floor in front of the coffee table, slid a covered plate and a box of pizza toward me and I grabbed it up, smelling the Texas toast, mashed potatoes, and steak as well as the garlic of the pizza sauce before I even lifted the lids.
“Steak sauce?” I asked to the room at large around a mouthful of pizza. I had to have it or the whole meal was going to be ruined. Not for the steak, but for my toast.
“Here, babe.”
My eyes snapped up from my plate to Axton, who was holding the steak sauce and offering it to me. The bitch in me wanted to say screw it—I didn’t need that steak sauce that bad. I didn’t want to even touch the bottle after he’d had his hands on it. But the hungry, exhausted person that I was already snatching it from him and drizzling it over my toast, trying to avoid touching the place his hand had just been. I didn’t offer a thanks, or look in his direction again.
Unable to cut the steak and hold the plate steady at the same time, I picked the steak up whole and took a decent sized bite of the perfectly prepared medium steak. The meat was juicy and some dripped down my chin. I smirked be
fore wiping it away. If only my mother could see me now! Damn, she would have a coronary watching me eat with my fingers.
“Quick, someone take my picture!” I pulled my phone from my pocket. Natalie caught it when I tossed it her way and I lifted the steak, tearing into it like a barbarian. Laughing, Natalie started punching away on the touch screen, already knowing what I had planned for the picture.
“Don’t you think you should stop pissing your mother off so much?” Natalie said even as she was hitting send on the text she had just typed. “I’m about fed up with her calling the apartment just to bitch.”
I hadn’t known Natalie as long as I had everyone else in the room, so she didn’t know even a third of what my mother had put me through growing up. Sure, she knew some of the bigger things—forcing me into pageants when we lived in Texas, followed by signing my life away to some modeling agent when I had been ‘discovered’—but barely anything else. So I refrained from jumping down her throat. Instead I just shrugged and kept eating my steak, dipping it in the potatoes from time to time.
“Dallas could never piss her mother off enough,” Linc told Natalie. “The next time she calls to bitch to you, tell her how happy Dallas is. That will really piss her off.”
Yeah, that was probably the truest statement ever made about my mother. She hated how happy I was, living my life the way I wanted to instead of how she had imagined me living it. Her plans had been for me to keep modeling—even though she knew I hated it. Maybe start an acting career—although I couldn’t act to save my life. Marry some Hollywood-type guy who had a big name and even bigger wallet. All the things she wished she could have done if she had been pretty enough.
Instead I had destroyed my body—her words, not mine—with my ink and piercings. And then I had worked my ass off to get into one of the best nursing schools in America. A school that had required every spare moment I possibly could have had in the last two years. Seriously, Linc had had to do my laundry because I hadn’t had the time to! After graduating at the top of my class, and suffering through clinical training at one of the busiest hospitals in New York, I now had my license and was an RN—something I had been dreaming about since I was a little girl.