HADES BONUS EPILOGUE
“Can I? Can I kiss you?” Benjamin asks his summer crush after their picnic dinner under the full moon.
They’re sitting on a blanket by the lake on their last night of the mission.
Tess stares at him for a long, considering time…then she tentatively nods.
It’s not the Fourth of July, but his chest lights up with fireworks. “Yes?”
“Yes,” Tess confirms. “But Benjamin?”
“Yeah?” he leans forward, giving him her full attention.
“You should know that you’re my first kiss ever,” she says, her voice taking on a shaky note he’s never heard before. “I just don’t have a lot of experience, and I’m really nervous.”
He’s her first kiss? Something in Benjamin’s stomach jumps at that new piece of information. Yeah, he definitely wants to kiss the hell out of this girl. But first he has to make a confession of his own. “Can I tell you something?”
“Sure.” She leans forward too.
“I’ve got more experience than you, sure. But it’s only stupid stuff at parties where nobody should have been drinking.” He swallows and admits, “I’m nervous, too, but I’m trying to act confident—like I know what I’m doing so that you won’t dump me for being a loser.”
“Wow, seriously, that’s the story you’re really trying to sell me, looking all fine under this moonlight?”
He wants to laugh, but he’s got to remind her, “This isn’t going to work unless we listen and validate each other. That’s what you said.”
“Sorry! Sorry! You’re right.” Tess’s disbelieving look becomes an apologetic wince. “I shouldn’t invalidate what you’re feeling. I’m just finding it difficult to believe that someone as good-looking as you is as insecure as me.”
“Oh, I’m way more insecure at this point than you,” Benjamin insists. He ticks off the reasons on his fingers. “You were abandoned by your mom as a baby. Mine did that shit after actually getting to know me. The only parent I have left is an abusive piece of shit who never put in any volunteer work a day in his life. And oh yeah, I’m living in my brother’s shadow, and I might only be sixteen, but I’m already beginning to suspect that situation might stick.”
Tess scrunches her forehead.
“Still don’t believe me?” He raises the other hand, prepared to give her a hell of a lot more examples.
“No, it’s more like I can’t believe I’m just now figuring out how much we had in common from the start.” She peeps up at him shyly. “I really did think we were an opposites-attract romance.”
“Only on the outside.” Benjamin covers her hand with his on the blanket. “Tess?”
“Yes?”
“Still nervous?”
“Not so much anymore. Thanks for walking me through it.” She offers him a sweet smile. Then she asks, “Benjamin?”
“Yes?”
“Can we kiss now?”
This girl….
More fireworks explode in his chest as he leans forward to capture her mouth.
She tastes as sweet as her smile. Like the cherry Coke she had with dinner.
Cherry…
That innocent word leads to dangerous thoughts. He kisses her even deeper, his cock turning to concrete at the idea of taking her virginity tonight. But go slow…
He gently guides her into a lying-down position on the picnic blanket, even as his mind pops off with lurid images of himself moving between her legs.
He already knows it will be as good as he imagined all those nights he lay in bed alone, yearning for her in the dark. Better, probably.
He groans into her mouth, hips grinding into the front of the pretty light blue jersey dress she wore for their picnic date under the moon. He’s going to ruin her outfit if he’s not careful.
But fuck careful.
“If I buy you another one of these, can I rip this dress off your body?” “he asks, his voice rough with dark desire.
“That’s a thing that actually happens outside of romance novels?” she asks, giggling breathlessly.
Her laughter morphs into a surprised gasp when he rips the pretty-but-offensive barrier down the front.
And Benjamin’s mouth waters when he sees the glorious set of tits she was hiding beneath the dress’s too-high neckline. They strain against the lacy white cups of her bra, begging for his attention.
But they don’t have to beg for that. They’ve got his full devotion along with every other curve on his summer crush’s body.
“Look at you, Tess,” he breathes out. “You need to stop with this low self-esteem shit. You’re the sexiest girl on Earth.”
Her gaze melts. “When you say things like that, I actually believe you. Thank you,”
“No, thank you.” He takes a deep breath and says, “I know you’re going to find this hard to believe, but all I want in this world is to be your first. I’m already so far gone over you, Tess. Can I have you? Can I have you tonight?”
She swallows thickly. Then seems to decide right then and there. “Yes…yes, I want you to be my first time. I stand by that decision.”
This girl…
It’s all he can do not to fall on top of her. But no… Control yourself.
Forcing that animal instinct down, he refocuses on Tess. Her pleasure…that’s his only job tonight.
With that in mind, he pulls the cups of her bra aside, freeing her luscious breasts to give them the attention they deserve. This is not a hardship at all. He sucks the dark aureole into his mouth, swirling his tongue around the nub, then bites down just enough to make her release a breathy, “Oh, oh…”
She’s so responsive, and that’s enough to make him linger there. He latches on to the other breast and draws just as hungrily while molding his palm around the first breast. He loves the sounds she makes as he swirls his thumb around its hard black-cherry peak.
“Oh, Benjamin! Oh, God. Why does that feel so good?”
It’s obvious from Tess’s response that her breasts have not been given the respect they deserve over the years. God damn shame really. Luckily, he’s here to put an end to all that neglect.
Her needy whimpers are driving him crazy, not to mention the way she’s wriggling beneath him, driving her hot core into his stomach.
He has to remind himself several times to stay in control as he cups her pussy, using just enough force to keep her still. She whimpers dejectedly, like something unfairly caged.
“Ssh, not yet, baby. Not yet,” Benjamin whispers around her breasts. “I’m so fucking turned on right now, but I’m not going to rush us. I want your first time to be so good you don’t ever think about being with another guy. I’m going to open you up with a couple of fingers. Make sure you’re ready.”
He reaches underneath the band of her cotton panties, and she lets out a soft gasp when he strokes one finger into her virginal tunnel. But then she widens her legs to accommodate the second one he pushes into her. And when he pushes a third one in, she moans brokenly as her pussy contracts around his fingers
“Good, good,” he says thickly. “You’re doing so good….”
She’s getting really close. He could light up her body with just a few more pumps of his hand.
But there’s a presence in the woods with them. And he has to point them out.
“You see Donovan and those other Connecticut asswipes over there? Watching us from the woods?” he asks, nodding toward a point just a few feet away from where he’s fingers-deep in her core. “No, don’t stop. I want them to watch me worship this pussy.”
Tess stiffens underneath his hand. Donovan and his boys watching them was not something they discussed beforehand, and he can see her old insecurities threatening to overtake the lust.”
“I’m going to orgasm you, baby, and you’re going to come for me like you don’t give a fuck whose watching,” he growls. “C’mon. Let them see us. Let them see how good we can b together.”
Lucky for him, Tess was always the kind of girl who settled for nothing less than straight A’s in school. In the end, she gives into her new assignment with a little nod.
She’s already soaking his fingers. But true to his word, Benjamin will settle for nothing less than complete worship. He keeps one hand molded to her breasts but dives his mouth down to the sacred space between her legs, splitting her folds with the flat of his tongue, before thrusting it in for a most reverent kiss.
That’s when the moaning really begins. Tess twists her fingers into his hair as he lathes her core, and her chest heaves under his hand. She looks glassy-eyed toward the spot where Donovan and his boys are standing.
“I can’t believe I’m letting you do this in front of them,” she whispers. “But I can’t tell you to stop. It feels too good.”
Her words nearly unravel him. His cock is so heavy and full it’s pressing painfully into his zipper. But he continues to drink her down like a man dying of thirst. He won’t stop. He refuses to stop. Not until…
Her pussy clamps down hard on his fingers then shudders as she comes with a helpless cry while her thighs flex around his head. Christ, he loves the sounds she makes as she finds her completion.
But it isn’t enough for him. Again. The thirsty man disappears, and he becomes an animal, licking at her soft inner thighs before diving right back into her sodden pussy.
“I can’t, Benjamin,” she half-sobs, her fingers pulling at his hair. “It’s too much. Please…”
Thank fuck they talked about safewords earlier. He continues going because she can. He knows she can show Donovan and company how a real woman receives her just rewards.
And he’s proven right a few moments later when she cries out with a second orgasm before becoming boneless underneath his mouth.
Good, good. She’s nice and soaked. Ready. He pulls his fingers out and rises to his knees.
But the picture she makes lying on the blanket beneath him…eyes glazed with her thick thighs akimbo and her dark breast spilled out over the underwire of her lacy bra. No, he doesn’t ever want to hurt her, but it causes him pain to unzip his jeans and pull out his rigid cock.
“You see what you do to me, baby?” he asks as he picks up the foil package from where he left it on the picnic blanket. “I’m going to have to think about hockey drills when I put on this condom just to keep from blowing early in front of Donovan and company again.”
“Then don’t,” she says softly.
Her words freeze him in place.
“Don’t what?” he asks carefully.
Her lust-filled gaze raises to meet his, “Don’t put on the condom. Take me raw.”
Everything falls away. The woods, the lake, that summer—all the memories they’re trying to undo.
No, Donovan wasn’t in the script they talked about when they decided to try a roleplay dinner date to heal what happened that summer. But neither was this.
“We’ve already proved we can co-parent with me hating you,” she explains into his shocked silence. “I’d like to see what it would be like to do it the opposite way.”
Benjamin blinks.
Because that’s what you do when you suddenly find yourself in a dream, right? And there’s no way, Tess, the woman he’s been yearning after for nearly four years actually wants to try for another kid with him.
That would be too good to be true.
If this is a dream, he doesn’t want to wake up.
Still, he has to do his due diligence. It’s like he promised Tess the night he told her everything in the wake of Stephanie’s departure. No more lies. No more secrets. From now on he follows his conscience and does what’s best for Tess—not himself.
He won’t risk losing her again.
So he has to ask. “You remember the safeword?”
She nods.
Not good enough. Not for this.
“Say it out loud for me, baby.”
“Tommy’s Pizza,” she answers, sitting up on her forearms. The sex glaze is gone, and she looks at him with clear eyes to insist, “I know the safeword, and I don’t want to use it.”
He shakes his head, unable to let himself believe. “Tess, are you serious? You gotta be serious because it’s going to kill me if you take this back.”
She regards him with a sympathetic gaze. Then she sits all the way up and pushes his jeans further down his legs. “I want a baby. One I can keep. Do you want a baby too? With me?”
“Fuck yes,” he rasps out.
“Then come on.” She places her hands on his hips and eases him back down to the blanket with her. “Let’s make a baby.”
He follows her to the ground. “Please don’t regret this.”
He doesn’t realize he’s said that prayer out loud until she answers, “I won’t. I promise I won’t. I never got over you either. Now, please, let’s make this right.”
Let’s make this right.
He lodges himself deep inside of her and crashes his mouth back down on hers. She’s so tight and wet and his. He’s not going to last long if he doesn’t keep kissing her. He needs the separate action to remind him what’s at stake, that he can’t mess this up if he wants forever with her.
For a moment everything is quiet as he concentrates on loving her the way he should have that night, with long, slow strokes that touch her deep inside.
But then she falls out of the kiss to tell him. “Benjamin, I love you. I love you so much. I never stopped, even though I wanted to. Thank you for never giving up on us.”
He’s bid himself so many times tonight to stay in control. But he just loses it after she says that. No more kissing. No more slow loving. He begins thrusting into her, crude and rough.
“I will never give up on us. Never stop loving you,” he snarls into her neck. “You’re going to have to marry me, baby, because I can’t stop. I’m never stopping with you again. Take this baby, Tess. Make us a family.”
He’s too far gone to temper his emotions, but his real talk doesn’t spook her. No…
She pulls him in closer, her arms wrapping so tight around his neck, he can hear the clacking of her teeth as he thrusts into her faster and faster.
Neither of them is in control. They mate like animals on the ground. Too base to do anything but follow a prime directive to reproduce.
She cries out beneath him, “Oh, God, I can’t. I can’t take this! Please, I can’t.”
No safeword.
“You can,” he growls low into her ear. “You are. You will forever.”
No more secrets. He lets her see everything he feels for her. Everything he’s hidden behind carefully-worded suggestions, nice-dad smiles, and invitations on A4 cardstock. The never-ending love. The impatient obsession he’s harbored for three years. The dark entitlement.
“You’re mine, Tess,” he informs her roughly. “You were mine from the moment I laid eyes on you. And when I put this baby in you, we’re never going back to the way it was.”
She should be scared. All the second thoughts—that’s what she should be having right now.
But instead of pushing him away, she screams. Not in fear, but in pleasure. Her face slackens into wonder as another orgasm crests over her.
Thank goodness, Daphne sleeps with noise-canceling headphones. Benjamin couldn’t quell her screams if he wanted to—not with her pussy flexing and contracting around his cock.
Benjamin wanted this to last forever this time. But he can’t…he can’t….
He explodes.
“This is forever, Tess,” he declares, mindlessly pumping as he empties inside of her. “I’m never going to let you go. I’m going to love you until the day I d—”
“Oh my God, Tess! Tess! Are you okay?” Stephanie’s voice calls out, right before the door crashes open and she and Hades come rushing into his bedroom.
Stephanie’s face is frantic with worry—until she sees the picnic scene on the floor. Then she says, “Oh, my God!” again for a much different reason.
Benjamin and Tess tumble out of their lake fantasy, back into the primary bedroom of his three-bedroom condo in Seaport.
And Stephanie slaps a hand over her eyes.
“We heard you screaming, and we thought you were hurt,” she explains. “But maybe that’s not the case. Are you okay?”
“I’d say she’s more than okay, ma belle,” Galen points out with a devilish grin. “It looks like the two of them have made up, just like us.”
“Wait, you took him back,” Tess asks, pushing at Benjamin to let her up. “Even after Operation Birthday Card?”
“Yes, our love is no match for snitching birthday cards.” Galen glares at them as Benjamin re-zips and grabs a robe from the walk-in closet for Tess to put on over her ruined dress.
“I took him back before I lost my memory actually,” Stephanie answers her sister in a much kinder tone. “It’s a super long story which I will be more than happy to share with you in full—after you get dressed.”
“Okay, I mean, sure, I guess. I need to hear that story,” Tess says, pulling on the robe. “But what are you two doing here?”
* * *
“Daphne!”
His daughter comes awake with a jerk when four adults yell her name loud enough to be heard over the noise-canceling headphones she likes to wear to bed.
“What the…” She lifts her silk mask with an angry look–only to burst into a smile when she sees the two people standing beside her parents. “Steph, Uncle G! What are you doing here?”
Stephanie holds up the phone. “You texted that it was an emergency and that Tess needed my help. Then you never answered my return texts. And your mom was…ah…occupied—all I knew was that Tess needed my help and that the both of you were here in Boston. So we basically dropped everything and flew out here in a private jet.”
“Ooh, you flew here in a private jet.” Daphne clasps her hands and lets out a wistful sigh. “That’s so cool. I tried to get Mom and Dad to fly us out here in one, but they’re, like, agreeing now, and they both said it was wasteful.”
“Environmentally unconscionable actually,” Tess says, throwing Hades another dirty look. “But Daphne, focus. Why didn’t you text your aunt back? You had her really worried and made her fly out here for nothing.”
Daphne appears just as confused as Tess for a moment. But then she remembers out loud. “Oh yeah, my phone died before I went to bed. But my charger’s all the way out in the living room so, you know…”
She trails off with a shrug as if she expects all the adults in the room to fully understand why, of course, she couldn’t walk all the way to the living room to plug in her phone.
“You might have a point about her being spoiled,” Benjamin concedes to Tess under his breath.
“Might?” Tess repeats.
At the same time, Stephanie asks, “What the heck, Daphne? What emergency, even? Tess is fine!”
“Better than fine,” Hades can’t help but add with a secretive grin.
Tess glares at him much in the same way she glared at his brother Keane yesterday when he magnanimously “forgave” her for not forgiving his little brother sixteen years earlier.
“I mean yeah, she’s fine right now,” Daphne answers defensively. “But earlier tonight, she told me she was going to wear Crocs underneath her evening gown to Dad’s Man of the Year ceremony tomorrow. Crocs.I was texting you so that you could talk some sense into her.”
“What?” Stephanie stares at Daphne for several disbelieving seconds—before turning to Tess and saying, “Yeah, no, you can’t do that, sis.”
“Why not?” Tess whines, immediately jumping to her own defense. “Keane’s wife never wears heels. She says she can’t anymore after having three kids.”
“You had one kid when you were sixteen,” Daphne argues from the bed. Then she turns to Stephanie with an exasperated look. “See why I needed your help?”
“Totally,” Stephanie says, shaking her head at Tess. “I’m glad you texted, Daphne. I’ve got this. Go back to sleep.”
She strings an arm around Tess’s shoulders and guides her out of the room while sternly informing her, “We’re going to go out tomorrow to find an evening gown for me and a pair of comfortable heels for you.”
“Comfortable heels are an oxymoron!” Tess insists.
To absolutely no avail.
The next night, Tess finds out why her daughter was so insistent on her wearing a cute pair of heels when Benjamin proposes on the Boston Charities red carpet.
But she does have to worry about her make-up smearing when she answers with a tearful yes. With no hesitation whatsoever. They’re not teenagers anymore, and they’re done second-guessing themselves—not when they make each other this happy.
“It stings, it stings,” she says, rubbing at her eyes after he slips the ring on her finger. “But that’s okay. All the pain is worth this.”
Benjamin gets the feeling she’s not necessarily talking about her mascara as he pulls her in for a big kiss with their families clapping and news cameras flashing all around.
No, Tess and he didn’t get their happy ending the first time around when they were teenagers.
But that’s okay.
They’re getting it now, and he already has the feeling they’ll appreciate their true love way more the second time around.
* * *
Oh my gosh, Bono and Tess have been lurking around for years in the background of the 50 Loving States Universe.
All I knew when Bono presented himself for KEANE was that he was deeper than he appeared, and he got someone pregnant while away on a mission trip.
Over the years, Bono’s secret baby came up occasionally in other stories. And I kept on getting glimpses of his first love as someone super practical who ran a shelter—but there was no story to go along with these quick character peeks. So, imagine my surprise when Tess—Stephanie’s secret sister—presented as Bono’s first love and asked for a B story.
I really loved getting to tell a secret baby story that actually included a custody agreement. And I just adored how petty Tess was about not wanting to speak or see Benjamin ever again.
But I’m even happier, Benjamin and Tess figured things out.
Hey, want to meet their baby?
And thanks so much again for reading HADES: Stephanie and the Ruthless Mogul!
PHANTOM Bonus Epilogue
BONUS EPILOGUE
BERNICE
“Aw, don’t cry, Eric. Don’t cry….”
Lord knew we’d learned our lesson about giving anyone unnecessary hugs over the last few years. But Olivia immediately pulled Eric into her arms—as best she could with her six-month pregnant belly. Meanwhile, I rubbed his back, trusting the vaccines we got toward the beginning of the year to keep us safe.
I figured Eric would be happy when Olivia, O2, and I showed him the flower-covered lattice archway and the rows of white chairs we’d set up for his wedding on Glendaver Castle’s back lawn.
But I didn’t think he’d burst into tears, turning the light yellow sleeve of Olivia’s dress dark with his guttural sobs.
Olivia and I exchanged a sympathetic look over his shoulder. This was about more than really liking the aesthetic we’d chosen for his wedding.
“Why are you crying, Uncle Eric?” O2 asked as if sensing the same thing we did.
“I’m sorry,” Eric answered. He pulled away from Olivia and mopped at his tears with the back of his hands. “After the year I’ve had—that we’re still having, I just don’t know how else to respond to all this beauty. I’m so happy to see you all again, but Olivia, you’re so pregnant. And Bernice, you’re still you, but O2 is so big—I just missed you so, so much!”
And there he went again.
This time I pulled Eric in for the hug while Olivia patted his back.
“We overstand,” I let Eric know.
I wasn’t just commiserating either.
None of us expected to be apart for this long. Two Januarys ago, Olivia and Phantom had returned to New York to introduce their baby daughter, Fei, to the grandmother they named her after and check in on the clinic. When I told Olivia about my landlord finding out that I wasn’t the great aunt on the rent-controlled lease and only giving me seven days to find a new place, she’d come up with a novel solution.
She’d bring O2 and me back with her to Kentucky so that I could help her continue setting up the clinic while she was technically on maternity leave. Three months, six months tops, we’d figured—just enough time to help Olivia get the clinic in Louisville fully staffed and running. Then O2 and I could move back to NYC and live in Phantom’s Upper West Side penthouse until we found a new place of our own.
My Aunt Minerva, who’d moved into the castle after she found out Olivia was pregnant, had even volunteered to also watch O2 during the day.
Rent-free castle stay, no-charge babysitting, extraordinary boss—Olivia had made it virtually impossible for this single mother to say no to her.
But shortly after O2 and I arrived in Kentucky for our short stay, the reports of a virus that would eventually upturn the world kept getting worse and worse. By the time three months rolled around, the idea of moving back to New York felt crazy. And by the time I got the vaccine over a year after our arrival, I honestly couldn’t see us ever returning to the big city I could barely afford.
Sure, Glendaver County was a little too close for comfort to the place where O2 was conceived. But that was just me being silly.
O2 had plenty of space to play outside without the risk of getting run over by a car if she wasn’t paying attention while chasing a ball. She loved Fei like a little sister. And she just adored Aunt Minerva, who’d set up a supposedly temporary daycare for the clinic staffers in the castle’s guesthouse, as did all the kids who’d ended up in her care during the pandemic.
Sure, Aunt Minerva occasionally sent the children home with simple spells to fast heal booboos and anything else that was bothering them. And around the holidays, quite a few of the parents had asked her to stop telling the children that one of her cousins was actually Santa Claus’s second wife. But other than that, we could all agree that Minerva was essential to us essential workers being able to do our jobs during the worse of the pandemic.
And as crazy as her spells and stories were, only one of us parents pulled our kids out of the makeshift daycare after getting our vaccines—and that was only because the child was going to live with her grandparents for the summer. Otherwise, Minerva’s witchy daycare would still be at total capacity.
Olivia had made it easy for me to agree to come to Kentucky and impossible for me to leave.
As Phantom had said last Thanksgiving when he stood up to give the toast with Fei in one arm and a glass of Glendaver Whiskey in his free hand, “I like our version of family.”
The only downside to the new family we’d created in Kentucky was that it didn’t include Eric.
So we held each other tight, and eventually, O2 tugged on the skirt of my maxi dress to say, “Now you’re crying too, Mama!”
Eric and I both let out watery laughs.
“We just missed each other,” I answered for both of us. “A whole, whole lot.”
“Yes,” Eric sniffled and once again mopped away his tears. “I missed you so much, I agreed to come down here for my wedding—even though my man wanted to just get married in some courthouse in New York.”
“You’re acting like this was an inconvenience. But Phantom did fly you out here private,” I pointed out, easily falling into my old snippy dynamic with Eric. “And we were the ones who did all the planning in set up work. I think the two words you’re looking for are ‘thank you’”
“I know, you’re right. Thank you! You two are the best.” Eric blew both of us kisses. “But you know my guy’s a city boy through and through. It was a job to get him to step foot in Kentucky, much less get married here like Olivia and Phantom.”
Olivia nodded.
“I can understand that he wouldn’t necessarily feel Kentucky was a safe place for him,” she said, validating him like the excellent boss she was—even if Eric was the one in charge of the NYC Women with Disabilities clinic now.
It was the exact right response. But then, O2 asked, “Mr. Byron is scared of Kentucky? But he’s a police officer!”
I mentally slapped myself. It hadn’t occurred to me that Olivia would remember the only boyfriend Eric had ever introduced her to before we left NYC for our temporary Kentucky stay. But, of course, she did.
After nearly five years of motherhood, I’d learned that kids’ #1 talent in life is zeroing in on the one question that will make things awkward for all the adults involved in the conversation.
“No, sweetie-bug,” Olivia said, bending down to address her as best she could with Phantom’s huge baby boy in her belly. “Uncle Eric is getting married to Uncle Phantom’s brother.”
“Oh,” O2 said with seemingly complete understanding—only to ask, “What happened to the police officer? He was nice!”
Because I guess she just didn’t feel this conversation was awkward enough.
This time Eric answered O2 for himself with a tight smile. “Well, Uncle Eric upgraded himself to Mr. Mike, a caring doctor who would never, ever go behind my back and cheat.”
O2’s mouth dropped open. “Mr. Byron cheated on a test?”
Kids. They bring the awkward, and they bring the funny, too.
O2’s next question ended up being, “Why are you laughing?”
And a little while later, after we told her we were going inside to introduce her to Mike and the rest of Phantom’s family, she said, “Hold on!” as soon as we walked through the kitchen’s door.
We all watched her run up the back staircase to Olivia’s old childhood bedroom, which she’d called her own for over a year—Olivia had even helped her swap out the N’Sync posters for ones of Applejack, Pinkie Pie!, and Rainbow Dash from My Little Pony.
She came back down a few moments later with a sheet of gold star stickers. We had no idea what she had planned for them until she reached up and stuck it on Mike’s mask after he introduced himself.
Of Phantom’s three doctor siblings, Mike looked the most like the only CEO in their family. Tougher and squarer than his other two older willowy brothers.
But his hard face softened as he asked her. “What’s this for?”
“For not cheating on Uncle Eric’s test!” O2 answered. Then she once again found herself having to ask, “Why is everybody laughing?”
We laughed a lot that day.
* * *
That night instead of having a traditional rehearsal dinner, Eric’s parents and younger tech billionaire brother brought over takeout from the Mayan Café, an Indigenous-inspired farm-to-table restaurant in Louisville that was hipster enough for Eric and Mike citified tastes, but delicious enough for the rest of us.
After setting up the kids in the kitchen with Minerva, we placed the food out buffet-style in the castle’s great hall. But it being early August, eventually, the small party spilled outside where the adults could mingle on the stone deck, and the unvaccinated children could take off their masks and play in their pod on the huge lawn below.
For many of us, this was the first time we’d been to any sort of largish event since the start of the pandemic, and we enjoyed each other’s company to the utmost.
Phantom’s parents told me all about Fei’s grandma, who’d sadly passed away just a few hours after meeting Fei. This was a happy story, according to them, and Phantom’s father insisted, “She promised to send me a sign of who she’s become before I die.”
Sensing a way to help, I told them about my distant cousin—who contrary to the requests of the skeptical daycare parents—really was married to Santa Claus.
“She talks to spirits,” I let Phantom’s father know. “And if there’s anyone who can help you figure out what happened to your mama, it’s her. But you’d have to travel to San Francisco during the twelve days of Christmas to see her. Here, let me get your number, and I’ll send you all the details….”
Eric pulled me aside after I exchanged numbers with Phantom’s much more tech-savvy mother.
“Can you go get Olivia? She’s talking my brother’s ear off. I think she’s trying to set him up with that spouse-stealing tramp.”
“C’mon now, Eric, stop calling one of the nicest people I know out her name. Allie didn’t steal your work wife. Olivia decided to stay down here before she even hired her. And she’s the one running the clinic by herself tomorrow while Olivia and me enjoy your wedding. Also, that’s my best friend you’re talking about.”
He glared. “Now you’re on the mistress’s side? That makes me despise her even more.”
So, same old Eric.
He ended up doing his own dirty work, pulling Olivia out of the conversation with his crazy rich brother with a ding of his glass to get everyone’s attention before he thanked her and Phantom for providing their house for the wedding.
And by thanking, I mean he mumbled something about their generosity—then took not-so-humble credit for “saving” her from marrying Garrett by telling Phantom about their upcoming nuptials.
“Mike and I had only been dating for a few weeks, but after I got that invite, I was like, ‘not to be totally insane, but you’ve got to introduce me to your family, like, way too soon so that I can pretend to let it slip to your brother that Olivia’s getting married.’ Honestly, I knew he was the forever one when he actually agreed.”
Olivia and the rest of Phantom’s family had tears of laughter in their eyes by the time he was done with the story. But Phantom, who’d kept a thick arm wrapped around his wife’s waist the entire party, grumbled something low in Olivia’s ear.
I didn’t have to hear what he said to know that Eric’s story was still in the “too soon” category for him. If not for Eric’s interference, Phantom would have lost his wife to Garrett Easton. And I was no Olivia in the empathy and validation department, but I could guess that the longer they were together, the worse that thought became for him.
In any case, Olivia quickly stopped laughing and laid a soothing hand on his cheek.
I could almost imagine what she was saying. Something along the lines of… “I know those memories are hard for you. But look at us now. Concentrate on the present. Think about our future.”
Whatever she said, it worked. Phantom’s concrete face broke out into a soft smile, and he laid a hammy hand on her belly while pressing his forehead into hers.
The moment was so loving, so tender….the hot pang of jealousy erupted in my chest before I could stop it. I had to look away, turning my back on the scene in favor of watching the children play under the setting sun.
Nobody deserved to be happy more than Olivia. But more and more lately, it had been hard for me not to covet what she had—not the money and the clinics, but all the blessings she’d received in her personal life.
I adored O2—a little too much, even more now after the pandemic. The longing for another had become an ache in my heart. But I didn’t want to go the single mother route again.
What would it be like to actually fall in love and get pregnant? The right and solid way—not the crazy and wrong way, like I had with O2’s father?
“I think I know what’s got that pensive look on your face….”
I didn’t realize Olivia had moved until her voice tore me away from thoughts of the things I couldn’t have.
“Um…” I answered. I was pretty sure Olivia didn’t know I was experiencing a helpless bout of jealously over her happily ever after, so I didn’t know how to respond.
“One of us has got to talk to Dawn as soon as she gets here with Victor tomorrow,” Olivia continued, assuming that we were on the same wavelength. “I mean if she says anything to Eric about her brother and….”
I caught up in an instant and concluded, “Oh wow, yeah, that could definitely ruin Eric’s big day. As in love as he is with Mike, he’s still really bitter at Byron.”
“I know, right?” Olivia agrees. “Better not to chance him finding out until after the wedding. But they’re not getting in until right before the reception. And since I’m Eric’s best person….”
“Don’t worry, I’m on it,” I assured her.
* * *
“Hey, what are you doing out here?” my best friend, Allie, asked me the next day when she found me seated on the steps of Glendaver Castle. I was reading the latest sci-fi novel by another one of my aunts, Clarissa Quinn, instead of whooping it up with everybody else at the wedding reception.
Allie was supposedly here to pick up her son from the backhouse daycare where he was hanging with O2 and Aunt Minerva. But she’d worn a pretty wedding-appropriate sundress for the occasion.
Olivia’s scorned work husband would never have invited her to the reception himself. But since Allie had to pick her son up from Minerva’s daycare anyway after the clinic closed, Olivia and I had told her to drop by for some free food and fun.
“Let me guess,” she said before I could answer. “You’re trying to finally get a quiet moment by yourself for the first time since the pandemic started.”
I laughed at her guess.
Allie understood the struggle more than most as a single mother herself. And she had a near similar story to my own. Olivia had hired her for her already overly popular clinic in Louisville despite her being visibly pregnant just because someone she trusted—me—recommended her. The only difference was, she’d been hired on as a fresh out of medical school general practitioner doctor instead of a clerk.
Over the course of the pandemic, we’d become even closer—to the point where O2 insisted on calling Allie’s toddler son “Little brother,” no matter how many times we explained they weren’t related by blood.
And even though she was the doctor with the least experience at the clinic, she was the best, according to our online reviews. Olivia trusted her to be the doctor in charge when she was away and lived in fear that her second work spouse would quit on us.
That made me feel a little better about the lie of omission I’d told to get her the job. I’d insinuated that Allie—or as she was professionally referred to—Dr. Allison Snow was a medical work colleague from my pre-New York days.
That was only kind of true. She’d worked with me back then—but not at the doctor’s office I’d clerked at in Tennessee. The job we’d worked had been off the books in a place you couldn’t find on Yelp or Google Maps.
But we never talked about what happened at that under-the-table job.…or the fathers of our children.
Hopes and dreams, all day—I could tell you Allie’s 5-year plan, line by line. But our pasts….well, let’s just say that the reason we’re such good friends is that we understand what’s thoroughly off-limits.
As far as we’re concerned, we’re exactly what we say we are. A boring office clerk and an ultra-capable doctor. The girls we were when we worked at that roadhouse right at the Tennessee/Kentucky border….well, we’ve left them behind.
For us, there’s only now, and we try not to think about our pasts ever catching up with us.
“Good guess,” I said to Allie in answer to her question about why I was waiting outside the castle. “But really, I’m out to intercept Dawn, who should be here any second with her husband, Victor.”
Allie’s eyes widened, “Oh my gosh, are you going to run interference to warn her not to bring up the situation with her brother and the yakuza….”
“Yup,” I answered before she was even finished with her guess.
When I said we were best friends, I meant best friends. And though our own pasts are off-limits, everybody else’s is fair play.
My gossip game was A++ after years of being a side character in The Phantom and Olivia Show. So my girl knew all the special guest stars in their universe, including the obscure ones she’d never met.
“Ooh, I’ll wait with you,” she said, dropping down to sit on the stone steps beside me. “Maybe his sister will have an update for us too. I can’t wait for another episode of that story!”
“See. This right here is why we’re best friends,” I let Allie know with a huge laugh.
She laughed too, and the southern accent that she tried not to use in her professional day-to-day came back full force as she declared, “I’m just saying this single mom Kentucky life is thin on drama. I need an infusion of it wherever I can get—”
Roaring engines in the distance cut off whatever she was going to say.
The laughter disappeared from our voices, our minds, our very souls.
Because we knew that roar. It was the growl of ruin and danger, announcing a motorcycle gang’s arrival at the roadhouse. It was the sound of our pasts catching up with us.
Every nerve, every drop of blood, every breath in my body froze.
“Don’t freak out,” Allie said, her tone dropping back into doctor mode. Unlike me, she had a full view of the road as she assured me, “It could be anybody, it doesn’t have to be them—”
But then she stopped cold, her pretty face collapsing into horror.
It was them.
I knew that even before I turn to see the ten bikers roaring toward us with their president at the front of the pack. He had a distinctive red beard, parted into two braids like a Viking—Viking that’s what his fellow Reapers called him. But all outsiders had to call him Waylon under threat of physical violence or, in our case, getting fired.
Don’t piss off Waylon—that had actually been a rule written down on a whiteboard in the back of the roadhouse.
“Maybe…maybe he won’t remember us,” Allie said beside me, her voice shaky and hopeful.
But we’d been the only black women who worked at that roadhouse. Of course, he remembered us.
As if to confirm my guess, Waylon stopped his bike right in front of Allie and me while the rest of the gang drove on toward the parking area around the side of the house. “Red, Allie, is that you?”
He knew Allie’s real name, but of course, he didn’t know mine.
I didn’t give it to any of the bikers at that roadhouse 1) I wasn’t stupid—at least not until O2’s father looked down at me with those piercing blue eyes, and 2) I was pretending to be somebody else back then. A woman with flaming red hair who did what she wanted and was ready to party.
Allie, so capable beyond her years, just stared at him, her face as stunned as I felt.
“What are you doing here?” I asked for the both of us.
“Security. Something about a secret show for the gay brother of some big shot alcohol guy,” Waylon answered.
Too late…
Too late, I remembered the other party conversation I’d overheard. Phantom teasing his little brother about not wanting to come to Kentucky but loving a particular country trap artist…
My brain went desperate like Allie’s.
Maybe he wasn’t talking about the same guy. He’d retired from performing shortly before the pandemic. And lots of other acts used MC gangs as security, especially in small venues like ours.
It could be anybody—
“What are you doing here, Red?” Waylon asked again, interrupting my denial fest. Then before I could answer, he said, “You better come with me. He’s been looking for you.”
He’s been looking for you….
Like it’s been five days since I last saw him, not five years.
And that let me know without a shadow of a doubt who had come to perform tonight. There was only one person who Waylon referred to as “he”—like he was some kind of deity who needed no introduction.
This was my worst nightmare.
I glanced at Allie.
Best friends. We were best friends for reasons we never talked about….
Without having to say a word, we both broke toward the castle’s front doors.
We ran…ran through the castle toward the backhouse daycare and our secret children as if we had hellfire at our feet.
But we screeched to a halt at the back house’s door.
“Mama!” Allie’s son called out, toddling right on up to her.
But O2…my Olivia…
She didn’t call out my name. Because she was deep in conversation with a masked man who’d squatted down to speak with her. He wore a cowboy hat paired with a Ruthless Reapers leather vest. And though his back was turned to me, I recognized all the tattoos running up the back of his neck and down his arms.
I’d teased him one of the days we’d been together. Kissing each inked piece while my hands grazed his hard, lean body—until he put me on my back and buried his mouth in my sex, aggressively returning all my soft kisses with a hard wet one of his own.
“Mommy! Mommy!” O2 called out when she saw me over his shoulder. “It’s G-Latham!”
I couldn’t answer. I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t even breathe as G-Latham slowly stood up to his full six feet plus.
“Bernice?” Allie asked somewhere in the distance.
At the same time, O2’s face went from excited to worried. “Mommy?”
I needed to say something…reassure my daughter, the love of my life.
But I could only stare at G-Latham as he turned to face me. Or Griff as he’d introduced himself to me that night when I thought he was just another Reaper, like nearly every other guy at the roadhouse.
A few more hopeful maybes sparked in my chest…
Girls in his world were a dime a dozen. There’d probably been a million mes while he was out on the road.
Maybe he wouldn’t recognize me. Maybe he wouldn’t realize—
“Red,” he said, his ice-blue eyes narrowing on me, then on my daughter.
Our daughter.
All the hope died in my chest.
G-Latham. G-Latham was here. And he knew…
He knew the little girl he’d just been talking to was his secret daughter.
Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!
You have GOT to find out what happens next
in the Ruthless MC series:
WAYLON: Amira and the Grumpy Reaper
GRIFFIN: Red and the Big Bad Reaper
REAPERS: Dr. Snow and the Vengeful Reapers
HADES: Stephanie and the Merciless Reaper
Also by Theodora Taylor
RUTHLESS MC
WAYLON: Amira and the Grumpy Reaper
GRIFFIN: Red and the Big Bad Reaper
REAPERS: Dr. Snow and the Vengeful Reapers
HADES: Stephanie and the Merciless Reaper
RUTHLESS TYCOONS
HOLT: Her Ruthless Billionaire
RUTHLESS TYCOONS: Broken and Ruthless
RUTHLESS TRIAD
RUTHLESS FAIRYTALES
Reina and the Heavy Metal Prince
(newsletter exclusive)
THE VERY BAD FAIRGOODS
RUTHLESS BOSSES
RUTHLESS BUSINESS
RUTHLESS RUSSIANS
HOT HARLEQUINS WITH HEART
ALPHA KINGS
ALPHA FUTURE
ALIEN OVERLORDS (as Taylor Vaughn)
THE SCOTTISH WOLVES
Her Scottish Warrior
About the Author
Theodora Taylor writes hot books with heart. When not reading, writing, or reviewing, she enjoys spending time with her amazing family, going on date nights with her wonderful husband, and attending parties thrown by others. She LOVES to hear from readers. So….
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