Asa (Marked Men #6) (23 page)

Six Months Later …

Living with a police officer was an interesting experience. I’d gotten used to Kevlar mixed in with silk and cotton in the closet. The sight of guns around the house no longer made me jolt in surprise, and her odd hours no longer had me staying awake when she rolled out of bed at the crack of dawn or in the middle of the night. What I was still learning to navigate was the way her job affected her. There were nights I came home to find she was crawling out of her skin with leftover adrenaline, and I barely made it through the door before she was all over me looking for some kind of release for all that pent-up energy. Then there were days that she came home and could hardly look at me. Those were the days I found her curled up in the shower crying and had to pull her out and hold her until she came back into herself. I figured out pretty quickly those were the days the bad guys won. Luckily the days I got tackled and stripped naked were far more common, so I just learned to love her through both. I still thought her job sucked but she loved it so much that I kept my mouth shut … most of the time.

Dom had worked hard and had the help of a very skilled physical therapist that had become instrumental in more ways than one when he had returned to the force. Surprisingly, Royal had asked him if it was okay with him if she stayed partnered with Barrett upon his return. She felt like she had been leaning on Dom too hard thus far in her career, and with a different partner she was really forced to be the cop she was always meant to be. Plus, she told him there was no way her heart could handle seeing him with a gun pointed at him again, and Dom, being the outstanding friend and man that he was, took all of that in stride. All he had ever wanted was for Royal to reach her full potential and she was doing exactly that.

I tossed my keys in the fancy ceramic bowl she had picked out to set by the front door. Even with a designated place for all the keys to live I was still running across town intermittently to let her into her car because she was still locking herself out of things and places on a regular basis. It was cute and the way she said thank you always left me with a smile on my face. My sexy cop was a handful and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Tonight I was the one getting home late. I had so many irons in the fire sometimes it was hard to keep track of things anymore. The business that Rome was spearheading was going like gangbusters. Our initial investment had doubled in just a few months. I honestly took pride in taking businesses that needed a helping hand and breathing new life into them. I was still working a shift a week at the Bar, mostly because I just couldn’t let it go. The place was like home to me when I really needed a place to feel welcome and I didn’t have it in me to just walk away from that completely. Generally I worked a Wednesday or Thursday night mostly so I could watch the way Dixie and Church were still dancing around each other. It was like a reality TV show live and in color, only far more entertaining. Dixie had recently started Internet dating and Church had all kinds of grumbly and growly opinions about the fact. I couldn’t figure out why he just didn’t take her to bed and put them both out of their misery, but he wasn’t explaining himself.

I had also found a tiny hole in the wall in LoDo that I was dying to turn into an old-fashioned cigar bar. The place sat maybe fifty people max and it was tucked away and hidden enough that I knew I could transform it into an exclusive spot that the trenderati would be dying to get into. Because he had been so good to me from the very start, I asked Rome if he wanted to buy in with me and was stunned when he told me no. When I told Royal his response she just smiled at me and told me the place was mine. Rome wanted me to have something all my own to either sink or swim with just in case the rest of it fell apart. He was trying to take care of me in his own gruff way. So tonight I had been talking with Zeb because I finally signed a lease on the place and wanted him to get in there to remodel the interior. The planning had gone longer than I expected, so I was quiet as I walked through the house just in case Royal was already in bed.

The lights in the house were off as I made my way through to that incredible kitchen and poured myself a scotch from my own private stash. The sliding glass door that led to the deck off the back of the house was cracked open and Tom Petty was playing softly from somewhere outside. Royal still liked her bubblegum pop, but when she was in a mellow mood and just needed to unwind after a long day, she tended to fall back on the classics, which I had to admit, I much preferred.

I took my drink and pulled the door open, my eyes automatically going to the set of Adirondack chairs that occupied the far corner of the deck opposite the hot tub. She was sitting in the dark outside in the cold; it was the first part of February, so there was still snow on the ground, and I wasn’t at all surprised that all she had on was one of my long flannel shirts and a pair of Uggs. I swear she was antipants as soon as she hit the front door. Not that I would ever be stupid enough to complain about it. She had a beer in her hand and a soft smile on her face, which reminded me every time I saw her here that this house and these moments of making it a home meant nothing without her in them.

“Did you wait up for me?” I walked over to the chair she was curled up in and pulled her up to her feet so I could kiss her. She tasted like the outside and cold beer. She tasted like heaven and hell all mixed together. I snagged the seat she had been sitting in and pulled her back down so that she was sitting in my lap with her back pressed up against my chest.

She lifted the beer to her lips and snuggled into me. I sighed in pure contentment and wrapped an arm around her trim waist.

“Yeah. I didn’t want to go to bed alone.”

I rubbed my nose in her soft hair and told her, “You should’ve called me. I would have come home.”

She put one of her hands over mine and I set my glass down on the ground because she was far more interesting to hold on to.

“I was actually talking to Ayden and lost track of time. I knew you couldn’t be much longer, so I thought I would just sit out here and wait for you.”

“Half naked.”

She laughed and lifted an arm up to curl around my neck. “Of course.”

“How’s the drive from Austin going?” Ayden refused to get on a plane this far along into her pregnancy even if her doctor had informed her it was perfectly safe. She insisted she wasn’t taking any unnecessary chances with her little girl, so she and Jet were driving in the unpredictable weather so they could be here next week for Rome and Cora’s wedding.

“She sounds fine. Jet was the one suffering. He’s doing that guy thing where he wants to drive straight through, and with a wife that’s six months pregnant with a baby sitting on her bladder that just isn’t happening. She told me he looks like he’s going to shoot an embolism every time she tells him she needs to stop and use the bathroom. Knowing your sister, she’s doing it on purpose every fifty miles or so just to aggravate him.”

“Probably. I’m excited for them to get here.” I had Skyped with Ayden a few times, so I could see the way being an expectant mom was changing my little sister physically. I wanted to see how she was handling it up close and personal, with my own two eyes. And I wanted to put my hands on the baby bump that held my niece.

“Me, too.” She fell quiet for a second and then asked softly, “Do you ever think about getting married and having kids?”

I took her beer out of her hand, set it down next to my scotch, and put my hands on her hips so that I could lift her and turn her around so that she was straddling me and we were face-to-face in the dark.

“Do I think about marriage and kids in general, or do I think about them with you, Red?”

She put her hands on my shoulders and shrugged, which sent her auburn hair slithering across my hands in a sexy, cool glide.

“Ayden’s due in a few months, Rome and Cora are getting married in a week, Rule and Shaw are living in domestic bliss, Salem just told everyone she’s expecting, and Saint couldn’t tell Nash yes fast enough when he proposed over Christmas. There’s just a lot of kids and forever-after going on around us and you never mention it. I just wondered if it was even in the cards for us.”

I untangled one of my hands from her hair and put a finger under her chin so that she couldn’t look away from me. “You want to get married, Royal?”

She rolled her eyes at me like that was the stupidest question I could ever ask. “Yeah. Eventually.”

I nodded at her and leaned forward so I could kiss her lightly. “Then eventually we’ll get married.”

She gasped and her mouth fell open in a rather comical way. I pulled her closer so that I could whisper into her ear, “You wanna have my babies?”

She shivered against me as my hands drifted up along her bare thighs under the hem of my shirt. “Absolutely.” She breathed the word into my neck as she fell forward to hold me closer.

“You let me know when you’re ready for that to start and I’m on board.” She would be an amazing mom, and while my skills and ability to parent were probably questionable at best, I would figure it out. Because having a family with this fascinating, fun, wonderful woman wasn’t something I was ever going to miss out on.

My hands brushed up against warm, naked skin that was already damp and ready for whatever I wanted to do with her. She lifted a mischievous eyebrow at me and leaned back from where she was nuzzling on my neck so that she could get her hands between us in order to work on my belt.

“Were you planning on giving the neighbors a show?” I couldn’t help the humor that laced my voice as she set my hardness free and ran her hand up and down the length.

“I left the lights off for a reason.” She smiled at me, and my entire world was in that tiny gesture.

I grunted in response because she wiggled herself up over my straining erection and then slid down so that I was sheathed tightly inside her welcoming and pulsing body. At this angle I could feel the way her body had to stretch to accommodate me. It made my eyes twitch in pleasure. I used the hand that had been stroking her inner thigh and playing with the tender places that led to where we were joined to slip between her slippery folds and find her sensitive little spot of desire.

She said my name on a moan and started to move on top of me. We were still mostly clothed; all any nosy neighbor would see if they bothered to investigate was a flash of her spectacular rear end every time she lifted and fell as she rode me hard. She curled an arm around my shoulders and leaned forward so that our heads were pressed together. Every time she panted I tasted it across my lips. Every time I growled in satisfaction at her she breathed it in. I teased her clit ruthlessly as she ground into me, as her body sucked and pulled on mine with greedy motions. She was beautiful. The way she worked me over was beautiful, and when she came with my name on her lips and my hand coated in her passion, it was so fucking beautiful it pushed me over the edge and I followed right behind her.

We panted together and tried to catch our breath as I moved my hand to curl around her naked butt. She rubbed her cheek against mine and sighed as she told me, “I live for these moments with you, Asa.”

I picked her up and carried her inside our house, our home, and thought that Ayden had been right. When you allowed yourself to love and be loved, that was when life really started. I might have come back from the dead once, but I hadn’t started living until I let myself love Royal.

*

“Cora told me I have always been her hero, so I needed to look like one on our wedding day.” Rome grumbled the response when I asked him how it felt to be in his dress uniform after being out of the army for so long.

We were all standing at the back of the church waiting for this shindig to get started. I think everyone had been a little surprised that Cora wanted to go such a traditional route with her wedding, but according to Rome, his little pixie had always wanted the fairy tale and he was more than willing to give it to her.

At first I had been stunned when he asked me to stand up with him. Of course Cora wanted Royal as a bridesmaid, so it made sense that I would be the one to walk her down the aisle. Rome had given me one of his somber looks and informed me that I belonged up there next to him just as much as Rule, Jet, Nash, and Rowdy did, and how could I argue with that?

Shaw and Ayden were trying to keep RJ entertained so that she didn’t shove fistfuls of flower petals into her mouth while she waited for her very important duties as flower girl to start. The adorable, blond toddler was far more interested in making a mess with the rose petals than she was in whatever the women were doing to distract her. She kept looking up at Rome with a big toothy grin and asking him if it was time to get married. The big man just smiled back at his precious little girl and told her, “Almost.”

Cora and Rome had welcomed a healthy baby boy only a few months prior. They had also broken the trend and skipped not only the letter
R
for the first name but also the
C
. Baby Zowen was sleeping soundly with Rome’s mom and dad while his cousin watched over him carefully. Shaw and Rule’s baby boy was just a little over a year old and he was fascinated by his infant cousin. Shaw insisted that the older the little boy got, the more and more his personality was making itself known. He wasn’t wild and rebellious like Rule, nor was he mellow and introspective like her. She swore that each day that passed he reminded her more and more of Uncle Remy, and I think everyone in the Archer clan liked that assessment just fine. The baby was sweet, always had a smile or a giggle ready, and seemed content just to bask in his parents’ love, and it made Shaw laugh every time she mentioned how much of a daddy’s boy he was. Ry and Rule were the best of friends, and even now Rule was sticking his shaved head out of the back of the church to where all the guests were congregated to see how his son was doing.

Ayden groaned as she righted herself back up and walked over to me. My sister was always beautiful, but there was something about her being pregnant that made her out-of-this-world stunning. There was a softness about her that had never been present before and it looked really good on her. She walked over and looped her arm through mine. She just grinned at me when I put a hand on her protruding belly.