Our family may be loud and chaotic, gruff and messy, but it’s also wonderful. Our parents love us, and the four of us have always been like brothers and sisters.
Roman and I getting married might be a little weird at first, but in the end, I know it will only close our family circle even tighter.
I just can’t wait for that to happen.
And to get that dick.
3
Roman
We’re on the stairs leading up to my brother and sister’s condo when I grab Emily’s wrist and jerk her around, pushing her up against the wall. She’s grinning, starting to squirm, but I ain’t playin’.
“Easy, Cowboy. You want me to spread my legs right here, you only have to ask.”
I growl. “I need to hear it.”
“This again?” Her eyes turn serious and sad. She knows the darkness I carry inside me, the fear that I’m not good enough for her. Her hand slides down my arm, her fingers twisting with mine. “What happened to your mom was tragic, but it wasn’t your fault. You’re a good man. She would be proud.”
I blink back rage tears, tears of hatred for myself, the size I am, the things I’ve done. Carrying me for nine months turned out to be more than my mother’s body could take, and that’s a darkness inside me I’ll never shake.
“I’ve waited for you, Emily, when every bone in my body was screaming to marry you, fuck you, breed you, fuck you some more. I need to hear it.”
“You’re the only one for me, Saint Roman.”
It’s the name she teases me with. I’m many things, not all of them good, but I am a man with superhuman control. Because somehow, I’ve refrained from fucking her every time she offers herself to me like a barely-legal honey trap. But the way she saysSaint Romanright now sounds more like awe than playfulness.
“I need to hear it, lil Kicker,” I say again, and my blood pressure only starts to come down when she says the words, her eyes wide and honest without a trace of a lie.
“I’ve waited for you, too. I’m still a virgin. There’s no other man for me, Roman, and there never will be.”
I breathe a sigh of relief and release her wrist.
I know she’s had other offers. I mean, look at her. That fucking wavy auburn hair, those ice-blue eyes that send chills through me every time she looks my way. She’s five feet tall if she stands on tiptoes, like some little doll I could carry around in my fucking pocket. Curves to fucking die for.
There’s only one guy who ever said anything about her when I was around, and I gave him a dentist’s bill that he’s probably still paying off.
She reaches up and cups the side of my face. “Silly cowboy. Why would I ever look anywhere else?”
I hold her hand where it is, and she smiles as I study her beautiful face. The freckles across the bridge of her nose, the scar through one eyebrow, the chipped tooth from where she took a fall barrel riding last year. I hate that she got injured, but I secretly love knowing that she’s hellfire and whiskey. I want to ride that lightning until my last breath.
Her dad, Decker, saw the way I was with her that day, how I wouldn’t let anyone else near her. She hated me fussing, told meit was all fine, but I was beside myself, ready to haul her out of there to the hospital, ready to tell her she’s never getting back in a saddle again.
I guess Decker recognized in me the same fire he has for May, his wife. I can still remember his words.
If anyone ever hurt my daughter, I’d kill them. You know that, right? Doesn’t matter if they’re family. They’d pay with their life.
I couldn’t even come back with a smart-ass comment, because I could see from the look on his face, he was dead serious. And I was too. I still am, and I always will be. That fire for his daughter is something both Decker and I share.
Before you go down that road, you better make sure you’re the right man for her. Violence has its place, but all this using your fists to solve every problem, you can’t bring that to her door. You man up, you start using your brains as well, because I know you have them, Roman. Try to make it a year, just see if you can, and if not, maybe it’s time to walk away, because you and I both know Emily deserves more, and I’ll fight to make sure she gets it. Even if it’s against you.
He was right. And in a couple of days, I’ll have made it a whole year without throwing a single punch.
“Come on, cowboy. I have no idea what this is about, but Carrie’s gonna have a panic attack if whatever schedule she’s planned for us gets derailed more than ten minutes.” Emily’s plump, round ass makes me groan as she turns and climbs the stairs to Casey and Carrie’s off-campus condo in front of me. They’re the same age as us, almost right down to the month, but they both graduated high school two years early and have been running rings around their professors ever since.
I raise my hand and land it with a loud smack on Emily’s left cheek, making her yelp, her hair flying in an arc as she turns her head to glare at me.
“Stopthat. Your brother and sister do not want to see?—”
