Текст книги "Coup De Grace"

Автор книги: Lani Lynn Vale

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Текущая страница: 14 (всего у книги 15 страниц)

“Look at me, Nikki,” he ordered.

I peeled my eyes away from where his hand was holding her under her bottom, and looked at him.

He wasn’t worried.

Not even a little bit.

And that was what I needed to finally gain some control.

“What do we do?” I asked softly.

He leaned forward and took a seat on the side of my bed, running his hand along the length of my cheek.

“We let the pediatrician look at her. We talk to my father. My mother. But we do it all together. Because we can do nothing less,” he whispered.

A tear slipped down my cheek, and I looked down at my hands. Seeing them trembling, I took a deep breath and said, “I love you Michael. I’m sorry for freaking out.”

He pulled me to his chest, and my head rested next to the entire length of our baby’s body, and I just knew everything would be alright.

Why, you ask?

Because Michael said it would, that’s why.

***

Four hours later

“So you’re saying she’ll need to undergo surgery for this within the first three months of her life,” I asked the pediatrician I’d painstakingly chosen out of many in the East Texas area.

He nodded. “Having those taken care of is imperative. If you don’t, it could become malignant. It could stay the same. Or they could mean she’s blind for the rest of her life. And this is an easy fix. It’s relatively painless, but it is something she’ll have to be put to sleep for. Which is always a risk.”

I closed my eyes as tears started to form.

“Thank you, Dr. Rush,” Michael said, offering his hand. “We’ll follow up with the doctor in Dallas next Tuesday, like you said. We really appreciate you coming out and seeing her on your day off.”

I smiled through my tears.

That was awfully nice of Dr. Rush.

Most doctors didn’t do things like that.

Which was why I’d chosen Dr. Rush in the first place.

Bringing my knees up to my chest, I moved Carolina up until she was resting on my upraised legs, and stared at her.

She was so beautiful.

And perfect.

And it broke my heart that she had to have this done at such a young age.

But I didn’t have to worry about that now.

I had five full days with my little beauty, until I had to see that doctor in Dallas with her, and I was going to love her so hard.

Michael put his arms around me and hugged me to his chest, pressing his lips against my cheek.

“I’m going to go home and change my clothes,” he rumbled softly. “And bring up your bag so we can get little miss priss dressed. Anything you need while I’m out?”

I shook my head. “No. Not unless you want to grab me a number one from Whataburger.”

He leaned back and gave me a grin.

“I think I can handle that,” he teased.

Kissing me once more, he moved his lips to our little girl and brushed his lips over her hair.

“The two best things that ever happened to me,” he whispered, then left the room without another word.

Picking up my phone, I started to take a few hundred pictures of my little beauty when a knock sounded at the door.

I looked up, and smiled.

Because at the door was Wolfgang, or Wolf as I liked to call him, and baby Nathan.

Although Baby Nathan wasn’t so much a baby anymore. He was a toddler who was full of mischief and love for all things furry.

“Wolf,” I said softly, smiling at him once he breached the doorway. “Come in, come in.”

Wolf smiled. “I’d have waited to come see you, but I have to be at work in a couple of hours, and I didn’t know if I’d get to see you before you got out. How are you doing?”

He smiled as he looked down at the baby in my lap.

“He did good,” he rasped, a deep seated hurt evident in his voice.

His own child would’ve been six months just a few weeks ago.

“Would you like to hold her, Wolf?” I asked softly.

He swallowed, and looked into my eyes. “Yeah, if that’s okay.”

I held out my hands for Nathan, and he handed him to me.

Nathan immediately wrapped his chubby arms around my neck.

“Take her,” I said softly.

Wolf did, reaching forward and scooping Carolina up with nimble, practiced hands.

“She’s beautiful,” he rumbled, cradling Carolina to his chest.

“She is,” I agreed, turning away from the devastated look that came over Wolf’s face. “How ‘ya doing, Nathan?”

Nathan offered me a slobbery smile as he played with my hair.

“Fish,” he babbled.

“Fish?” I asked him.

“That’s his new favorite word,” Wolf explained. “That and ‘cup’. Seems he only says what he wants.”

I smiled.

I remembered that with Nico’s twins as well.

“How’s work going for you?” I asked softly.

Wolf spoke without looking up from Carolina.

“A lot longer than I realized it’d be,” he muttered. “I find that I miss the hell out of Nathan while I’m there.”

I smiled.

That tended to happen when you had children.

I’d witnessed it with all of the SWAT team, as of late.

They all wanted to get home to their kids and wives.

The parties had gone from all nighters to ‘we need to leave by eight p.m. to get the kids in bed’ kind of parties.

Although, it was nice to see all these reformed bad-boys turned family men.

That’s the way it was supposed to be.

“How do you like the new mayor of Uncertain?” I asked. “Michael said they got a Sheriff and Mayor in the same day. He said it’s been kind of crazy.”

Wolf nodded. “It’s been a clusterfuck. It’s going to take some doing to get things settled.”

I wasn’t surprised.

Texas was a true Republican state, and to have two Democrat officials in high positions in the city was really getting on a lot of the city’s nerves. I was still surprised that it’d happened in the first place.

“Cup?” Nathan asked, tapping my face.

I looked to him and smiled. “I don’t have your cup, big guy.”

Nathan frowned, and my eyes were drawn to the barely noticeable scar on his forehead.

He’d had plastic surgery done on his head about eight weeks into his hospital stay. Then four more reconstructions after that.

And they’d done a wonderful job. Such a wonderful job, in fact, that you could only see that something had happened when he frowned or cried.

Wolf got up, drawing my attention to him.

He really was a big man.

Today he was in his leather jacket that I never saw him without.

He had some extensive damage to the back of his head and neck, which made him grow his hair longer than I’d ever seen on any police officer before.

He wore the leather jacket to cover up the scarring on his back and neck.

Another thing I’d heard from Michael.

I’d never seen it myself, but it broke my heart that he wore it.

“I gotta go,” he rumbled. “I just wanted to come see y’all and make sure you were okay.”

So he’d heard.

“Don’t do anything, Wolf,” I reprimanded him.

His eyes looked up to mine, and I could see the determination here.

“We’ll see.” He placed Carolina into my arms and reached for Nathan. “I can’t promise anything, though.”

I looked into the sweet face of my little girl once he left the room, and came to a decision.

I’d do everything in my power to help make that man happy. Even if I had to throw one of my sisters at him.

They were tenacious.

“You and me will get him there, little girl,” I said, running my finger down the bridge of her nose.

She stirred, and my heart filled with just a little bit more joy.

I was so happy I could scream.

I had the man I loved with all my heart.

A baby with that man.

And a life that I loved.

And in a few months, when Carolina’s surgery was behind her, I would be complete.

I couldn’t ask for a thing more.

Epilogue

I missed you. Let’s have sex. A lot.

-Michael’s secret thoughts.

Michael

“You left the toilet seat up again,” Nikki grumbled from her bent over position.

She was loading the dishwasher and I winced. I was supposed to do that last night. She’d asked a million times, and I just plain forgot.

Fuck.

“And you forgot to take out the trash again,” she continued.

I sighed.

The woman was a freakin’ mess.

I didn’t complain about her inability to put things away.

Like the pitcher of tea. I hated drinking hot tea. And I didn’t like the way ice watered it down.

Yet did she make more of an effort to put it away?

No.

So I drank my tea with ice now because it was inevitable that she’d forget to put it away.

And don’t even get me started on her makeup, hair products, curling irons, and God knows what else.

The first thing on our remodeling agenda, if it ever came to it, was a duel sink for him and her, because I couldn’t tell you how many times I’d wished I didn’t have to put away shit on the counter to shave my face or brush my teeth.

I didn’t tell her any of that, though.

We’d learned, over the last four years, how to pick our battles.

“I can’t fix the plumbing because you bought a male end, and I need a female end.” I said.

“What do you mean? What’s the difference?” Nikki asked, turning to study me.

I was a fucking mess.

I’d been under the house, fixing the plumbing that’d decided to fucking combust last night.

And she’d been bothering the fuck out of me for the entire morning to fix it so she could have running water for the party we were throwing for Madden.

Madden hadn’t had an easy life.

He’d had a lot of struggles, but in those struggles, he’d come out on top.

After Madden’s children had been released from the hospital, the three of them had gone to a foster home with Dean and Joslin, of all people.

After the whole asking for sperm from his brother debacle, Joslin finally gave up on ever having a baby with Dean. She actually gave up a lot of things, in fact.

Mainly other men’s dicks.

And with that new attitude on life, Joslin turned into a half decent person.

Joslin and Dean had helped raise not only Madden’s two children, Sophia and Tawny, but also Madden himself.

They’d given Madden the opportunity to just be a kid while helping him raise his children.

And as of this afternoon, he was officially a high school graduate.

“Michael, are you even listening to me?” Nikki yelled.

My brow rose. “Yes, I’m listening to you. But you’re not saying anything that I haven’t already explained to you. Five times, in fact.”

She narrowed her eyes at me.

“Well then, maybe you should enlighten me…one more time.”

I grinned at her.

“You need an anatomy lesson?” I clarified.

She narrowed her eyes at me.

“No. I need you to explain to me how plumbing parts have male and female ends.”

I charged forward and pinned her to the counter, my sweaty body plastering up against hers.

Nikki had put on a little bit of weight over the last four years, but not one bit of that weight did I not love.

In fact, I was fucking ecstatic to have a little more of her to hold onto while I fucked her.

Something I was about to prove during the anatomy lesson I was about to give to her.

“A female end,” I said, pressing my hands against her. “Is wider. It allows the male end to fit inside of it.”

I punctuated this comment by pressing my erection into her hip.

She gasped and her eyes widened.

“You…you didn’t say that when I left,” she stuttered.

I leaned past her and turned the water on, picking up the bottle of soap and washing my hands behind her back.

She licked her lips, and I knew she knew what I was about to do.

“The kids are about to wake up,” she hesitated when I slapped the faucet down to stop the flow of water once I’d was finished.

I grinned.

Then my hands went to her sides, and I ran my hands up and under her shirt, pushing it up and over her head in one fluid movement.

Her hair fell from the haphazard bun she’d placed on top of her head, with a pencil of all things, and tumbled down her back and over her shoulders.

Just the way I liked it.

I didn’t bother removing the bra.

That’d take too long.

I knew the kids were about to wake up.

They only gave us a solid two hours at most, and it was already going on an hour and forty five minutes.

The next thing to go were her pants, panties going with it for expediency.

“Michael,” she said breathlessly when I turned her around and pressed her over the sink.

She grabbed onto the faucet for dear life, looking back over her shoulder as I unzipped my pants.

“Yeah, baby?” I asked, pulling my dick from its confines and running the hardened length up her pussy lips.

She gasped and pressed back against me, helping me coat my cock in her juices as she involuntarily jerked her hips.

“See, to fix this plumbing,” I said, pressing my lubed cock up against her entrance and pushing in. “I need a three and five eights male end. You got me a female end. To get full satisfaction on both ends, one won’t do without the other.”

I could tell she wanted to laugh, but she was too busy moaning as my cock filled her to the brim.

My eyes crossed when she clenched down on me.

“Less talking, more fucking. We’re running out of time,” she panted.

I agreed.

Picking up the pace, I grabbed a hold of both hips and started to move in and out of her.

Faster and faster, I thrusted.

Each one harder than the previous.

We worked well together.

She knew what I liked, and I knew just the right angle that would set her off like a bottle rocket.

Moving my hand between the counter top and her hips, I found the bud of her clit and started to circle it as I ramped up my speed.

“Michael,” she moaned. “Yes!”

I gritted my teeth and closed my eyes as I felt her pussy begin to convulse around the length of my cock, meaning the end of me holding back.

She did that to me, though.

Undid me.

Tore me down to rock bottom and built me back up again.

I growled when my release hit me.

Hot come poured from my cock and splashed against her insides, coating the two of us equally as I worked myself inside of her, until the last dregs of my orgasm abated.

Then, right on cue, I heard the sounds of Clayton as he started screaming at the top of his lungs to be let out.

“Shit,” I growled, reaching forward and to the side to yank the dish towel off the peg where Nikki insisted we hang it.

“Not my good towels!” She cried.

But it was too late.

I’d already pulled out and placed the towel over her entrance to catch my release before she could protest.

“Dammit, Michael,” she growled, holding the towel between her legs and glaring.

I raised my hands. “So now that you know what I need,” I said, buckling my pants. “How about you…fuck.”

My pager went off, and I looked at it over on the table, then back to Nikki.

“Dammit!” She cried when I walked to it.

Wincing, I looked at the readout and sighed.

“I’m sure the rest of the ladies will be able to come help you. Just remember not to run the water in the main bathroom,” I ordered as I started walking to our bedroom.

Nikki followed me, moments later, with Clayton on her hip and a hardness to her eyes.

“What are we supposed to do when we need to wash our hands?” She asked.

I raised a brow at her.

“Wash them in the kitchen. Put a bottle of the eighteen million bottles of antibacterial shit you have lying around every surface of the house. I don’t fuckin’ know,” I said, shoving my foot into my boot.

She sighed.

“You better be here by eight or I’ll kick your ass,” she growled in mock anger.

I knew she wasn’t mad.

She knew what she was getting into when she married me.

She knew that the SWAT team was a huge part of my life.

And she accepted it…and me.

“I love you, baby,” I said, kissing her softly on the cheek.

She smiled. “I love you, too.”

With a final kiss on Clay’s head, I rushed out of the house, only to come to a stop when my father and mother pulled up with Carolina.

“Hey,” I called, veering around their car to my truck.

They all waved, and Carolina’s baby blue eyes followed me.

“Daddy, where are you going? I wanted to show you my new cat!” Carolina held up a stuffed cat with a huge, fluffy tail.

It was in a box that distinctly marked it as a Build-A-Bear.

I narrowed my eyes at my parents. “Nikki’s going to kill you.”

They grinned unrepentantly.

Rolling my eyes, I blew a kiss to my little girl and said, “Daddy has to go to work.”

She pouted, but blew me a kiss nonetheless.

Just like her momma, she knew when daddy had to leave to ‘go save lives.’

“Take care of my girls, pop,” I ordered my father.

He winked and helped my mother out of the car.

“Will do, son, see you tonight.”

I made it to the station twenty minutes later, and was just in time to see Luke and Bennett walking from their trucks.

I caught up to them at the door to the station.

“What do we have?” I asked them.

“A multi-city wide fuck up, that’s what.”

Wonderful.

***

Nikki

“Momma, I got a cat!” Caro called the minute she made it through the front door.

I smiled and handed Clay off to Elizabeth and caught Carolina just as she barreled into my legs.

I smiled and picked her up, looking at her new cat.

“Oh, yay,” I said, looking up into her crystal clear blue eyes. Every time I saw them up close my heart clutched.

We’d had Caro’s cataracts removed from her eyes when she was exactly one month of age, and it’d been the most terrifying experience of my life.

She’d gone through the surgery remarkably well, but the sheer horror of having to watch my baby be wheeled away from me was torture.

Now, though, she was healthy and happy.

And those eyes that looked exactly like Michael’s sure had a way of making my heart melt.

Each and every time.

“Yeah, Grammy and Poppop spent a hundred dollars on her. They said I better like her. And treat her well, because that was the last time they took me there,” Caro continued.

I smiled and winked at ‘Poppop.’

They were such suckers.

I’d known, of course, the minute they’d said that they were taking Caro to the Boardwalk, that they were in for a rude awakening.

Caro was my child.

She could shop until she dropped, and did so daily.

She could talk just about anyone into anything, which was why her room was filled with all kinds of toys, clothes, and shit she didn’t need.

“Hey! Let go of my kitty!” Caro screamed when Clay latched onto the kitty and wouldn’t let go.

“Caro,” I said sternly. “Clay is just a baby. You can’t yank stuff out of his hands like that. You could hurt him.”

Caro stuck out her tongue at her brother, who was all of eight months old so the effect was lost on him, and crossed her arms.

I smiled and looked down at my hands.

She looked so much like Michael when she did that that I could barely stand it.

“If y’all wouldn’t mind watching them, I have to go to Lowe’s…again…and get a coupling for the plumbing underneath the house. And pick up the cake,” I said, trying valiantly not to blush and failing miserably.

“Okay, dear. Don’t forget to pick up that prescription you made me call in,” Manuelo said.

The blood in my veins froze.

Motherfucker!

Shit!

Fuck!

“Okay,” I said shakily, walking to the front table and clutching my keys in a tight fist.

I was out to the car when I managed to quietly pull out my phone, open the door to my Tahoe, and slide inside.

When I started the truck and started to back out of the driveway, I hit the call button and immediately called Michael.

He didn’t answer, of course.

I didn’t expect him to.

But I wanted his voicemail anyway.

This is Michael, leave a message.

“Michael,” I said quietly. “If you managed to knock me up again today, I’m going to fucking kill you,” I growled, then slammed the phone button on my steering wheel.

Ineffective but it made me feel better, nonetheless.

I’d run out of birth control pills two weeks ago, and had completely forgotten until just yesterday that I’d not been taking them.

Michael and I lived busy lives.

We both had some really odd hours, so on the off chance that we had been able to find time to do the deed, in the past two weeks, I’d forced Michael to use a condom.

Something he absolutely loathed doing.

Today, though, I’d completely forgotten.

And I knew, like I’d known with Clayton, that he’d just knocked me up.

There was something about Michael and his damn bad intentions that made me lose my mind. Forget that I didn’t want to be pregnant.

But there Michael was with that ‘magic dick’ as my lovely friends liked to call it, and all my inhibitions flew out the window.

And with it went my ability to drink.

Shit.

***

Four hours later, with all my family and friends around me, I realized that maybe another kid wouldn’t be so bad after all.

Especially not with Georgia and Nico’s fourth baby in my arms.

“He’s just the sweetest thing I’ve ever seen!” I said, rubbing my nose along Heath’s head.

Heath was all of two weeks old, and the very definition of his father.

“You did good, big brother,” I said, smiling up at Nico.

Nico winked. “I know.”

“And so humble,” Georgia laughed.

“Nico, humble?” Downy asked after taking a sip of his beer.

The whole group laughed.

And I looked around at my extended family.

They were all there.

Luke and Reese with their three children.

Nico and Georgia with their four kids.

Downy and Memphis with their two children.

Miller and Mercy, with their three.

Foster and Blake with their two.

Bennett and Lennox with their two.

My sisters and their husbands and boyfriends.

The Chief and his wife.

My parents. Michael’s Parents.

Joslin and Dean.

Madden and his kiddos.

My husband and children.

Hannah and Wolf – although, that was a new thing.

They’d spoken on and off for the last few years, but with the way they were acting, looking at each other but not going near the other, I knew something had transpired.

I just didn’t know what, but I had a feeling that something would break soon.

And then they’d be just as happy as the rest of us.

And I was happy

Ecstatically so.

“Here you go, Mama,” Michael said, handing Clay over.

He took Heath from my arms and handed me my own little butterball, and I smiled as Michael gazed longingly into Heath’s little face.

For a man that hadn’t wanted any children, he sure was adamant about having more and more.

And as I looked around at all the children running and playing happily in the yard amongst their parents, I decided that just maybe another baby wouldn’t be a bad thing.

As long as I had Michael, I could totally get on board with another kid.

Because I loved him.

With my whole heart and soul, and I knew he’d always be there for me.

He was just that type of man.

A man that always had his woman’s back, no matter what it took.

That’s what true love was.