Page 4 of Hot Chicken (Sunday Brothers #6)

“Holy shit,” he finally managed, pulling back to look at me with glassy eyes. “That was…”

I nodded, just as dazed. We’d had some good sex. A lot of great sex. Even some personal-record-phenomenal sex. This had been… something else entirely.

“And to think, I was tired when we got home,” he murmured, nuzzling my cheek. “I think you inspire me, Hawk Sunday. Giving me all kinds of energy.”

The word energy dropped between us, and I felt Jack go still. He pulled back, and we shared a single wide-eyed blink before he darted a lightning-fast glance at the counter where Pecky sat.

He laughed, but the sound was a little forced. “Jesus. I think the heat’s fried my brain. Or, more likely, my hot fiancé has.” He stepped back to help me off the counter, and once he’d made sure I was steady on my feet, he pressed a kiss to my temple. “Come shower with me.”

“Definitely shower,” I agreed, running a hand through my sweaty hair and feeling cum trickle down my thigh. I refused to look at the rooster. “I’m dirty.”

“I like you that way.” Jack grinned, taking my hand and leading me upstairs to our bathroom.

Under the cool spray of the shower, we took our time cleaning each other, our hands lingering on warm, soap-slicked skin.

Because he smelled so good, tasted so good, was so good, I pressed a kiss to the underside of Jack’s chin—my current favorite spot on his body.

Jack growled and grabbed me around the waist, and the next thing I knew, I was pressed against the cool tile wall, Jack’s mouth hot on mine.

I pulled back and laughed a little breathlessly. “Slow your roll, playa. I’m young, but even I need more than ten minutes to… to… oh fuck ,” I groaned as Jack sank to the tiles and proved me a liar.

This time, the orgasms were slower but not one iota less intense. By the time I’d come down his throat and he’d spilled on the shower floor, we were both waterlogged, wrinkled, sated… and absolutely ravenous.

For food .

At least, I was pretty sure.

“I’m going to light the grill and make a salad, too,” Jack declared, wrapping a towel around his waist and another around mine since I’d lost the ability to coordinate my movements. “And water. So much water.”

“Yes. Hydration,” I grunted. “Good.”

I followed him back to the kitchen, watching a single droplet of water trail down the tanned column of his spine as he walked. I bit my lip and curled my hands into fists, fighting the urge to yank Jack’s towel off his body and make love to him on the stairs.

Maybe it wasn’t just food I was hungry for.

“Christ, I can barely keep myself upright,” I croaked, mostly as a warning to my own wayward libido.

“Careful, baby.” Jack frowned in concern.

Once we got to the kitchen, Jack got me some ice water and insisted that I sit on the stool and watch him prep dinner…

which didn’t help matters. Jack moving around the kitchen, handling knives and tools with calm competence and focus, was and always had been one of the sexiest things I’d ever seen.

“You okay?” he asked once he had vegetables and chicken marinating in a bag on the counter. He came closer, stepping between my legs, and pressed a hand to my forehead. “You’re still looking flushed. Think it could be heatstroke or something?”

I snorted, even as I leaned into the touch. “You think heatstroke’s making me horny? Or that my hot fiancé is giving me heatstroke?”

Jack’s eyes darkened. “You can’t be horny right now,” he said, even as his hands slid up my thighs and I noticed a growing tent in his own towel. “Impossible.”

My body didn’t seem to have gotten the memo about what was possible, though, because I was definitely horny—definitely exceptionally horny—even before Jack bit my jaw and sucked my earlobe into his mouth .

Later, after Jack had eaten me out and taken me again—on the kitchen floor this time—I found myself sprawled on the hardwood with my head pillowed on Jack’s stomach.

Every bone in my body felt spongy-soft, and my head felt like the unspun wool I’d gotten at the rummage sale earlier—fuzzy and amorphous.

“Wow,” I slurred in the direction of the ceiling. “Just… just… wow.”

“I want to make you food,” Jack complained in a hoarse whisper, lifting one hand a couple of inches before letting it flop to the floor again. “But I can’t reach it from here.”

I snickered. “What the hell has gotten into us?” I demanded. “We’re supposed to be an old, almost-married couple.”

“Wellllll,” Jack began in a teasing tone I recognized, “I know exactly what’s gotten into you , Hawklet . ”

Despite my fatigue, I managed to roll over and tickle his ribs because I loved Jack too much to let him make silly jokes like that without immediate payback.

Jack grabbed my hands to stop me, and I pulled back just a little, full-on laughing now…

Then, I caught sight of the rooster on the counter and froze.

Sir Pecksworth sat exactly where I’d first put him…

except I was almost positive I hadn’t adjusted him after Lydia moved him.

He definitely wasn’t facing the wall now, though.

In fact, his golden eyes seemed to stare directly at us, his ceramic beak tilted with something that almost looked like… avian satisfaction.

“Jack,” I whispered.

He stilled beneath me immediately and followed my gaze, and then he froze, too. He cleared his throat. “The… the cat. Lydia. She must’ve moved him. Again. When we were upstairs.”

I nodded. “Sure,” I said faintly, though I knew—and I knew Jack knew—the cats were on the porch and almost definitely hadn’t evolved opposable thumbs and learned to open the door while we were upstairs.

“The rooster’s just a decoration,” Jack said firmly, though I wasn’t sure which of us he was trying to convince. “The whole idea of him being sentient was a… was a joke.”

“Yes,” I agreed. “Obviously. He’s adorable. And possibly lucky. A cock of good fortune, if you will. But he doesn’t have, like, powers . He’s just a… a cute piece of pottery.”

“It’s not like I need to be under the influence of a magical cock to crave you,” Jack went on. “Or even to make love to you multiple times a day. It’s not like this was unprecedented.”

I nodded. He was right. It might not have happened in the past few weeks, but the potential was always there between us. A low-level hum in my blood, a banked fire that could turn into an inferno at the slightest provocation.

“You’re everything to me. Always.” Jack lifted his hand to push back the hair that had fallen over my forehead. “Even if I haven’t done a very good job of showing that this summer.”

Warmth unfurled in my chest, and I felt my smile soften.

“We’re a team, Jack Wyatt-almost-Sunday.

That means there are going to be seasons where we have other stuff that’s occupying our hours.

” I leaned in and pressed a kiss to his lips.

“But I need you to know, no matter how busy we are, that you are my forever Mr. Darcy. The best man I know.” I felt my smile go lopsided.

“Maybe we needed the, ah, Cock of Good Fortune to remind us of just how lucky we already are?”

He made a thoughtful noise. “It might have been luck that we met in the first place, Hawk, but the way our relationship gets stronger every day, every year? That’s because we both work to make it that way.

Because no matter what, there will never come a time when you’re not my first and last priority.

” His smile turned into a leer. “And I don’t need the Cock of Good Fortune because I already have the only?— ”

“No,” I said severely. I clapped my hand over Jack’s mouth and absorbed his laughter into my skin. “Don’t you dare make a stupid joke about my cock being enough for you.”

“ That ’s not a joke,” he said, the words muffled by my hand. He grabbed my wrist and pulled my hand back to kiss my palm. “But it’s kinda nice that you make the dad jokes for me, baby. I think this is how Knox must feel when Gage says something snarky.”

I nuzzled back into Jack’s neck. “Speaking of Gage and Knox… did you see them at the rummage sale earlier?”

Jack turned his head to give me better access. “Mmm. Sort of? Knox was helping at Betty Ann’s table, and Gage was doing some kind of science booth for kids, I think? I didn’t talk to them, though. They both seemed… distracted, I guess.”

Grumpy was the word I would have used. Which was pretty much on brand for my brother but not at all for Gage, who was usually sunshine in a bottle.

“I saw Gage fast-walking through the crowd, and Knox called after him, but Gage pretended not to hear.”

Jack laughed. “Can you blame him? Knox was probably sharing his thoughts on sock organization or some fascinating facts on lemur migration patterns he read about.”

I poked my beloved in the ribs, and he squirmed. “I’m sure people say the same thing about me and my Pride and Prejudice retellings, and you seem to like them.”

“No, I love them,” he corrected. Then he shrugged.

He pushed me back just slightly so he could cradle my chin in his hand.

“You’re not actually worried about Gage and Knox, are you?

It was hot enough out there to make anyone short-tempered, but their relationship is solid. Besides, bickering is their foreplay.”

I nodded. All of this was absolutely true. So I was surprised to find myself blurting out, “But I feel like they need the Cock of Good Fortune.”

Jack blinked. So did I.

“I… I don’t know why I said that.” I felt my face flush.

“But it feels right , doesn’t it? Gage loves quirky decorations, and…

and Lydia clearly doesn’t like Pecky,” I reminded Jack solemnly.

“She’s already attacked him once, and it’s only a matter of time before our murder feline finishes the job. So, really, it’s for his own safety.”

Jack tugged a lock of my hair. “Sure. Your brother’s had a bad day, and you want to give him a possibly sentient sex rooster. That’s reasonable.”

I gaped at him. “N-nobody said sex rooster !” I protested. “Ew, Jack Wyatt! If anything, Pecky’s a good luck charm!”

He grinned hugely, enjoying our teasing. “I think you mean a get lucky charm.”

I tried to poke his ribs again, but Jack was too quick this time. He twisted so I was beneath him, the wooden floorboards cool against my naked back, one hand trapped in each of his as he loomed over me. I laughed breathlessly, half-annoyed and half-amused at how easily he’d pinned me.

Staring up at him, I saw everything I’d ever wanted reflected in Jack’s blue eyes.

The setting sun picked out the gold flecks around his irises and the gentle crinkles at the corners that deepened when he returned my smile, and I was struck for the million-billionth time by how ridiculously gorgeous this man was.

Jack’s thumb traced along my collarbone—a barely there touch that made me shiver—and my pulse picked up. I saw Jack’s eyes flare hot.

“I cannot wait to marry you this fall, Hawk Sunday,” he said, his voice a deep growl. “I don’t want to go a single day without that smile. I cannot wait to make it official.”

My throat went tight. “It’s like when Elizabeth Bennet said she could not repress a smile at Darcy being so easily pleased,” I teased in a whisper. “Just having you with me, knowing you love me, makes it hard not to smile.”

“Then I promise to make you smile every day. Starting tomorrow, when I wake up next to my fiancé and help him rehome a possessed rooster cookie jar?—”

I snort-laughed.

“—and ending… oh, seventy years from now, let’s say, when I fall asleep next to my husband.”

The sweet words, combined with Jack’s weight pressing me to the floor, had a predictable effect… an effect that had nothing to do with roosters.

Jack noticed immediately and raised an eyebrow. “Reeeally? Four times in two hours, Hawk Sunday? That’s gotta be some kind of record.”

I grinned up at him unrepentantly. “Are you complaining?”

He shifted his hips, and I gasped. “Not even a little bit.”

Much later, when we’d finally managed to eat dinner on the porch with the cats winding around our ankles, and I was sitting back in my chair with my legs thrown over one of Jack’s strong thighs, I found myself glancing at Pecky, who sat on our kitchen counter like a poultry-shaped sentinel.

“I wonder what Pecky’s story is,” I mused. “How’d he get to be so… you know, lucky ? And how’d a lucky rooster end up on a donation table at the Hookers’ Rummage Sale?”

Jack’s fingers traced up and down my knee idly.

He glanced at the rooster, then gave me an amused look that said he still refused to believe in possessed ceramic poultry.

But because he loved me, he didn’t say that.

“Sometimes things just end up where they’re needed most,” he said instead.

“Whether it’s a weird rooster finding its way to a rummage sale…

or the most gorgeous, generous, loving human on the planet ending up in my arms.” He brought my hand to his mo uth and kissed my knuckles.

“You’re all the good luck I need, baby.”

“Same,” I whispered back, and I meant it with every fiber of my being. “Forever.”