Page 31 of Whips and Chains (Saint View Murder Squad #2)

X

I got changed three times before I settled on jeans, a white T-shirt, and a backward baseball cap. Variations of the same outfit were strewn across my bedroom, and I’d dropped to the carpet at least three times to do pushups, trying to make my biceps pop.

Levi and Whip watched me from my bed, neither acting terribly impressed by how jacked I was.

I winked at them in the mirror. “Don’t be so depressed! We can’t all have guns like these!”

Whip squinted at me. “I’m not depressed over your arms. I’m depressed by the fact you said you had an emergency, and we needed to get over here now, and really your emergency was you couldn’t count your pushups yourself.”

I stopped in plank position. “I had no idea what to wear, Whip! I can’t make important decisions like that alone!”

“You made us choose between the white tee, the off-white tee, and the cream. That is not a decision that warranted an SOS text, X.”

I grumbled beneath my breath, “I’ll call Reginald next time. He’s less grumpy than the two of you.”

I glanced between them. They were about as far apart on the bed as they could get, neither looking at the other. There was a distinct chill in the air between them.

I dropped my knees down and sat up. “Did you two have a fight?”

Levi glanced over at Whip, but then quickly dropped his gaze back to his lap. “No.”

“Ah.” I nodded to show them I understood. “You had sex, and Whip didn’t call you the next day?”

Whip glared at me. “Why are you so obsessed with me and Levi fucking?”

“We aren’t fucking,” Levi muttered.

Whip rolled his eyes. “Oh, sorry, I forgot the idea of that was so completely repulsive to you. I mean, I can jerk you off, and you can kiss me like you want me to roll you over and take you hard and fast from behind, but no. There’s definitely no possibility of us fucking.”

Levi glared at him. “Fuck off, Whip. You’re being an asshole.”

“I’m being an asshole? That’s rich.”

I glanced between them. “I kinda think you’re both being assholes, because you asked me a question and then didn’t let me answer it.”

They both looked over at me, but it was Whip who wearily asked, “What question did we ask you?”

“Why I was so obsessed with you and Levi fucking.”

Levi flopped back on the bed. “I don’t think I want to know the answer to that.”

I pushed to my feet. “Okay, cool, well, if you don’t want to talk about my feelings on the subject, the least you could do is talk to each other.”

“I’ll talk to him when he stops being a prick,” Levi muttered.

Whip shot back just as fast, “I’ll talk to him when he stops pretending that anything between us is one-sided.”

I moved for the door. “Well, I was going to invite you both to come out with me and Violet tonight, but now you’re killing my vibe, and I think I’d rather lock you in here until you sort out your shit. There’s lube in the top drawer!”

I closed the door behind me and slid the lock into place.

In a heartbeat, the door rattled, the handle twisting uselessly.

“Why the fuck do you have a lock on the outside of your bedroom door, X?” Levi shouted from the other side.

I grabbed my keys from the kitchen counter.

“Some people have safety blankets. I have a reinforced door with a deadbolt.” I tossed the keys into the air, and they jingled as they fell back down into my palm.

“I have Doc lock me in there when I’m in one of my moods.

Safer for the public, you know? Don’t bother trying to get out. If I can’t, you won’t. Toodle-oo!”

“X!” Whip shouted. “If you leave us in here, I swear to God I will fucking rip you limb from limb when I get out!”

“And I’ll help him!”

I grinned, pausing in the doorway that led to the hallway of my apartment building. “Aw! You’re working together already! Good job, boys!”

I closed the front door on their complaining and practically skipped along the hallway. They’d feel so much better after they’d had some time out. I know I always did. There was water in the bathroom, and if they got hungry enough, there was flavored lube they could snack on.

Or do other things with.

Violet was waiting on Fang’s front porch, a long skirt brushing her ankles and a cropped sweater covering her top half. When she lifted her arm in a wave, it showed off a tiny bit of her belly, and she quickly tugged the top back down, looking uncomfortable.

I just wanted to get my fingers all over it.

She ran across the lawn to my van, and I got out, opening up the passenger-side door for her.

“Your chariot, my lady. It doesn’t even smell of horse.”

“No, it smells like ice cream and sugar.” She grabbed my hand and hauled herself up, pulling the seat belt across her chest and buckling it in. Then winked at me. “With maybe a dash of hyperactivity.”

I loved how she just got me.

The blinds in an upstairs window twitched, and I waved at Fang, who I knew was probably watching me through the lens of a sniper rifle, just waiting for me to put a finger wrong.

But I wouldn’t.

Tonight I was introducing my woman to my family, and it was going to be perfect.

I got back in behind the wheel and started the engine again.

Violet smoothed her hands over her skirt. “I’m really nervous. I’ve never met a man’s parents before.”

“Not just my parents. The whole family will be there. All my brothers and their partners. My grandma and her boyfriend.”

She smiled but seemed a little green. “Really? I didn’t catch that. All of them, huh? A whole party of your relation…”

“It’s gonna be great. They’re going to love you. Just like I do.”

“You don’t love me, X. You just love the idea of me.”

And she called me insane.

She was the one who sounded crazy.

But I didn’t have time to tell her yet again about how we were going to have four kids, a house in Providence with a white picket fence, and a birdfeeder so Harold had something to keep his psycho side entertained.

Like father like son, after all.

I couldn’t wait to get that cat.

“So, tell me all your brothers’ names.” Violet took a notepad from her purse and poised a pencil over a blank page.

She was so freaking cute with her note-taking.

“Xavier is the eldest, after me. Suzanne is his wife, but don’t call her Suzy. She gets crazy eyes when someone does. Lilith and Blake are their kids. Then there’s Felix and Max, and Hendrix is the youngest of my brothers.”

She wrote it all down diligently, then read over it. “You all have X’s in your names.”

“We do.”

“That’s why you go by X in the group?”

I shrugged. “When Trigger first found me and told me about the group, he said we couldn’t use our real names. I had to choose fast or one of them would have chosen for me, and I would have ended up with a name like Tinkerbell. Or Lulu. Or…Bob. X was the only thing that came to mind.”

“Your family doesn’t call you X though, do they?”

I shook my head. “No.”

“So I should call you by your real name, at least while we’re in your parents’ home?”

I hadn’t really thought about it. This problem had never come up before because I had never wanted to bring a woman home to meet them.

But I wanted to spend a night with Violet. And knowing my parents were expecting us kept any desire to wrap my fingers around her throat at bay. I hated that I felt like we always needed a chaperone, but the memory of choking her in the shower haunted my every moment.

I wasn’t ever going to put her in that situation again.

I needed a babysitter, whether I wanted one or not.

And since Levi and Whip were too busy making “I want to suck your dick, even though I swear I’m straight” eyes at each other tonight, that chaperone was going to have to be my parents, my siblings, and my ninety-year-old grandma, Ruth, and her man of the week.

We stopped in front of my parents’ home, and Violet peered out through the window.

“Wow. This is really nice!”

I got out to open her door again, taking her hand as she got herself out of the van. “Were you expecting the slums?”

She shrugged a shoulder, pink flushing her cheeks.

“Honestly, maybe? I think I expected burnt-out cars on the lawn and guns and drugs littering every surface inside.” She glanced at me.

“Is it impolite to ask if your family all likes to kill people too?” Her cheeks were bright red.

“I know you won’t let them touch me, but it would be good to know, either way. ”

I snorted on a laugh. “You’re so fucking cute.”

I couldn’t help myself. I snaked my hand into the back of her hair and drew her in close, my whole body lighting up when she didn’t fight me and just went with it.

I dropped my mouth down on hers, kissing her slowly, savoring the taste and feel of her lips.

The door swung open in front of us, but I was powerless to stop kissing her, and she seemed to feel the same way. Or maybe she didn’t notice my little niece standing in the doorway with her face all screwed up.

“Ewww! Mom! Uncle Knox is kissing someone on the front porch!”

I finally dragged my lips away from Violet and ruffled Lilith’s hair. “Tattletale! You going to let us in? Or are you the bouncer I’m going to have to fight later once I’ve had too many drinks and made some bad decisions?”

Her face lit up, and she brought tiny fists up either side of her cute face. “We’re definitely going to fight.”

This kid was always ready for violence, unlike her older, much gentler brother.

Violet laughed at the small girl pummeling my thigh with her tiny punches.

But I gave my niece a sidelong glance. “I worry about you. I fear your parents might have started something by calling you Lilith.”

The tiny demon herself didn’t stop her attack to acknowledge me further, and I knew my brother was going to be pissed I’d encouraged her violent streak.

So I picked the pipsqueak up in one arm, throwing her over my shoulder so her hair dangled down my back and her shouts of violence turned to giggles of laughter.

I wrapped my free hand around Violet’s fingers and towed her along the hallway, into my parents’ home.

Everyone was in the living room, all four of my brothers squished onto the three-seater couch, Suzanne cross-legged on the floor with Blake, my dad in an armchair with my mom perched on the arm.

And Grandma Ruth sitting on the lap of a man I vaguely recognized.

My mouth dropped open. “Silas Pearler?”

The guy peeked out around my grandma’s bony shoulders. His face smoothed out into a smile when he recognized me. “Hey, Knox, right? We went to school together, didn’t we? I think you were a few years younger than me, right?”

“I was a year older,” I grit out through barely moving teeth.

Silas laughed. “Oh, right. Long time ago. Bad memory.” He kissed my grandmother on the cheek. “We have that in common, don’t we, sweetheart?”

I turned to Violet and pulled her in close, inhaling the scent of her hair like it was aromatherapy fragrances designed to calm me down. It only half worked. “I have rage,” I whispered in her ear.

She stifled a laugh, but she squeezed my fingers, while I hid in her hair.

When I finally pulled away, my entire family was staring at us. My brothers and Suzanne with looks of complete and utter shock.

My mom with tears in her eyes and pure pride and happiness on her face.

She stood and crossed the room, and when she stood in front of Violet, a good ten inches shorter than her, she didn’t hesitate.

She went straight in for a hug, wrapping her arms around my girl.

“Welcome to the family, Violet.”