The Strength of the Pack [Suncoast Society] (Siren Publishing Sensations) Read online

  “Yeah.”

  “Do what feels right. If taking things slow feels right, then do it. If she’s worth it, you’ll be glad you did.” She grabbed her stuff and headed toward the door.

  “So does he still enjoy taking it up the arse from you, sweets?” he called out, deliberately emphasizing his accent that time.

  She flipped him a bird as she reached the door. “Yes, we’re even,” she called back as she headed out.

  He grinned. Cherise was definitely a Domme.

  In the dungeon…and at home. And while Wade was a competent paramedic, when he was at home with Cherise, he was her doting slave.

  Literally.

  Nate missed her living at home with him, but he suspected that was more his problem than hers. Yes, they’d butted heads sometimes.

  And he’d had more than his fair share of worrying about her in her late teens, before he was finally able to make the breakthrough with her.

  That had been an uncomfortable talk with his little sister, but as her “parent,” it had to be done and needed to be him. Finally forcing her to admit why she’d been cutting for months. An activity she thought she’d hidden from him. Why she’d tried to slice her wrists, even though it wasn’t a serious suicide attempt on her part.

  The threats that he would drive her to the hospital immediately and Baker Act her if she didn’t tell him, and reciting back the things he knew about her that she thought she’d carefully concealed from him.

  Finally getting her to admit she thought there was something wrong with her because, unlike most of her friends who wanted a guy to take care of her, she’d had fantasies of tying guys up and spanking their asses. Or that maybe she was gay. Not that he would have cared if she was gay or not, she was his sister.

  Her pain was what concerned him, and being unable to get her to admit it for so long.

  His blessed relief to be able to connect with her, even through their mutual discomfort, and open the conversation that finally unblocked her soul and allowed her to cry, to really start to grieve with him for all they’d lost, and to accept that not only did he accept the person she was, but he loved her as well, and was very much like her in his own ways.

  Wade was good for her, a good man with a good heart. Cherise was as much his oasis as he was hers.

  When they’d first met, Nate had felt the energy between them, nearly visible.

  Much like he felt it with Eva.

  Wade had confided to him a couple of weeks ago that he was going to propose to her on Christmas Eve and asked if Nate was okay with that.

  That Wade asked his permission touched Nate. No, it wasn’t necessary, but just more proof the man was the right person for Cherise.

  He headed home, swinging through a carwash on the way. Yes, he wanted to stay home tonight and think about himself, about Eva, about the possibilities.

  How to keep himself centered and let her lead him, for now. Until she reached the tipping point where she wanted him to take control. In a healthy way.

  Because he sensed she really was the one for him, and he damn sure didn’t want to do anything to screw it up.

  Especially not when Tilly would likely hand him his ballocks if he did.

  Chapter Ten

  Nate had offered Eva a couple of options for Monday night. To drive separately and meet there—which wasn’t her preference. Or to meet at his house and he’d drive from there, or he could pick her up at her house.

  She opted for the scary third option in this case because it was scary to her, even though it likely wouldn’t be scary to anyone else.

  To have Nate pick her up at the house Monday night.

  It would give Laurel an opportunity to meet him, briefly, and then process that Eva was going on a “date” with him.

  When he arrived, Eva was ready to go although her stomach felt bound up into one large, nervous knot.

  He came to the door and rang the bell, already earning bonus points from Leo as he headed to answer it.

  “Glad he didn’t just sit there and honk,” Leo said.

  “Be nice.”

  “I am. I’m serious.” He welcomed the man in with a hug.

  Laurel came running in. “Who’s at the door, Daddy?”

  “Honey, this is Nate Crawford. He’s the doctor I go to for my pain.”

  “Doctor Pokey?”

  Eva and Leo winced, but Nate laughed. “That’s one name I haven’t been called yet.” He held his hand out to her. “Are you Laurel?”

  “Yes, I am.” She shook with him.

  “I’ve heard a lot about you from your dads and your mom,” he said. “It’s nice to finally get to meet you.”

  Eva noticed he used the plural for “dads.”

  “Does it hurt sticking people with needles?” Laurel asked him.

  “It doesn’t hurt me.” He smiled.

  She smiled back. “Does it hurt them, silly?”

  “Ask your dads and your mom.”

  “They said it doesn’t hurt, but I don’t understand. Needles hurt.”

  “They’re very tiny needles,” he said. “Like a hair. Way smaller than the ones you get shots with.”

  “Oh. That doesn’t sound bad.”

  “It’s not.”

  Eva stepped in, knowing they’d be there all night if they kept indulging her questions. “Don’t give Daddy and Poppa a hard time tonight,” she said, giving her a hug and a kiss. “Love you.”

  “Love you, too.” Laurel wrinkled her nose again. “Are you two going on a date?”

  Eva inwardly groaned. “Yes, sweetheart. It’s a date.”

  “Oh. Okay.” She waggled her finger at Nate. “I get to be the flower girl. Don’t forget it.”

  Leo and Jesse, already veterans of Laurel’s militant flower-girlism, burst out laughing while Eva groaned.

  Nate, however, offered Laurel a smile. “Duly noted. Rest assured, I will not forget that.”

  Eva grabbed him by the arm and practically dragged him out of the house. “Sorry,” she muttered on the way to his car. “She’s nearly seven going on twenty-seven, sometimes.”

  He chuckled as he opened the passenger side door for her. “No worries. I raised Cherise, don’t forget. That was nothing compared to some of the stuff she pulled with me.” He closed the door and rounded the car.

  “Like what?” Eva asked when he was inside.

  He cranked the engine. “Oh, when Cherise was ten, she lectured one of my dates on how babies were made. Then she proceeded to inform my date that she wouldn’t be happy about having a little brother or sister. Which led to an argument between me and Cherise that it wouldn’t be a brother or sister, it would be a niece or nephew. And that led us into the weeds arguing semantics about parental responsibilities versus familial relationship titles. For about an hour.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “For some strange reason, I didn’t get another date with that girl,” he said as he backed out of their driveway. “I can’t imagine why.”

  * * * *

  Since it was a Monday night, fortunately the restaurant wasn’t as busy as it usually was on a weekend. They didn’t even have to wait for the hostess to lead them inside to their table.

  “My treat tonight,” she said.

  “Nope,” he said, arching an eyebrow at her over the top of his menu. “I asked, therefore, it’s my treat.”

  She laid her menu down. “You don’t have to do that.”

  He leaned in and dropped his voice. “You said Leo and Jesse have signed off on trusting me, correct?”

  She nodded.

  “Unless I’ve agreed to other arrangements in advance, I pay when I take you out. Understand?”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  She didn’t realize she’d said it—or how natural it felt saying it—until after it was already out of her mouth and hanging there in midair between them.

  When he didn’t speak for a while, she thought maybe she’d screwed up. But then, “You can call me Sir, but it doesn’t me
an I’m your Dominant. We haven’t even gotten close to those discussions yet. But I’m okay with you calling me that, if you want to.”

  “Thank you, Sir.”

  His lips quirked in a deliciously handsome smile. “So are we clear about my policy on paying the check?”

  She smiled. “Yes, Sir.”

  “That’s better. Good girl.” He went back to perusing the menu and Eva was left with a subtle throbbing between her legs that, sadly enough, took her a few moments to identify.

  It’d been so long since she’d actually felt sexual attraction that it was almost an alien sensation to her.

  I. Am. Pitiful.

  Once their orders were placed, she wasn’t sure where to go with the conversation. “So you raised your sister?”

  He nodded. “It was a huge adjustment for both of us, at first.”

  “Were you close to your step-father?”

  “I loved Ken like a dad. He was the only father I had conscious memory of.” He tipped his head and met her gaze head-on. “You can ask, if you want. I don’t mind talking about it now. It was twenty years ago.”

  Heat filled her face. “Sorry.”

  “No, there’s no reason for you to be sorry.” He reached across the table and took her hand in his, thumb lightly brushing over her knuckles. “If I don’t want to talk about something, I’ll tell you. I’m perfectly capable of laying down boundaries. I won’t play games with you. And it’s nothing personal if I do lay down a boundary. You won’t know unless you ask. Please, never feel bad about asking. Never hesitate to ask. I won’t get upset.” He frowned. “Did Leo ever—”

  “No.” She shook her head. “Leo and I…Other than he turned out to be gay, I have no complaints about him as a husband.” She let her gaze drop to Nate’s hand. His fingers were long and lithe, just like the rest of him. Smooth. Leo’s hands were large and muscular and callused from his job, always tender when touching her but so vastly different from this man.

  “Leo,” she said, “seemed to have an infinite well of patience with me. He finally reached a point where he couldn’t ignore the truth any longer, couldn’t make excuses. He tried so damned hard to make it easy on me. He did. I’m the one who tried to hang on.”

  “And yet you still live together.”

  “It made the most sense. For Laurel, and for Leo, after his accident.”

  “That’s good, that you can get along so well together, and with Jesse, to raise her.”

  “We’re a pack.” She smiled. “It’s what packs do. We love each other and help each other out. If it hadn’t been for Jesse…I’ll leave it at that. I love both of them, and they love me and Laurel.”

  “‘For the strength of the pack is the wolf, and the strength of the wolf is the pack.’”

  “What’s that from?”

  “Rudyard Kipling.”

  “Ah.

  “I see a lot of people into puppy play in the lifestyle who call themselves a pack. I think you’re the first family unit I’ve seen use it more as a figurative than a literal title.”

  “Laurel’s the one who came up with it. She watched a special on Yellowstone wolves.”

  “Ah. Well, that explains it.”

  Eva hesitated, then plunged forward. “You mentioned your parents died in an accident. Car accident?”

  “No,” he said.

  * * * *

  Most of the time, when Nate talked about his parents, he didn’t deeply engage with the person about the details. How deeply he engaged depended on a lot of variables, such as the situation, the person, his relationship—or potential relationship—with the person, and how he felt about discussing it with them, at that time.

  That always determined how he answered—

  They died in an accident.

  They died in an accident at an air show.

  They died in a tragic accident with several others at an air show.

  They died when a plane coming in for a landing blew a tire, took out a fuel tanker truck that shouldn’t have been parked where it was, and splashed them and the group of people they’d been standing near with aviation fuel, roasting them alive.

  He shut down the memories of the sounds, the sights…

  The smell.

  To this day, even pumping gas sometimes nauseated him.

  How he couldn’t stand the taste of frozen lemonade, because he’d taken Cherise away from where they’d been standing with their parents just minutes earlier—talking with their friends—to make a run to the bathroom and then get her a frozen lemonade.

  He’d just bought them and they were drinking them in the shade cast by the wing of an old bomber on display when he heard the plane coming in for a landing. An old fighter—he couldn’t tell the damn things apart and really didn’t give a shit—and then the noise of the tire exploding…

  And then…

  “Cherise had been bugging me to go to the air show with them,” he said. “It was our first year here in Florida. My parents were both thinking about retiring from the military and had bought the house in Sarasota, making the drive up to MacDill to work. They didn’t want to have to move Cherise to yet another school when they knew they wanted to live down here.”

  “You were still living with them?”

  “Yeah. I’d started school here and they told me to live with them to save myself expenses. I wasn’t going to argue with that.” He covered her hand with his other, fighting the urge to squeeze, to hold on tight. “Besides, Cherise was so used to me taking care of her while they were working, it was better for her.”

  “You sound like you were a devoted older brother.”

  “I was. Yes, she was a pain in the ass at times, but I was so much older than her I think I’d grown through the worst of the ‘I hate you’ syndrome. I was twelve when she was born, and I was changing her nappies from that point on.”

  She smiled. “Nappies?”

  “I can’t help it. I ‘go Brit’ from time to time, as Cherise calls it.” He tried to find a way to not kill the mood of their date and yet not shy away from her question.

  “So I went to the air show with them,” he said. “A family of four went to the air show that morning, and a family of two left that night. But at least we still had a family. The accident killed twelve people total, including two other families with kids, and severely injured fifteen others. An old fighter coming in for a landing blew a tire and took out a fuel truck parked where it shouldn’t have been, and everyone standing around it.”

  “That’s horrible,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry.”

  He didn’t need to describe the horror to Eva, weigh her down with his memories.

  Of dropping his cup after his shock broke when Cherise screamed for their parents and ran toward the conflagration while nearly everyone else was running away from it except trained first-responder personnel…

  Of trying to catch up with her and wondering when she’d gotten so damned fast when he was the one who usually ran every morning—except that morning…

  Of the feel of the heat, so much more intense than the Florida summer sun beating down on them, washing toward them like a toxic ocean and carrying the smell of fuel and barbecued flesh…

  Of making it to Cherise in time to scoop her up and carry her away despite her struggles, clapping a hand over her eyes as he spotted a charred figure crawling out of the flames and having no clue if it was one of their parents…

  Of feeling guilty for running away…

  Of being herded to a waiting area with others who were missing family members or friends, and finally getting confirmation a couple of hours later when the flames were out and they were able to find the dog tags still around their necks despite their civilian clothes having been burned from them—along with their flesh…

  Of the voice of the chaplain who tried to talk to him when all he could do was sit there, stunned, holding Cherise as she sobbed against his shoulder and screamed for their parents…

  Of having an MP leading a locksmith
through the parking area later to open the car for them and cut him a set of keys for it, because all he had were the house keys with him, and the car keys had been in Ken’s pocket since he drove…

  Of wishing he hadn’t spent a good chunk of the drive there trying to snooze in the backseat…

  Of wishing he’d spent that time talking to them, memorizing every line in their faces and not realizing that it’d be him driving a sedated Cherise home that evening, the doctor at the base clinic finally giving her a shot to calm her down, which ended up knocking her out…

  Of getting home and seeing his mom’s purse still sitting behind the front passenger seat, where she’d left it after fishing her wallet out and tucking it into her back pocket, not wanting to carry it around all day…

  He shrugged. “It was an accident,” he said. “I could have blamed god or the pilot or the fuel truck driver who’d stopped in the wrong damned spot to take a moment to watch the landing, or any number of things. Just like I could have thanked the portable toilet people for sticking them where they did and forcing us to walk all the way over there, or the frozen lemonade stand for being where it was and distracting Cherise and saving our lives. None of it would matter or change the outcome. It happened, and we had to deal with it.

  “I had to finish growing up a lot faster than I realized I’d have to, and so did Cherise, in some ways. At least she still had me and could hold onto some of her childhood. I decided that day that it had to be the worst day of my life, and to keep every other day in perspective by contrast. That’s how I got through it, and how I’ve tried to live the rest of my life.”

  He gave her hands a gentle squeeze. “So what happened between you and your parents?” There had been some references to an incident at the hospital, following Leo’s accident, but she hadn’t gone into details.

  Her smile looked almost sick, and he suspected that was triggered by her memories and not by his story.

  “My father’s an asshole,” she finally said. “And I’d rather enjoy this evening with you than relive any of that.”

  “Fair enough.” He had to sit back as the waitress brought their salads. “I’d rather enjoy this evening with you, too,” he said, her smile looking a little healthier now. “Beautiful company and good food makes for a very nice evening, indeed.”