Chapter 15

Gunnar

I don’t have many regrets in my life - there’s no point to regret, you know. Just gotta learn from your mistakes and move on.

But barely twenty-four hours after that scorching hot kiss-a-thon with Winnie – the one I didn’t get in on before she pulled a runner – and I’m desperately regretting not kicking Jack aside and being the first to shoot my shot. Or Diesel. Second in on the love train would have been great. Or third, even. I would have been thrilled to knock Gav on his ass and take her in my arms and kiss her instead of my twin.

I’m trying not to be bitter, but I haven’t even had my chance to kiss Winnie yet, and one of my rat bastard brothers spent half the night fucking her.

And now I’m feeling actual pain as I think of my missed chance, and my betrayer of a brother. Song lyrics keep rolling through my wounded soul and head .

Win - the one I dream of / Win - the one I need / Yet he’s the one who holds her / Now my heart bleeds

Fine, bad song lyrics. Very bad song lyrics.

I don’t actually know which of my brothers was keeping her bed springs squeaking, but they made damn sure she stayed satisfied.

See, my room shares a wall with Winnie’s, and even with a pillow over my ears, I could hear her sexy-as-fuck little whimpery moans of ecstasy as she came.

I couldn’t hear him at all, though, which annoys me to no end. A blessing and a curse. How can I punch that dickhead traitor in their traitorous dick, if I don’t know which of my brothers committed the crime?

I had been betting it was Max. So much for “just friends,” right? But then, I swear I heard her moan Axel’s name.

I wanted to bust in and punch that bastard in the face, naturally. Her fucking bed wouldn’t stop squeaking.

But just as I was getting all worked up to holler at Axel to shut the fuck up in there, I swear I hear her panting out my name, and I decided must be fucking delusional and hearing things. I’m not sure. After her fifth orgasm, I moved downstairs to the couch where I tossed and turned for a number of reasons.

His kiss on her lips / A knife in my chest / Promises broken / My dick left bereft….

Uh… Promises broken…

Shit, usually back-stabbings and broken hearts inspire the best lyrics. Blame my exhaustion .

I move from the couch to the kitchen breakfast bar to drown myself in OJ and cereal instead of self-pity and woe. I sit in peace for a half hour or so before Jack enters the kitchen.

He’s whistling. Something’s made that bastard happy.

“Why the hell are you so fucking chipper?” I demand.

“Why the hell are you so fucking grumpy?” he counters without skipping a beat. “Where’s the coffee?”

“Make your own coffee, douchecanoe.”

“First one up makes the coffee. House rule.”

“Mom’s rule, and Mom’s not here.”

He skips a retort in favor of opening and closing the cabinets in search of God knows what with way more noise than necessary.

Elbows on the table, I drop my head into my hands. Jack goes back to whistling.

“Speaking of Mom. Did you see the pics she put on Insta though?” he says with a chuckle. “They are having a blast. Her ridiculous overuse of hashtags cracks my shit up.”

Holy hell. Would you shut up, Mr. Happy?

“You sleep good last night, though?” I ask, sarcastically. I’m wondering if he slept at all. I’m wondering if he was the one who–

“Who pissed in your cornflakes, bro?” He glances over his shoulder at me, then immediately goes back to whatever the hell it is he’s searching for to make so much goddamn racket.

“ I didn’t get much sleep,” I tell him .

“Then you definitely need some coffee, my man. Black as your mood.”

I roll my eyes. I’m not in the mood for Jack’s dad jokes.

“Winnie kept me up most of the night,” I say, and that gets his full attention, as well as the attention of Cruz, who has just wandered in, with wet hair and a towel wrapped around his waist.

“The fuck is this, a locker room?” I say. I’m tired, sure. I’m grumpy, obviously. But I hate the fire of jealousy that roars through me when I imagine it was Cruz who broke the pact and made Winnie come so much last night, and that he’d just been showering away the scent of her…

“What do you mean, Winnie kept you up most of the night?” Jack asks.

My eyes narrow on him again. As the oldest, Jack got the apartment over the garage, so he wouldn’t have heard what I heard unless he was the one eliciting the sounds.

Those blissed out, glorious sounds. My cock twitches at the memory of her moans.

“Uh… what’d I miss?” Mason has joined us.

I point up at the ceiling. “Somebody broke our pact, again, and was keeping her in a very good mood for hours.”

Somebody with mind boggling staying power. It would stop and just as I started to drift off, thinking it was over again, there they went at it again.

“No fucking way,” Jack growls. Then, “You can stop shooting daggers this way. Wasn’t me. ”

“Me either,” Cruz says and there’s enough envy in his voice for me to believe him.

“It was probably fucking Max,” Mason rolls his eyes. “Had to shoot his shot before she cut him off. What a shitbag! Where’s the coffee?”

“You bitches talking about me?” Max demands, rolling in. He definitely has the bedhead of a dude who spent the night getting laid. Over and over. And over.

“Winnie had company last night,” Jack fills him in.

“Oh,” Max says. But he looks disappointed.

“Wasn’t him,” Jack mouths at me.

One at a time, the others spill in. We’d agreed to meet across the street and get started at seven. It’s a quarter ‘til now. Everyone denies that they were the culprit, with varying degrees of vehemence.

But when Winnie comes down, she is fucking glowing and there’s no doubt that there’s a liar amongst us.

I immediately perk up–in more ways than one–at the sight of her. She’s still in her teeny tiny sleep shorts that give hints of her ass when they ride up as she walks, and a matching satiny tank top that can barely contain her tits. Nothing has ever lifted my mood quite like Win.

“Well, there’s our little noisemaker,” I tease, before realizing it might embarrass her.

She indeed flushes, her cheeks turning an adorable shade of pink, but then she laughs. She looks so relaxed, so carefree .

Regret slashes through me again, and I want to kiss her so fucking badly. Take her face in my hands and push her up against the pantry door and kiss her until the end of time.

She is so relaxed / So carefree / Why didn’t I show her better / How much she means to me?

“Oops. Was I loud?” she asks. Then she scrunches up her face in a way that makes me want to sweep her off her feet and take her upstairs to my room. Take her volume to a whole ‘nother level.

“I was the only one that heard you. Well. Me and whichever one of these bastards,” I gesture at all my brothers, “is lying about being the one with you.”

“Lying, huh?” Winnie makes a face then laughs again. She comes over and massages my shoulders. “Is someone jealous?” she asks, kissing the top of my head.

And then I feel her breath on the back of my neck and she bends down to tease my ear with her lips as she says, “If you must know, I was indulging in a little – well, a lot – of self-care.”

“Self-care,” I repeat, and my voice practically cracks like a horny teenager.

She blows on my earlobe gently and I shiver. “To word it as a lady would.”

Oh. Ohhh.

I can’t move, frozen in my seat with the burn of her smile against my skin as Winnie floats off and around to the other side of the breakfast bar. She grabs a box of cereal and a bowl .

My brothers, all shades of red, are very busy doing breakfast-y things, as well. But we are all trying not to stare at the smirk that is growing on her face.

Then she says, “I’m no lady, as you know. So yeah, I got myself off, multiple times. Hard not to keep going while fantasizing about having a big ol’ orgy with all of you.”

It’s as if someone has yelled FREEZE OR DIE, because we all freeze.

For a second, even Winnie looks shocked by her own admittance. But then she bursts out laughing. “Your faces. Oh, my. Oh come on. It’s not like I’m the only female on the planet who has Hammer Bros gang bang fantasies. You were all very, very good by the way.”

I can’t resist. “I know how good we were. I heard, remember?”

And she winks at me.

Holy shit.

Then she looks like she swallowed a live goldfish.

“Oh my God,” she whispers and then, with her head down, she beelines back towards the door she euphorically entered just moments earlier.

Gavin intercepts her. Both hands on her shoulders, holding her in place.

“No running, remember? Not from us.”

What the hell is that all about?

“I’m not running.” She wriggles away from him. “I just need a moment to collect myself and…”

“I don’t know.” I get up. “I kind of like you uncollected. ”

She glances over at me, her face beet red. “I cannot believe I just admitted… My filter hasn’t had a chance to kick in this morning and…”

I stride over and all but hip check Gav to get him to move the hell out of my way. Taking the spot he reluctantly gives up, I pull her into a tight embrace, so that her body is fully against mine.

“You have an erection,” she whispers and I laugh.

“Around you, pretty much constantly, yeah,” I confess, gazing down into her pretty blue eyes. For a split second, we’re alone in the room. I take her face in my hands and say to her, as seriously as I’ve ever said anything, “You do realize you never, ever have to get yourself off again, right?”

Her pupils are dilated. She parts her lips.

I grab her hand, take it in mine and head towards the door, pulling her with me. “We need a few minutes of privacy,” I tell the others, without looking at any of them or waiting for their responses, which they toss at my back.

“We agreed to just friends, Gunnar,” one of them–don’t know who, don’t give a damn–reminds me. “We promised her–”

“Yeah, well, I don’t think that’s working for Win and it sure as hell isn’t working for me,” I say as I tug her behind me into the hallway.