“Running into them like we did?” he said with amusement in his tone and his eyes. “No. Possibly being close to them? Maybe. I had no clue if they would actually be stateside or not. They’ve been gone a lot since I bailed after things got bad with my dad.” He leaned forward, and with his mouth next to my ear, he said quietly, “Why did seeing you down that drink just make me hard as fuck?”
Why indeed?
Not that I wasn’t willing to ride that weird train.
If his friends weren’t here right now, I’d definitely be willing to rent a hotel room…
“I have no clue,” I teased.
“You should stay at the mansion with us while you’re here,” Noble offered. “It’s practically empty, even with nine rooms in use.”
“Mansion?” I asked.
“Mansion,” Banner confirmed. “When I had my daughter over Christmas, my parents came down. There was nowhere to stay, and they needed something fast. Just so happened that my friends Slone and Titus, who are also professional football players, were down. They were going on and on about having a place to stay when they came to visit, and my parents all but pushed this mansion on them when they were here. Slone and Titus bought it.”
“It’s a twenty-seven-bedroom monstrosity,” Everett offered. “And even with us occupying eight of the rooms—Banner lives next door—we still are practically lost in its greatness.”
“Titus and Slone have a room, too. When they stay over, they hang out there,” Autry explained. “And all of the rooms have master suites. Bathrooms and massive closets the size of Fort Knox.”
“No can do,” Coffey declined. “I’ve gotta be there to start dinner and lunch.”
“Dinner?” Duke perked up.
“Lunch?” Callister leaned forward.
“Oh god,” Autry moaned. “Please invite us for dinner one night. Please, please, please. I’m not above begging.”
Chuckling, I said, “You’re welcome to stay. The first night is usually pretty chaotic. But Friday or Saturday should be generally pretty laid back. You could check out the show, then stay for whatever dinner Coffey feels like cooking.”
I placed my hand on his thigh, and when I did, I felt the tip of his cock with my pinkie finger.
The reminder that I was a roaring live wire after that long-ass trip with my vagina settled up against him, vibrating and shaking, made me reach my pinkie finger out and stroke the tip.
He paused in taking a sip of the coffee he’d ordered, his gaze looking down to capture mine.
“I’ve only seen that look on his face when he was ready to kill someone,” Whittaker whispered loudly.
“I think he’s ready to kill something, all right.” Autry laughed, dropping his arm from around the two of us. “Just not a someone, but a something.”
A terrible-sounding beep started to fill the air around us.
Every single person at the table turned to the man beside me and stared.
I looked at the intensity on all of their faces, blinking slowly and lazily as I took them all in.
Every single one of them, Banner included as he all but leaned around me to stare at Coffey, were all so intently focused on him that it made a chill skate down my spine.
“I’ll go fix it,” he promised, then shoved at Autry.
Autry got up, but instead of sitting down in his place, he walked with Coffey outside.
I turned around, and no longer did Coffey have everyone’s attention. I did.
CHAPTER 17
Being a functional adult seems a bit excessive.
-Simi’s secret thoughts
SIMI
“Um,” I forced myself to say. “What’s going on?”
Nine pairs of eyes blinked in unison.
It was the one to my left, Duke, the eldest in the group, who answered.
“His blood sugar is out of whack,” Duke answered. “You didn’t remember that?”
I opened my mouth to say no, but then a snippet of conversation between him and me came back to me.
“I’m a type one diabetic. From the moment I could walk, I had blood sugar issues. It wasn’t until the last five years or so when I got my pump that automatically injects me with my insulin that I’ve been able to live a somewhat normal life.”
“Oh, yeah.” I winced. “Guess I don’t have them all after all.”
One of the ones to my left snorted, and I looked that way.
Whittaker grinned wickedly at me when he caught my attention.
“Likely, you will keep thinking and saying that, then you’ll get another one,” he said. “Do you remember how you conceived, at least? I feel like that one might be the most important.”
I thought back to how our child was conceived.
His hands. His mouth. His cock. His…
Yes, yes, I did remember.
I blushed furiously, causing the table to laugh.
To change the subject of my child’s conception, I turned to the group and gave them all eye contact before saying, “Does that happen often?”
“Often enough,” Trig answered as he finished off the last of his drink. Water. Boring water. All of them had gotten boring water but Banner, who’d had a Dr Pepper with me.
“Luckily, only in the last six months to a year, actually,” Crew answered. “He got that pump about three months before our last mission together. Used to, he’d have to stop in the field with his handy dandy blood glucose monitor. Then we’d have to figure out where the hell to put his insulin.”
For the next ten minutes, they talked all about the times that Coffey would need insulin to bring his glucose down or food to bring it up, so much that it actually freaked me out a lot.
But then they started talking about the miracle of his little machine and how it only gives him alerts when there’s a malfunction with it or he’s out of insulin and in need of changing a pod of some sort.
I was patiently tapping my fingers against my lap, wondering if I should go out and find him, when their attention went over my head.
Seconds later, that familiar body slid into the booth beside me and crowded me into his side.
“Hey,” he said. “Sorry, malfunction. Had to change it.”
As if that explained everything.
Later, when we were alone, he would be telling me everything so I could be as concerned or as unconcerned as the men at the table that knew him better.
Which actually kind of smarted a little bit.
It was sad that the men knew him better than I did.
I wanted what they had.
“Cool,” I managed to say.
He caught my fidgeting hands and pulled them into his lap, keeping them in his one large palm and curling his fingers around them to keep them still.
I leaned in and rested my head against his shoulder, feeling something hard and lumpy on it.
Before I could get alarmed at what it was, he said, “That’s the thing that tests my blood and holds the insulin,” he explained before I could ask.
“Oh,” I said. “I wish they had something like that for migraines. Swear to God, I would pay billions for that if they had a way to stop that in its track, testing it before it became a problem.”
“You get migraines?” Noble asked. “Me, too.”