Chasing His Brother's Bride
Chasing His Brother’s Bride – Chapter 23

Jolie woke Monday morning feeling incredibly nervous about the day. A quick glance at her phone told her it was coming on six. She lay there staring at the ceiling dreading the day. By the time bedtime had rolled around last night, she had replayed her k**s with Brix a thousand times in her head and more than once she had caught him staring at her broodingly. She had been busted as frequently looking at him. She had been bold, for the first time in many years with a man, and it was eating her alive inside.

Despite spending the weekend with Brix, Malik and Elio, the notion by the end of the day they would all be living in the same house had given her a sleepless night. She had tossed and turned so much she was surprised Pia had gotten any sleep at all next to her.

Today she had to go to work with Brix and Malik and she knew the office would be gossiping. She still hadn’t chatted with Opal and Malik had told her having conversations in the copy room as they used to was now forbidden. While they trusted her, they did not trust the entire office and they had not yet completed a full security evaluation of the building. Until they made sure the place wasn’t bugged by feds, she could only discuss their personal lives in the board room or Brix’s office. Malik told her she was to bring Opal up to the boardroom and fill her in on her upcoming marriage but she could not discuss family business with anyone. Opal was going to freak out.

She rolled to her side and looked at Pia who was on her back, her arms and legs spread wide as she took up the bulk of the bed. She brushed the dark fringe of bangs off her face and smiled as the child smirked in her sleep. It was funny to her how facial expressions she had attributed to Val she was now attributing to Brix and Elio and it made her less edgy about Pia’s behavior. Even when she was smirking and sassy, she was seeing the playful side of Brix and not the malevolent side of Val. Not that she’d ever considered Pia malevolent, but she’d always felt an undercurrent of fear the child would have inherited his temper but three days with the Cacciola’s around her daughter and those fears were gone.

Jolie decided she would get up and shower before waking Pia up. She pressed a k**s to her daughter’s forehead grinning when the child huffed in her sleep and rolled over. She liked her sleep as much as Jolie did. She sat up in the bed and swung her feet to the floor. She stretched and reconsidered her plans for an immediate shower as a need for caffeine after hours of being awake struck her. She padded quietly to the shared rooms of the hotel suite and was surprised to see Malik already up, with damp hair, dressed in his suit and looking fresh as a daisy. She mentally cursed him.

“Caffeine,” she croaked as she tried to fight the embarrassment of being caught sneaking out of her bedroom wearing her flannel.

He was grinning at her like a fool, his dark eyes raking her from head to toe. “I put the pot on so it’s going to take a minute. Brix strangely already drank the first pot. I don’t think he slept. I barely got a cup out of it.”

“Where is he?”

“Coming back from the gym in about ten seconds,” Malik stretched his arms along the back of the sofa which faced the door to the hotel suite. “He’ll be all sweaty and glorious.”

She faltered in her footsteps as she looked at the muscly man, “excuse me?”

“It’s my favorite Brix look,” Malik patted his knee. “Come sit here and watch with me.”

“I’m not sitting on your lap to ogle,” she stopped talking when he reached out and tugged her onto his lap as the door opened.

“Shh, just enjoy,” Malik whispered in her ear, “he always takes the shirt off when he’s in the elevator. He does it on purpose. Makes my d**k hard every single time.”

Before she could respond, sure enough, in all his glistening and moist beauty, Brix strolled into the room without a shirt. His tattoos predominately displayed coated in a sheen. He was gorgeous with his muscles bunched from whatever his workout was, veins and sinew popping and twisting all over is body. Even his long legs were tight and flexed and Jolie’s eyes lingered a smidgeon too long on the length of him in his basketball shorts.

He paused at the image of Malik and Jolie on the sofa. “Morning,” he narrowed his gaze, “what is going on?”

“Jolie got up for coffee but stayed for the gun show,” Malik boldly looked him over and smacked his l*p loudly.

Brix gave a bark of laughter and threw his damp t-shirt at Malik’s face before he flexed his biceps proudly and kept walking. “Eat your heart out Malik.”

Malik breathed the shirt in and then held it out to Jolie who shook her head horrified. “I’ll suck your d**k,” he called after Brix. “Please?”

Jolie jumped in stunned surprise at his words and was horrified when Brix’s laugh turned into a rolling thunder of guffaws as he kept walking away shaking his head.

She turned to Malik, almost forgetting she was sitting on his lap crossways and stared into his eyes, “you do that?”

“A time or two but never when it’s only been the two of us. I’m wearing him down. It’s only been thirty plus years of knowing each other. One day, he’s going to take my face without a woman between us.”

“You really mean it.” she was morbidly curious about their s****l relationship. “You have done threesomes.”

“Multiple times.”

“Are you gay?”

“No.” his gaze held amusement. “I’m as straight as they come. I love p***y.”

“Malik,” she gasped when he squeezed her thighs.

“But him,” he pointed to the room, “I’ve loved since I was a toddler and we’re not b***d and I am an insatiably curious individual. The only reason we have never f****d is because he’s hung like a stallion and I’m not keen on having my sphincter destroyed. He has always said if I want his a*s, he gets mine first.”

She knew from the bulge beneath her thigh Malik himself wasn’t the happy meal snack Brix had suggested and wondered how big the other man had to be for Malik to call him huge. Her thought made her blink. Malik was hard under her leg. s**t! She shifted to get off him but he held her close.

“Don’t leave Jolie. Let me calm down first. You soothe me.”

“Is it a polite way to say I turn you off?”

“f**k no,” Malik grinned, “you’re gorgeous and the feeling of you sitting warm and cozy on my laugh is the thing of wet dreams. I’d drill you in a New York minute but you’re scared of us. Someday, once Brix realizes how much you two are perfect for each other, we are going to be the happiest poly couple in the world. First, I need you two to fall in love and then I will swoop in and steal some of that love for myself. Then I’ll get you both.”

Her cheeks were flaming at his words and she was shaking. Strangely, she was not shaking out of fear. His words were coursing through her veins like molten lava and for the first time in far longer than she could remember, a man’s comments were making her panties soaked. Her breathing was erratic and shallow and she knew her eyes were wider than they had ever been.

“Malik,” she whispered in stunned surprise.

He nuzzled her cheek playfully hugging her close, “don’t worry, Jolie. I will never hurt you. Anything and everything will always have your express consent. First, we need to get you comfortable with your soon to be husband and for him to realize you are exactly his type and then I will seduce you both. I think I’d like to have my face here,” he rubbed her thigh through her flannel, “while he’s behind me.”

His tone was positively gleeful as if he knew he had planted a wriggling, vivacious worm right into the center of her brain and was happy to watch it twist her thoughts in the most delicious of ways.

“I need to get ready for work.” Her voice hoarse and raspy

“Yes, you do.” He surprisingly kissed her cheek very softly. “Go get ready for the day beautiful. I’m going to go sexually harass my best friend. I’ll bring your coffee to you in a minute.”

She hopped off his knee and raced to the bathroom on trembling legs, kicking the door behind her with a slam, wincing at the noise. She leaned against the door and placed her palm against her chest to find her heart racing far faster than it ever had. Not even Friday night when Brix had shown up at her car window had it beat this hard. What did it say about her she was less affected by the thought of being killed than willingly f****d by two men?

She moved to the mirror over the vanity and stared at her reflection and knew Malik had to have seen the reaction his words had on her. Her eyes were huge, pupils dilated and cheeks flushed. Her n*****s ached under the flannel she was sporting and there was no denying the wet spot between her legs. Malik was a dirty rotten scoundrel and her body was here for it. What was wrong with her?

Since Val, her body had shut down. Men in too close proximity made her nervous and any man even remotely bigger than her tended to make her flinch. Yet in three days, these two men with their constant gentle k****s to her forehead, reassuring hugs and promises to keep her safe had figured out a way to bypass her body’s security mechanisms and she was all too well aware of them as more than simply contractual relationships to keep her safe from a drug cartel who wanted vengeance.

With shaky fingers she took her pyjamas off and moved to the shower, her fingers tracing her body nervously. She closed her eyes as she remembered the image of Brix coming into the room after his workout. He was not as big and bulky as Malik but his body was incredible. She skated her fingers down her rounded tummy to the spattering of hair between her thighs and found herself drenched. She hissed frustratedly as for the first time in years she yearned to have hands other than her own touching her intimately.

She was certainly messed up in the head. Nobody in their right mind would want a man as a lover who so closely resembled their abusive ex and yet, she was forced to admit to herself, she was sexually attracted to Brixton Beckwith and Malik Norman was egging it on. He had said too many times over the weekend she wasn’t his type, though, he had made the crack at brunch about having to get his boner under control after she’d insanely kissed him.

She touched her lips with her fingers as she stood under the stream of water. She had kissed him and she could still feel how soft his lips were, the taste of coffee lingering and the smell of his aftershave in her nostrils when he’d kissed her back. The strength of his hand when he’d held her neck while he’d touched their tongues together. She slipped her finger into her mouth and sucked it softly, wondering what it would be like to have him in her mouth and then her thoughts flitted to Malik.

Would he watch them and then join in? Would his hands rove her body while Brix took her?

She was jolted from her thoughts when the bathroom door slammed open and Pia’s voice complaining she needed to pee made her jump, crashing her hand against the shower niche and knocking shampoo bottles to the floor.

“s**t,” she muttered as she picked them up and then cranked the shower to cold. She viciously dumped a bunch of bodywash on a loofah and scrubbed her body raw under the freezing cold temperatures.

She was a psycho. Having sordid thoughts of the men she had been running from for years while her baby slept in the room right next door.

“Jolie, married people have s*x all the time with their kids in the house,” her conscious mocked her. “It’s how siblings happen.” Siblings. Siblings. Oh god now she was going to imagine babies with them. She turned the hot water completely off and left it cold to rinse the soap away. She yipped as the water turned frigid and froze her brain to keep it from continuing her crazy thoughts.

Pia was yammering a mile a minute and Jolie was shivering amidst a blast of goosebumps, quickly dampening her deviant thoughts. She shut the water off and stood there with her head against the cool shower glass cursing Malik a hundred ways to Sunday for being so naughty. He was going to be the death of her and she was going to die of hypothermia from all the cold showers his dirty tongue was going to force her to take. She was certain of it. She could not live with the man. No sir!

Pia was washing her hands singing a song about frogs and logs and Jolie was lost in her own daydreams.

“Jolie?” Brix’s voice cut in and then he gave a shout, “oops, sorry. Heard Pia in here and thought, you were both brushing your teeth.”

“Brix!” she shrieked as he didn’t turn away from her naked body through the very clear glass of the shower wall. “Get out!”

He looked her up and down and gave a wolfish whistle before turning his back, “I said I was sorry.”

“But you kept looking.” She shrieked as she reached for her towel and wrapped it around her. She had seen the way he had let his gaze sweep her from head to toe.

Pia was giggling like a fool and she looked at her, “what are you laughing at?”

“Daddy saw your butt,” the child began roaring hysterically.

Jolie got out of the shower with the towel wrapped around her and marched towards the man whose shoulders were shaking at Pia’s comment. She smacked the back of his head. “Now look what you’ve done. She’s going to go to school and tell everyone you saw me naked.”

He was smirking as she clutched her towel in her hands.

“What?”

“You hit me,” he grinned. “So much for anti-violence.”

“Brixton Beckwith, get your derriere out of my bedroom and bathroom right now before I lose my shit.”

“Mommy swore!” Pia exclaimed still giggling before changing the words of her song about frogs now about mommy’s butt.

Brixton swooped the child up and made a beeline for the door to the bedroom, “let’s go get your breakfast before mommy decides to serve my head on a platter.” As he got to door though he paused and looked back at her red-faced, clutching her towel and shaking her head at him and grinned, “I could get used to mornings like this.”

“Brix!” she almost screamed as he raced away with a chortling Pia over his shoulder.

Moving to sit on the edge of the bed Jolie wondered what the hell she had gotten herself into.