Authors: Cooper McKenzie
“Still sleeping?” Martin asked when she rejoined them.
Anna nodded then sipped at her coffee. “Spring, is there anything we can do to help with breakfast?”
Spring shook her head. “It will only be the parents and you and us this morning. The others like to sleep late. They’ll have breakfast at their own houses and will wander up here about lunchtime.”
“We’ll need to see Winter, Garrett, and Hawk as soon as we can this morning. Seems someone left them a present last night,” Martin said as he ambled around the coffee bar to where the twins were lying side by side in a playpen.
“Oh, what?” Spring continued talking as she cleaned up the tiny mess she’d made while fixing the coffee.
Martin shook his head. “Oh no, little girl. This isn’t your surprise. It’s your brother’s, but I have a feeling the whole family will be pitching in to help them deal with it.”
Spring rinsed her cloth as she frowned at her father. “You do realize you’re not making a lick of sense, don’t you?”
“I know, but that’s the way things have to be for now.”
Martin left the children and went to the table where he had laid the envelope they had found the night before. Taking it and his coffee, he headed to the couch where he sat down in one corner and began reading.
“Mind if I join you?” Robert said as he settled in the chair next to him.
“Not at all. Here, you read those.” Martin handed him the bottom half of the paperwork.
“What am I looking for?”
“At this point I just want to make sure everything is legal and that what I read last night was what the papers said and not a figment of my oversexed, yet overtired, brain,” Martin said softly.
Robert nodded and turned his attention to the papers in his hand. Martin then turned back to his own stack of paperwork.
Ten minutes later, he finished reading and turned to watch Robert look over his last couple of pages of his stack.
“So?”
Robert shrugged. “The custody papers all seem to be in order, signed by the mother and duly notarized. The father’s death certificate attached to prove he will not be showing up to take the girls away. The medical records indicate the girls are healthy eighteen-month-olds with no allergies and all their shots are up to date.”
“Did you see anything that said why she chose Winter, Garrett, and Hawk?”
Robert shook his head and handed the papers back. “No, but maybe there’s a letter or something in the suitcase.”
“I think we’d better go wake up Winter and his men now,” Martin said.
The two men had just stepped out the front door when a small someone began to whimper.
* * * *
Winter jumped as the siren his mates had hooked up for a doorbell sounded, nearly deafening in its volume. Hawk immediately grabbed his head and pulled it closer to his lap again when he lifted it, still sucking on Hawk’s erection.
“Easy, baby. I like my cock where it is.”
Winter opened his mouth and released the long, hard length before looking up his mate’s body to his bright blue eyes. “Sorry about that,” he whispered, trying not to wake Garrett who continued snoring softly beside them. “I like your cock where it is, too.”
When the siren sounded a second time, Garrett rolled over, opened his grass-green eyes, and glared at them. “Would somebody please go answer that before we all go deaf?”
Hawk stroked his fingers over Winter’s cheeks and lifted his hips closer to his mate’s mouth. “We’re busy. You go answer it.”
Winter heard Garrett muttering as he rolled out of the bed, but with his mouth full of Hawk, he knew better than to offer to run downstairs himself. But he also knew Garrett wasn’t asleep.
Pulling off Hawk’s big erection, Winter turned to look at the tight bare ass of his other mate cross the room. “Uh, Garrett, you might want to put some pants on so you don’t scare anyone.”
His hand slid up and down the spit-slicked cock as he watched Garrett stop and look down at himself. The man cursed and then turned and grabbed a pair of sweats from the chair nearest the circular staircase. Once he’d pulled them on, he turned to glare at the bed.
“Happy?”
Winter nodded and puckered up, sending the man an air kiss which softened his frowning countenance. Then the siren sounded once more, and the frown deepened once again as he turned and stomped down the stairs.
“Baby, please. Stop teasing me. I’m so damn close,” Hawk pleaded through gritted teeth as his hips began to thrust up, sliding his cock through Winter’s closed hand.
“Oops.” Winter giggled.
He turned his full attention back to loving on his mate’s erection that throbbed with each racing beat of the man’s heart. Licking his way up the underside, he swirled his tongue around the head then opened his mouth and took as much of the length in as he could. He began to hum as he bobbed and swallowed on the long, thick length.
Above him, Hawk growled, and his fingers tightened where they were still stabbed through Winter’s hair. Knowing exactly what would set his man off, Winter ignited the explosion.
As he slid farther down his man’s cock, Winter reached up and gently cupped the man’s balls and slowly rolled them. Then he eased back down the cock, swallowing and humming as he took as much of Hawk in as he could.
He knew Hawk was on the edge when his mate grabbed a pillow and held it over his face. A moment later, a muffled roar filled the otherwise silent room. Hawk’s hips snapped up, driving his cock deeper as semen filled his mouth.
He swallowed his mate’s spend then thoroughly cleaned his cock before finally pulling off and kissing the head of his cock. Winter rested his cheek on Hawk’s thigh as his hand flashed up and down his own erection until he came with a gasped cry a few seconds later.
“Mmmm, now that’s the way to wake up in the morning,” Hawk said softly. He reached down and pulled Winter up the bed until they were eye to eye. “But next time I want to suck you, too.”
Winter nodded and grinned before leaning in and kissing his mate as someone came thundering up the stairs.
“You two need to get your asses out of bed and get dressed now,” Garrett said as he crossed the room to his dresser.
Chapter 8
“What’s going on?” Hawk asked as they climbed out of bed.
“Our presence is required up at the Wash House ASAP,” Garrett said, looking troubled as he finished dressing.
“Well, that’s about as clear as a mud puddle,” Winter said as he pulled on his clothes.
He buttoned his jeans as he stuffed his feet into his sneakers without socks then followed his two mates down the stairs again. He found his father and uncle standing near the front door drinking from mugs from Spring’s coffee bar.
“Morning, Dad, Uncle Robert. What’s going on?” Winter asked, wishing they had brought him a cup of coffee, which he thought was one of the only two reasons he had to get up in the morning. The other was being with his mates.
“You’ve got company up at the Wash House who are quite anxious to see you,” his father said cryptically as the five men left the fortress and headed up the path that connected all the main buildings of Sanctuary.
“Company? I wasn’t expecting anyone.”
His father met his questioning gaze and sent him an unreadable look. “And these are the last people you’d expect to show up,” he said.
As they reached the porch, Winter heard screaming. “Who’s killing whom?”
He watched as Robert opened the door then he and Martin stepped back to allow him, Garrett, and Hawk to go first.
Winter stepped inside and winced at a chorus of unhappy squeals that were painfully high and loud.
“Damn, that hurts,” Garrett said.
Hawk nodded his agreement as he lifted his hands to cover his ears. Though his shape-shifting mates were Irish Wolfhounds, even in human form their senses were much more acute than those of a normal human.
Winter glanced around the room, tracking the source of the noise to the couch. Anna was sitting down with two small children squirming in her lap while Spring paced in front of the couch with another one. But these were not Spring’s offspring. They were older and bigger than Spring’s twins. One was dressed in pink, one in light purple, and one in orange. Their blonde curls looked very familiar. Though it had been nearly seven months since he had moved from Charlotte to Sanctuary and even he knew that babies could change a lot in that length of time, Winter knew who the three children were.
“What the hell? Why are the girls here? Where are Talia and Steve?” he asked, as he hurried toward the little girls. As he did, he looked around for his former next-door neighbors and the parents of these three. He saw several large suitcases in the open space behind the couch, but no Talia or Steve.
“Do you know these little girls?” Anna asked.
As Winter rounded the couch, the three toddlers caught sight of him. In a second, the screaming stopped and all three squealed with joy as they reached for him. Spring had to put her bundle down as the ones on Anna’s lap squirmed for release. Once they were free, the three toddled toward Winter, grinning and babbling happily though tears still glistened on their cheeks.
“Winter? What’s going on?” Hawk said as he and Garrett stopped behind the couch.
Winter sat down with a laugh as he opened his arms to welcome the three little girls. The trio climbed into his lap, talking to him in their own language of baby talk. They each patted Winter’s face as if assuring themselves that he was real. Then they settled, laying their cheeks on his chest and looking at the others warily. He wrapped his arms around them in a group hug, still curious as to what they were doing here without their parents.
“Meet Cassie, Jessie, and Marissa. They’re triplets who belong to my next-door neighbor in Charlotte, Talia. I babysat, and when the girls were really cranky or fussy, Talia would call me to come over. Seems I was the only one who could settle them. I guess they remember me.”
He looked around and found the others staring at him as if he had just turned green or grown a second head.
“You babysat?” his father asked.
“Sure. Babies love me,” Winter said. “Talia said the girls felt safe with me. Where is she, anyway?”
“Um, son, it seems she’s left the babies here for you,” Anna said softly. “She left custody paperwork and copies of their medical records and a copy of Steve’s death certificate. But there was no note explaining why.”
Anna handed the paperwork to Hawk, who opened it and quickly flipped through the pages. He then gave them to Garrett, who did the same thing.
“Is it legal for her to do something like this?” Winter asked, knowing with three attorneys and his mates he and his writing income would be well protected from danger.
His father, mother, and uncle all nodded at the same time.
“All you have to do is file the paperwork at the county courthouse and the girls are all yours,” Robert said.
Winter looked to his mates, who had remained silent through the conversation. They looked stunned, and he wondered if this would cause a problem. After all, they had mated him, and being gay, they had never really talked about having children of their own, except to agree to be the best uncles to Spring, Summer, and Autumn’s babies.
“Garrett? Hawk? I know we never talked about having babies of our own, but what do you think?”
Winter studied the twins’ faces, reading stunned amazement and something else he could not put a name to. He wondered if they would turn their backs on the girls even though he could not. Talia had given him a precious gift, her trust that he could raise her daughters. There was no way he could turn his back on the little girls, no matter what his mates said.
The brothers each met his eyes then turned to look at each other for several long minutes. He knew they were silently communicating. It was a twin thing they did that sometimes frustrated the hell out of Winter, but he also understood that if they did this, it would be a major lifestyle change, one that none of them were expecting.