RUSH
Kiro was shirtless and swinging his tattooed arms around with a cigarette between his fingers and a bottle of rum in his other hand. “What the ever loving fuck is your problem? Hell, you got momma issues then go bitch at motherfucking Georgianna. Why am I the one being dealt this crazy shit?” Kiro was yelling at Nan when I walked into the game room. A pair of black lace panties were on the pool table but the female I’d left him with a few hours earlier was nowhere to be seen. Small miracles.
“Rush! Do you hear him? He doesn’t care about me. He doesn’t care that he ignored me most of my life and do you know he has a daughter? Some uptight bitch that won’t even look at me,” Nan was still screaming.
I walked over to her and grabbed both her hands. “Take a couple deep breaths, Nan. You gotta calm down so we can all talk. You yelling isn’t gonna fix shit.”
She glared at me but did as I told her to. I waited until she’d taken two deep breaths before squeezing her hands. “Good. Now, go sit over there on that sofa and don’t talk. Let me talk. Okay?”
She frowned but nodded her head and walked over to the white leather sectional sofa that outlined two of the four walls in this room. Once she was she seated I turned back around to look at Kiro. He was taking another long swig from the rum. The man needed to stop drinking and eat something. You could see his ribs. His fetish with leather went beyond furniture. He wore it too. The leather pants he had on were hanging on his tattooed hipbones.
“Can’t believe you got her to shut up for a whole damn minute,” Kiro muttered and put the cigarette back to his lips.
I looked at Nan and shook my head. They were too much alike. They both liked to have the last word.
“She’s upset. Please just watch your words and try to remember she’s your daughter. The one you abandoned to live with the worst mother a kid could have. Now,” I glanced over at Nan. “You can’t hate Harlow because he chose to take care of her. You hated Blaire for the same reasons. She never did anything to you but you hated her anyway. There are only two people at fault for the way things ended up. Kiro and Mom. You need to keep your hateful malice geared toward them. Not everyone around them.”
“She’s made you hate me. You never used to call me hurtful names. I hate her because she took you from me. I can blame her. She took the only family I had who loved me. All you do now is correct me and talk down to me. You haven’t even called me since I left the hospital,” she spat and bolted up. “I’m done trying to make you all love me. I shouldn’t have to try so hard. I hope you’re all happy!” She ran from the room and her heels clicked down the hall and up the steps. I wasn’t sure if she was actually leaving or going to throw a fit and see who would follow. I’d followed for too long. I’d helped make her this way.
“Fuck. I needed you around here all along. You can get rid of her with no problem. Damn, that was easy,” Kiro said as he sank down onto the sofa and propped his feet up, crossing them at the ankles. His hand still clutched the rum and his cigarette still hung out of his mouth. “Sit down and tell me about that girl I ain’t met yet. You sure ran outta here fast when Princess dropped her shirt.”
The woman’s name wasn’t Princess. That was what he called all the women he screwed. He told me when I was younger that if you called them all the same thing then when you shot your load you wouldn’t be caught moaning the wrong name. I’d thought he was a genius back then. Maybe he was in the artist category but with women he was an idiot. It was a miracle he still had a dick. He’d stuck it in so many places I’d be worried it was gonna fall off.
“Princess had a fine pussy too. Shoulda seen it. All pink and waxed. I think she even oiled that thing for me.”
“Don’t want to hear about it. Not why I’m here,” I interrupted him before he could go any further.
Kiro laughed and took a pull from his bottle. “She sucked like a damn vacuum too,” he said.
“Daddy, please. I don’t need the mental images that go along with that.” Harlow’s voice had me snapping my head around to look for Blaire. She was standing beside Harlow with a pale blue and white striped dress that had long sleeves. The neckline dipped too low, showing off her cleavage that was only getting better and better with this pregnancy. It also hit several inches above the knee and she was barefoot.
“Well, I’ll be damned, she’s one more mouth watering morsel. I’d offer you my lap sweetheart, but I think your man just might castrate me if I got too close.”
“I’d do more than that,” I growled, shooting a warning glare at Kiro before walking over to Blaire.
“You never sent food up so we came down here looking for something. Everything was quiet in the house so we figured Nan had left,” Harlow explained.
Shit. I’d forgotten the food. “I’m sorry, baby. Nan was screaming and I forgot. Come on, let me feed you.”
“I already have the new cook, Mr. Branders, fixing us some chicken salad,” Harlow replied.
Blaire squeezed my arm. “I’m okay. Stop looking so upset.”
Dealing with my family was not what I needed right now. I had Blaire to take care of and our baby. Why had I agreed to come out here? Blaire didn’t belong around this kind of lifestyle. The smell of cigarette smoke met my nose and I turned Blaire around and moved her toward the door. “Let’s get you out of here. He’s smoking,” I explained.
“You really making her leave ‘cause I’m smoking?” Kiro asked with an amused tone.
I didn’t even answer him. I just kept moving Blaire to the door. I was tempted to tell her not to breathe until I could get her to fresh air. I had to get this Nan shit straightened out and fast. Blaire needed the fresh clean air in Rosemary not this nicotine infested place.
“Leave him alone,” Harlow scolded Kiro softly.
“Dean wasn’t shitting me. The boy has done gone and got himself a pussy,” Kiro called out with a hoot of laughter.
I clenched my teeth and kept moving Blaire toward the kitchen.
“He sounds interesting. I never was properly introduced,” Blaire said.
“You don’t want to be introduced to him. He’s not someone I want near you.”
Blaire glanced back at me and frowned. “Why?”
“Because he has no morals. None. At all. And boundaries are a foreign language to him. Women throw themselves at him and he screws them and then moves on to the next one. I don’t want him looking at you.”
“I really wish I could confirm to him that you do in fact have a penis. A very big and pretty penis,” Blaire whispered.
I winced. “Please, just call it big. Don’t call it pretty. That hurts its feelings.”
Blaire giggled and hurried ahead of me.
