Newmar, Lola - Unzipping Levi [Scarlett Rose and the Seven Longhorns 4](Siren Publishing LoveXtreme Forever) (7 page)

When she heard the driver’s side door open, she looked and saw Levi scooting in behind the wheel. It wasn’t until he placed his large, dark hands on the steering wheel that she noticed several smears of blood on the tops of them.

“Baby, you’re bleeding.”

He merely glanced at his hands before giving a complacent shrug then starting the engine. “That’s why I didn’t want you to help me.”

His smart ass comment resuscitated her frustration. “How in the hell do you expect me to be your wife and the mother of your children if you’re going to scare all the townspeople? This is where we live, Levi, and it’s where our kids are going to be raised. This whole strawberry girl thing is going to be pointless if you keep doing this. My family can’t have a normal life unless you keep your bull in check.”

They rode back to the ranch in silence. And pie-less.

* * * *

He hated how quiet his usually fiery mate was being. A silent Scarlett was never a good sign in any respect. Every time he looked over at her as he drove, she just turned away to stare out her window. He fumbled with the radio, only to find a bunch of commercials and heavy metal. The last thing he needed was to be stirred up any further, so he just shut it off. The silence was deafening.

The pickup had barely come to a complete stop before Scarlett hopped out of the truck, slamming the passenger door hard behind her. All six of his brothers were waiting on the porch, and he watched Leo put his arm around her shaking shoulders as he led her inside.

Goddamn it, he thought when he realized Rhett and Sonny were the only ones who didn’t follow them inside. He should have known his triplet brothers wouldn’t let him off the hook with this one. The identical blonds walked over to his open car window and stood there with their arms crossed over the chests. He couldn’t quite determine what they were thinking because their faces seemed void of any emotion.

“Let me guess,” he began, “y’all came outside because y’all could feel she was upset?”

There was no reply. They both just continued to stare back in the warm night with blank looks on their faces. Levi reached over and opened the glove compartment. The half-full pack of cigarettes was still there. He’d finally quit last summer after years of Leo’s tireless and relentless medical badgering.

The cigarette he placed in his lips was quickly ripped away. Rhett broke it in half before throwing it down on the grass. “No use in killing yourself along with the trust you had earned from Scarlett.”

“Some redneck grabbed her ass!” he yelled. He got out of the truck to face his brothers on his feet. “You weren’t there. He was
sexually assaulting
her when I stepped out of the bathroom. He’s lucky he’s going to be able to wake up in the morning and continue living his meaningless, piece-of-shit existence.” Just saying the words out loud enraged him further, and he turned and punched a dent in the pickup truck driver’s door. His hand was already bleeding, so he didn’t care much when fresh blood warmed his knuckles. He flinched when he felt a hand on his shoulder and turned to find it was Sonny.

“Under no circumstance are you to make Scarlett question our place in her life,” Sonny said calmly. “I can feel her disappointment. You let her down, Levi.”

Levi shook away his brother’s hand from his shoulder. Sonny was usually really good at calming the brothers down with his uplifting advice and serene demeanor, but Levi felt nothing could help him. He let out another roaring growl, but his brothers only stared back at him with annoyance.

“I’ll never forgive you, brother, if this scares Scarlett away,” said Rhett, his tone hard and angry. “You own no right—”

“I own the right to protect what’s mine,” Levi bit out angrily as he stepped up to Rhett.

“But in the process,” Sonny held a thick arm between the other two brothers, “you risked losing what’s ours.”

Levi paused to think about that for a moment then took a step back from Rhett’s puffed out chest.

Levi had never intended to put his brothers in danger tonight. And if Scarlett were to leave them, that’s exactly what they’d be in. His rage morphed into guilt when he saw the concern in their eyes. “I snapped,” he explained, shoving his hands in his pockets. “The possibility of her up and leaving one day has my head all messed up.” His head throbbed painfully just thinking about it, and he threw his hat to the ground to release some of the tension there. He ran a hand through his hair and let out a long sigh.

“Is it Mom?” Sonny asked with concern. The word was so foreign on his brother’s thin lips.

“Don’t call her that,” Levi demanded as he stared out in to the field.

“Why not?”

“Because we hardly remember her”— Levi removed his shirt and began to unbuckle his jeans— “and then there’s the fact she was anything but a mom to any of us.” He needed to get out of there.

“But we do remember her,” Rhett countered as he took a step closer. “We remember her, and we loved her, and she hurt us. But get the fuck over it, Levi. Scarlett’s a different woman than Mom.”

Instead of wasting his energy replying to his brothers’ bitching, he shifted into full Texas longhorn form and took off into the night. Just as he expected, they didn’t shift to follow him or call him back. They always knew when he needed to take a good, long run to clear his head after a major blowup.

He didn’t slow his speed until his lungs stung with the cool night air and his aching knees began to scream for mercy.

Why did he always manage to fuck everything up, even after he’d received the greatest gift in Scarlett? Hell, maybe he was self-destructive. His anger problem was something he’d kept secret from her until tonight. He was ashamed, and most of all, disgusted with the fear he saw in her pretty blue eyes when she voiced her concern over handling their children. He’d never, ever hurt any child of his, much less one he’d conceived with his mate. But he had to admit she had every reason to be cautious of his behavior. She was only putting the well-being of their unborn children above everything else. At least he knew now that she’d be a kick ass mother.

Chapter 6

“Goddamn it!” Alisa screamed out, the sharp sting from her broken, neon pink acrylic nail making her jump a little. With her good hand, she carefully picked up her newly purchased handgun and placed it in her leather Coach suitcase, burying it under a heap of multicolored lace thongs and bras.

“Alisa!” She heard her fiancé—make that soon-to-be-dead future husband—call her name in that annoying, nasally Southern American accent from the hallway. “Alisa, are you okay, my dear? I heard you cry out.”

The soft, squeaking sound of Charlie’s wheelchair coming down the hall grew louder. Her hands fumbled to close and lock the suitcase in time for him not to see what she’d bought on her latest shopping spree. Texas citizens were trusting people. All she’d done was flashed her in-state driver’s license to the independent dealer, and he happily traded it for a small bundle of cash.

The door creaked open just as she heard the lock on the luggage click into place. She twirled to face old Charlie wheeling himself through the Victorian-decorated master bedroom they shared. “Oh, lover. Look, I just broke a nail,” she explained, holding out her hand for him to see. “I didn’t mean to scare you, my sweet.” Then she leaned down and kissed him on his cold cheek.

“Go ahead and make an appointment at the nail salon. I’ll give you some cash so you can go and get it fixed today.” Charlie reached into his front pocket—taking old-person forever, as usual—and pulled out a thick wad of cash and handed it to her.

Come to Mama.

“Thank you, lover,” she purred as she slipped the cash into her gold sequin purse resting beside the giant suitcase. And in the same routine she usually performed for her allowance, she pulled down her tight, sky-blue tube dress until her giant, tanned silicone tits nearly popped out the old man’s eyes. She moaned softly as he took his time suckling her nipples before she put them away again for safekeeping.

As a girl in Russia, she’d done much worse things than pull her tits out for a sweet old man in order to get money. She had an extremely tough, traumatizing childhood. Sometimes, she and her mother, Dasha, would go all day without a bite to eat. As soon as she grew mosquito bites for tits and hit puberty, Dasha had taught her how to seduce a man into giving her whatever she wanted, be it love, lust, money, dresses, and more importantly, food.

The seduction tricks had started to become even more lucrative after her first boob job at fifteen years old. American men loved big tits, and she’d been determined most of her life to score a rich one. The road had been hard. Some of her sugar daddies were abusive, many into sexual fetishes that went a little too far, even for her. But the last thing she had ever wanted to do was disappoint her mother. Her mother had always made it perfectly clear that Alisa needed her for guidance, and Alisa had to agree with that.

Alisa could even remember a time she’d been taken advantage of several years ago. She’d barely known the new John for more than a few hours at the bar they’d met at before he asked her to come back to his room with him. She could still remember the sick, knotted feeling she had in her gut when he took her hand and smiled at her. She’d even admitted that she wasn’t comfortable with the idea and had suggested another date the next night to get to know each other better.

Then he offered to pay her sixty grand, and of course, she accepted. What she hadn’t expected was to walk into his hotel room only to find four of his closest friends waiting there for her. It was the worst night of her life. They had no concern for her protests, her comfort, or her tears. She screamed, cried. And they laughed. One man had sat at a nearby chair as he threw lunch meat at her, laughed, and called her horrible names.

From that moment on, men were nothing but scum to her. They all deserved punishment and suffering, and she was more than happy to teach them all a good lesson. The best part was, men were dumb and easy to get money out of. She’d estimated she and her mother had earned a couple of million dollars over the years from blackmail and seduction. But Alisa and Dasha weren’t always so good with their money, so the cash never lasted long. Submitting her photo to the Russian mail order bridal magazine had been their latest plan, and it worked wonderfully.

She had hundreds of responses from wealthy men all over the world, but Charlie had been the one to catch her attention. He had a reputation of being a good-hearted man, so she knew he’d be much easier to deal with than the dogs from her past. The fact that he was old as dirt was an added bonus. She could marry into the money then get rid of him quick. With his failing health, no one would likely suspect foul play. They’ll just chalk it up to old age and be done with it. Fucking Charlie’s male nurse assured the scene would be done flawlessly. Then she and her mother could finally have everything they’d ever wanted.

“I love you so much, Alisa,” Charlie said, placing his fragile hands on her small hips while she adjusted her dress. “I’ve been counting down the minutes until our wedding on Sunday. After being madly in love with you for the last two years, I can’t wait to officially make you my wife. I feel like I’m the luckiest man alive right now.” His sparkling blue eyes became misty as he spoke. It seemed like that was happening more often the older he got. Old people hormones, she supposed.

“Oh, lover,
I’m
the lucky one,” she said then briefly patted him on the head. The mirror behind him caught her attention at that moment, and she adjusted the rhinestone hair clip behind her classy, fabulous, and chic Bumpit. She reminded herself to touch up her hair with some more shine spray on the way out the door. She turned and lifted the suitcase off the bed and placed it gently on the wood floor.

“I came to tell you I spoke to Scarlett this morning, my dear.”

Charlie’s simple yet poisonous words just about knocked the consciousness out of her, and she literally had to sit on the bed before her knees gave out beneath her. Her chest rose and dropped, and she tried hard to breathe normally, but she felt as though she were having another anxiety attack. When she looked down, she noticed her hands were visibly trembling.

“Alisa? All you all right, sweetheart? You’re white as a sheet.” Charlie wheeled a little closer to where she sat on the edge of the mattress, his eyebrows furrowed in genuine concern. His cool hand slowly reached up and touched her cheek, and she immediately pulled away, needing more room to breathe.