I laughed under my breath and let my fingers fiddle with the hem of his tee, the smallest of smiles tweaking at the corner of my mouth. “It seems you bring about the strange, little drummer boy.”
He laughed through the tease. “Oh, they’re strange all right, gorgeous. Whole lot of them are nothin’ but a handful. But I promise you that you won’t be able to help falling in love with them.”
Maybe that was what I was worried about. The falling part.
“So what are we in there?” There, with him, I felt confident. I just had no idea how Zee wanted to handle it once we stepped through the door.
He touched my chin. “We’re us. As complicated as we are, I say we walk in there and be whatever feels right. How’s that sound?”
My brow arched. “It sounds complicated.”
Zee laughed, and he slung one of those strong arms around my neck and kissed the top of my head. “How’s it you make every single thing better, baby?” he murmured.
Baby.
Oh God.
The boy had me in the palm of his hand. The only thing I could pray was for him not to crush me in the end.
Zee squeezed my hand where we stood in the archway that led into a quaint sitting room that rested just to the right of the sweeping foyer. He cleared the roughness from his throat. “Guys, brought someone with me tonight that I wanted you to meet.”
He glanced down at me with a tilt of his head toward the room. “Alexis, this is my crazy family that you’re basically going to need to ignore.”
Oh goodness.
I stepped a little closer to Zee. My protector. My savior. Standing there in the entryway of this incredible house with about ten different pairs of eyes staring at me, I was pretty sure I was going to need it.
A group of children were playing on the floor, and the men of Sunder were littered around a sitting room just off the foyer, so big and bold, radiating this striking aura of power and a dark, menacing kind of beauty and magnetism. They were surrounded by women who were even more beautiful than their pictures.
They all shifted from where they had been lounged back on plush sofas.
Ash Evans jumped to his feet, covering the ears of a little black-haired boy who stood in front of him. “Holy S-H-I-T.”
The boy squirmed out of his hold. “Uncle Ash, you don’t need to go covering my ears. You really think I don’t know what you spelled? You’re gonna have to get way better at that before you and Willow have that baby if you think you’re gonna be foolin’ anyone. Probably gonna need a money jar like my dad’s got. Momma Blue is pretty much rich.”
Brendon…this had to be Brendon, the son of the band’s guitarist, Lyrik.
I had the urge to press my hand to my mouth to stifle a laugh.
I shifted, trying not to be shy, remembering I always faced every situation like the adventure it was.
But something about this felt different.
“You’ve got me there, Brendon,” Ash agreed, shooting Zee a sly grin. “But sometimes men like me just don’t know how to handle this level of surprise when they’re in the presence of children. Things are bound to slip out.”
Brendon shrugged as if it were obvious. “Money jar. Problem solved.”
Willow, the woman I knew was Ash’s wife, pushed to standing from one of the couches, her belly so round I thought this practice session might be interrupted by a surprise trip to the hospital.
She had a vibe about her, soft and sweet and encouraging. She ran her fingers through Brendon’s hair. “I think that sounds like the perfect kind of plan, Brendon—a money jar it is. The last thing we need is this big oaf to be teaching our little man words he doesn’t need to know.”
Brendon nodded as if he was all kinds of proud of himself, and I found myself smiling into Zee’s arm as I peeked out at his mismatched family.
Willow approached us. “Alexis…it’s so good to meet you. Welcome to our home.”
“Thank you so much for having me.”
“Any time.” She slanted a curious glance toward Zee before she turned her gaze back on me. “Any friend of Zee’s is a friend of ours.”
Ash clapped his hands, something wry in his smile. “That’s right, Alexis. We couldn’t be happier that you’re here, could we, everyone?”
The entire group nodded, smiling as they stood to make introductions.
Zee filled me in on the names of the children, Connor and Kallie who belonged to Sebastian and Shea, Adia and Brendon who belonged to Lyrik and Tamar, and the tiny baby girl, Sadie, who was Austin and Edie’s.
Ash caught me totally off guard when he suddenly swooped me up in an overbearing hug, flinging me around like a rag doll. “Welcome to the freak show, darlin’. Admission is free, but you don’t ever get to leave.”
“Oh my God, you did not.” Willow shoved her husband in the shoulder. Her expression was a mixture of fond disbelief and sheer horror.
Ash jostled to the side, righting himself, stretching his hulking, tattooed arms wide, continuing with a story I was a little horrified of, too. But it was done with so much natural warmth it was hard not to fall into the comfort of it.
“What? It was our boy Zee’s twenty-first birthday. What did you expect me to do? That was nothing but my own responsibility.”
Zee had settled into some kind of mood I didn’t recognize. So casual and calm. Laid back.
He glanced at me with a smile playing all over that mouth. I couldn’t keep my eyes off it, the memory of his kiss still rushing like a river through my veins.
He looked back at Ash, this sparring sarcasm dripping from his tone. “Last kind of birthday present I needed, man. Last kind. Flip on the light to my hotel room, ready to crash since you assholes kept me out all night, and here’s this chick tied to my bed.”
Incredulous, Ash scoffed. “Last kind of birthday present you needed? What the hell are you talking about, man? I’m pretty sure it was the only kind, considering I hadn’t seen your ass with a girl the whole year since you’d joined Sunder. It was the least I could do.”
I peeked over at Zee, wishing I could ask him more. Dig deeper into the subject we’d only touched on back at his place earlier.
I wanted to make sense of it. He was the sexiest thing I’d ever seen, and yet, he’d chosen to shun the attention that was clearly thrown at him at every turn.
No one-night stands. No relationships. Nothing at all.
It seemed impossible.
There are some things I can’t tell you.
That admission taunted my mind. A flicker of that self-preservation I was lacking urged me to take heed.
Instead, I smiled and let myself get lost in the relaxed vibe. Because like Zee had said, if our time was running out, we needed to savor the moments we had.
Shea’s mouth dropped open. “A stripper? Ash, what is wrong with you?”