Page 1 of Midnight Curfew

1

Dallas

My favorite brother got out of prison today. And where is he now? Pounding down drinks with friends? In bed, coming inside something other than his hand for a change?

No. I shake my head. He’s home, sleeping like a priest down the hall from my three other brothers, who all seem to have lost their edge, as well.

Five fucking men in the family, and only one is a proper functioning Jaeger anymore.

“Is he tied up?” I ask my friend.

“Good and helpless,” Rip replies as he secures Mr. Coldwell to a chair somewhere behind me. “Just the way you like.”

Yeah, I do.

And I like the sardonic taunt in Rip’s voice, telling me he’s all in.

I love my friends almost as much as I love my family. With Rip Rodriquez behind me and Tyson Alarcon at my left, I don’t lament that all my brothers are slumbering at home, bellies full and content in their docility now that a woman lives there. Pets.

Timothy Coldwell sucks in air, exhaling hard. “We have jewelry,” he says. “And my car. The keys are on the dresser.”

I stand at the end of his bed in his master bedroom, which smells fresh and clean with scents probably named dumb shit like white tea and purple sage. My house smells like leather and tires, no matter how many candles my brother’s wife burns.

Taking the bottom of the sheet in my hand, I tug it ever so gently, Mrs. Coldwell gripping the other end as she holds it up to shield her body. Moonlight spills through the sheer curtains, glowing across her young skin. “Yeah, Coldwell.” I grin behind the black bandana covering the bottom half of my face as I stare at his wife. “You got lots of pretty things, don’t you?”

Her blue eyes peer up at me, like a deer in headlights, her long blond hair blanketing her naked arms and back. A lock hangs over her left eye as she stares at me.

Rip falls in at my right, the three of us gazing down at a woman who barely looks like she’s had a single cock, much less three in one night. Twenty-four—maybe twenty-five, she’s at least two decades younger than her husband, velvet skin without a single tattoo, scar, or blemish that I can see. She’s not being properly appreciated by that balding fuck, that’s for sure.

Drinking her in, I trail my eyes down her smooth arms, over the toned curve of her hip peeking out of the sheet, the little string of her panties strapped over her supple skin. With feet flat on the bed, her knees are bent and parted under the sheet as she sits there, frozen since we burst in two minutes ago.

“Please,” Coldwell begs behind us. “My watch. Take it.”

“We’re not a pawn shop.”

“There’s a little cash in the safe,” he adds.

I snap the sheet, ripping it from her grasp. She squirms, looking left and right, but there’s no help and nothing else to cover her. “But not enough?” I ask her husband.

Dropping my eyes to her tits, I watch the skin of her nipples harden, shaking with her shallow breathing.

“I hope not,” Tyson jokes.

Yeah, there are other ways we’d prefer to get paid tonight, I tell myself, the fantasy taking over.

With her hands pressed to the mattress at her sides, she shies away as the three of us leer over her, and I can’t help but take all of this in from her point of view. On her ass, staring up at a man and knowing he likes what he sees.

And what he wants from you.

Her fingers dig into the sheet as she curls them into fists, and I feel my own nails grate across the fabric as if I’m her.

Lips trembling, she whispers, “Please…”

Sweat cools my bare chest, that June Floridian heat permeating this nice air-conditioned mansion.

“Your husband is in debt with the Bay,” I explain, cracking my knuckles. “This is how you pay.”

I hear Rip lick his lips, Tyson cocking his head.