Page 55 of Her Hat Trick Daddies
“Open that greedy little mouth for me, Phoenix,” he commands, his voice gravelly. Instinctively, Shane fists a hand in her hair, giving it a sharp tug to tilt her head back, her lips parting on a gasp, mouth wide and ready.
It only takes seconds after that, bodies writhing together, pleasure peaking hard, the room echoing with breathless, incoherent sounds, as we all come undone. A beautiful, filthy mess.
Leighton is wrecked. Completely spent and fucking glowing in her surrender.
Hot damn.
Any other time, I’d clean up quickly and head home. But not tonight. This doesn’t feel like just play anymore. And I’m guessing the guys feel the same. We’re not letting this one go. Maybe not ever.
***
It’s 9:00 PM when we finally make our way back downstairs, cleaned up and still buzzing from the high of earlier.
The barbeque in the kitchen smells like heaven again, so we all dive in, grabbing plates piled with pulled pork, chicken wings, coleslaw, and mac. David has always been a pro in the kitchen. Hell, he could’ve been a chef in another life. If you ask me, the guy’s got options after retirement.
The conversation is easy, laidback, but my attention is elsewhere. It’s on Leighton. She stands up after a while, heading toward the piano room. I don’t think much of it until she comes back, holding her phone. Immediately, I feel the shift, the atmosphere changing with it. She straightens up, clears her throat like she’s about to say something important.
“Well, guys,” she begins, her tone shifting, drawing our full attention. “I’ve been trying to tell you something for a couple of days now. Every time I tried, it just didn’t feel like the right moment, or we kept getting pulled in different directions. But after everything that’s happened tonight, I can’t keep putting it off. This is why I came here in the first place.”
She flips her phone around, screen facing us. “This is Luna. She’s my daughter.”
At first, I don’t get why she’s showing us the picture beyond just introducing her kid. I blink at it and open my mouth to say she’s cute. She is, after all. And, well, aren’t you supposed to compliment mothers on their kids?
But then David snatches the phone from her hand, pulling it up close to his face. I get it, man. My eyesight is not what it used to be, either.
“Shane… she has your eyes. Yourexacteyes.”
Shane frowns as he stares at the picture, his expression deepening into disbelief as his eyes, the same slate gray as the little girl’s, widen in shock.
Holy shit. I quickly do the math. The masquerade ball was three years ago. Luna is a toddler. I’m not an expert, but… “She’s two years old,” Leighton adds, almost as if she’s answering the question I never asked.
Crickets.
Leighton’s eyes dart between us.
I finally break the silence, asking the most obvious question. “What are you saying here, darlin’? That you got pregnant the night of the masquerade ball?”
Her answer is as simple as it is shocking. “Yes, I am.”
“Holy shit,” David mutters, standing up so fast the stool screeches backward across the floor. Any trace of his usual captain composure, gone.
Shane, who’d been hovering near the bar, tries to sit on the same stool David just abandoned, but misses. He lands hard on the tile, and for a second, he just stays there, stunned and slack-jawed, like someone yanked the ground out from under him.
“Fuck,” he grunts, more dazed than angry.
“Flip through my photos if you want,” Leighton says quietly, holding out her phone with a trembling hand. “They’re almost all of her.”
David and I both move to sit beside Shane, the chill of the floor matching our reaction, an unwelcome reminder that this is real. David slowly takes the phone from Shane’s hands and starts swiping.
Photos of Luna roll by—first a baby, then a toddler. Blonde hair. Slate-gray eyes. That unmistakable smile. Shots of her wrapped in blankets. In a kitchen sink, getting a bath. Smearing chocolate pudding all over her cheeks. A birthday cake with a big pink “2.”
I drag my hand down my face, stopping just short of my mouth. Unbelievable. My mind is still trying to connect the dots.
“But we used condoms,” David mutters, like saying it out loud might make the pictures disappear.
“I was on birth control, too,” Leighton says, her voice thin. “But things fail. I didn’t even know I was pregnant right away.”
“I was halfway sloshed that night,” Shane says suddenly, finally breaking his silence. He looks pale, like he might hurl. “I don’t remember putting anything on. Fuck. And the mess we left on the couch…” He shakes his head. “I knew that wasn’t just her.”
