Page 1 of Secret Baby Daddies
CHAPTER 1
Harley
Two Months Earlier
Being twenty-seven-years-old at a college party with an Ecstasy pill clutched in your hand was definitely one way to make yourself feel like someone’s grandma. I didn’t even know if I was saying that right. An Ecstasy pill? Just Ecstasy? When I’d asked the guy on campus known to sell every drug imaginable for something to help me loosen up, he’d handed me the colorful little pill, winked, and slipped my twenty-dollar bill out of my hand. I’d used a pill identifying app to figure out what the pill was and if that wasn’t a clear indicator I had no business doing drugs, I wasn’t sure what was.
It’d all seemed so easy when I was sitting in my new apartment with just the thought of the upcoming auction playing through my mind. I didn’t want to be a part of an auction at a sex club while still a virgin. If some rich old bastard was going to do kinky things to me, I didn’t want it to be my first time. The stubborn part of me refused to give anyone at that club the twisted pleasure of taking my virginity. I knew there were men who got off on it. Since I wasn’t saving my virginity for any specific reason, I’d decided I’d go out and get rid of it the old-fashioned way. It’d only taken me one night sitting at a bar on campus to realize there was no way I could sleep with anyone there while sober. That led me to buying drugs and choosing to attend a wild party in the wealthiest party of Dallas.
Twenty-seven had never felt old before but it was so obvious I wasn’t the same as thekidspartying around me. I’d dressed up. It was a party in a fancy neighborhood and I hadn’t wanted to stand out so I’d worn the nicest dress I owned. The red dress was a holdover from another life and it proved I’d gained weight since that time. What had once been a tease of a dress which hinted at my curves, had become a skintight number that barelyheld my boobs in. I was wearing heels, for god’s sake. I had on lip liner. Fucking lip liner!
Every other person I passed looked like they’d just come back from a jog. The athleisure wear was insane. Tennis shoes, joggers, comfortable looking cropped hoodies… I was so overdressed that I wanted to cry. The amount of glowy skin and glossy lips made me reconsider everything in my life. I wasn’t sure I’d ever glowed like the girls around me. Why had I powdered my face in the car before coming in??
Then there was the music. I wasn’t sure what it was. Had I aged a century since I was eighteen? I sure as hell felt like it. I winced as an extra sharp sound came from the massive speakers and pictured myself unplugging the stereo system and shaking my fist while shouting about ‘real’ music.
I’d made my way to the back of the house and grabbed a bottle of beer from the giant bucket of ice on the fifteen-foot kitchen island. Was it okay to take drugs with beer? Why hadn’t I thought to ask? I needed some sort of ‘ask your local drug dealer’ app. I glanced around the packed kitchen to see if there was anyone around me who looked like they might know.
The guy next to me swayed and grinned when our gazes crossed paths. He saw my beer and my befuddled expression and I practically saw a lightbulb brighten over his head. He took my beer bottle and lifted it to his mouth.
“I got you, babe.”
Horror filled me as I watched him bite the twist-off top at a strange angle and then pry it off. He’d already handed it back to me before I saw he was bleeding from a cut on his upper lip. I gasped and pointed to his mouth, just for him to lean forward and spit a mouthful of blood out on the floor.
“No problem!” He leaned closer. “Want to make out?”
I shuddered, grabbed a different beer bottle, and let myself out the back door into a yard which probably cost someone morethan most people made in a year, to manicure. The music wasn’t as loud when I got a little farther from the house and the crowd dispersed enough that I could catch my breath.
“What are you doing here, you idiot?” I didn’t realize I was talking out loud to myself until the girl next to me gasped.
“I have every right to be here! Jason invited me. Do you even go to school with us, lady?” She pointed a three-inch long fingernail at me and jabbed at her phone with her other hand. “I’m going to record this!”
I held up my hands and rushed deeper into the yard. What the hell was I doing there? I felt the indentation of the pill in my hand and shook my head. I was insane. There was no way I was taking drugs and going into the party to find some weird mouth-bleeder to lose my virginity to. No fucking way. I was already thinking of ways I could make the money I needed without attending the auction when a familiar sound from the front of the house sent everyone sprinting away.
It took me a moment to understand. The cops had arrived and it sounded like there were a lot of them. I could hear them shouting over the sound of the kids screaming for everyone to run. I knew then and there that if everyone was jumping off a bridge, I’d jump, too, because I turned and started running. Only I ran away from the house, despite everyone else running towards the house, where they were going around the sides to get to the street out front. I was sprinting across grass in five-inch heels towards nothing.
The thought of getting caught at a college party as a twenty-seven-year-old woman with an Ecstasy pill clutched in my hand made me run even faster. The property ended ahead of me with a wrought-iron fence and I nearly screamed. I wasn’t coordinated enough to climb a fucking fence!
What happened next was something I’d think about a lot later. In my panic, I made the decision to ditch the drugs. Instead oftossing the little pill into the woods beyond the fence, though, I opened my mouth and threw the thing towards the back of my mouth like I was a fucking house cat. I even lifted my head and rubbed my throat in an attempt to dry swallow the thing. Then I looked back at the house and prayed to all the gods I’d ever heard of to give me strength as I grabbed the top of the fence and heaved myself up and over it.
I hit the ground on the other side hard and would’ve lain there for a while if I couldn’t hear the cops still screaming at people. I struggled to my feet and took off at a sprint in the first direction my body leaned. I’d parked Belinda, my beat-up old car, a good distance away to avoid drawing attention to myself in the uber rich neighborhood but even if I could get back to it without the cops seeing me, I’d just taken drugs! I couldn’t drive.
Panic drove me down a hill, over a beautiful little creek with a nice wooden walking bridge, and up a different hill. I could see massive houses ahead and the realization I was running into someone’s back yard should’ve made me slow down and think things through but in my head, there were definitely ten cops and a drug-sniffing dog chasing me. When I saw the massive privacy fence ahead I decided letting myself into someone’s yard to hide was a great plan. I circled the fence until I found a heavily carved wooden gate that was unlocked and let myself in.
“Oh.” I hadn’t let myself into a quiet, private space. I’d let myself into another party. I almost had a brain spasm at the idea I’d somehow run right back to the party I’d just run from, until I noticed the people around me weren’t younger than me and dressed casually. They were older than me and dressed in hardly anything at all.
CHAPTER 2
Harley
I had to look down at myself because I worried the drugs had already kicked in and I was hallucinating. Nope, I was still wearing my dress. A woman glided past me, a coy smile on her painted lips. She was wearing a bra and panty set I instantly felt jealous of and as she passed she trailed her fingertip over my upper chest.
“You’re overdressed, darling.”
It occurred to me she was one of the most covered up people around. I had to stop my hand from trying to clutch the pearls I no longer owned when I saw multiple sets of fake breasts bouncing around an olympic-sized pool. Then there were the masks. Everyone, including the touchy woman, wore Mardi Gras masks which hid half of their faces. I’d stumbled into another party where I was the odd woman out. Not wanting to get kicked out to face the cops I just knew were chasing me, I inched along the fence line until I spotted a mask sitting on an empty lawn chair that definitely cost more than Belinda. I was tempted to curl up in the thing and spend the rest of the night in comfort but the idea of facing so many naked people once the drugs hit, was terrifying.
I slipped the mask over my face and tied it at the back of my head, catching more than a few hairs in the knot as I did. That would suck later. I let myself inside through the wall of glass doors which had been opened and stood perfectly still while I absorbed what I was seeing. Pure deviancy wrapped in opulence. That was the only way I could describe what I was looking at. Men and women were everywhere, in various states of nakedness, involved in all sorts of sex acts. I’d never considered myself a prude until that moment but when faced with the debauchery in front of me, I was blushing hard and looking for an exit.
I had to go deeper into the house to escape. My heart was a hummingbird in my chest, beating wildly against my sternum. There was a couple directly in front of me, bent over the side of an expensive white couch. I accidentally made eye contact with the man’s penis just before it vanished in the woman’s ass and Ididclutch for my pearls then. I inched further into the house, feeling like a pervert for watching when that was clearly part of the point for the people interacting with each other.
