Page 42 of My Boss's Sons

“Well, now I think I might need to give the phone back. I didn’t earn this phone.” I joked to lighten the mood and when I saw his shoulders relax, I sighed. “I’m sorry you don’t have the relationship you’d like with your dad, or that he’s not the manyou’d prefer him to be. Your mom seems like an angel, though. I’m honestly not sure how she married Gerald.”

He took an off ramp and pulled onto the shoulder of the road. “She’s not my mom.”

“What? I just assumed… How…?”

“No one knows.” He turned to face me and shrugged. “I only found out because I took a DNA test. I spent most of my childhood thinking that Gerald wasn’t my dad. I’m so different from him that I thought that Mom cheated or something. The bad thing about a teenager with an unlimited allowance is that I could follow through with whatever ideas I got stuck in my head. Gerald is my father, without a doubt, but Mom isn’t my mom.”

I took off my seatbelt and moved to the middle of the truck to lean into him. His voice was flat as he spoke, but I could see pain in his eyes. “So, Gerald…?”

“I’m the kid of one of his mistresses. I never could figure out which one and I don’t think it matters. Our mom has never treated me any different than Noah and Ethan. She’s amazing. Gerald seems to have a chip on his shoulder about my existence, though.” Alex wrapped his arm around me and held me tight. “He always treated me differently. I was never smart enough or athletic enough. The twins were always better than me and I thought it was just true for a long time. When I confronted him about who my real mom was, he lost it. I was still a kid, but he threatened me and made a big fuss about it. He didn’t want the world to know anything about it, not even the twins. He’d built an image of a perfect family, one my birth almost ruined, and he was horrified at the idea of his affair getting out.”

“That asshole.” I wrapped my arm around his waist. “That’s a horrible way to treat a child.”

“Yep. I’m only sticking around at the office to make Noah and Ethan happy. Daddy Dearest called us home and we all had to put on a good show. I mean, it’s not a show for Noah andEthan. They have a different relationship with our dad. As soon as people stop looking, I’m out.” Alex searched my face and frowned. “Well. I was going to be out. Now, I think I may stick around for a while. There’s this woman in Acquisitions I’ve got an office thing with.”

I rolled my eyes. “The way your brothers bragged about your tattoo skills yesterday, I’m surprised they want you in the office. They believe in you.”

“Yeah, they do. I haven’t been able to talk either of them into getting a tattoo, but that’s fine.” Running his fingers over my thigh, he nodded. “Yeah, completely fine. Especially when I get to tattoo you instead.”

I pushed his hand away and scooted back to my seat. “Thank you for telling me that, Alex. I’ll never say a word to anyone. I will add this to the list of reasons I want to punch Gerald, though.”

“Want to give me some of your other reasons?”

I shook my head. “No. Knowing you have a complicated relationship with your dad is just one more reason for me not to voice my complaints.”

“It’s not going to do more damage than he’s already done, Sophia.”

“Do you think you’ll ever tell your brothers?” I buckled up as he started to pull away. “It seems like a lot to hold onto by yourself.”

“They don’t need to worry about this shit.” Alex smiled suddenly. “I wasn’t completely correct in saying no one knows. Obviously, Mom and Dad know, too. I’ve talked about it with Mom. She’s become even more of a mother hen since I found out. I think she’s trying to make sure I know that she thinks of me as her own, but I never doubted that. She’s always been the best mother to me.”

I blew out a shaky breath and fanned my eyes. I wasnotgoing to cry over hearing him talk so fondly of his mom. I wasn’t going to. I stared out my window and tried to quietly sniff myself back together.

“Hey. Are you crying?” Alex sounded like he was close to laughing rather than concerned. “You’re a sucker, after all. Look at you, crying over a man loving his mother.”

I reached over and slapped his thigh. “Shut up. I’m not crying. It’s just that the most you can hope for as a mother is your kid feeling loved, no matter what. I could tell Mary was great, even as I was trying to run away from her, but hearing you say that makes me want to hug her so tight. It would’ve been so easy for you to have ended up as an angry man.”

“Who’s saying I didn’t?”

I grinned. “The tattoos and the scowls aren’t fooling me, Alex. I’m not the only sucker here. You’re a big softie.”

He growled. “We’ll see if you’re still saying that when I’m tattooing your virgin skin.”

35

***Sophia***

Igritted my teeth and stared down at Alex with my eyes narrowed into daggers. “Is this how you tattoo every woman who wants a thigh tattoo?”

He lifted his tattoo gun from my skin and looked up at me with a smirk. He’d positioned himself between my thighs with my dress hiked up to my waist and I felt like I was in something between a sex swing and the stirrups at the gynecologist. “Nope.”

I wasn’t sure if I wanted to drag him up my body so he could screw me or if I wanted to kick him away from me and call for help. The tattoo gun going across my skin burned like fire and I was an idiot for choosing my thigh. His elbow kept bumping into my sex, though, and the sensations were combining to make me very confused and very horny. “You don’t?”

He wiped down the lines he’d tattooed so far and lowered his face to press a kiss on my panty-covered clit. “I don’t. This position was chosen for my own pleasure mostly, and some for yours, too. I’m a professional with every other client. With you,though? I thought you might need a little reward system for making it through your first tattoo.”

I winced as he went back to work with the devil gun. Blood rushed to my face and I groaned. It hurt. There was no way around it. I hadn’t even done the smart thing of choosing something tiny. I’d told Alex what I wanted and watched him draw out something even better than I’d imagined, the size of his hand with lines that trailed out on either side. He was still working on the outlines and I was considering the benefits of just an outline.

“Not interested in my reward program?”

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