Kick Back - Susi Hawke Page 0,16

good at sneaking around and showing up where we didn't want him. Qualities that would make him a damn fine assassin one day but made it hard to salvage what was left of his childhood. The kid’s eyes were wide and sparkling with delight. He looked past Gib, grinning up at Darius. "Dad! This time you have to look at their balls! Forget about their red eyes and look at their giant pink balls. You're going to freak out."

Nope. I definitely didn't want to hear the rest of that one. I swung the door open and tried to look cool by scratching my temple with the barrel of my gun.

"What up, Gil? I know we're friends and all, but let's be honest. My brothers hate your filthy ass and we both know it. Dropping by without calling first? Not cool, bro. Especially naked." I winked and looked over his shoulder, craning my neck as I tried to count heads. "Shit, man. How many brood members did you bring? Did our families go to war and nobody told me?"

Gil flipped his long mane of perfectly straight, gorgeous blond hair over one shoulder, rolling his eyes and not bothering to cover his junk. I couldn't resist peeking, but his balls didn't look overly large or weird to me. If anything they were high and tight… something to be proud of. Sacha was right about the pink part, though. They were totally hairless and almost reminded me of Pepto-Bismol. Whatever. Every guy knows that dude-junk comes in every shape and color.

Several seconds passed before Gil smirked and motioned to his face. "My eyes are up here, Moreno. And we're naked because we shifted and took the shortcut through the meadow. Obviously. Are you going to invite us in or what?"

Dan snorted. "Or what. We don't have enough furniture for all of you or nearly enough Lysol to disinfect after your bare asses and balls park on it. Tell us what you want and then get the fuck off our property."

Gil batted his lashes and blew Dan a kiss. "Sorry, boo. No time for verbal foreplay today. We need to talk because you’ve got a member of my brood in there and we've come to retrieve him and take him home to our nest."

I wrinkled my nose in confusion, jerking my head back to let Gil know how surprised I was. "Member of your brood? What the hell are you talking about? Look, can we just do this later? You really can't be here right now. It's nothing personal, but it's a bad time. We're in the middle of… something."

The dude next to him—a taller brunet that I didn't remember having met before—shouldered Gil aside and almost desperately looked past me. "Ignore my cousin and his posturing, please. We don't care about the omegas you smuggled into town last night. We were out near the airport practicing our group attack moves when you flew in, that's the only reason we know about it. And really, we won't tell a soul. It's just…"

He paused to take a breath after spilling all that out in a rush of air. He looked down at his feet then glanced back up, his pale green eyes looking all kinds of sweet and vulnerable. "It's just that one of them is my true mate. I scented him. He's a small shifter, like us. I want to guess guinea pig, but I was too distracted by his sweet smell of vanilla and sassafras to know for sure. Please, can I just meet him?"

Oh, hell. While I was still processing that, Gil shoved the dude back. "Calm down, Peter. I'm the leader of this brood and I told you I would handle it."

Dan started cracking up. I glanced over my shoulder and grinned. So many Peter Rabbit jokes and so little time. I wanted to ask where Flopsy, Mopsy, and Cottontail were or at least remind Peter to stay out of Mr. McGregor's garden. But I didn't. The big guy had just looked so darned smitten. And as much as I knew my brothers hated to think of a member of the Blythe brood as also being regular people, I couldn't do that to the guy.

Especially after just having found Nathaniel.

Shit. Empathy sucked. But discovering I had it sucked even more.

I held up a hand. "Give us a moment to confer. I'll be right back." I closed the door and turned around, pressing my back against the wood as I looked around