I stood there in the glaring sun and watched them devour each other with their eyes. Yeah, there wasn’t anything going on there! “Sometime today, Jesse. Stop eye fucking the chick and let’s get this show started, man.” Layla’s cheeks flushed, and she stepped back to let us into the apartment. “I wasn’t expecting you guys to help me.”

I dropped down on a couch that reminded me of the one my mom had loved so much when I was a kid. This one was probably as old as I was.

“Neither were we,” I muttered.

“What Drake means is that he is here under duress. This is his punishment for pissing Emmie off last night,” Jesse informed her.

“I still don’t understand what I did,” I grumbled. “One minute she’s all smiles and the next she’s screaming at me.” I shook my head and my long hair fell in my face. “I hate pregnancy hormones. Cannot wait for that demon child to get out of her!” I wanted my sweet little Emmie back.

Okay, she wasn’t sweet, but she was ours, and I wouldn’t trade her for anyone else. But lately she wasn’t the same girl that the guys and I had practically raised. She had been taken over by the spawn growing in her belly.

Layla laughed and it was a sweet sound. “That isn’t going to help,” she assured me. “After the baby is born, she’s going to be worse. Take my word for it, sweetie. Postpartum is worse than the mood swings she’s having now.”

“Ah, hell,” Jesse muttered at the same time I did.

“Hey, Layla, did you already pack the bathroom? I need…” My head snapped around at the sound of that voice, and I was sure that my heart stopped in my chest when I met the whiskey colored eyes of an angel. Her long, midnight black hair was pulled back in a ponytail. Her brown-amber eyes were huge in her beautiful face. She had plump lips that were almost bee stung and a nose that was tipped at the end. The angel was tall, her waist long and slender, but she had curves that made my body ache to hold her against me.

This angel was young; I would say no more than twenty-one…Layla introduced the angel. “Lana, this is Jesse and that’s Drake. Guys, this is my seventeen year old sister, Lana.”

Seventeen. Seventeen. SEVENTEEN!

Seven-fucking-teen!

The number bounced around in my already throbbing head, and I thought I was going to go mad from it. No! Not seventeen. She had to be older. I couldn’t be attracted in a seventeen year old girl.

“It’s nice to meet you, Lana,” Jesse said as he stared at the angel.

I was fascinated by the pretty pink that flooded her cheeks. “Yeah, you too,” she murmured and glanced at her sister. “Layla, can you help me with something in the bathroom?”

The sisters left us alone in the living room, and Jesse dropped down on the sofa beside of me. “Dude, you look pale.”

I wasn’t surprised. I think I had actually felt the color drain from my face when Layla had said the word seventeen. I felt sick to my stomach for an entirely different reason than the ones that I had woken up to.

“Are you really demons?”

I turned my head to find a little girl with long, curly, dark hair standing a few feet from the sofa. She had big dark eyes and a cute little button nose, and just like Emmie had all those years ago, this little girl sucked me in. I couldn’t help smiling at her. “No, sweetheart. I’m not really a demon.” All though some people had likened me to one a few times. The public eye thought I was some hard-ass with no heart or soul. Mostly, they were right. Unless you counted Emmie and my band brothers, I had no love and no compassion for anyone.

“What’s your name?” The little girl asked.

“I’m Drake,” I told her. “He’s Jesse.”

Her dark eyes took us both in as if she were assessing us both. Then, with a trust that only the young and innocent had, she climbed onto my lap. “I’m Lucy. It’s nice to meet you, Mr. Drake.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you too, Lucy.”

For the next five minutes, she asked a hundred questions about the house she was going to be living in. Before Jesse or I could attempt to answer, she threw another one at us. Within the first minute, I knew that her favorite word was awesome. She wanted to build a sandcastle but had never been to the beach. Before I could really think about it, I offered to teach her.

Layla came out of the bedroom with a smile on her face. “Not today, Lucy,” she told the girl. “We have a lot to do today, baby.”

“Tomorrow?” she asked.

I was already nodding my head. It sounded like fun the more I thought about it. Fuck, I don’t think I had ever made a sandcastle either, but I wanted to make one with Lucy. “Tomorrow. It’s a date, okay?”

Her eyes grew wide. “Promise?”

I smiled. “Promise. Now, let’s get you ladies moved.”

Lana

I knew who Demon’s Wings were. Layla was a big fan of their music, but I would have known about them even if she wasn’t. They were an incredible rock band, and even I liked some of their songs, which was saying a lot because my tastes leaned toward musicians like Michael Bublé.

Lately, the band had been in the tabloids, which wasn’t typical of them. They mostly kept a low profile, but the front man, Nikolas Armstrong, was going to be a father, and that was a big deal in the music world. He had knocked up the band’s surrogate sister and caused heads to turn all around the world. The tabloids had made a killing off the story for months now, but it had died down for the most part. I figured that when that baby was born the band would be hounded yet again.

The baby story was the first real news about the band in a few years or so. The last time they had made tabloid news it was because of Drake Stevenson. The man was reported to be some psycho who had thrown a doctor through a window. The picture of the bad-ass rocker glaring at the photographer, who had dared to take his picture, had shown a man that looked beyond wild and dangerous. I guess you could understand my shock at finding that same guy standing in what had been my living room for the past two years. I was nervous at first, especially when he looked at me and I felt as if he was looking straight to my soul. But even though he scared the crap out of me, I was sure that my heart was racing for reasons other than fear.

Damn, that man was sexy! You could even go as far as saying that he was beautiful. His face was all hard lines and angles, but each angle looked as if the Gods themselves had sculpted each line. Adonis, the God of beauty and desire, had nothing on Drake Stevenson, and with just one look, my breath felt like it was trapped in my lungs.