CAM

CAM

I hadn't woken alone in as long as I could remember. Even that horrific fucking night I'd knocked out on a stranger's couch in Hereford, I'd opened my eyes to Logan Halliwell standing over me.

It was a fucked up thing to endure the people I felt such responsibility for believing I was the fucking fragile one, but on mornings like these, when I woke to Saint's legs tangled with mine, to him curved around my naked body, I didn't mind it so much.

Lexi .

He wasn't in my bed—in my house. I knew it before I was truly conscious.

My sister's pregnant.

Another thought that bulldozed my mind before I had the chance to enjoy the fact that Saint was naked too.

Fuck.

Like I had every morning for the past week, I reached for my phone, heart in my mouth as I braced myself for a devastating message from Nash or Locke.

Saint swiped the phone. "She's fine."

I let loose a caged breath. "How do you know?"

"Alexei's with her."

I rolled over, wincing as my body lit up with aches and pains I deserved after the last few years of hell I'd put it through. "Why?"

"Breakfast."

"He doesn't eat breakfast."

Saint shrugged. So?

So…my sister and my lover usually drank vodka together and laughed at me. I was curious about how they'd spend their regular hangouts now, but Saint distracted me just by existing. His messy hair and sleep-heavy eyes—forest-greens that gave me the life-affirming knowledge that he'd just woken up. That he'd slept with me.

He didn't always. So many things had changed over the past few years, but not that. Even after I'd followed Nash into the path of an HGV, Saint was still Saint.

Still beautiful. Still a gift from God that I couldn't believe was fucking mine.

I hooked a stray lock of chestnut hair with my finger, brushing it out of his face. I lacked Alexei's compulsion to tidy him up, but for as long as I had him in my bed, I needed to see all of him. "You're all right?"

Saint nodded. "Are you?"

"I'm in bed with you."

It was the answer that made the most sense to me, but Saint needed more. Probably because after a long night on the road, we'd only crawled under the covers a few hours ago, and I was an angry bear that needed more than a cat nap not to be a royal cunt.

But with him this close, even with my mind already working a million miles an hour on all the things I had to worry about now I'd made the decision to keep Nash's life as clean as possible, I felt nothing but alive.

And horny as fuck.

I kissed Saint, softly, feeling him out, not bothering to hide my relief that he kissed me back, drawing me into his orbit. Slow and calm, lighting a wildfire in me that only he could contain.

Because sometimes this was enough for Saint. To spend hours wrapped up together, kissing like teenagers, barely coming up for air, not a rizzla of space between us as he slowly worked me into a frenzy I couldn't come down from on my own. And as well as I knew him by now, when it came to sex, I couldn't always gauge his mood.

So I'd stopped trying. These days, I let him do whatever the hell he wanted. Gave him what he wanted. What he asked for with silent cues and clever hands. It was a world away from the apocalyptic sex I shared with Alexei, but even if I didn't aways know it, I needed it just as much.

Saint put me on my back, his calloused palm gentle on my jaw, dominating me the way only he could with his hypnotic kiss. He made me want things I'd never asked of anyone. Made me crave his weight bearing down on me, his strong body between my legs. His hand sliding up my thigh like it was coming home.

I hooked a leg around him, pinning him in place, drawing his face from the crook of my neck. "You make me fucking shake."

Saint teased me with a light kiss. "You deserve it."

Because I was equally enchanting to him, or because I was just that fucking special, I had no idea. And it didn't matter. Whatever Saint wanted, now and forever, I'd take it with grabby, greedy hands, because I was fucking lucky to have him.

He kissed me again, deeper, amping up the pressure of his body pressed to mine. "I want to fuck you."

"Yeah?" I drew back so I could see his face again. "I don't think you've ever said that out loud."

"I have."

If I pushed him, he'd probably tell me when in just enough detail that I ate my words, but I didn't bother. I was happy to be wrong when being with him was so fucking right. "You want to fuck me…then fuck me."

Saint had a secret smile, one only me and Alexei ever saw. He flayed me open with it now, gaze darkening with desire. For me. For us, and every moment like this we'd ever shared.

He didn't fuck me that often. And I fucked him even less. But, honestly, he could bang me every day and it would still be significant, because there was nothing ordinary about Saint. Not a single fucking thing.

I stayed on my back while he stretched an arm for the drawer in the bedside table. Missionary wasn't our style—we'd never done it. But I'd dreamed about it one night a while ago. It had been on my mind ever since, and Saint, the psychic motherfucker, probably knew it.

Definitely knew it as he came back with the lube and a questioning heat in his eye.

Like this?

I pulled him over me. Yes.

Saint gave me what I wanted—what I needed, and for as long as he drew out fucking me, as long as he was inside me, stealing my breath and my senses, I wasn't the president of a motorcycle club, and I sure as fuck wasn't anyone's brother.

I was his. Nothing more, nothing less. I was snatched breaths and gritted curses. I became the arch of my spine and clench of my jaw. The gravelled moan as I came, and the wonder that swelled in my heart as he detonated inside me.

His hot grin as he made me shake for real.

I sealed my hand over his mouth, my legs still hooked over his hips. "Don't laugh at me."

Saint wove out of my hold. "No."

"No, you're not? Or no, you won't stop?"

He shrugged, vague and beautiful, and leaned down to kiss me again, and again, still inside me, still hard. Still loving me so entirely that I couldn't see how this moment would ever end.

My phone had other ideas, chirping with a series of alerts violently enough to snap me out of my sex haze.

Saint retrieved my phone from wherever he'd hidden it the first time. He held it up to my face and the message app opened to a stream of communication from my enforcer.

Mateo: need a sit dwn

Mateo: on my wy from schl

Mateo: 10 mins

I frowned, deciphering. "You know what that's about?"

Saint shook his head, already easing out of me. He took it slow, but I still felt every fucking inch of him, and every ten minutes of the grace period Mateo had allowed before he demolished the love bubble of my morning with Saint.

I moved to sit up.

Saint stayed me. Slow . Because I'd been dizzy for weeks after the bike crash, nearly braining myself a second time downstairs in the kitchen. But I was over that now. Now I just had to wait for him to be too.

He let me out of bed with minutes to spare. I took a lightning quick shower and traipsed downstairs in my workout clothes in time to catch Mateo at the door before he thumped the hell out of it.

"Morning."

Mateo grunted and stomped past me. I glanced behind me for Saint—for back up if Mateo's mood was as shite as it looked, but he'd already vanished.

Fucking grand.

I followed Mateo to the kitchen that had doubled in size while I'd been on mental health leave, and found him by the back door, glaring at the garden. "Those bushes offend you?"

Mateo turned and the fire in his amber eyes gave me pause.

"What's wrong?"

"Are you taking the piss?"

"Excuse me?"

Mateo blazed fire a moment longer before he seemed to catch himself. "We'll get to that. I need to talk about something else first."

"With words, or you want to go outside and throw hands?"

He took it down another notch. "This place clean?"

From bugs . "Course it is." I maintained my glare until he relented enough to take a seat at the table. Then I moved to the coffee machine, needing caffeine before Mateo unleashed whatever was festering inside him. "You want breakfast?"

"Nah."

I sighed and filled the mugs, taking them to the table, before snatching a shirt from the basket by the door and yanking it over my head. Dressed, I fell into a seat. "All right. Out with it."

"It's about Liliana."

"Okay. Something happen?"

"She asked me about Viktor."

"Viktor?" I wrapped my hands around my mug, letting my thoughts turn to the mostly friendly Russian I'd last seen battered to shit in the bunkhouse. "What's he to her?"

"Her grandfather's personal pilot. Like Jakov was his bodyguard. Cos I'm a stupid fuck, it never occurred to me that they'd crossed paths until she brought Viktor up this morning on the way to school."

It was a lot to take in—a jolt to my brain as I put the pieces together. "It never occurred to me either."

"Yeah, well. It's not your job to think about every little thing when it comes to my kids. It's mine, and I fucked it up."

"Juana didn't tell you either?"

Mateo winced. "She doesn't like to talk about all the fucked up shit her old man put her through. And I never told her much about what happened that day you rescued me from him."

"She didn't ask?"

"No, and I didn't volunteer much beyond the fucking basics. Reckon I was too excited to look her in the eye and tell her that for once in my life, I'd fixed something and she didn't have to worry about it anymore."

In our world, his reasoning made sense. "How much contact did they have with the Russians?"

"They didn't know they were Russian, and only Liliana saw Viktor. Carlos used to snatch her from Juana and take her up in his chopper. Viktor's the last pilot Lili remembers before they ran away."

"What about Jakov?"

"Juana says he's nice ."

Mateo's lip curled in disgust, and I had to conceal a grin, because, honestly, it was my experience of Jakov too. Nice, amenable. Empathetic in those moments when it felt like no one on the fucking planet had a clue what I was trying to do.

We had a lot in common, but I didn't feel like sharing that with Mateo any more than I did anyone else. "What did Liliana think of Viktor?"

"He gave her sweets, and horse-nuts for Chappie, when Carlos wasn't looking, and she wasn't scared when he flew the chopper. She didn't say much else except that she saw Locke carry him in from the upstairs window, and she knows he's friends with Ranger because she heard you and Rubi talking about it."

I rubbed my lips. "Your kid hears too much."

"Sees too much too." Mateo's gaze hardened again and the agitation he'd blown through the door with returned. "She told me what Doherty did."

I didn't blink, not yet. "And what's that?"

"Don't fuck with me, man. She saw , she was right fucking there, and this shit is so normal for her that she didn't think to bring it up until this morning."

"Sounds like your school run was lit. Was Ivy with you?"

"Nah, it was just us. Lili had art club."

Well that was one thing, at least. But it wouldn't hold, and I was already, mentally, halfway into the conversation I needed to have with a man who was probably the most dangerous at my table when Mateo spoke again.

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"There was no need." I tracked the steam that furled from my mug. "It was handled."

"By Ranger. "

"He's a brother. And he didn't fucking hesitate. What more do you want from him?"

"It's not him I'm questioning. It's you."

I snapped back to attention. "All right. What more did you want from me that night? You weren't there. Embry was. You think I should've told him all about it and turned him loose? Let him kill four men in the ring and spend the rest of his life back in Woodhill?"

"Mate, I was ten minutes down the road."

"And what would you have done?"

"I wouldn't have killed anyone. I ain't that nice."

He still didn't get it. "But you are , Mats. To Liliana. To Ivy. And it ain't a nice thing to watch your gentle old dad muller someone for the first time, brother. Take it from me."

Mateo absorbed that, sipping his coffee, a mature adult with responsibilities, like he'd always been, long before I'd ever knew it. He was still fucking fuming, I could tell. But maybe not with me. "Are you going to tell Decoy and Folk?"

"Are you?"

"No. And Lili won't either."

"But that's why I have to, isn't it? I don't want your kid to carry anymore secrets. She needs a fucking childhood."

I didn't say it to hurt Mateo, but he flinched anyway, tangible grief eclipsing the dying embers of anger in his eyes. And there was nothing I could say to make it better. Liliana's childhood was fucked up. So was Ivy's. All we could do was love them enough that every screwed up thing they lived through became their superpowers.

Cheers, Rubes .

I sighed as it dawned on me that I was going to have to tell Rubi about this shitshow too. Fuck, I had to tell everyone. I had to tell my sister and hope that she was pregnant enough to spare my balls.

"Can I see it?"

"Hmm?"

"The footage." Mateo drummed his fingers on the table, a habit he'd picked up over the years from Saint. "I want to see it for myself."

"I don't have it."

"Alexei does, though, right?"

Couldn't deny it. Didn't even try. "Ask him. But I need your fucking word you won't go off on it. It's done. Ranger did his job, and I haven't got the fucking energy to fight every war twice."

Mateo stilled his fingers. "Everything okay?"

A loaded question that I didn't have an answer for. Not one I could give Mateo anyway, and he knew it.

He rose to leave, coming to embrace me with enough warmth that I knew that whatever Alexei saw fit to show him, he'd be okay. That I'd been right the first time, and it wasn't Mateo I had to contain.

Mateo left. I went upstairs to find the bedroom window open and Saint gone too, but I didn't worry too much about that. He'd figured out Doherty's sin for himself and made peace with Ranger's brand of justice. Because I'd begged him to, and he loved me enough to listen.

Folk, though.

Damn.

It scared me that I couldn't be sure. That after everything Alexei had been through with him, he didn't know either.

So I needed help from someone else. A brother so close to me we might as well have shared blood. We had shared blood. Too much of it. And if I could stand his flapping mouth for more than ten seconds, I needed his advice.