ALEXEI

ALEXEI

They had made up. I was sure of it when I heard Cam laugh—a sound I had not had the pleasure of in weeks. Perhaps months.

I did not hear Saint. I felt him first, that tingle at the nape of my neck. The pleasurable shiver down my spine. The warmth of his arms as he slid into bed and wrapped them around me.

"You're not asleep."

"I am not." I kept my eyes closed, tipping my head back to rest on his collarbone. "Would you prefer it if I was?"

"Maybe."

"What is the dilemma?"

"Cam said you haven't slept much."

"I never sleep much. What is the counter point?"

"I missed you."

I smiled and let my eyes open, half fearing that Saint was a dream, but there he was, dishevelled and beautiful. Tired, though I felt an odd energy thrumming through him and into me. "Did you get high, wingman?"

Saint nuzzled my neck.

I waited.

He nodded.

"Weed?"

Another nod.

"You smoked?"

"Yeah."

"Why?"

"I drank a lot too."

So had Cam, which should have been all the answer I needed, but it was not. Cam drank when he was happy, sad, and angry. And when he was drunk, he was still himself, whether he wanted to be or not.

Saint was different. He consumed edibles when we had the space and time to escape, to quiet the noise in his brain. Perhaps the noise in his heart had proved harder to subdue.

It certainly proved impossible for me.

I turned to face him, my hands finding their home on his bare torso. "You have bruises."

He tilted his head. So do you.

"There is something else." I took a deeper look at his shadowed eyes and paler than usual complexion. Felt the heat of his skin for what it really was. "You are unwell?"

"No."

"But you have been?"

"It's better now. I went to Rubi."

It hurt more that I had not known that—that he had not come to me —than I was prepared for. I inhaled a sharp breath, one that went nowhere because Saint kissed me, his lips a sudden wildfire that caught me off guard in the very best of ways.

Instinct had me kissing him back before I let myself contemplate his deflection. I had missed Saint more than I could say. I had missed Cam too—we had not fucked while Saint had been gone. We had circled around each other, as if we could not begin until we knew for sure that it was not the end.

But Saint. He was the love I had not seen coming. If Cam was my strength, then Saint was the air in my lungs. Air he seemed intent on stealing, and I let him, tipping onto my back as he covered me with his body, an urgency in his touch that felt more like my own than his.

Saint did not fuck like this.

Rough.

Frantic.

But I did not stop him. I fell pliant to his unspoken demand and let him take me, bewitched by the hunger in his weary eyes. The wonder as the heat between us coalesced to whatever it was he needed from me.

We were not quiet. Distantly, I contemplated why Cam did not come upstairs, but not enough to derail the thundering arousal building in my blood as Saint drove into me, his cock thick and hard, his skin too hot, his pulse beating too fast beneath the palm I pressed to his chest.

He groaned, losing his rhythm. I dug my heels into his back, urging him on, and he dropped his forehead to mine, grinding deeper, his scarred abdomen trapping my cock in a vortex of hypnotic friction.

"You will make me come," I whispered.

He thrust with more force, banging the bed frame against the wall. My eyes rolled and I could not contain it. I came with a sound that ripped from my soul, and snapped Saint's hips forward. I came as hard as he loved me, and watching him fall apart in return was a magic I never took for granted. The way he stared at me. The flush that stained his chest.

The deep, deep moan that tore from his gut.

Saint trembled in my arms for a long moment, before he raised his head to look at me.

He seemed dazed. Dizzy, almost.

"Do not get up." I spoke in Russian by accident, Cam and Saint had that effect on me. But Saint understood—he always did, and moved no further than to roll off me.

I took a second to clean up.

Saint watched, chin propped on his folded arms.

"You should fuck Cam like that."

He smirked. "Maybe I will."

"You are friends again? I was beginning to worry."

Saint fought for his words.

I lay down again, stretching out beside him, and rubbed his neck. "Do not force it. He can tell me."

He relaxed.

Actually, he fell asleep, and as my blood cooled, his remained feverishly warm, and I knew how this went. That he would not let us take care of him until Cam got upset.

We had been here before.

But had we? Everything felt different now. He felt different. So did Cam.

So did I.

I heard Cam's tread on the stairs. He slipped into the bedroom with water and effervescent paracetamol—the only medicine Saint would ever take without a colossal fight with multiple people. "I did not imagine it then."

Cam shook his head, taking in the rumpled sheets and whatever mess Saint had left me in. "Can't be that bad if he's put you in this state, though."

"And what state is this?"

Cam smoothed my hair and knelt at the side of the bed, tucking away the lube bottle and folding the clothes Saint and I had discarded, before he put his hands on Saint, his touch so reverent it was a sight I would never forget.

"If you are to kneel for him, biker boy, you should do it while he is awake."

Cam gifted me a soft smile, one that told me that everything was going to be okay. "I already did."