Chapter 54
chick chat
Liam
She’s asleep on my chest when the first text comes in.
Christian: We need to meet.
Cian: Give me five.
Ren: I’m already here. You guys getting sleep is a whole thing.
Cian: I sleep when I can. He’s little.
Ren: Ours hasn’t even been born yet and I’m not sleeping. Rude.
Fitz: Did I just enter a chick chat?
Ren: Sooner or later, Young.
Fitz: Later. Definitely later. If ever.
Christian: Ladies…
Cian: Fine. Fine. On my way.
I never reply. I do, however, slide out from under Lorien, pulling the covers over her naked body as she discusses something about narwhals playing ring toss.
Poe curls up in the warm spot I just vacated as I step into my pants.
I’m out the door in time to watch Cian do the same from his room down the hall.
“Weird as shit to all be back under the same roof, don’t you think?” he asks, mussing his dark blond hair.
“Definitely. But not bad. When does my little man start sleeping through the night?”
“Sariah has an app that tells us everything, so I don’t know, but I bet she could tell you right now when he’ll have his first tooth.”
“Does that kill some of the fun for you?”
“Nah. I get to celebrate him at all the stages. Blind isn’t bad. Prepared isn’t either. I get the joy without the worry, you know?”
I don’t, but still… I’m almost to the bottom of the stairs when he turns to me.
“Lorien seems… different,” he hedges.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” He slaps my shoulder and immediately recoils. “Oh, shit, was that the bad one? I didn’t think.”
“You would’ve known. But—” I tilt my head in question.
“I was going to say ‘I’m happy for you,’ but then I slapped you and I panicked.”
“Thanks, Ci.” I don’t elaborate. But he knows I mean it.
Fitz and Ren sit at the kitchen island watching Christian as he paces between it and the counter behind it. When Cian and I arrive, I place both hands on the stone, tapping my fingers in a melody with my nerves. “What is it?”
Christian stops dead in his tracks. “Did you know that Briggs Barnett and your dad are colleagues?”
My world closes in on that one data point, expanding out from the pinprick to view everything from that perspective.
“Briggs reached out not long after Ayla’s accident,” I start.
“It was no accident.” Christian’s anger is visible on his face and palpable in the air around him.
“I know.”
“We have to stop putting the blame or responsibility on her when it happened to her, not at her hand.”
I lift a hand toward him before pressing the air down around us. “You don’t need to advocate for her with me, Barone. We all know our father is a piece of shit. We’re not cutting him slack or victim shaming Ayla.”
“Who referred him?” He executes a subject change with surgical precision.
I stare at my brother-in-law, studying his face. “You did. According to him. That’s why I didn’t question the recommendation.”
Christian whirls on me, finger outstretched. His face is livid, and his demeanor has gone from zero to a hundred in ferocity.
All eyes turn to me as mine settle on Ayla’s husband. “And you don’t know him.”
“I sure as fuck do not.”
“So our father…” Cian states with more calm than I have. “Do we think he planted Barnett to what… hurt you?”
My brother missed the earlier conversation. The part where millions were offered to me to eliminate some men who were unwelcome on the Durango property, but who may have been offered the same to take me out.
“Or kill me.” It’s not a question. Well, there are certainly questions surrounding this and question marks flying up from everywhere. “So today’s visit from him was less about Mom and all about verifying if I was alive or dead.”
My brother looks incredulous. “He showed up today? At your house?”
“Well, he can’t show at your place and he can’t come here.” I look around my sister and brother-in-law’s house. “And if it was about proof of life instead of Mom…”
“While you’re here and to loop Ren in, Barnett’s mom is a convicted serial killer. He was underage, but there were assertions he helped her groom and lure.”
“The fuck.” Ren looks appalled.
“And he has your address and knows about Lorien,” Cian interjects.
“I already didn’t want you at home knowing what we knew, but with Seamus involved, it ratchets up security concerns,” I add.
Fitz smiles an evil smile. “So what’s our plan?”
Ren stretches his neck like he’s warming up for a workout, but Cian’s gaze drifts to the stairs.
“Any plans we have will include keeping the women out of it,” Christian says.
“No.” I slap my hand on the stone of the island.
“No? You want them involved?”
I shake my head. “No. Where we’ve made plans, it was to save or rescue. We aren’t ‘making plans’”—I make air quotes with my fingers—“because we’re not vigilantes. We’re not a military unit.” Though Fitz and Ren were. “We’re men. You’re family.”
Fitz starts to interject, but I stop him with a hand.
“For the purposes of this moment, you are too. And we don’t risk family.
I won’t jeopardize Wills growing up without his father, or Sariah losing you again.
” I look from Cian to Christian. “I took a bullet forty-eight hours ago, so Sophia didn’t grow up not knowing you.
We’re not risking the families you’ve made, the family we found”—I tap Ren’s shoulder—“or the family forged in trials just to play God.”
Hunched over, hands to the island, Christian lifts his head. “What would you have us do then? Be sitting ducks? Hole up in this house as a compound until our kids don’t know what sunlight is? I applaud your loyalty, Liam, but something must be done.”
“Oh, I didn’t say nothing would be done. I just said I wouldn’t risk you.”
“But you would have us risk losing you as if that would be better?” Cian bows up beside me, flaunting the two inches he has on me.
I stand chest to chest with him. “To protect you? Fuck yes, I would.”
“I don’t need your protection.” My brother’s voice is quiet, not in anger, but as if he’s vowing something to me. “I need my brother at my side. You don’t get to go rogue on this.”
“Not without me at your back,” Fitz says.
“Or me,” Ren adds.
“Or me,” Christian vows.
Cian merely raises his eyebrows, letting his face say it all. None of this is happening without him at my six either.
Fuck. I scrub a hand down my face, through my beard and pull it to a point.
They’re undeterred. And I’m not used to this pack mentality. I save myself. I’d save them. Hell, I’ve killed for my brother.
More than once.
But for them to risk that for me? I’m at a loss.
“What do we do then?”
Lorien
My alarm is going off but the tone is wrong. I’m also on the wrong side of the bed. How did that happen? It’s neither the left looking from the front or nearest the bathroom.
“Wifey, no alarm tone should be that chipper.” The man beside me grumbles, disabling the alarm.
“I like starting the day happy.”
“I can give you happy.” Liam’s voice is thick with sleep and sex and oozes both.
I bet he can. No. I know he can. My body still feels where he was.
Liam’s chest starts to shake, making my face bounce on his pec.
“What? Moving my pillow is rude, you know?”
“One, I am your pillow.”
“Exactly.” I tighten my arm over his abs.
“And two, you just moaned when I talked about giving you happy.”
I press up to stare him in the face. “I did not.”
“You did.” His smile is so bright and wide I’m momentarily dumbstruck.
“You’re incredibly handsome. Do you know that?”
“Don’t try to cute your way out of this.” He winks. He freaking winks at me.
Oh, God. I can barely function around him as it is. His protective nature, his gorgeous physique, the ink—which was never my thing, but it turns out it so is. But his smiles and playfulness added to his adoring me? “Toast.”
“You can have breakfast after.” He slides me to straddle him.
I like the power of being on top. I’ve never had much confidence in taking control or being the one to set the rhythm.
I tend to get lost in my head. But looking down at Liam, at the powerful man below me, I’m not only shocked that he would allow it, but I want to own my place here. I want to be in control.
I slide my center against his cock trapped between us, loving the feel of his crown and that bead as they slide along me and press into my clit.
“I have no problem getting off while watching you take your pleasure, baby. But I really want to be inside you.”
I open my eyes, not realizing I’d gotten lost in myself. Holding his gaze, I reach behind me, position him where we both want him to be, and slide ever so slowly down until he’s fully seated inside me.
Oh God, I love this. I love being with him, love having him deep inside me, love the me I am when he’s around. I love… him.
“Oh.”
What can I do to not lose him? How do I keep my husband after the arrangement is done? My nose tickles but I stuff it down.
“Lorien?”
“William.”
“Nothing, baby.” He pulls his pelvis into the mattress before stabbing up into me.
Moving both my hands from his pecs to sit fully upright, I grind down on his cock. “I’m in control right now.” I glide up to grind back down.
He starts to slide both hands up before realizing his bad shoulder won’t comply. One hand behind his head, he watches me ride him like I’m his personal brand of entertainment.
I’m stuck in my head, though, wondering how to live after knowing this kind of perfection.
We’re not typical. We certainly don’t look to the world as though we make sense. But somehow, we do.
I see in him everything I need to make me whole.
I see in him… my future.