22. Mateo
22
MATEO
Nash agreed to find out in return for me going home and staying there so he didn’t have to waste time worrying about me.
So home I went. To my empty house, save the moody cat, and quiet phone, missing Embry, missing my kids, and even missing Juana, as despite her unneeded apology, I’d pissed her off enough to go radio silent, leaving the brothers shadowing her to let me know she’d made it home from the school run.
I shut my front door behind me, the noise like sealing a tomb, and drifted to the couch. I felt like smoking, and not cigarettes, but I’d been bullied into promising I wouldn’t so I’d heal faster—I’d heal better , but as wise as everyone around me seemed to be these days, they probably hadn’t considered how fractured the organ in my skull was without my casual weed addiction propping it up.
Rubi would get it . So would Nash. So would Embry , but for them to understand, I’d have to tell them, and I hadn’t. So I raided the edible stash I’d procured for Saint and gobbled a few.
Then, like a fucking idiot, I lay down on the sofa and waited for them to cure me.
Didn’t happen. I figured I’d sleep, but I didn’t. I thought and thought and thought, every glimmer that popped into my mind an untethered trail of nonsense that brought me a hundred new things to worry about and zero solutions. By the time it grew dark, Juana had taken my kids and emigrated to Australia with her hot new bodyguard, and Embry?
He had a girlfriend and he liked fucking her more than he liked fucking me.
He’s never fucked you .
I sat up, my phone slipping from my chest and thunking to the floor, taking with it the text message I belatedly remembered sending Embry on the endless drive home from the hospital. Six hours of pain and motion sickness that had felt like six weeks .
Six .
The same number of years Embry had been in my life, maybe, if I’d counted right, but my brain skipped away from thinking about it before I could check, dancing back to the fudged words of that message.
that thing u were goin 2 say... mayB we can xxx
Then, I’d been totally sure he’d been talking about fucking. Now, I was sure of nothing except that I couldn’t feel my legs and my eyeballs seemed too far from my skull for me to see anything clearly.
Fucking edibles.
I needed to call Saint a cunt.
Reached for my phone.
Fell off the couch and stayed on the carpet, tapping into Embry’s message thread instead, finding texts that were two hours old when my phone had been on my chest the whole time I’d been home.
Fucking edibles.
I rubbed my face, flinching at the tidiness I found there. I’d forgotten Alexei’s assault on my appearance and wondered if it was why I didn’t feel like myself and why I couldn’t remember how I’d felt before he’d taken a blade to my beard.
My phone buzzed.
I jumped and knew I needed to get up and eat something before the overdose of THC came out of me the same way it had gone in.
Fucking hell. I hadn’t whitied from skunk since I was a teenager. Since before Liliana had been born. Cos I’d been a person then too, and I’d had nothing to worry about except avoiding beat feds and my pisshead old man.
His weathered face forced its way into my brain.
Cringing, I got up and staggered to the kitchen, opening the fridge, wincing at the light.
The shelves were heavy with Rubi food. Pies. Pasta bakes. Irish shit I’d never learned the name of. But at the very top, he’d left a Tupperware with a note.
Matttttts,
I’d do it for you, but you always do it better. Make yourself a sandwich, boyo. You know it makes sense.
Love ya x
I didn’t feel like making fucking sandwiches, but bocadillos were the one meal I could put together that made the people around me smile. The one thing I could make on autopilot without texting Rubi, Cam, or Orla for help.
Or maybe I’d made so many of them they made themselves these days.
Who knew?
Not me.
I still knew nothing except the barbed paranoia that Juana had left me and Embry was fucking someone else, which reminded me to call Saint a cunt.
I’d left my phone on the floor. Chewing on a bocadillo, I went back for it and remembered Embry’s messages.
Embry: Staying late. Unless you need me to come home?
Embry: Take that as no. Nash said you went home. Did you sleep?
Embry: Are you okay?
He’d sent the last message ten minutes ago. I thumbed out a reply. Deleted it and tried again but took so long he called me.
Answering felt like the end of the world, but I loved his voice. I loved him , and I took the call. “I fucking miss you.”
Embry chuckled. “At least you’re alive then.”
“Lucky you.”
“Yeah, lucky me. What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
“Liar.”
“How’d you know?”
“Vibes,” he retorted, Cornish brogue dry as a fucking bone. “And I’ve had it from multiple sources that you’ve been acting weird all day.”
“I haven’t seen anyone—” The denial died in my throat. The bullshit. I had seen people. Lots of them.
Liliana, Juana.
Locke, Nash, and Orla.
Alexei.
Any number of them could’ve grassed me up, but my money was on Alexei. Embry annoyed him less than I did. “I’m bored,” I tried again. “Being home alone makes me batshit.”
“I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“That I’m not there. You never left me when I needed you.”
“Yes, I fucking did. I had to, there’s more to our lives than each other.”
“I—”
“No. Don’t misremember shit. If I’d been there every time you needed me, you wouldn’t have spent so much time in bed with Rubi.”
“Still not over that?”
I was, as in, I’d finally got over my fucking self . But my point was solid, and maybe if I wasn’t such a crabby wanker, I’d be in bed with Rubi right now instead of stewing on my own. “I love you.”
Embry sighed. “I love you. I’ll be as quick as I can, okay?”
“Nah, be safe instead.”
“All right. I’ll see you soon.”
“Bye, cielito.”
We hung up. Or, at least, Embry did. To me, the call was swallowed by silence, and I found myself with tears on my face, at the mercy of solitude, a half-eaten sandwich, and another message from my husband.
Embry: FFS, just go to bed x
* * *
I didn’t go to bed. I woke up on the floor sometime around dawn to Embry sleeping beside me and a message from Nash.
Didn’t read the message. I only knew about it from checking I hadn’t missed anything from my kids.
I hadn’t, but I’d missed my husband, and even in my current state, waking up to him was as magical now as it had always been.
He was on his stomach, arms folded under the sofa cushions he must’ve chucked on the floor when he’d come home, lower body half hidden by the same blankets covering my legs, hair in his face, and breathing deep. Fast asleep and so fucking beautiful I felt like crying again.
Fuck. I’d forgotten about that.
I reached out and tucked a lock of that dark hair behind Embry’s ear, hooking a tousled wave with fingers that for the first time in days didn’t tremble like a bitch.
Embry didn’t move either, but I was less scared of that than I had been the first time we’d slept in the same bed and I realised how long he took to wake up. And how I fell a little deeper in love with him every time I got to watch it happen. At least, when shit was good in our lives. I didn’t want to think about the days that had been so dark I’d faced the reality of him never waking up at all.
Fuck that. I rubbed his arm. “Em?”
He groaned, shifting but staying in dreamland.
I sighed and let him be, blinking at the clear vision and free-moving joints I’d woken up with. The strength in my legs, the balance, as I rose from our makeshift bed on the floor and moved to the kitchen.
It was still murky outside, cold and damp enough to drive me to the thermostat to crank the heat before I fixed my caffeine craving.
The boiler whirred to life. Scarred by River’s near-death experience, I checked the carbon-monoxide monitor Locke had installed. Checked the battery on the separate alarm. All good, but I still didn’t feel like coffee. I felt like shedding my skin and retreated to the shower instead, blasting myself with scalding water, waiting for the dizziness that still didn’t come.
It felt like a cruel trick—like one wrong move and it would surge from hell and drag me back down. But even without coffee, my head stayed screwed on right, as if my edibles trip had blasted it clean, and I returned to Embry feeling more human than I could remember in forever.
I lay down beside him and rubbed his arm again. This time he stirred a bit more and his eyes cracked open. I expected that to be it, that brief glimpse of his stormy blues all I’d get for a few more attempts. But he shocked the shit out of me by bolting upright and snatching my hand in a death grip.
“Fuck. Are you okay?”
I caught him as he tumbled over me, bracing his slighter frame. “Whoa. Cielito. Of course I’m fucking okay. Are you?”
Embry’s wild gaze bored into me, scanning every inch of my face, tension in every lithe muscle until a harsh breath escaped him and he sagged a little. “You were shaking when I got home. I thought something was really wrong until I realised you’d got into the edibles.”
I winced. “Yeah. Sorry about that. Had myself an accidental exorcism.”
“Did it work?”
“Think so.” I lay back, tugging Embry on top of me as much as he’d allow. “I didn’t realise not smoking would mess with my head so much.”
“That’s what you think happened?” Amusement warred with scepticism in Embry’s sparkly eyes, though now he knew I wasn’t dying, sleep had caught up with him again. “Weed withdrawal?”
“What else would it be?”
“Years of unprocessed trauma catching up with you.”
“You sound like Locke.”
“Locke’s wise. You should listen to him if you won’t take me seriously.”
“I do take you seriously.”
Embry rolled off me and flopped onto the carpet again.
It was easy to follow him. Harder to compute what he was saying. I kissed him instead, the surge of arousal pulsing through me another clue I was a different man to whatever jabbering mess I’d been last night.
Em’s mouth was my fucking home. His warm, scarred skin my fucking sanctuary. I hadn’t woken him up with sex on my mind, but I couldn’t seem to get enough of him. A deep ache woke up inside me, a familiar ache, a longing—a craving —and I knew what it was.
It was that shit I found so hard to say, but if Embry had taught me anything—if Saint had—it was that talking was more than words.
We’d had some of our best times on the floor, as feral as the day we were born. But we’d had mindful times too, when as hot as I’d been for him, the reality that he was fragile had never entirely left me.
That had eased in recent months. Watching him regain the strength his injuries had stolen from him, the weight, the flexibility, had chased those worries away, and I couldn’t remember the last time I’d fucked him with anything but love in my heart.
And fucking lust. Before Embry, sex had been a rare distraction from the world of terror grinding me down. Faceless. Detached. A means to a fucking end. With him, it had become a drug that brought my every sense to life. I wanted him so much, just a glance from him across a crowded room was enough to burn me alive.
Him putting me on my back and looming over me? I was scorched fucking earth until I realised he was backing off, taking his weight from me and his heated skin with it.
“Where are you going?”
“Nowhere.” Embry settled next to me, lacing our fingers together, his chest rising and falling as fast as mine. “Just trying to remember you had surgery a week ago. You’re too good at pretending it never happened.”
I snorted. “That’s why I couldn’t stand up without stacking until this morning.”
Embry peered at me from behind the arm he’d dropped on his forehead. “That’s better now?”
“Yeah.”
“As in, it’s gone?”
“Think so.”
“You think?”
I cursed in Spanish, a habit I’d picked up from Juana—one that made it hard to believe I’d never spoken Spanish around my brothers at all until she and Lili had found me here. “What do you want from me?”
“I want you to be okay.”
“I am okay.”
“Really? You seem agitated.”
Frustration boiled up my throat. Then déjà vu hit me with a brick, taking me back to the time when he’d been the one at the mercy of limitations I’d assumed instead of truly seeing him.
I took a slow breath. Let it out. “I’m not agitated, cielito. I want you to fuck me.”
Embry’s gaze bottomed out, shock widening his sleep-heavy eyes. “You do?”
“Yeah.”
He rolled closer, searching me for all the things I probably hadn’t thought of. But he didn’t ask why—or why now , so perhaps, for once, my face held all the answers.
Embry kissed me, grazing a hand over my tender abdomen. I shivered, and he pulled back to drill his glittery stare into me again. “It might hurt—and I don’t just mean the obvious. You’re more banged up than you realise.”
I knew that. But this yearning for him, for this last piece of us , I couldn’t let it go. Even if I had to tap out, I needed it more than I’d ever needed anything. “Please?”
Embry groaned, cinching his eyes shut. “You have no idea how hard the responsible side of me is fighting right now.”
I knew that too. And what it had taken for me to lose that fight with him.
He wore more clothes than me, still in the sweats he’d fallen asleep in, his dick straining at the soft cotton even as he braved the war going on in his conscience.
I slid a hand over his hip, drawing him closer, tugging him over me as he began to relent, widening my legs to make room for him. Kissing him. Breathing a final plea against his hot lips. “Please?”
For long moments, his mouth fused to mine, he didn’t give me an answer.
Then he pulled back and gripped my chin, the first strains of winter sun filtering through the blinds and sparkling in his gaze. “For this to work, you have to trust me.”
“I do trust you?—”
He sealed my mouth shut. “You have to trust me ,” he repeated, “and let me take the weight in ways you never have. Can you do that? Even if it’s just for this?”
Embry was too clever for me. But as he let his hand slip from my mouth and we stared at each other in the slowly lightening room, every thread of us connected. I knew what he was really asking, and my answer was nothing but truth.
“Yes.”
Embry smiled—he smirked , planting a palm either side of my head. “I’ve thought about this way too much.”
“When?”
“Hmm?”
“When do you think about it?”
“I thought about it the whole time you were gone, until I realised something was wrong.”
“I don’t believe you.” My breath caught as Embry went for my throat. “You’re too obsessed with stable insulation these days— fuck .”
He bit me and the spiked sensation went straight to my dick, arching me from the floor.
Embry held me down, his hand flying to my hip—my bare hip—as he pushed my sweatpants down. “Easy,” he murmured. “Trust me, remember?”
He hadn’t specified trusting him meant lying sprawled on my back while he took me apart. But it happened anyway. He tossed my clothes aside and danced his lips and tongue down my body, and I lost myself in it, in him, as his lemon-and-mint scent swirled around us like a fucking shield, and my cock found its way to his mouth—a scenario that had always sent me spiralling, but this was different. So fucking different. Embry wasn’t getting me riled up to fuck him. He was getting me ready for him to fuck me , and the realities were worlds apart.
I’d never let anyone or anything inside me, not even him. Not his fingers or his dick. His tongue.
But that was all about to change.
Embry blew me until I nearly died on the fucking floor. Until I was panting, legs sprawled, head thrown back, dick so hard it could whittle glass.
Then he pushed two fingers inside me and I writhed , a startled growl spilling out of me, the sharp sensation of that wicked intrusion clashing swords with the desire I’d nursed all these years, losing as pleasure coiled in my gut and the rumble in my chest melted into a groan.
My stomach hurt, the wounds there pulling. I ignored it and ground my hips in a slow circle, sinking into Embry’s expert touch, letting him work that magic inside me, coaxing me open so fluidly I didn’t really notice him gripping my pelvis and shifting me onto my side, bending my leg to my belly.
It exposed me more, and Embry went to town with his mouth everywhere .
Rimming me.
Fuck.
Fuck .
I wasn’t ready for that. Nowhere close. I made a sound I couldn’t calibrate and my fingers scrabbled for purchase on the rug we’d fucked on too many times to count. “Em. Fuck.”
He hummed against me, squeezing my dick with one hand, the fingers of the other still working inside me in tandem with whatever he was doing with his tongue.
I stopped being able to quantify what was happening to me, the aches and pains in my body kept at bay by a frantic pressure I’d seen in him before, when I’d wound him up enough to need me like I needed him right now. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t breathe . As release steamed towards me, I could only fucking surrender and pray I made it out alive.
Tension built in my nerves, in my gut, in my spine. Sweat coated my skin. But just when I thought I’d combust, Embry eased off, turning down the volume.
He didn’t stop, though. He gave me a second to regroup, then he was on me again, over and over, until I thought I’d have a fucking heart attack. And maybe that was his plan. To kill me so he didn’t have to fuck me. Or maybe the stories I’d heard about him yesterday were true.
Of course they were fucking true.
He had me in pieces and I loved it. I mourned that I’d never been this broken by him before.
I missed his face, I realised, but he was way ahead of me, and I found myself on my back again. Found him naked and nearly between my legs, his cock as hard and demanding as mine.
He pressed a lube bottle into my shaky hand. “I want you to do it.”
Command laced his tone.
Another shiver rattled me and I poured lube into my palm, warming it before I smoothed it over Embry’s twitching cock. My husband’s cock. How the fuck had my miserable life amounted to a moment as perfect as this?
Embry took my wrist and pinned my hand over my head, his thighs pressed to mine as he stared down at me again. “This is going to hurt.”
“Nothing hurts forever, cielito.”
His gaze flared. “You’re wiser than you’ll ever know.”
Not as wise as him. As Saint. As Folk. As Alexei. Viktor, even. But our brothers, old and new, were the last thing on my mind as the energy pulsing between us traversed the unknown.
Embry lined us up and eased just the tip of him inside me, pressing so gently I thought this shit would be a breeze, making space for himself with each slow slide in and out, warming me up, stretching me, each push going deeper.
Deeper.
He hit a spot that sparked raw pain and rubbed my chest. “Breathe.”
I obeyed, dizzy for a whole new reason—a better one.
The sting faded.
Embry pushed harder and we danced again, each time claiming a new piece of me until he filled me to the brim and my body went into literal shock.
I could not stop fucking shaking.
Embry held himself up on one strong arm, his free hand rubbing my chest again. He didn’t speak. What was there to say? He knew it hurt—knew that pain, all of it. Knew it would fade into something so fucking good.
So. Fucking. Good.
Sensation began to lick at me, blooming where Embry was buried so deep inside me.
I shifted a little, rolling my hips, tracking the breath that caught in his throat and the burst of pleasure that started life as a slow smoulder burning brighter with every tiny movement I made.
Embry gave it up. For a moment.
Then he stilled me. “Let me do it.”
Let him. What a fucking concept. As if I’d ever stop him. As if I’d ever want to.
I curled a leg around him.
Embry smirked and drew the other into a mirroring position.
He thrust his hips in a torturous grind, searching for the place I knew existed inside him. The one that made him sweat and pant and drive his fist into whatever surface we were fucking on.
Didn’t take long to find it. Or to fall into a rhythm that brought our flesh together, his abdomen skimming mine with every pump inside me. Every slow pull out as he dragged his hand up my throat, a light grip that had my eyes rolling and fresh curses spilling from my lips.
Curses he kissed away, hot breaths morphing with mine, stealing mine all over again as he brought his knees closer, rising up on them, leaving me on my back, gripping my thighs, rolling his dick inside me, hitting every spot, coaxing pleasure so fucking profound I could hardly stand it.
It’s how we stayed for the longest time.
Edging, edging, edging.
To the brink, over and over.
It wasn’t like this when I fucked him— he wasn’t like this. He came hard and fast on my dick, even when I took it slow, and I’d never seen this side of him. This fucking master of control.
And I was here for it.
So fucking here. Any pains long forgotten. He felt perfect inside me. Every throb. Every pulse. Every hypnotic grind that made me fall in love with him all over again.
I was so close, and eventually, so was he.
His thrusts got faster, his breath as uneven and strained as mine. His dick got harder, pushing deeper, and it was too much. I couldn’t contain it. With my head thrown back, every nerve wrenched tight, my fucking bones thrumming, I surrendered to a climax that burned through me like wildfire, eviscerating every trace of the man I’d been before. And as he shot inside me, muscles jumping, cock surging, his low moan scraping my soul, that ache, that longing, finally fucking healed.
Fuck.
Fuck .
I was covered in cum.
Mine.
I chased it with my fingers and smeared it into Embry’s abdomen.
Mine .
He loosed a breathless laugh. “Perv.”
“I like it.”
“You belong in a dirty shifter book.”
“A what?”
“Go to the old lady’s book club on a Tuesday. They’ll tell you all about it.”
No thanks. All the civilised shit the club offered these days was for other people. Embry was for me, and I pulled him into a sticky embrace, as much of one as we could manage while trying to keep the mess away from the incisions on my belly, wounds that were starting to wake up and throb in time with my thundering heart.
My arms shook. My thighs.
Embry kissed me, then pulled away, pulled out , and fuck, was that an experience I hadn’t anticipated.
My fucking jaw trembled and I tried to push myself upright.
Embry eased me back down. “Not yet.”
He got up and disappeared. At least it felt that way for the lonely seconds he was gone.
Then he was back with water and a hot cloth. All the shit I usually did for him without thinking too hard about why , beyond that I wanted to take care of him.
He cleaned us up. Coaxed me to roll over and use him as a pillow, the blankets we’d slept with tucked around us.
I floated away for a while, drifting to the sensation of his fingers stroking through my hair, his quiet breaths. But there was one thing I couldn’t stop thinking about and I wondered if he knew—about the reputation I’d had no idea about until yesterday. If he’d even care.
In my head, I propped myself up on one elbow and asked him. The reality was different. Because I didn’t care. These quiet moments with him were too good to give up, and if I died right here on my living room floor, I’d die a happy man.
The Juana thing still bothered at me, though. Enough that Embry heard the cogs spinning in my brain and shifted me around to face him.
“What’s wrong?”
I told him. All of it. Even the rumours about him and his magic dick.
Embry pursed his lips, wry amusement warming his gaze. “That’s why you wanted me to fuck you? To see if it was true?”
“No.”
Embry cocked a brow.
“ No .” I leaned in and nipped his collarbone. “The two things aren’t connected. Besides, I know you , chaparrito. I had no doubt it was fucking true.”
Embry snorted, but his humour faded as he considered the rest. “I hadn’t thought about how lonely Juana must be. It’s so crazy around the club it’s too easy to forget she’s alone.”
“I know.”
“What are you going to do?
“Me?”
“Yeah.” Embry ghosted a hand up my ribcage, fingertips grazing my chest. “Whether you mean to be or not, you’re the obstacle. You ever seen a brother go up to Juana in the bar? Talk to her like she’s a regular girl?”
I bristled, despite the optimistic reaction my body had to Embry’s light touch. “She’s not a regular girl. Neither is Orla. Or Willow.”
“Orla’s fixed for life. And Willow has no clue who most of us really are. Juana can’t get a flat tyre without you knowing about it two minutes later. It’s no wonder she can’t fucking breathe.”
Guilt threatened the afterglow keeping my limbs slack and my brain sluggish enough to listen . “I’m going to find her a new bodyguard. Someone who can be around her when she’s not with the kids and not tell me a single fucking thing about it.”
“Someone you have no relationship with then?”
“I guess.”
“That’s gonna be hard for you.”
“You said that about what we just did.”
“No, I said it would hurt.”
And he wasn’t fucking wrong, about that or this. But sometimes things had to hurt and be hard to be right, and however I felt about Juana, I had to let her go. “Nash is going to help me find someone.”
“Then what? Who do they go to if something happens?”
“I don’t know. You?”
“No.”
“No?”
“Think about it from Juana’s point of view.” Embry tipped me onto my back and stole a kiss. “Swapping me for you isn’t all that different. It needs to be someone you trust with her safety and her privacy.”
He was right. About all of it. But his absent affection as he spat the words derailed my thoughts.
His lips at my neck.
His dick hard between us.
I reached for it and wrapped my hand around him. “You still got juice in the tank, cielito?”
Embry tried to bat me away. “Leave it.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“ No .”
That word had done a lot of heavy lifting since I’d been awake this morning, but I meant it this time more than ever. Cos I’d never get tired of my husband wanting me. Of him loving that I wanted him too.
Can’t lie. I didn’t have another railing in me. But there was more than one way for Em to keep me in line, and I knew this dance well.
I tugged him on top of me. He lowered himself on my dick, keeping his weight off me, leaning back so his cock jutted out, and I could see how much he loved this. How hard he was as he rocked us together, grinding out a rhythm that was every bit as hypnotic as when he’d been inside me. The same strength binding his lean muscles, the same elegance in every curve and angle of his agile body.
We fucked for as long as we could stand it. Came with the same blistering heat we had the first time. Then we showered together and I realised the dizziness plaguing me the last few days really was gone.
And ... I’d made Embry late—a fact hammered home by his phone blowing up when we got out.
“I have to go.” He came up behind me and kissed the nape of my neck. “Are you bringing Lili for her lesson later?”
“Yeah.”
“Don’t drive if you’re tired.”
“Em, I’m fine.”
He spun me round to check. Scrutinised me down to my core, but for the first time in days, I passed the test, and he held out a hand to help me up from the bed.
I took it. Let him ease me to my feet.
Embry smiled and kissed my cheek. “I love you.”
* * *
I found Cam and Rubi in the chapel. They glanced up as I approached, assessing me as much as everyone else in recent days.
“There he is,” Rubi called. “Back from the dead.”
“Fuck off.”
“Cannot, will not. We’ve been worried about you, Matsy.”
Cam’s scrutiny backed him up. He gave me his full attention. “You saved me a trip. I was about to come and see you.”
“Why?”
“Why not?”
He pulled out a chair and gestured for me to park my arse. Then he rose and disappeared into the kitchen, leaving me with Rubi and his droll fucking stare.
I sighed. “What?”
Rubi kept staring as the scent of bacon drifted from the kitchen. Kept grinning, like the cat I’d had to offer eleven food choices to before I could leave my house.
“Just say it.” I snatched the nearest vape and treated myself to a lungful of nicotine. “And then shut the fuck up.”
“You got laid.”
“Did I?”
“Course you did. Nothing else makes you this chill.”
“How do you know I’m chill?”
“You didn’t punch anyone between here and the car.”
“I haven’t punched anyone in ages,” I countered. “ You’re the one with the recent hooligan points.”
Cam emerged as I dropped that nugget, a glare already threatening his nice side. “The fuck is he talking about?”
“Fucked if I know.” Rubi leaned back in his seat. “Probably off his tits on paracetamol.”
Cam’s scowl intensified, but it didn’t go anywhere. And he didn’t ask any more questions as he set a plate in front of me and clapped my shoulder. “Eat.”
He meant it with love, but I knew an order when I heard one, and I contemplated a breakfast that was more food than I’d seen in—fuck, I didn’t even know. Weeks, probably. I hadn’t been hungry, but I was now, and I fell on my plate with enough enthusiasm that Cam’s glare disappeared.
Rubi’s smirk remained, but I could live with that. I mean, he wasn’t fucking wrong, was he?
I cleared my plate.
Cam grinned. “You want more?”
“Fuck, no.”
He chuckled and took the plate away.
Came back with coffee and by then, Rubi had wandered off. “I’ve been worried about you.”
“I’m all right.”
“Can see that. Doesn’t mean you have been. Anything you want to talk about?”
I eyed him through the vapour of the stolen vape. “Not really. Nash tell you about the Juana thing?”
“Everyone’s told me about that, one way or another.”
“Even her?”
I was joking, but awkwardness blanketed the room. Juana had been attracted to Decoy the first year she’d been here, but for whatever reason, she spent more time with Cam these days and she was no more immune to him than the rest of us.
With a lethal grin, Cam lit a cigarette and offered me the pack.
I thought about it way too hard. Vapes were shit. But the incisions in my belly still throbbed and pulled enough to stop me lighting up. “Nah, you’re all right.”
Cam dropped the pack on the table. “Jokes aside, it was Nash who came to me about the bodyguard thing. River was there. He said it’s something Axel could do. How do you feel about that?”
“Axel... the mechanic?”
“That’s the one. You don’t know him?”
Nope. As a rule, I was closest to the brothers who did the dodgiest work. Axel wasn’t on that list, which had its pros and cons. “I don’t know shit about him.”
Cam grinned again. “That’s the point, isn’t it?”
I really wanted a cigarette. Karma for all the times I’d made fun of Nash for being in the same predicament rained down on me. I shifted in my seat, sore from... lots of things, glad Rubi had fucked off. “All right. Tell me what I need to know then.”
“He’s Irish,” Cam started, as if I gave a fuck. “On his dad’s side. McShane.”
“Excellent. Sign him up.”
“Don’t be a cunt.”
“I’m not being a cunt. I just don’t give a fuck if he bleeds Guinness. It doesn’t mean anything to me.”
O’Brian to the core, Cam stared as if I’d grown three heads, taking a full minute before he let it go. “He’s a legacy ,” he amended. “Been with us since he was a kid, on and off. We lost him to the MMA circuit a few years ago, but he came back to work for River when his ma got sick.”
“She get better?”
“Died the night the Porth Luck garage burned down.”
“What’s he been doing since?”
“Raising his sisters, but the last one left home in September, so he came to help us rebuild Crow Land.”
“You like him?”
Cam ashed his cigarette, exhaling a last lungful of smoke. “Course I do. He’s quiet and keeps his fucking opinions to himself.”
“It’s a good thing to not know how someone thinks?”
“Actions speak louder than words.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning he never left River alone with Bear. We didn’t realise it until recently, but Axel’s the reason that sneaky fed never got my brother in a room.”
River was no rat. He’d have offed himself long before he’d have rolled on the club—on his family, but I got the sentiment. “And he can fight?”
“He’s put me down before.”
That got my attention. Cam wasn’t unbreakable. He’d come unstuck in the ring, we all had—it was how we learned to win on the street. But it was fucking rare. If Axel was capable of that, he was more competent than I’d hoped for in a bodyguard for Juana. “What’s he like with kids?”
“I don’t know,” Cam admitted. “It’s never come up. I can’t see him being bad, but if he’s Juana’s protection when she’s a free woman, it shouldn’t matter too much.”
I drummed my fingers on the table, not disagreeing, letting my ravaged gut guide my thoughts as much as I could. “Hot fucker, though. He got a girl of his own?”
“Only ever seen him with fellas.”
“How old is he?”
“Twenty-four.”
“Really? Thought he was older.”
“And I thought you said you didn’t know him.”
“I don’t. Just seen him around.” That’s how I knew he was hot, and I couldn’t deny I found as much comfort in the knowledge this dude was young and gay as I did in his fighting skills. “You think I should talk to him?”
“Depends how involved you want to be. I thought the idea was that you weren’t.”
Embry had made the same point. Which meant I couldn’t ignore it, and the energy I’d woken with went into overdrive.
I abandoned my chair and paced the chapel, ignoring the discomfort, letting it fade to insignificance, trying to see the bigger picture in Juana going out into the world and living the life she deserved.
What if she got married?
What if she had another baby?
All those things and what they meant for the unconventional family we’d built.
“Mats.” Cam rose and got in my fucked-up face with a gentle interception that didn’t feel like his first. He gripped my shoulders. “Look, I know it’s fucking hard, but whatever’s going to happen to her, you have to let it. Same as I had to do when River left.”
“He came back.”
“Yeah, and there’s no saying she’s even going to leave. But your kids might one day, and you’ll have to let that happen too. Trust me on this, fighting it just kills everything quicker.”
Ominous words, but he meant them enough that I agreed to him calling Axel and handling the whole thing for me. I trusted him enough, which through no fault of Cam’s hadn’t always been true. But things had changed—I’d changed, and this fucked-up thing we called life had moved on.
Cam set a meet with Axel. I tuned out of the details, letting my thoughts stray to Embry and how we’d begun our day. My blood heated before the first image hit me, head swimming for reasons I clung to, leaving the stress I’d overthought myself into behind.
It was easy to see how Embry had got his rep among the women. I lacked the capacity for multiple orgasms, but as the release he’d driven me to this morning rattled through my brain, I mused it was probably for the best.
No way I’d survive two of those in a row.
Or how hard I’d come when he’d pinned me down for round two and reset the balance.
Cam rapped his knuckles on my skull. “Wake up.”
“I’m not asleep.”
“Not what I meant.”
“Eh?”
He shook his head. “I’m not used to you being spaced out. It’s fucking weird. You need more food?”
I was still stuffed to the gills from the breakfast he’d piled on my plate. Truly, the only thing I needed right now was Embry, and lucky for me, I had the best reason in the world to go plant myself where he was. “Lili has a half day at school. I need to pick her up and take her to the farm.”
“I know. Rubi’s going with you.”
“What? Why?”
“A couple of reasons.” Cam grinned and mussed my hair. “One, we weren’t sure you were up to driving that far. Two, I need to do a site inspection and Rubes is pretty good at keeping Joe out of my face.”
“You’re coming too?”
“Yup.”
On his hog, thank fuck. Driving to Cornwall and back didn’t faze me, but being trapped in a car with my boss, Rubi, and my lippy kid for an hour each way was a hard no.
We emerged from the chapel into bright winter sunshine.
Decoy was in the yard, raising the massive Christmas tree into place. He beckoned me closer as I neared him and tugged me into a brief embrace. “Missed you, brother.”
“I haven’t been anywhere.”
“Yeah, yeah. See you later for the lights.”
The big switch-on. Right. I’d forgotten about that—on purpose, maybe. I still found it hard to believe I no longer had to endure one of the club’s most wholesome family events beneath the weight of everything I didn’t have. That this year, like last year, Embry and my girls would be right there with me.
I wondered if Decoy felt the same. If he had the same scars from every year he’d had to haul that tree around not knowing if Ivy would ever see it.
Contemplating it tightened my arms around him. “I fucking love you. We all do.”
Decoy grunted in surprise, but I didn’t stick around for whatever he might’ve said in return. I continued to my car to find Rubi already behind the wheel, still smirking as much as this morning.
“Did they take that appendix from up your?—”
“Shut the fuck up.”
Rubi shut up and watched me ease into the passenger seat without further comment. He cued his Mats and Roo Want To Kill Me playlist and steered my car out of the compound.
Cam followed behind, rumbling on his hog at a steady pace. I figured that was it. Then two miles along the A-road, two sport bikes cut in front of us. Alexei. Viktor. A combination that had me frowning. “What’s that all about?”
Rubi shrugged. “Nothing I’m important enough to know about. Sure it ain’t shady, though. You see how chill Cammie is these days?”
“Joe don’t like strangers.”
I was thinking of Viktor. Joe had come across Alexei enough to mostly ignore him. But Rubi had news for me.
“Joe already met Dodger. They get on just fine.”
“Dodger?”
“Road name, innit?”
“For Viktor ?”
Rubi laughed, leaving me wallowing in the ignorance I likely deserved after being off radar so long, and I didn’t mind it. Rubi made me feel good, and despite what he thought, I didn’t mind his music that much. Every track he played came with a memory attached—memories I’d learned to cherish.
Family.
Friends.
Brothers.
We picked Lili up from school. Engrossed in her sketchbook, she didn’t have much to say, and the drive passed in a muddle of Rubi’s batshit tunes and random chatter until we reached Whisper Farm, a sacred place only Orla had ever been until my kid came along and turned everyone’s lives, even Joe’s, upside down.
My car was allowed up the lane. The bikes weren’t. Cam and the others rode on to park elsewhere while Rubi steered us into a space near Harry Carter’s wellness clinic.
I spied the big man through a window, working on someone. Up ahead, Joe emerged from the main house, grinning as he saw Liliana, like he always did, however he felt about who’d made the journey to bring her here.
She skipped ahead to meet him, but I found my gaze straying in the opposite direction, following the trail and sound of a working building site, searching out Embry as if I’d die if I didn’t lay eyes on him in the next ten seconds. Relaxing as his dark mop of hair came into view, his cute face creased in a frown as he mixed cement for the breeze-block wall behind him.
Fuck, I love him.
I caught up with Liliana, Rubi at my heels.
Joe spared him an up-nod. “Your weirdo mate’s already here.”
Rubi swung his gaze to where Joe pointed. To where Saint lounged against a tree by the strongest fence on the farm, sharing a deep stare with Shadow, a stallion—a fucking unit of a horse—I had on good authority had almost killed Joe at least twice.
“Fucking hell.” I sucked a breath through my teeth. “He have a death wish?”
Joe shrugged. “Nah. They get on. It’s how I know Malone’s a wrong’un.”
Lies. Joe and Saint got on just fine. It was how I knew the animosity between Joe and Cam was more habit than real. Didn’t know why Saint was here, though. He’d fronted most of the money for the stable build we’d offered Joe in return for keeping the horse Liliana had outgrown, but I found it hard to believe he’d rocked up for a site inspection, and with Cam and Alexei still elsewhere, I was probably the only person he’d tell.
I left Liliana with Rubi and picked my way to where he stood, half expecting him to ignore me. But he turned as I approached and tilted his head, a faint smile tugging at his lips.
Then he shocked the shit out of me and opened his arms, drawing me into the latest in a long line of fraternal embraces I’d had today, but from him, from Saint , a brother I hadn’t seen since he’d left the haulage run, it meant as much as Alexei putting a blade to my scruffy jaw had yesterday.
I hugged him back, surprised how long he let it go on for. How chill he stood in my arms instead of vibing like a trapped animal. “All right?”
Saint shrugged, easing away like we did this shit every day, as if it wasn’t the first time since he’d hugged me right here on this farm on my wedding day. “I wanted to see you.”
“I’ve been at home for a week.”
“I wanted to see you here .”
“Why?”
His shoulders rose again, his only answer. But I could live with that. I’d known Saint a long time and I’d never wasted much of my puny brain power trying to figure him out. If he was out of words, he’d find another way to tell me. Or he wouldn’t and I’d never know, a scenario that seemed more likely as Saint reclaimed his tree and resumed his stare-down with Shadow.
It was my cue to go back to Liliana, but turning my back on him didn’t come easy. I glanced between him and the huge black stallion. “Careful. This one bites and he means it.”
That smile warmed Saint’s face again. “But look at you now.”
“I meant the fucking horse.”
Saint just stared.
I shook my head and walked away, joining Rubi and Joe at the ring fence while Liliana saddled Casper and got him ready for her lesson. “Where’s Clemi?”
Joe’s daughter was almost as cute as Hope and I liked hanging out with her while Liliana rode, especially now she had a new horse twice the size Chappie had been.
“Inside with her mum.”
Distracted by Liliana, Joe barely glanced my way. Beside me, Rubi made a sound like he needed an explosive shit.
Joe ignored him and walked away.
I shot him a glare. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
“Nothing.”
“Why are you all red?”
“That’s not the question.”
“What is the question?”
Rubi held out his tattooed hands, opening them like a book. “What’s yellow and invisible?”
I sighed, knowing he was going to tell me and I still wouldn’t get it. “Go on.”
“This bag of popcorn.”
“What?”
Rubi’s grin expanded into Cheshire Cat territory. “You’ll see.”
Like Saint, that was all I was getting, and I let it go to watch my kid mount her huge horse and ride him like a boss, brighter and younger than I ever saw her at home, pure joy lighting her face. It made me think of those crazy months I’d spent tunnelling under a crooked wall to get to her. All those years I’d spent playing cat and mouse with a cartel boss who wanted my head on a spike and my daughter’s virginity sold to the highest bidder. Every moment I’d survived to live this one and every moment after it.
Emotion got the better of me.
Sensing it, Rubi fell quiet and watched Lili ride too. I couldn’t say how much time had passed when Alexei popped up beside me. “This is the new horse?”
I hummed an answer, still caught in my feelings.
Rubi leaned around me. “What’s with you and Vicky on tour? Jealous of Cam’s new bestie?”
Alexei paused long enough to make Rubi squirm. Then he inclined his head beyond us to where Viktor had positioned himself by a paddock that contained half a dozen more donkeys than the last time I’d thought to look. “Vitya has been missing his home. I thought he might like it here, and it annoyed me enough to find out.”
“It annoys you to want nice things for Viktor?”
“Maybe.” Alexei shrugged as his presence tempted Saint away from his tree and his lover stepped into the space beside him. “But I did not remember his bike was found here when he was missing, so I’m wondering if I made a mistake.”
“Only if it smells the same.”
Alexei squinted at me. “If what smells the same.”
“The air. The dirt. I know I was only took for a few days, but I mostly forget about it unless I catch a fucking whiff of dead grass and rotting wood.”
“Then how do you feel?”
“A lot less smiley than Viktor and those mules.”
“Donkeys,” Saint corrected.
“Thank you, enforcer,” Alexei said. “I will keep that in mind next time Viktor’s sad face becomes so irritating.”
“Fucking-A.” Rubi clutched his chest. “Give him a kiss, Chattypants. Before I do.”
Saint absolutely did not kiss Alexei on command. He skated a subtle palm over his hip instead, guiding him close enough that Alexei glanced over his shoulder with the kind of smile that made me forget he was the most dangerous human I’d ever shared oxygen with.
One of them, anyway.
I tore my gaze from Viktor as a voice too young to be Liliana’s called my name. Behind me, the front door to the main house had opened and Clementina Carter skipped across the yard, hand in hand with a tall neon-haired woman I assumed to be her bio mum—the surrogate Joe and Harry had used a few years ago.
Me and Clemi got on great. I broke away from my brothers to scoop her from the ground and swing her in a careful circle before I settled her on my hip. “There you are. I’ve been looking for you.”
That earned me a giggle and a sticky hand in my face.
Her mum laughed too. “Sorry. She saw you through the window and wouldn’t stay inside.”
“I don’t mind.” I took a proper look at the woman, taking in her electric-orange hair, full red lips, and scorching tats on every inch of her milky white skin. “We’re mates.”
“Aren’t we all?” The woman fired her attention—her smirk—over my shoulder to where I’d left the others. “Isn’t that right, old friend?”
Frowning, I spun around to find Saint smirking right back, leaning against a fence post, casual as you fucking like. “Lena, don’t play. Not here.”
A subtle warning laced Saint’s rare uninhibited words, but the amusement I’d seen in him earlier remained, and it was enough to light Alexei’s flinty gaze with dangerous curiosity while Rubi turned red all over again, mouth clamped shut as if he had any hope of containing the bullshit fighting its way out.
Lena stood with us a while until Clemi got bored of my ugly mug and they went on their way.
I waited for Rubi to burst with whatever it was I’d clearly missed, but Alexei broke first, waiting only a heartbeat longer than it took for Lena to be out of earshot. “This is the woman you used to fuck together?”
Saint cleared his throat. “Yeah.”
“I see.” Alexei’s expression was unreadable. “But she was only the beginning, no?”
He walked away without waiting for an answer.
Rubi whistled. “Ain’t gonna kill her, is he?”
Saint snorted. No .
Me? I remained a bemused motherfucker, though Rubi’s popcorn obsession now made sense.
I threw him a bone. “Want to fill me in?”
Rubi chanced a wary glance at Saint, but he didn’t seem to care about whatever tea Rubi was dying to spill, and the tension of Alexei’s ambiguous reaction faded. “That, my boy, was Lena Gordon. Siren sister to the club and the closest thing to a girlfriend our king ever had before this mister came along and stole his heart.”
Saint shook his head. “Not girlfriend.”
“Yeah, cos you banged her too.”
“That’s not why.”
“Semantics. Point is, that crafty cunt—” Rubi shot a dry look in Joe’s direction, “—has been reaming Cam all these years for shagging his girlfriend, then he goes and knocks up Cammie’s ex. Couldn’t. Make. This. Shit. Up.”
“Does Cam know?” That brilliance came from me.
Saint said nothing, but as if he’d heard every unsaid word, Joe looked away from Liliana long enough to send Rubi a wink and I shook my fucking head. How did our world keep getting smaller?
My brothers had no answers for me. Saint disappeared, there one minute, gone the next, and Rubi wandered off to make fun of Viktor’s donkey fascination. It left me alone as a light rain began to fall, misting the air and soaking my skin. Cold rain, but I liked it. I still had a few layers of myself to wash clean, and I’d learned things could be that literal if I let them.
“You know, you could stand under the tree.” Dusty arms, hands flaked with cement, slid around my waist from behind. “Then you wouldn’t get wet.”
Embry.
I closed my eyes to his touch. “Lili’s getting wet.”
“Doesn’t mean you have to.”
I knew that. But I didn’t move, save to tug him around me so I could see the face I’d spent all day missing. That messy black hair, those wise, glittery eyes. The lips I’d been obsessed with from the moment we’d met.
The juncture of his throat.
I dropped my mouth to it with a light kiss.
Embry shivered. “Don’t play with me. Not here.”
The words of his murmured plea were so similar to Saint’s, I pulled back and gave him a look.
Embry cocked a brow. “What?”
“I have some serious fucking gossip for you. Unless you already know it...” Did he? Embry’s job was to keep other people’s business to himself, but I wasn’t sure how far that extended. Embry and Joe were close, but then, so were Cam and Embry. Whose side was my husband really on?
“Hey.” Embry poked my arm, shifting his thigh to subtly press against my half-hard dick. “Don’t wind me up, you’ll lose.”
Could never lose with him in my arms, but I dropped the tea anyway, and I knew in a heartbeat that he’d had no fucking idea. He took a moment, breathing steadily into my chest. Then he whirled around to stare at his cousin.
Focused on Liliana, Joe didn’t notice. Or maybe he didn’t care. Either way, I found it hard to believe he’d had a surrogate baby with Lena for any reason more than it was simply how it was meant to be. Joe was a grumpy bastard, but his heart was pure love. For Harry. For Clementina.
For Embry.
I held my husband a little closer, better equipped to handle the wave of want that swept over me than I was when we were alone. “I love you.”
Embry tilted his head to look up at me, exposing the few inches I had on him, height wise, at least. “Always knew it, but hearing the words never gets old.”
“I married you on this farm.”
“You did.”
“I’d marry you again, cielito, a hundred times.”
Embry smiled, rain sliding down his cheeks. “I’d marry you every day.”