37. Alexei
37
ALEXEI
The wedding celebrations were long, but I did not mind. It gave me time to be amused by the unspoken determination everyone seemed to have not to give Saint a moment to himself.
I felt his pain, but I dulled it drinking the homemade wine Iggy Whitlock passed around and watching Cam give the speech he’d been working on his entire adult life.
For River.
For Rubi—Cam’s impressions of him were uncanny. Or maybe it was the wine. Thick and fruity, a term the nomad often used to describe the prospects loitering outside the clubhouse bar, it was stronger than vodka, sweeter too, and perhaps to blame for my good mood by the time people began to leave or turn in for the night.
Rubi and River had already left for a destination I was not privy to, beyond the trackers installed on their bikes. For tonight, I had entrusted their safety to Jakov in return for a whole summer of not murdering him on sight.
Ranger and Viktor were escorting Locke and Nash home with Orla and their children.
Everyone else would remain.
Even us, but not here.
Eventually, anyway.
Cam was with Juana, helping her take her children inside to sleep. I found Saint with Joe Carter, and it was Joe’s gaze I met across the garden, one of only two souls Saint and I had told of our plans.
Another hour passed.
Two.
It was close to midnight when the time came to slip away.
Cam was half asleep in a lawn chair. I took his hands and pulled him to his feet. “Come with us.”
With me.
With Saint.
With Joe who, led by the earth, had already disappeared into the depths of a farm that was not his.
Cam scrubbed a hand down his face. “I can’t ride yet. That fucking wine. I drank it hours ago and I still feel pissed.”
“We are not leaving.”
Confusion darkened Cam’s features, but he trusted me, as he had that first night when he’d followed me home to my penthouse lair, and his instincts were as true now as they had been then.
I walked him into the shadows, as he had walked me into the light.
Saint fell into step at his other side, and Cam’s bewilderment deepened as we approached the farthest orchard from the house, where Joe and his friend Jevon waited for us. Where Jekka waited for us—the matriarch Saint and I had never had.
Cam’s footsteps slowed. Expecting it, I slipped in front of him while Saint dropped back to flank him behind.
Over Cam’s shoulder, I met the complex gaze of the soul who’d healed me more than he’d ever know.
Saint nodded, smiling. Do it.
I took Cam’s hands and let him see all he’d taught me to be. “They say souls are born in pairs, but I never believed one existed for me until I met you. You are the greatest gift to me, Cam. And Saint is my whole heart.” I took a breath, my voice thick with emotion. “The man I was then is the man I must always be, and the world cannot ever see the three of us, but we would like to marry you anyway, if you will have us.”
Shock flared in Cam’s molten gaze, eclipsing the bewilderment there. He leaned back into Saint, a subconscious movement, as if to check he was real. That I was real and my words were not a figment of something he’d never even thought to desire.
Saint nuzzled his neck, primal and claiming. “It won’t be legal, but that shit doesn’t mean anything to me. I want you , I want Alexei, and I want it forever.”
Cam’s slow blink seemed to take as long as Saint’s dreams of forever. He dropped one of my hands and reached blindly for him. “Am I fucking awake right now?”
“Say yes, biker boy, and we will find out.”
“Yes.”
I had never felt happiness like I did in that moment. At least until we stood together beneath the oldest tree on the Whitlock farm and Joe, a man who claimed to despise Cam, bound us forever with the same scarf he had used for the others. For himself , when he’d married his own true love more than a decade ago.
“You’d better appreciate this, O’Brian. This scarf is older than your fucking sins.”
Cam grinned. Almost. He still seemed stunned by the turn his evening had taken.
He gazed at me, and then Saint. And then Jevon as he placed his hand over where ours were joined. “You give your hearts as the earth gives you life. May your love be as wild as the moon and the sun, and as free as the trees and the birds in the sky. May you find strength in each other, adventure and joy. May you always find peace.”
Joe withdrew the bindings.
Jevon’s hand remained. “Go forward in love, my friends. And so it is.”
Cam closed his eyes. “And so it fucking is.”
* * *
A few hours later, we left.
Cam did not know where we were going, and for once, neither did Saint.
I led them west, towards home, but turned inland before we reached Whitness, riding away from the water that tormented Saint so on his darkest days.
They followed me uphill and into the dense woodland. Through a gate that Jakov had secured for me before he’d left after Christmas and into the grounds of a property it had taken me six long months to buy.
I pulled up outside the house that had been built over five levels. In the dark, we could not see the far-reaching views over Dartmoor, but that would come in the morning.
Our bikes engines cut off, leaving only blissful silence and a natural tranquillity Saint needed so much. It was quiet here. Private. Still . It was ours, if they wanted it.
Saint sprang from his bike, his bright gaze flitting all over.
Cam was slower to roll from his, but he came to me, pressing close, hands on my skin, lips at my temple. “What is this place?”
“I sold the penthouse in Bristol. I thought maybe we could use this as our bolthole instead.”
Cam held me tighter, not saying a thing for a long moment. Then he tipped my chin, forcing me to look at him, not that it was any hardship. “Why?”
“The penthouse was tainted by death. This... I would like it to be a place for living.”
Saint drew nearer. “There’s a forest over there.”
“I know, wingman. Twelve acres, and it is ours too, if men can own such a thing.”
Cam chuckled. “You bought the woods?”
“I took some advice and bought all the land down to the road. Jakov is good for more than poor decisions, I suppose.”
Saint wandered off, as fascinated as he had been on the Whitlock family farm, a sight that made me long for daylight.
Cam stuck by me as I moved to the front door and lifted our joined hands to press his thumb to the lock pad.
The front door clicked, the heavy security system buzzing in my phone, the hidden security system that did nothing to mar the rustic beauty I’d chosen for Saint. The rough wood floors and cracked walls, the spider webs in the old beams that, for him, I would happily live with for the rest of my days.
We slipped inside. The house was old but had been mostly renovated by the previous owners. In the spring, I had furnished it enough to be habitable.
I had furnished it enough for this .
Cam pushed me up against the wall. “Tell me there’s a fucking bed in this place.”
“A bed for fucking, biker boy?”
“You’ve had your fun with me today, don’t play with me now.”
The laughter in his voice belied the heat. I knew he would not care if we did not fuck tonight, and nor would I.
I showed him around the house, every level, every room. The high ceilings. The huge fireplaces. The glass roof in the main bedroom that opened to the stars when the British weather allowed them to shine.
And it was a good night for stargazing. In the bedroom, we found Saint already there, stretched out on the clean sheets, staring up at the sky, his boots and jacket discarded.
My heart swelled to see him—the life in his gaze, his smile. Despite the sensation of that sacred silk scarf still seared into my skin, I had not expected him to come inside so soon. “Do you like it?”
Saint nodded. “So quiet.”
“And it will stay that way.” I sensed Cam shedding his jacket and boots and passing me. “This house is not where people come.”
“I like the sound of that.” Cam lay down beside Saint, his hair coal-dark against the ash-grey bedding, and lifted his arm for Saint to slide beneath it. “Is there a well we can drop our phones down?”
“If you wish it.”
Cam almost responded, but Saint shifting into his embrace distracted him, and I could understand that.
We had built-in wardrobes. I gathered the clothes they had already left on the floor and tucked them away with my own boots and riding jacket.
I returned to the bed and lay on Cam’s other side, resting my chin on his chest, close enough to Saint that I felt his slow, even breaths. His peaceful breaths, a reality that had seemed so far away for him when we had first met.
Reaching for Saint’s hand, I closed my eyes. “We are safe here, wingman, I promise.”
A low hum was his only answer and time began to drift. I may have slept, I was not sure. The only clue I had was that I opened my eyes to the first strains of summer sun sometime later.
Also, I was on my back and Saint was above me, brandishing a water bottle.
I took it and drank, knowing it would make him happy, noting how he watched me, his gaze drifting to my throat as I swallowed.
Cam .
He was beside me, sitting up, drinking coffee.
And yet, Saint had brought me water. What was this outrage?
I moved to set the bottle aside.
Saint took it from me and dropped his hands either side of my head.
His eyes glowed. Saint remained hard to read when it came to sex, but this... this was a look I had learned to interpret from the start. He wants me. A fact that burned through me untamed, a thrill that would never get old.
I slid a palm along his jaw. “You would like to fuck?”
Saint kissed me and he tasted of love and forever. Poetic, perhaps. Nonsense, even, but it was where my mind went. And where it stayed as he swept his tongue into my mouth, and every nerve I possessed lit up for him, muscle memory taking over, slotting us together.
My leg hooked over Saint’s hip. His hardness ground into me so slowly it almost hurt, the long roll of his hips pure torture, and I braced myself for what would come next. Craved it as much as I feared it.
Cam fucked me with the savageness I demanded of him. Saint had always fucked me with the love we deserved.
I bit his lip. “Do not tease me. I will surely die of it this time.”
“You’re not dying.”
Saint’s whisper gravelled from his lips like shattered glass. He rolled his hips again, then a flicker in his gaze seemed to change everything.
I drew back to give him space. To give myself space to decipher it. Saint and I, we had never needed the words he fought so hard for.
We did not need them now, but I said them all the same, unashamed of how much hope I put in his answer. “Saint, would you like me to fuck you?”