Chapter 15
Saint
Oisín vibrates behind me the whole ride back. He’s trying not to, his hands clenched at my waist, fingers curled so tightly the knuckles have gone pale, as the tremor keeps moving through him in small, visible waves no amount of stillness can hide.
He head is buried against the back of my neck and shoulder blades, no doubt soaking blood into my cut.
None of the blood is his. I know that because I checked him before we got onto the bikes, checked his throat, his ribs, his arms, the scrape along the side of his neck where that bastard locked an arm around him and used him like cover.
I know he isn’t badly hurt, but I still keep looking at the mark.
That bloodbath didn’t have to happen. Oisín should never have been there.
Sol should never have been there. I could’ve handled the buyer, the complaint, and Maverick from the Reapers without my father turning it into a lesson and dragging Oisín in as proof of whatever the fuck Sol thinks he still needs to teach me.
That’s what sits under the rage. Sol didn’t want answers.
He wanted confirmation. He wanted to see whether Oisín would break, whether I would react, whether the Rogues had their fingers in the complaint, whether his son could still be provoked with the right pressure on the right throat.
He got his answers because old men like him always know how to make a room pay for what they want.
Behind me, Oisín shifts. It’s a small movement, just his shoulder dragging against the seat as if his body can’t find a position that doesn’t hurt, but my grip tightens on the bars hard enough that the leather complains.
By the time we reach Obsidian, the front lot is full enough to make me want to turn the bike around and drive through every man standing there.
Conversations die as we pull in. Word has already reached them, no doubt, but I don’t have time to entertain it.
I put a hand out for Oisín to climb off and then I twist toward him.
He looks up at me like he’s coming back from somewhere far away. I reach forward, catch the back of his neck, and pull him toward me with more care than my temper wants to allow.
“You hurt?” I ask.
His throat works before he answers. “No.”
The lie comes too quickly, but I can’t fault him over. His face is pale beneath streaks of blood that don’t belong to him, eyes still too wide, mouth held carefully closed like if he loosens one part of himself, the rest might follow.
“Your throat,” I say.
“It’s fine.”
“It’s marked.”
His fingers tighten on his thighs. “So is the rest of me.”
The sentence sits between us, and for once I don’t know what to do with it.
I could tell him those marks are mine. I could tell him that’s the difference, that what I leave on him is proof and what that bastard left is a violation.
Even in my own head, the distinction sounds too honest to survive daylight.
Instead of answering, I just gestured for us to head inside.
The front of the clubhouse goes quiet as we push through, my anger starting to rise again with how pliant Oisín is beneath my touch.
Tally steps into our path. “Saint.”
“Not now.”
“He’s bleeding.”
“He’s not.”
“That throat says otherwise.”
I stop long enough to look at her, and the room braces around the glance. Her gaze cuts from my face to Oisín’s, and the anger in her expression changes into something that understands exactly what I’m trying to get him away from.
“He’s coming upstairs,” I tell her.
“He needs to be looked at.”
“He needs out of this room.”
I wait for her to step aside and then take him through the private hall and into my room. The second the door closes behind us, the clubhouse falls away. Only my room, my bed, blood on my hands, and Oisín standing in the middle of it.
I strip first because if I stop moving, the warehouse will catch up. My cut comes off and lands over the chair. My shirt follows, peeled from skin where blood has started to tack the fabric down. I kick off my boots, undo my belt, moving on instinct.
Thinking means seeing Oisín pulled back against another man’s chest again. Thinking means feeling the useless weight of the gun in my hand when there was no shot to take. Thinking means admitting that for one second, before I dropped the weapon and moved, fear got its hand around my throat.
I turn around and find Oisín exactly where I left him.
He hasn’t moved, standing near the foot of the bed, eyes wide, hands hanging loose at his sides.
His hair is a mess, one curl stuck damply to his temple, and there’s a darkening bruise along the side of his throat where another man put pressure on what belongs to me.
The last of my control slips sideways. I cross the room and get my hands on him.
He sucks in a breath when I grip the front of the cut and shove it off his shoulders.
It hits the floor between us. His shirt is next, dragged up and over his head with no patience for the way his arms catch in the fabric.
I need the blood off him. I need the warehouse off him.
I need every trace of that man’s hands gone before the part of me that hasn’t stopped moving since the shot decides there are still people left to kill.
His skin is warm beneath my palms, smeared with rust-red streaks across his collarbone and ribs. I know it isn’t all his, but knowledge isn’t enough, so my hands move over him anyway, checking and claiming in the same rough pass.
“No one gets to fucking touch you except me,” I growl out.
His breath catches, and the sound drags through me like a hook.
I grip his jaw and turn his face, checking the mark at his throat under the light. “No one.”
A pained little sound leaves him, full of shock, hurt, and trust tangled so tightly I can’t separate them, and the fact that he’s making that sound for me, after what just happened, makes my temper look for another target because I can’t stand what it does inside my chest.
I catch his wrist and pull him toward the bathroom.
“Saint,” he says, not resisting, but not absent anymore either.
His voice has come back thin and unsteady, and that should make me slow down.
It doesn’t. I turn on the shower hard enough that water hammers against tile, steam rising almost immediately, heat filling the room until the mirror begins to fog at the edges.
I shove the rest of my clothes off, then go back to him with impatient hands. Every piece of fabric that holds blood, dust, or the memory of that warehouse has to come off. Oisín lets me strip him, but he’s returning to himself now, his fingers catching briefly at my forearm to steady himself.
I drag him under the spray with me, loosening blood from my skin in pinkish trails that curl down the drain.
Oisín gasps when the heat finds the scrape at his throat, and I crowd him back against the tile before I can decide whether I’m checking him or cornering him.
The answer is both. Every motive in me is jagged right now, too sharp to hold without cutting through the lie that this is just about business.
“I’m going to ruin you,” I mutter, mouth near his ear, one hand braced against the tile beside his head. “Then I’m going to kill my father.”
Oisín’s hands lift before I can catch them, the man gently cupping my face.
His palms are damp and shaking against my jaw, thumbs brushing water and blood I haven’t finished washing away.
His eyes are still too wide, but they are here now, fixed on mine with a steadiness that makes the room feel suddenly smaller than the rage.
He looks frightened, bruised, and too soft for the world he keeps being dragged through, and somehow he still touches me like I’m the one bleeding out.
“Forget your father,” he says. “I’m right here. I’m okay.”
The words reach for a part of me I don’t have available, so I turn them into anger before they can land properly. I catch his wrists and pull his hands down, pinning them between us with enough control to keep from hurting him and enough pressure to remind myself I still can.
“I don’t fucking care about you.”
Oisín flinches and I try to brace how I feel about it.
A week ago, I would have meant those words.
Now, I’m saying them so I can survive in the only world I know.
If I don’t care about the man in front of me, then it won’t hurt when I lose him.
“This is business, and Sol is fucking it up. He’s handing me the club but still has to oversee me like a dog?
Dragging you into a meet, making threats, testing whether I’ll jump when he snaps his fingers. That’s all this is.”
Oisín looks at me through the steam and falling water.
The hurt stays on his face, but it doesn’t make him look away.
If anything, it clears something. He studies me with an expression I don’t know how to take, as if he can hear the panic under the rage and has decided to answer that instead of the cruelty.
“Then focus on me,” he says.
My grip tightens around his wrists. “Don’t.”
“Focus on me.”
“Sín.”
“I’m right here,” he says again, quieter this time. “Not your father. Not the warehouse. Me.”
I stare at him while water runs down his face and over the bruise on his throat. “I want to bruise you,” I tell him, voice rough enough that it scrapes coming out. “I want to make you hurt. I want you to feel me for fucking days. You’re going to pass out on my fucking cock and love it.”
“Then use me.”
He’s offering me the thing that has quieted me since the first night I found him, and some part of him knows the cost well enough to pay attention while he hands it over.