Chapter 16
Sixteen
Rush
I don’t know how we are supposed to walk away from a treasure like Belle. The very idea of tonight being our last night as a unit has me white-knuckling the steering wheel. Admittedly, I’m way more attached to the feel of her warm body in my arms than I care to admit.
I grunt. Fuck that. “I don’t want to let her go,” I say flatly. “She’s not going anywhere. You two dickheads can have your whole no relationships rule, but she’s it for me.”
Looking a little worse for wear, Gage finds my gaze in the rearview and says, “What do you think tonight is about, brother?” The hour-long flight back to Chicago was a silent one with all of us locked away in our thoughts. I can’t be the only one who sees we can’t go on living like all we can be are killing machines for the military.
“I know our plan. But asking her to visit us when we are in town is not what I want. I’m tired and I want more.” It’s the first time I’ve admitted what I’ve been feeling for a while now.
Gage is in the back seat wearing a cloak of silence like body armor again. He has a hard time with change. We all do after over a decade in the service.
“I’m letting my contract expire. I’m out.” The lead weight pressing on the center of my chest lifts.
“Aziel?”
He’s beside me nodding. “Agreed.”
“I know we haven’t talked about it, but I don’t want any more blood on my hands, brothers. We do this, we do it as a unit. If she’ll have us.” There’s always the chance she’ll walk away after one final goodbye, but I’ll put money on her feeling the way we do. Or at least how I do.
“We have talked. You were otherwise occupied at the time,” Gage says. Before I can ask when the hell they had that conversation, Gage pushes on. “That first morning with Belle. I couldn’t sleep. Aziel and I talked.”
“I told him I wanted out, too.”
That explains why they’ve been at odds lately. “And I’m just now hearing about this shit.”
“Sorry. We’ve been a little tied up.”
“In Belle, yeah I know.” The impossibly tight grip wrapped around my insides releases some of the tension. We’ve been through hell and back a few times together. Leaving without them feels like quitting on the men I depend on for life. I’m glad I’m not faced with the decision to pick between her and my brothers. I would have died before I gave up either.
I lock eyes with Gage. “And what about you? What is your decision?”
He’s silent a little longer, his eyes tracking the passing buildings as we head farther outside city limits.
“I don’t know. What do we do after?”
Aziel throws down his sun visor and nails our brother with a hard look. “You have less than ten miles to come up with an answer.”
I lay on the horn and swerve through Chicago’s evening traffic.
I rub my chest and hope today is not the day I find out I have the same heart defect as my father. This girl has put us through hell these past few weeks.
Aziel clutches my shoulder when we take a seriously steep bend in the road at top speed. “What’s the matter? You forget we are on civilian roads, bro? Take it easy. We kill someone getting to her and we might as well sign up to be shower bitch buddies in prison.”
“Fuck you. If anyone is a bitch buddy, it’s you.”
The pain in my chest doesn’t ease. Nah, this feeling of not being able to breathe is something else.
“Something’s wrong.” Spears drive through my heart with every mile we cover. I didn’t feel like this when we were air-dropped in the middle of the South American jungle last year or having a shootout with that fucking Mexican cartel.
“You’re in love, dipshit.”
Silence. No one speaks for the rest of the ride home. What the hell are we doing falling in love? We signed our lives over to the Navy. We have no business signing up for happily ever afters.
Aziel and Gage are out of the doors before I can get our SUV in park. We take the stairs to the porch and storm inside. We all head to the main bedroom only to find the bed empty. There’s nothing but the dildo she used to torture us with and her phone.
“What is this?” I pick up a note tucked under the edge of her phone.
Find me if you want me.
Gage stalks over to the window and his face turns ghost white. “Son of a bitch, she’s going to go swimming.” The sliding door is open and he’s dashing across the backyard, his clothes hitting the ground like grenades.
Aziel and I are right behind him.
“Belle, stop!” Gage’s warning carries away on the evening wind. A storm is rolling in which will only make the waters stronger.
God, no! We can’t lose her. Death claws closer. I’ve had enough brushes with the dark lord of the underworld to know what it looks like. Chills erupt over my arms and the steel spikes driving into my heart sink deeper.
Just last week a woman drowned not twenty feet down the beach. Undercurrents are tricky beasts and can kill men like us trained to swim in the deadliest of waters.
The idea of them tearing her from us puts fire in my legs.
We strip off anything that can weigh us down just as she turns and waves.
She’s a siren with her flowing hair and beautiful body on full display.
“Stop, Belle!” Aziel hits the dock at full speed, the boards rattling and shaking as he pounds them getting to her.
Fear grips her face. The smile drops from her lips. She backtracks and gets dangerously close to the edge. “What? What’s wrong?”
Aziel reaches her first and narrowly misses her hand as she starts to fall back into the swirling waters.
Fuck! My heart is ready to burst. My brother pins her to his chest. Aziel’s red eyes meet mine over the top of her head.
“Thank God. You got her brother. Loosen your hold, man. She can’t breathe.”
“Yes, she can’t breathe,” Belle mutters into Aziel’s chest.
“Fuck, that was close.”
Gage takes her from Aziel and then I gather her in my arms next. We all take turns reassuring ourselves she’s safe. A few inches at a time we start to huddle together until there’s not much space between the three of us and her.
“My God, do you know how close you were to being taken from us?”
I pin her to my bare chest.
Her startled eyes meet ours. “What are you guys talking about? I wasn’t going for a swim. I’m not suicidal. Those waters look sketchy as fuck. And that storm…” She raises her finger to motion toward the dark clouds riding in over the horizon. “...it’s not safe. You think I didn’t know that?”
The fire in her eyes glimmers with irritation. She’s stunning even looking like she wants to kick us all in the balls for going caveman protector over her. She’ll just have to get used to it. Protecting her just became our number one priority.
“What are you doing out here with no clothes?”
The way her lips twitch has my cock jerking. Her eyes dart from Gage’s to his very naked body and then to mine and Aziel’s. I’ve gone from flat-out scared out of my skin to turned on just as quickly.
“Ditto. But you first.”
“Saving your ass if you’d jumped in.”
Her smile falls and I tuck her into me a little more earning a flash of irritation from Gage. “You’d risk yourselves to rescue me?”
“That you even have to ask is insulting.”
I spot a familiar look of irritation and hurt on Aziel’s face. If she’s not careful she’ll find herself on her knees, ass in the air, and him spanking her again.
“I’m sorry,” she says softly, dropping her eyes to his chest. Interesting. What is our little minx hiding? I’ve never seen Belle unable to hold our gazes. But tonight, she can’t seem to look the three of us in the eye.
I debate pushing her for answers, but time will do it for me. She’s not one to stay quiet for long, I’ve learned.
“I, um, have something to show you.” She takes my hand, then Aziel’s. “Coming?” she asks Gage, who follows behind us.
She leads us off the dock and closer to the back porch where a large blanket is set out in the short grass. There are small lanterns I didn’t know we had dotting the perimeter of her makeshift bed with a few candles spread out.
I stop her with a pull and gather her in my arms. “Did you do this for us?”
That corner of her lip tilts up and she looks every bit as shy as she did the first day she walked into our lives. “I wanted you to come home to something pretty. I know you don’t have a lot of that in your lives with everything you handle with your jobs.”
I can’t live with the love I hear in her voice and not kiss her.
A crackle of energy pops and hisses between us. It’s as tangible as the heat of her skin and the feel of her lips on mine.
“Share, brother. I need to soothe my beast, too.”
Aziel gently takes our Belle and cradles the back of her head in the palm of his hand. He lays her down and spreads out beside her on the large blanket.
“I missed you,” she whispers to me as I take up the length of her other side. I want to breathe her life force in and hold it inside my chest. Carrying her with me everywhere I go would be a priceless gift. I turn her chin to face me. “Stay with us tonight.”
“I want to, but Gage doesn’t look happy.”
She holds a hand out and he takes it, pulls her off the blanket, and into his arms.
“Are you mad at me for something?”
“You scared me.” Gage drives his fingers into her hair and tilts her face to his. Holding her against his chest, our brother falls to his knees and joins Aziel and me on the blanket. He spreads our beautiful Belle out between us.
He takes either of her calves and places one in my care and the other in Aziel’s. “If something were to happen to you, the world might as well stop spinning.”
“You scared us all.”
Her lower lip trembles.
I take her hands and wrap one around Gage’s length and instantly see him relax into her powerful touch.
Wide eyes flick to me, and I move my lips to her ear, my words for only her. “Ease his pain, baby girl. Stroke him just like that. Make him feel how real you are. How safe you are between the three of us.”
Teeth sink into the plumpness of her lower lip. I ease the tortured flesh free, kissing her until she’s breathing in my essence and only mine. To her side, Aziel whispers his own words that have her panting one second and moaning the next.
Kneeling above us, Gage is in his own world with her. “Fuck, that’s all I need. Your heat, Belle. The feel of your skin on mine.”
My brother’s head falls back. I see the shine of heaven in his eyes when his gaze falls back on Belle’s.
“You have no idea how perfect you are.” Aziel grips her hold on him and pumps his hips into their joined hands. Watching her pleasure my brother makes my cock impossibly harder.
We might be physically stronger than the woman we love, but I’m witness to the power she has over the three of us. And my brothers. They’ve fallen for her even if they have a hard time admitting it.
“You care that much about me?”
“You have no idea,” I answer.
Consciously or not, her other hand seeks Gage’s and he gives her what she wants. I smile and take her mouth in a slow kiss before pressing my forehead to hers. Sweet, irresistible, hot. “Ours,” I growl and mean it with all of my soul.
Reading my silent cues, Gage sheathes his length, driving in and taking what belongs to us with one fluid motion.
For the next hour, we share our love, taking and giving in equal parts. Her pleasure, her wants, her desires are our only worries.
Her gasps of desire and need turn to moans of pleasure.
She’s not going anywhere. She can run, she can deny the pull of lust and love between us, but she’ll never escape the truth Room Two revealed—she’s ours and only ours.