31. Cash
Cash
At some point, I had to pull myself together and find Evie. I wasn’t up for a fight, but I could walk around on my own okay now, and every second wasn’t agony. I had a scar across my middle, but all it took was a shirt and Evie wouldn’t have to see that.
But she’d never made it to the Crescent building, and Grant didn’t have her, and I needed to figure out where she was. As sure as I was that she could take care of herself around a bunch of humans after a lifetime of contending with our pack, she shouldn’t have to.
I was staring at my bag, wondering if I should ask Jax for more supplies and maybe some new clothes. They’d grabbed what I had left at the motel, but it wasn’t much even before Grant ruined the outfit I’d been wearing by tearing me in half.
A quiet knock shook me out of my worry that it’d be too much for me to ask Jax for anything at all beyond saving my life.
“Yes?”
Dakota slipped into the room. “Hey, ah, Aleks came to see you? He’s at the door. Jax wasn’t sure if you’d want to talk to him.”
For a second, all I could do was stare, wide eyed. A thousand circumstances played through my mind, most of them horrible.
Aleks thought I was a coward.
He was there to tell me how selfish I’d been.
He hated me now, thought I didn’t believe in him or appreciate all his family had put on the line for mine.
My ears pricked up, and I heard Jax say, “If he’s willing to see you, that’s fine. But if he doesn’t want to, you have to leave. Understood?”
“Yes, Papa,” came Aleks’s accented response. “Your roof, your rules, okay?”
So maybe he was just . . . himself.
I didn’t know what to make of that, but I threw myself out of the bed.
I had to look like a rumpled mess. It’d been weeks since I’d even thought about a haircut, not that my hair was ever particularly tidy.
I was just thankful Jax had brought me a razor, which I had taken to mean that I was looking like a wild man and needed to do something about it.
I wasn’t exactly cleaned up all nice and shiny, but I’d looked worse.
I stumbled into the openness of the living area to see Jax blocking Aleks’s access to most of the pack. My heart squeezed so hard in my chest that it was all I could do to whisper, “Hi, Aleksander.”
Formal. That was too formal.
It was weird, but I was—
Was I in trouble? It wasn’t like Aleks had ever made me feel like I had to be deferential to him, but I’d also never absconded in the night without warning.
“Cash.” Aleks nodded at me, but his eyes were caught. Stuck on me.
Heat flooded my face and I looked at the floor, crossing my arms. I wasn’t nervous, exactly, but I wasn’t sure I’d like an audience for whatever he wanted to say to me. Jax would take it personally if Aleks was mad, and Aleks . . . he deserved to feel however he felt, and I wanted to hear it.
“Do you want to—” I stammered. My throat was dry and my tongue was clumsy.
I wanted to rush across the room and know that Aleks would open his arms for me and tell me that everything was fine. Would he? If he just didn’t hate me, I’d explain. He’d understand, and we’d be—
Whatever we were, we’d be it.
“We could talk,” I tried again. I glanced at Aleks, but it was too quick to glean any real understanding of his state of mind.
With a step back, I opened the way down the hall toward the guest room where I’d been staying. “In private. If you want . . . ”
“Cash, you don’t have to—” Jax said.
At the same time, Aleks said, “I want.”
Jax hissed. He didn’t like this, and I couldn’t blame him, but I—I just needed to talk to Aleks, and I’d go outside if I had to, but that felt . . . okay, I was scared to go out there. It felt vulnerable. I didn’t like it.
“It’s okay,” I said, offering a smile. “I’d like to talk to him.”
When I looked at Aleks again, I thought he brightened a little at that. I didn’t dare let myself hope yet.
“Come on,” I said, leading the way back to the guest room. The tiny hairs at the nape of my neck stood on end with Aleks behind me, and I didn’t know if it was a good feeling or a bad one.
It was like I could sense every shift of his weight, feel his eyes on me, and it was the only thing I ever wanted to feel.
But I’d upset him. There was no way I hadn’t, and the nervous bubbling that went along with that made me so anxious.
When we got back to the guest room and I shut the door, Aleks was on me the next second. His hands ran down my arms, up my sides, patting and touching everywhere.
“Evie?” I said.
“Safe. With Leo. Far away from here.”
I took my first full breath since I’d sent her shimmying through the motel bathroom window. “Good.”
He touched me everywhere, until, finding me whole, he held my face in both his hands and let out a shaky exhale.
Then he leaned in. The bridge of his nose pressed against my temple.
The sound he made was a low rumble, but not like a growl. It was comforting, and with how close he was, I only had to tip my head to the side a little to catch his lips. He groaned into mine. His tongue slid inside easily, like we’d never been apart.
Sparks danced across my skin, and that low rumble of his worked its way down from my chest straight to my cock. As exhausting and painful as the past weeks had been, I couldn’t help responding to him.
He clutched me tight, and I pressed closer. When his warm hands slid beneath my shirt, it was all I could do to get it off as fast as I wanted to. I wanted him everywhere, as close as he could get.
Nothing mattered more than having him, and he wasn’t kissing me like he hated me. I meant to enjoy it. I wanted to lose myself in him the way I always had.
But the second I shrugged out of my shirt, I remembered, and my arm shot around my middle, hugging over the fresh pink scar Grant had left.
Aleks went still when he felt me flinch. He pulled back, and his brows puckered. “Cash?”
My eyes started to sting, and I shook my head, squeezing them shut tight. Every fear I’d been holding onto bubbled up from my gut and spewed forth like I’d been sick with worry and had to regurgitate all of it.
“I’m sorry,” I rasped. “I shouldn’t have left like that. I thought—I thought if we got away, you wouldn’t have to fight. I didn’t want you or your family to get hurt for—for us. I thought I could manage, but I was stupid, and I swear, it’s not that I don’t believe in you. It’s just—”
Aleks shushed me, gently pulling me in. I sniffled against his shirt while he rubbed my back. “You did not do wrong. You were in danger and you got away. You’re safe now. It’s fine,” he promised.
But it wasn’t fine. I’d fucked up everything, and I hadn’t managed on my own.
When my breathing evened out, Aleks leaned back. Carefully, he cupped my wrist and pulled my arm away from my middle. I only resisted a second before I let him, and cheeks flushed with shame, my gaze hit the floor.
Aleks’s breath caught. He held my wrist in his hand still, but he also cupped my side and brushed the edge of one of the deep scratches with the light touch of his thumb. “It hurts?”
I shook my head. “Aches a little still, but I’m fine.”
“Not healed though.”
I glanced up at him, my lips tilting wryly. “I’m . . . having a hard time letting go of our pack.”
There was magic in what we surrendered to alphas. In a pack like Jax’s, it meant everyone working together, even if he led and cared for them.
While it wasn’t Grant I was attached to, he was still in charge of my pack. I couldn’t just let go of the idea of him as integral to it while he still held the loyalty of so many. But Aleks was right—I was a werewolf. I would’ve healed already if it weren’t for Grant himself dealing the wound.
Aleks cursed in Russian, then his lips were on mine again, gentler this time. His hand slipped from my side to press the small of my back.
We kissed until I melted into him, gripping onto his shoulders, dazed and bleary-eyed when he said, “I’m sorry I did not kill the bastard sooner.”
A laugh escaped me like a sob, and I shook my head. “You don’t have to apologize for not killing your uncle.”
Aleks snarled, and it was the weirdest thing, but it didn’t scare me. I knew he was mad for me, not at me, and warmth spread through my chest.
“He is nothing to me,” he spat. “You are—”
Aleks stopped and stared into my eyes. I was caught like a rabbit, waiting for whatever I was to him, unsure what he was going to say but certain I could feel the seismic rumbling underfoot.
“I love you,” he said, brow pinched, entirely serious.
I blinked. “You do?”
Shit. That’d just come out.
To be fair, Aleks was destined to be alpha of our pack. He was eight years my junior, completely gorgeous, and could have his pick of pretty much anyone he wanted.
I was just . . . I was a mess. Right then and always.
I didn’t know how to talk to people. I wasn’t charismatic like him. I hadn’t won over many friends and what few I did have—well, they’d mostly come through him.
His hair was perfect. His skin glowed. His body?
Holy fuck, his body.
But his heart was also kind and sweet, and he had been careful with me from the start. Generous. Of course I loved him. It never would’ve occurred to me that it was possible not to love him. But I’d never thought that meant he could love me back.
Whatever we had, I had always suspected I was . . . safe, for him. I was obviously interested, and he was more inclined toward men anyway, and I had no loyalty to Grant so there was no change of me outing him, and—
And fuck, I’d been blinking at him for too long.
He hummed, his charismatic smile returning, and this time, I thought it might be a mask. He was bracing for a blow, and I’d never—
I was never going to hurt him, not if I could help it.
He hummed, squinting his eyes a little. “Yes.”
“I love you too.” I reached up to tuck a stray blond wave behind his ear.
His expression softened to one of wonder, and I swallowed hard.
Maybe I should’ve told him that sooner. It wouldn’t have changed anything, but that he could even feel a flicker of disbelief that I might feel that way now was absurd.
He never should’ve had to live one second not knowing that I loved him.
I’d just been afraid that wanting too much would push him away.
His smile crept slowly across his face, and he dragged me in, stepping forward so I had no choice but to shuffle back toward the bed.
I fell onto it, and he stood above me, grinning broadly. When he reached for the waistband of the gym shorts I’d been wearing, I lifted my hips so he could pull them and my boxers off.
That low rumble sounded from his chest again, then he crawled up the bed, kissing the inside of my calf, my knee, up my thigh even as he shrugged beneath my legs. Like this, he gripped my waist and held me steady as he laved his tongue over my cock.
I cried out, muffling the sound against the press of my fist. He licked every inch of me, taking his time like he was savoring an ice cream cone before he sucked my head between his plush lips.
I wanted to buck and squirm, but his hands held me still.
Good thing, too, as the ache in my middle wouldn’t have liked my writhing much.
I thought I was going to come apart, shatter into a million pieces right there in the bed, but it wasn’t enough.
He was still fully clothed, and I needed his skin on mine.
“Aleks—” I pushed on his shoulder and he pulled back, looking up at me. No one should ever look like that, with his beautiful cheekbones flushed and his lips swollen and slick from sucking my cock. It wasn’t fair. “I want you.”
His brow furrowed. “Will I hurt you?”
I shook my head. “No. I’m fine, just—” Okay, now I was squirming, using my legs to try and pull him closer though I only managed to hook an ankle under his arm. “Please, Aleks.”
He cursed and climbed out of the bed, which was about the opposite of what I wanted, but when he went to the en suite and returned with lube, I didn’t mind so much.
He tossed it on the bed and stripped his clothes, piece by piece.
I was struck, watching him. There was no way someone so beautiful could possibly want me.
Except he looked me over with the same adoration that overwhelmed me. He stroked his cock lazily, and I shifted my legs apart, knees bent. I wanted to beg again, but that wasn’t going to get me what I wanted any faster.
Still, Aleks must’ve seen it in my eyes, because he smirked.
He crawled over me, nipping at my chest and kissing my neck.
He was sly and quick, somehow having gotten the lube open with one hand and slicking his fingers while his lips teased me.
Before I even realized he’d done it, he circled a slippery finger around my hole. I whined into his mouth, nodding.
This, please this.
His finger sank into me, and I swear I whimpered. But Aleks loved me. He loved me, and he had a finger inside me, moving slowly in and out while he kissed me to the brink of madness.
I gripped onto him desperately. I needed this to be real. If Aleks loved me, it made everything else—well, not worth it, exactly, but manageable. I could face whatever came next if I got to keep him.
I didn’t need much, just the man I loved and the people who mattered safe. Nothing else mattered. If we had to stay here or go elsewhere or—
He hooked his finger and I threw my head back. With the pad of his fingertip, he rubbed circles over my prostate until my cock was dribbling on my belly and I thought I might come just from that.
When he eased back, he slid another finger into me.
“Fuck,” I whined, grasping the back of his neck and dragging him into a kiss. “I missed you so much.”
He murmured something soft in Russian, and I didn’t know what it meant but I swear it lit up my whole body.
When he finally slid his slick hand over his cock and lined himself up with me, I’d been boiled down to nothing but a point of need. I held his eye as he pushed inside, marveling at the way his mouth fell open at the feel of me.
It was real. He wanted this as much as I did.
The air punched out of me and I clutched him tight, but it didn’t matter.
His body flattened mine into the bed, and I’d never felt safer in my life.
I just wanted him near, but he found a way to work with that, moving his hips slow and deep, murmuring sweet words against my lips in languages I didn’t know and ones I’d lost.
And when he slipped his hand between us to stroke my heavy cock, for the first time in what had felt like a life of misfortune, I felt truly lucky.
Loved.
Who’d have thought I could ever be loved like this?