39. Riley
The people Maddocsent in to douse Austin’s house obviously knew what they were doing, because it only takes moments before the whole house is engulfed.
“Fuck, yeah,” Dante murmurs under his breath, speaking for all of us. But as satisfying as it would be to watch the whole place burn, the sirens are getting louder, and we can’t afford to be here when they arrive for a whole host of reasons.
We hurry to Logan’s Audi, Dante still leaning heavily on Maddoc as we cross the bullet-ravaged lawn. Logan slips behind the wheel, starting it up fast, but when Maddoc tries to ease Dante into the passenger seat, he shakes his head.
“I’m with Riley.”
Maddoc huffs, almost smiling for the first time since all this shit went down, but quickly helps Dante into the back with me without any protest.
Dante immediately tugs me onto his lap.
“Dante,” I say, horrified. He could barely walk on his own.
I try to squirm off him, doing my best not to cause any more damage, but his arms stay locked tight.
“Come on now, princess,” he rasps, his voice a little slurred through the swelling on his face. “I could be dying right now. You really gonna deny a dying man his last wish?”
My heart plummets, ice filling my veins.
“What?” I whisper, my gaze jerking to the front. “I thought…”
My throat closes up.
Maddoc twists around, meeting my eyes. “Dante’s not dying,” he says with a smirk. “He’s tough as shit, and he’s been through worse than this. Shane will meet us at the house and patch him up, but he’s fine. Trust me.”
I do. With my body, heart, and life.
“Asshole,” I mutter, scowling at Dante and gently shoving him in the chest.
“Love you too,” he says with an unrepentant grin, capturing my hand and keeping it there. Then he grows serious. “Holding you would definitely be my last wish if I were actually dying, princess. Not gonna lie, I thought it might happen a few times while McKenna worked me over, and it was this right here that I was thinking of. You glaring at me. The feel of you in my arms. Loving you. Holding you.”
He reaches up, brushing a tear off my cheek.
He captures it on the tip of his finger, turning it this way and that, so it glints like a diamond. He stares at it as if he’s mesmerized, and when he finally looks up at me, I can see his entire heart in his eyes.
“But since I ain’t dying, I’ve got another wish.”
“What is it?” I whisper.
“I want to live to a hundred fucking years old, so I can hold you every day until then.”
“Dante...”
I stop thinking about trying to climb off his lap and cling to him, holding him just as tightly as he’s holding me. Breathing him in. Feeling his heart beat against mine. I close my eyes, letting the rhythm soothe the part of me that wasn’t complete without him.
“I missed you,” I murmur.
And I want the same thing he does. I want to give him those hundred years, and then take a hundred more.
He tips my chin up, smiling down at me. “Me too, princess.”
He doesn’t comment on the tears that keep sliding down my face, and I don’t comment on the tight lines of pain next to his eyes. We just exist together for a while, and even though we’ve just opened up a shitcan of worms by taking out a major player in Halston’s underground in such a visible way, it feels like the first moment of true peace I’ve felt since all of this started.
It’s perfect.
But of course it doesn’t last.
As soon as we arrive back at the house, time speeds back up. Maddoc made promises to some dangerous people today, and after a quiet word with Dante and a hard kiss that takes my breath away, he heads straight back to his office to deal with the fallout as leader of the Reapers.
“What’s going to happen now?” I ask, torn between worrying about what exactly that fallout is going to look like and my concern for Dante.
I believe Maddoc when he says Dante’s been through worse—I hate it, but I believe it—but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t need medical attention, and the Reaper who usually handles the things too serious for Logan to patch up, Shane, isn’t here yet.
I wring out a soft cloth in the sink. “Sit.”
He snorts, but doesn’t argue when Logan eases him down onto one of our kitchen stools.
“Maddoc has to get the word out that the offer he made to the mercenaries is legitimate,” Logan answers me.. “He needs to make sure we don’t get any who try to retaliate against us for McKenna’s death.”
“Who, the mercs?” I frown, then glare at Dante when he tries to wave me off, keeping it up until he finally lets me start to clean up some of the blood on his… everything.
Logan makes a distracted sound of affirmation, his attention obviously divided between this conversation and the constant barrage of incoming notifications he’s been getting ever since we left West Point’s territory. I know that as one of Maddoc’s seconds, he has a ton of stuff he needs to deal with right now too, but everything feels like it’s happening in a blur, and I can’t let it go.
“Why would any of the mercs give a shit that we killed McKenna? They were only in it for the paycheck, right?” Then another thought occurs to me. “Send word to whom? Who does Maddoc need to notify? The Six?”
“The mercs got their own code, princess,” Dante rasps, his face too pale and the damage that fucking sadist did to him more and more obvious as I clean him up. “They’ll only care about Maddoc offing that piece of shit if their deal falls through with us. If they think they were suckered into backing off a contract, then they’ll retaliate.”
“But that won’t happen,” Logan says firmly, finally looking up from his phone. “Maddoc has a network of contacts in Halston’s underground. Once they realize he’s still alive and that he’s good for the payment he offered, none of that will be a problem. He just has to make sure they hear from him directly, and fast, and then he needs to take care of our own.”
He means the Reapers who were injured, and the bodies—and families—of the dead.
I swallow hard, but know it’s always going to be a price for some in our world.
“And The Six?” I ask again.
Logan shakes his head. “Best if we clean up our mess a bit more before it’s brought to their attention, if possible. Which is what I need to go do.”
“You gonna be able to cover our tracks and keep the cops from sniffing around when they investigate a whole fucking house full of charred bodies, brother?” Dante asks.
Logan actually smiles. “Yes.”
No doubt. No hesitation.
God, I love this man.
Dante laughs, then grimaces, clutching his stomach. “Never… doubted it,” he wheezes. “Go on now. Make the magic happen. Shane will be here in a sec. You don’t have to babysit. It’s fine to leave me alone.”
I smack him, very lightly, on the shoulder. “Hey! What am I?”
His eyes heat up, far more than should be possible for a man in his condition. “Definitely not my babysitter, princess.”
We share a long look as Logan heads up to the computer setup he keeps in his room, only interrupted when Shane finally arrives.
I hover as he checks Dante’s vitals. “Is he okay?”
“Better than okay,” Dante says before Shane can answer, holding my gaze with such intensity that I feel it in my soul. “I thought we discussed that in the car.”
“I’m not sure I’d say ‘better’ than okay,” Shane says, oblivious to the heat throbbing between the two of us, “but I can definitely patch you up.”
He handles that with quick efficiency, reassuring me that Dante really is in good shape overall. He doesn’t need too many stitches, and even though he’s bruised all to hell and will be feeling the beating he took for a while, like Maddoc promised me in the car, none of it is life threatening.
Shane insists on checking me over quickly as well. Someone obviously tipped him off about the bullet I took with the vest, but while there’s some bruising, he reassures me that none of my ribs are cracked.
I’m just glad the bullet hit me in the back. The possessive look of barely contained aggression on Dante’s face as Shane examines me leaves me no doubt that, hurt or not, Dante would have done himself even more damage going all caveman on the guy if I’d had to bare my breasts to him.
Once Shane finally checks in with Maddoc and leaves, I help Dante up to his room and stay with him, the two of us talking quietly about nothing in particular, just enjoying being together. A few times, he almost drifts off, and I do what I can do to make him comfortable while he spends the majority of the day trying to assure me he already is.
I try not to let myself feel anxious about all the shit Maddoc and Logan are handling, or feel guilty for not offering to help with it. The truth is, I still don’t know enough about their world or the inner workings of the organization to be much use today, even though I’m determined to learn those things.
But more than that, I need this time with Dante. It’s something I’ll never take for granted.
Not with any of them.
Once it gets late, Logan finally comes in.
“Got everyone off our trail?” Dante asks, wincing as he tries to prop himself up against his headboard.
I’ve been sitting next to him on the bed, and gently push him back down. He hasn’t said anything, but he’s definitely in pain.
He lets me, then keeps hold of my hand and strokes it while Logan walks over to join us, nodding in answer to Dante’s question. “Law enforcement should have enough information to keep them satisfied now. None of which points to us.”
“Fucking magic,” Dante says, his voice still strained. “And I bet you’ve got all the tech in the city set to ping you if that changes.”
“Something like that,” Logan says, frowning. “When’s the last time you took a painkiller? Didn’t Shane bring you something?”
“Got all I need right here,” Dante says, squeezing my hand.
Logan’s eyes go soft. “Yes, but maybe add in some Percocet too. There’s no need to suffer more than necessary. Not now that you’re home.” He pauses, then. “I’m really glad you did make it home, Dante.”
He gets up to grab the drugs before Dante can tease him for being all emotional, and when he comes back, Maddoc is with him. He makes a beeline for the bed as Logan hands over the pills and a glass of water to Dante.
“All good?” Maddoc asks Dante, giving him a quick once over, like he needs to reassure himself that the report Shane gave him before he left was true.
“Never better,” Dante says, lifting the glass in a salute.
Maddoc’s body language subtly relaxes, and when I lean against him, he runs his fingers through my hair.
Dante’s eyes track the movement, then he looks up at Maddoc with his trademark smirk. “You can do better than that, Madd.”
Maddoc’s hand stills on my head, then he pulls me off the mattress and kisses me like he’s starving for it.
“Fuck,” Dante murmurs. “Yeah, that’s it.”
I wrap my arms around Maddoc, pouring everything I have into the kiss. All my fears, all my relief, every bit of the gratitude I have for what he pulled off today, and all my anger about the damage that fucking monster did to my family.
Maddoc takes all of it and gives it back to me tenfold, and when he finally lets me come up for air, Logan is right next to us, watching with a level of heat in his eyes that I never would have believed possible in the beginning.
I reach for him, and he takes me. Tipping my head back and claiming my mouth with a different kind of intensity than his brother. One that’s darker, but just as demanding.
I love it. Being able to kiss him like this, to revel in our connection and share the moment with all three of the men I love, it’s night and day from our beginnings, and it was worth every moment of pain, suffering, and heartache to get here.
“I’m never giving you up,” I tell Logan, running my fingers over the end-of-day stubble turning his jaw rough. I look at my other men. “Not any of you.”
“Same, princess,” Dante says with a groan that clearly has nothing to do with pain. “And that was hot as hell. I really wish I could fuck you right now. I missed you so damn much.”
I suck in a breath and squeeze my thighs together as arousal slams through me hard. I’ve been low-key thrumming with it all day, but I’ve been ignoring it because I know it’s not possible.
Not for Dante. Not until he heals a bit more.
He sees everything I’m feeling on my face, though. The man can read me so damn well. And he gives me a wicked smile of pure temptation in response.
It’s almost enough to make me want to forget the doctor’s orders.
“No,” I say breathlessly, resting my hand on the middle of his chest to keep him still. “You can’t.”
“I really fucking can’t,” Dante agrees regretfully, wrapping his hand around my wrist. “But the next best thing would be to watch my two best friends fuck you, princess. You up to giving me that? You want Maddoc and Logan to take you here in front of me?”
My breath quickens, my body instantly responding to him the way it always does. “Yes.”
“Good,” he growls, tugging me down on his chest and kissing me hard. “Show me, princess. Show me what I fucking lived for.”