41. Riley
Sunlight pouringthrough the window from the blinds we never closed last night wakes me up the next morning, and it’s not just the sun that’s light. I feel amazing. Sore, but amazing. My entire spirit is light, and it doesn’t hurt at all that I’m surrounded by hot, male bodies.
Sleeping male bodies. One of which is still healing from a beating.
My eyes pop open, a frisson of concern that I might have hurt Dante bringing me all the way awake. But to my surprise, it’s not him who has me sandwiched against Maddoc’s side.
It’s Logan.
A warm contentment steals over my heart when I see him next to me. I know how much he needs order and routine and the ability to retreat to the cool isolation of his own personal space. He didn’t go back to that last night, though. True, I can see that he took some time to align all the things on the nightstand next to him in neat, orderly lines, but he stayed here in the colorful, chaotic explosion of Dante’s room last night.
For me.
For us.
I’m facing him, and he has one arm around me in a firm, possessive hold and the other tucked under his pillow. His gorgeous face, usually kept so deliberately emotionless during the day, looks… not soft while he sleeps. But gentler. Calmer. I’m sure he’ll always have some of those old tendencies and a strict need for order and control in his life. That’s who he is, and I wouldn’t want him to change. But it means everything to know that he’s become comfortable adjusting his routines enough to include me, and what we all have together.
A gentle puff of breath on the back of my neck makes me shiver, and I nestle back, my ass firmly tucked against Maddoc’s groin. The feel of his thick morning wood, hard and insistent as it presses against me, almost makes me wish I could take him again.
My pussy aches with a deep memory of how thoroughly he and Logan fucked me last night, though, and as much as I crave them, I might need a minute before we go again.
I roll over to face him instead, his face softened a little by sleep too, but still so full of purpose.
I lean in, pressing the whisper of a kiss to his parted lips, then ease myself up, trying not to wake either of them.
Dante is asleep behind him, breathing evenly. A fierce surge of satisfaction hits me with the knowledge that the man who beat him like that is dead now, but then I push Austin McKenna out of my mind once and for all. Fuck him. The only thing that matters is that Dante is here, now, alive and whole.
I watch him sleep for I don’t know how long, just grateful to have him back. Grateful to have all of them here. Finally, his breathing changes, those amazing green eyes of his slowly drifting open. I’m not even sure he’s fully awake at first, and for a moment, we just look at each other, my heart filling with so much love that it nearly overwhelms me.
Then he smiles. “Princess.”
Maddoc stirs next to me, the light hold he has on my hip tightening into something more possessive as he starts to come awake. He stretches a little before his eyes open, his elbow clipping Dante’s side.
His eyes fly open, and he sits up, shoving a hand through his bedhead. “Shit, sorry.”
Dante grins, pushing himself up with only a minor wince. “I’ll survive.”
Behind me, the loose, relaxed feel of Logan’s body changes between one breath and the next, a sudden tension to his muscles telling me he’s awake now, even though he doesn’t move. Somehow, it doesn’t surprise me that he wakes up to a still, silent alertness, no doubt taking a moment to assess his surroundings by force of habit. And when all that tense alertness flows back to a comfortable looseness as he sits up, my heart swells even more.
This isn’t what Logan is used to waking up to, but he’s okay with it. More than okay, if the way he tugs me back onto his lap and plants a soft, sleepy kiss on the side of my neck is any indication.
“Good thing you have a king,” Maddoc teases Dante, trying to stretch again and settling for just rolling his shoulders. The bed is big enough for the four of us… but barely.
Dante snorts. “Yeah, gonna have to find something better for the future.”
I bite back a smile, a giddy happiness rising up inside me as it settles in my heart. These men are mine to keep. This isn’t the last time we’ll all wake up together. They’re really mine.
“The size of the bed isn’t as important as how it’s maintained,” Logan says, the stern reprimand in his voice ruined by how rough with sleep his voice still is.
Dante obviously thinks so too, since he tosses a pillow at Logan’s head with a shit-eating grin on his face. “Maintain this.”
Logan tugs me out of the line of fire and bats it away. “I had the bedding in good order and completely wrinkle free when we fell asleep last night. Look at it now.”
Maddoc disguises his laugh behind a cough. “Looks slept in. Nothing wrong with that.”
Logan huffs lightly, but the teasing glint in his eyes gives him away. He’ll never say so, but he’s enjoying this. “It looks like chaos. You’re both going to have to learn to sleep more neatly in the future. The blanket is wrinkled, and there are two pillows on the floor.”
Maddoc grins. “There’s only so much room here, and, you know… gravity.”
Dante picks up another pillow and holds it over the floor, then opens his hand and lets it drop.
Logan makes a dramatically pained sound, and Dante laughs. “Madd’s right. Fucking gravity. Who invited it to this party?”
“You’re just messy sleepers.” Logan shakes his head. “None of this would happen if you two learned to sleep more neatly.”
“Just the two of us, huh?” Dante teases, throwing me a heated smile that has all the emotion inside me bubbling up at once, making my throat close up as the love I have for these men almost chokes me.
I want this.
I want them.
I want it forever.
“What’s up, butterfly?” Maddoc says, his eyes going gentle as he looks at my face. “Everything okay?”
“I want to marry you,” I blurt. “All three of you.”
Surprise flashes in his eyes, and behind me, Logan goes utterly still. Dante’s green gaze drills into me with a heart-stopping intensity, but none of them say anything for a moment.
Then Maddoc clears his throat, his voice gruff. “No. That’s not gonna happen.”
My heart falls a little. It hurts to hear that, and I don’t understand why he’s so against it if we love each other.
Maddoc’s hand shoots out, capturing mine, and he pulls me off Logan’s lap onto his. “Marriage isn’t just about what we feel for each other,” he says, almost like he’s reading my mind. “It’s a contract, a legally binding one. It’s how McKenna got his hands on your money, and you know that was my plan in the beginning too. I don’t ever want that to stand between us, butterfly. I never want you to wonder, or think we’re trying to use you for your money. Marriage puts that in doubt.”
“I… what? No, it doesn’t.” I shake my head, even more confused, even though his tender words soothe the hurt. “I don’t have any money. Not anymore.”
Something fierce flashes across his face. “You’re Austin McKenna’s widow. His fortune, the one he fucking stole from you, will all pass back to you. You’re his legal next of kin.”
I shake my head again, my stomach roiling at the thought of being Austin’s, in any way, shape, or form. “I don’t want anything of his.”
“It ain’t his,” Dante says harshly. “It’s yours. Your grandfather wanted you to have it, and that bastard had no right to it, no matter what that farce of a marriage made ‘legal.’”
My grandfather. He means William Sutherland, a man I didn’t even know I was related to until recently. But… he’s right.
I take a deep breath, then let it out slowly, a determination settling in my chest. “Do you think I can get it back?”
This time, Maddoc’s grin is fucking predatory. “I know you can. I made sure of it yesterday, with the help of some legal counsel Logan hooked us up with.”
Logan nods, and my eyes fill with tears of gratitude. “Thank you.”
“I love you, Riley Sutton,” Maddoc says, cupping my face. “I’m so fucking in love with you I’d burn the world down. It’s why I won’t marry you.”
He takes my mouth before I can argue for it, and I sink into the kiss, letting that be enough for now.
I believe him. I can feel the depth of his love, and while I don’t agree—what’s mine is his, all of theirs, forever—I do understand his feelings, and I love him even harder for caring so much.
When Maddoc finally lets me come up for air, he rests his forehead against mine for a moment, breathing in sync with me. “You’re still mine, though. That won’t change.”
“Never.”
He smiles, kisses me hard again, then lifts me onto Logan’s lap so he can leave the bed. I can’t even imagine all he has to do in the wake of taking down Austin, so I let him go, happily falling into another deep kiss with Logan, and also not surprised when he gets up afterward too.
“Is there anything I can do to help?” I ask.
Logan gives me that small, private smile. “Take care of our brother.”
Dante snorts as Logan leaves the room, leaving the two of us alone. “I still don’t need a fucking babysitter,” he mutters, pulling me against his side.
I roll into him—carefully—and lightly trace my fingers over the bruises on his face. “Good, because I said I wanted to marry you guys, not babysit.”
He captures my hand, kissing my palm before staring into my eyes. “If it were just me, I’d marry you in a second, princess. But with the way shit works, it’s probably best if it’s Maddoc when it comes to the legal stuff.”
“He said no,” I whisper, my heart still a little bruised from that even though I do understand.
Dante’s smile turns wicked. “Yeah, well, he once said none of us were allowed to touch you, either. Don’t fucking give up on that. Logan and I will marry you in spirit and fuck you just like real husbands, but I haven’t seen you give up on something you want yet, so don’t start now.”
My breath catches, a warm glow spreading through my chest. “Oh?”
“Yeah.” He tips my chin up and kisses me. “Just keep asking him until he says yes. You know none of us can resist you.”
It’s exactly what I need to hear, and when we finally get out of bed a little while later, he gets me laughing about how sore we each are. He’s still moving slowly, and as we make our way to the shower, I’m limping a little too.
I wince as the hot water runs between my legs, reminding me how well used my pussy was last night.
“Look at us,” Dante teases, supporting himself against the slick tile with one hand while carefully soaping me between the legs with his other one. “You took a good beating too.”
I smack his chest. “That’s not funny. There’s no comparison.”
“You got that right,” Dante says, his voice husky as he turns me away from him and lathers up my hair. He drops a kiss on my wet shoulder. “Nothing’s ever gonna compare to you.”
It’s not what I meant, but I let it go.
What happened, happened, and the biggest fuck you we can ever give an arrogant sadist like McKenna is to truly forget about him. Something that’s easy to do when we head downstairs to find Logan cooking and Maddoc fighting with the new coffee maker again.
I grin, my heart lifting at the cozy domesticity of the scene, and go nudge him aside so I can actually get some caffeine out of the thing. Maddoc’s hopeless with it, and that doesn’t even take into account how many of these things have taken a bullet for the man since I first met him. But for the first time since I arrived here, things feel peaceful. Settled, even though I know there will still be repercussions on the horizon from what went down yesterday, and in this world—the dark, criminal underground that the respectable parts of Halston like to pretend doesn’t exist—words like “settled” and “peaceful” won’t ever truly apply.
But that doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy it while it lasts.
Which, as it turns out, isn’t all that long.
I’m not even surprised this time when the doorbell rings a little while later and it’s The Six’s representative, summoning us to see them down at Saraven later tonight. Nervous, but not surprised.
“It’ll be okay, princess,” Dante murmurs, leaning heavily against the door jamb once The Six’s representative leaves. He’d held himself upright, stoic and tall, while the man was here, but he still has a lot of healing to do, and it shows.
Just like his love does, since his first instinct is to reassure me.
“I know,” I say, nodding jerkily. It’s a lie. I don’t know. After all, this will be the third time we’ve been called before The Six after breaking their first cardinal rule. Even though Logan deflected the authorities’ attention from Reaper involvement, the incident itself has been all over the news.
Still, we have no choice but to go. We can’t defy The Six by not showing up. Whatever consequences come from the showdown with West Point, I’ve got no doubt that they’ll pale in comparison to what would happen to us if we chose to outright defy The Six.
I distract myself from that by turning my attention to Dante. “You should lie back down.”
He grins. “Is that an offer? Because I wouldn’t say no to a little company.” Then he sighs, scrubbing a hand over his face. “But actually, princess, we’ve got work to do.”
“You’re hurt!”
He lifts an eyebrow. “A few bumps and bruises? Nah. This shit ain’t gonna slow me down.” His face turns serious. “Besides, we’ve got a shit-ton of work to do to reclaim our territory and make sure no one else rises up to take McKenna’s place, right, Madd?”
Maddoc nods. “There’s a lot of cleanup to do to deal with the fallout from yesterday, and we need to move fast. West Point is fractured and leaderless. Something or someone will have to step in to bring order to everything McKenna built, and if we leave that to chance, we’ll regret it.”
He’s right. I may have woken up feeling euphoric, but this isn’t a honeymoon. We’ve got work to do.
“How can I help?”
“By claiming what’s yours,” Maddoc says, giving me a hard kiss. “Logan’s got some time-sensitive paperwork for you to deal with that will probably make your eyes cross with boredom, but it has to be done to reclaim your money now that McKenna is dead.”
The fact that I’m going to get it all back still hasn’t fully sunk in, but it turns out Maddoc’s not wrong about how mind-numbing the process is. With Logan’s guidance, I manage to get through it all before we have to leave for Saraven, and when we finally head to the upscale club in the evening, it turns out that, this time, it’s just us who have been summoned before them. There’s no West Point representative, or any other member of Halston’s underground, in sight.
I hold my head high as we’re led back through the club, to the room we’ve met them in twice before. They’re waiting for us, faces grim.
“There was a fire yesterday,” Ayla Fairchild starts without preamble. “One that apparently resulted in the deaths of…” Her eyes flick down to a small screen in front of her, as if she’s reading from a headline. “‘Several notorious members of a criminal gang, including its leader, Austin McKenna.’”
She pauses, her gaze raking over each of us before settling on Maddoc. Her eyes flick down to his missing finger for a moment, then return to his face.
“This isn’t what we meant by staying off the authorities’ radar,” she says, no inflection in her voice. “What happened?”
“McKenna had plans to take down The Six,” Maddoc responds. “We stopped him.”
All six members react with low murmurs and angry expressions, but Ayla’s gaze never wavers from Maddoc’s.
“Explain,” she demands.
Maddoc does, laying out the whole story, including how Austin married me in order to steal my inheritance, which he was using to fund his plans against The Six.
“We’re no strangers to threats,” one of the men says, his voice calm and his gaze assessing. “And for all Austin McKenna’s arrogance, West Point has never been one.”
“Not before he got his hands on Riley’s money,” Maddoc says. “But the resources that gave him were… formidable.”
He names the dollar amount, and The Six all mask various expressions of shock.
“And these assets are still in the hands of what’s left of West Point?” Ayla asks sharply.
“No.” Maddoc gives her that predatory smile that always makes my heart trip. “It’s in the hands of McKenna’s widow.”
Her attention snaps over to me, and the sharp intelligence behind her gaze strikes a chord in me. “You?”
I lift my chin. “Yes.”
A faint smile graces her mouth, and she gives me a small nod, then turns back to Maddoc. “Go on. What makes you so sure that McKenna was planning on coming after us?”
“We were tipped off.” He nods toward Dante. “My second infiltrated West Point to confirm the details. We were going to bring the proof to you once we had it, but McKenna caught Dante on his way out.”
Ayla raises an eyebrow. “This was yesterday?”
“Yes.”
She looks at Dante. “And did you find proof of his plans?”
“I did. He was setting himself up to take all six of you out in one fell swoop.”
Her face goes hard. “Show me.”
Dante transfers the digital files to her, and they direct us to wait out in the club while they review them.
My nerves return with a vengeance while we wait. “There’s no way they can bring repercussions on us for this, right? We were doing them a favor!”
Dante snorts, and Maddoc chuckles, shaking his head. “That’s not quite how it works.”
“We were covering our own asses,” Dante adds. “They know that, but that ain’t necessarily a bad thing.”
Logan nods. “They’ll respect it. They were already impressed that we found out about McKenna’s plans. I got the impression they would have been blindsided.”
Dante nods. “They were definitely surprised. Now we just gotta see what they’re gonna do about it.”
“What’s there still to do?” I ask. “He’s dead.” Then I shake my head before the men can answer, remembering what they told me this morning. Austin’s death will leave a hole in Halston’s underground that’s going to be filled, one way or another. The Six may not involve themselves directly in gang activities, but they’re also not going to ignore something like that when it’s bound to cause even more chaos.
When we’re finally summoned back into their chamber, they don’t waste any time.
“You were right,” Ayla tells Maddoc. “McKenna’s plans were very… thorough. The resources he was pouring into overthrowing our power definitely elevated him to a true threat.” She pauses, sharing a look with the rest of The Six before turning her attention to me. “Resources which now belong to you, Riley Sutton.”
I’m not sure what to say. Does she think I’m a threat to them now?
I swallow hard. “I don’t have any interest in overthrowing your power.”
Ayla smiles, a genuine flash of warmth in her eyes. “That’s good, because we’d like you to join us.”
“I… what?” I shake my head. I don’t understand. “Join you where?”
“Here.” She uses her prosthetic arm to gesture to the table they all sit at. “We want to offer you a place among us, Riley. We want you to become one of The Six.”