6. Saint
SAINT
Pike knew where the compound was.
That meant Avery slept while I sat outside her door with a pistol beneath my cut and murder running loops through my head.
At one in the morning, she opened the door.
“You can’t keep doing this.”
“Watch me.”
“Do you plan to sleep in that chair until Pike is dead?”
“Yeah, I do. Go back to bed.”
She studied me. “You’re bleeding.”
I looked at my hand. One knuckle had split during a disagreement with a man who sold Pike burner phones.
“Not mine.”
“Oh, well, that makes all the difference, then.”
She disappeared inside and I heard the lock click.
An hour later, I went across the hall to shower.
I left my door open, with hers directly in view, until steam fogged the bathroom mirror.
Then I closed it far enough to keep the light out of the corridor.
The shower was hot enough to burn river mud and somebody else’s blood from my skin.
I braced both hands against the tile and let the water strike the back of my neck.
The bathroom door opened.
I reached for the pistol on the sink next to the shower.
“It’s me,” Avery said quickly.
She stepped through the steam wearing a black shirt I’d lent her to sleep in.
Nothing else.
“What the fuck are you doing?”
“Checking on my guard.”
“Get out, Avery.”
“No.”
The shower door opened. Cool air curled through the steam.
She pulled the shirt over her head.
My body reacted before my mind could form another argument. Bruises still marked her upper arm and one hip from when Pike broke into her place. Rage crowded the desire.
Avery read it. “They don’t get to own what happens to my body next.”
“This isn’t about them.”
“Then look at me.”
I did.
Water silvered her breasts and ran between her legs. Her hair darkened as she stepped beneath the spray. She was beautiful without trying, and strong without pretending she hadn’t been afraid.
“Touch me,” she said.
I put soap in my palm and washed the fading marks on her arm. My thumb traced each finger-shaped shadow. She watched my face while I moved to the bruise on her hip.
“You’re thinking about killing them, aren’t you?”
“I don’t need to think about it.”
“Saint.”
I crouched and pressed my mouth beside the bruise, not on it.
“They hurt you.”
“They failed to take me, remember?”
“Because I got there.”
“Because I fought. Because I called. Because you came.” She touched the side of my neck. “All of it can be true.”
I rested my forehead against her stomach.
“I heard you through the phone,” I said. “Rook called while I was riding. I heard that bastard.”
Her fingers slid over my wet hair.
“I thought I’d be too late.”
“You weren’t.”
I kissed her stomach. This time the touch wasn’t about possession. It was gratitude with teeth.
Then I kissed lower.
Avery’s breath changed.
I lifted one of her legs over my shoulder and put my mouth on her.
Her hand slapped the shower wall.
“Oh, fuck.”
“Quiet,” I reminded her.
“You keep saying that while doing things designed to make it impossible.”
I dragged my tongue over her clit.
Her reply became a broken gasp.
Water ran over my face while I opened her with my fingers. She tasted warm and slick beneath it. I learned her reactions properly this time. How she rocked toward a firm stroke, how she trembled when I held the pressure steady, how her thigh tightened against my cheek when she got close.
“Saint.”
I looked up.
She looked down at me with one hand buried in my hair, all uncertainty gone.
“I want you inside me.”
I rose.
She reached for my cock. Her wet hand closed around it, and I had to plant a palm against the wall.
“I want to feel you.”
I turned her against the tile, then stopped. “Too much on the bruise?”
“Other side.”
We shifted. Avery guided my hands to where she wanted them, one at her breast and one between her legs. I slid the head of my cock through her wetness.
“Tell me what you want, Avery.”
“Fuck me.”
I entered her in one slow thrust.
Heat closed around me. I pressed my face into her neck and fought not to come like some desperate teenager.
“This,” I said against her skin. “This is what I imagined every time you stayed at the compound.”
“Me against your shower wall?”
“You in my room. In my bed. Bent over that fucking sink.”
She pushed back. “You’ve been busy in those fantasies.”
I withdrew and filled her again.
Her palms flattened against the tile. I set a deep, measured rhythm, watching water run down the line of her spine. Each thrust pulled a softer sound from her. The shower covered some of it, not enough.
“Harder,” she said.
She reached back and gripped my hip, urging me closer. I gave her what she asked for. The slap of wet skin joined the rush of water. I held her hips and drove into her until the careful man I’d been pretending to be washed down the drain.
Avery turned her head. “I want to see you.”
I pulled out.
She faced me, back to the wall. I hooked my hands beneath her thighs and lifted.
“Hold on.”
Her arms circled my neck. I guided myself inside and lowered her onto me.
She gasped.
“Too deep?”
“No. Stay.”
I held still while she adjusted. Then Avery braced one foot against the built-in ledge and began to move herself. She controlled the pace, rolling her hips while I supported her weight. My forehead touched hers. There was no room for distance, no angle from which I couldn’t see what she felt.
“Five years?” she whispered.
“Longer wanting you. Five years knowing it was love.”
Her movement faltered.
The word had escaped. I hadn’t meant to give it to her here, with my cock buried inside her and water beating against my shoulders.
“Saint—”
I kissed her.
Cowardly, maybe. Honest too.
I changed the angle and thrust upward. Avery cried into my mouth. Her inner muscles tightened.
“Touch yourself.”
She slid a hand between us.
Watching her fingers move over her clit while I fucked her stripped away the last of my control.
“That’s it,” I said. “Take what you need.”
Her breathing broke into short, helpless sounds.
I held her harder. “Come on my cock.”
She did.
Her body went taut against mine, then shook. I kept moving through every pulse, my mouth at her throat, her nails cutting into my shoulders.
“Saint.”
The way she said it pushed me over.
I pulled her down hard and came deep inside her, every muscle locked around the need to keep quiet.
For a while, the only sound was water.
I lowered her feet carefully. Neither of us stepped away.
Avery rested her cheek against my chest. “You said love.”
I shut off the shower.
Cowardice would have been denying it.
“I know.”
“Did you mean it?”
“I’ve never said anything to you I didn’t mean, but that might not have been the best timing.”
She looked up.
I cupped her face. The confession deserved more than a bathroom full of steam and the possibility of Rook pounding on my door. She deserved every piece of it.
But boots crossed the corridor outside.
Avery’s eyes widened. “Fuck.”
I grabbed a towel and wrapped it around her. Another went around my hips.
Someone paused outside my open bedroom door.
“Saint?” Riot called.
“What?”
“Movement near the south fence. Probably an animal, but we’re checking.”
“I’m coming.”
“You seen Avery?”
She pressed a fist to her mouth.
“In her room.”
“Rook wants eyes on her.”
“I said I’ve got her.”
Riot’s silence lasted too long.
“Sure you do,” he said at last.
His boots moved away.
Avery looked at me. “That sounded suspicious.”
“Everybody’s a fucking comedian.”
I checked the corridor, then put my shirt over her head. It fell to mid-thigh.
“Go straight across.”
She caught the towel before it slipped. “You’re very commanding after sex.”
“Avery!”
“Going.”
She darted into her room.
I dressed and followed her out to check the fence.
Nothing was there, but that didn’t ease the pressure in my chest.
I had crossed the line with Avery. Then I had crossed it again and spoken the one truth that made going back impossible.
Sooner or later, I had to tell Rook. This time, I wouldn’t ask permission.
I found Avery waiting on the edge of her bed. “Fence is clear,” I said.
“You believe that?”
“I believe nobody got inside.”
“Not the same thing.”
“No.”
She took my injured hand. The split knuckle had opened again in the shower.
“Sit.”
“You need sleep.”
“And you need disinfectant.”
I sat because arguing would wake the corridor and because I liked the way she took charge when care frightened her. She cleaned my knuckles with supplies from the bathroom cabinet.
“What did the man with the phones tell you?”
“Pike paid cash.”
“You hit him for that?”
“He lied first.”
“Did he know where Pike was?”
“No.”
“So hitting him accomplished what, exactly?”
“Improved honesty.”
She wrapped gauze around my hand. “This is the part Rook thinks I can’t understand.”
“Can you?”
“You hurt somebody for information.”
“Yeah.”
“Would you do it again?”
“If it kept you alive.”
She tied off the bandage and held my gaze. “It’s lucky that I don’t need you to turn into a good man for me.”
“Good.”
“I need you to be a man whose choices I can look at without lying to myself.”
That distinction cut deeper than judgment would have.
“You can?”
“So far.”
She placed the antiseptic on the nightstand. “What does the patch cost?”
The question should have been easy. I’d made men bleed for that leather and nearly done worse. None of that explained it.
“Everything, if it has to.”
Her mouth tightened. “That sounds like something printed on a bad T-shirt.”
“You asked.”
“I asked what it costs you. Not what men say at the bar when they want to sound dangerous.” I looked at my cut hanging over the chair.
The leather was scarred at one shoulder from a slide years earlier.
“Before the club, I didn’t have anybody who came when I called,” I said.
“Rook did. Every time. First fight I got into beside him, he stayed after the other men ran. When the Wraiths gave me a place, I learned how to be the man who stayed.”
Avery listened without filling the silence.
“The patch means every brother in this compound can call me at three in the morning, and I go. It means their families expect me to bring them home if a ride turns bad. It means Rook can put the person he loves most in my hands and believe I’d die before I failed him.”
The last words came rougher than I intended.
“And now you think loving me means you failed him.”
“Breaking my word did.”
“Wanting me didn’t?”
“No.”
“Choosing me didn’t?”
“No.”
She sat beside me, our thighs touching.
“Then don’t make the patch and me enemies before either of us asks you to choose.”
“You don’t know what Rook will do.”
“Neither do you.”
I turned the bandage around my knuckles. “If he strips my patch, I take that.”
“That’s different from handing it over because suffering feels honorable.”
“I don’t know how to love something without standing between it and damage,” I said.
“Then stand with me sometimes.”
The words settled harder than an order.
Not in front of her. Not outside a door while she slept. Beside her, where she could see the threat and make her own choice.
I could kill for Avery without hesitation.
Learning not to sacrifice myself on her behalf might be the more difficult promise.
I curled my bandaged hand around hers.