“Is okay, wingman.” Alexei moved around him. “Cam is irritable and I like poking wolves.”
It was more than that, the spiked fire roaring in my veins, and we all knew it, but I couldn’t handle seeing Saint fight with himself to save me.
I pulled myself together, wrapping iron bonds around whatever was blowing my mind apart. I reached for him, for them both, and kissed them in turn. “I need my chaplain.”
6
Saint
Embry’s homecoming party was lit. The whole club came out to play and some fucker turned the music up so loud my bones throbbed. I couldn’t imagine how it felt for Embry, Rubi, and Cam. Then again, they actually liked this metal shit. Cam and Rubi had been raised on it.
Pantera instead of lullabies.
The bar filled up, men in leather downing shots and shouting over the thrumming bass and rough guitars, air thick with smoke and testosterone, club women draped over every bloke willing.
Most were. Those that weren’t were either loyal to their old ladies, council members, or Decoy, who took no notice of anyone who wasn’t Ivy or a brother higher up the food chain. With Ivy back with her ma, he worked the bar with his patented blank expression. The grey man. But I knew better. Decoy wasmyman. The prospect I’d nurtured and patched in. Outside of the council, I trusted him more than anyone. Honestly, I loved him, and his flat distaste for the hedonism of club life amused me.
“What are you laughing at, wingman?”
I turned, doing my best Decoy impression in the hope that Alexei wouldn’t see he’d startled the fuck out of me. “I’m not laughing.”
“Shame. I like it.”
Iliked it when he said shit like that, though I had no clue where it came from. Alexei made my heart skip a beat every time I saw him, and it made no fucking sense. I’d loved Cam for years. I’d fucked other people, but I’d neverseenanyone else. Never wanted to. Now, every time I thought of Cam, I thought of Alexei too, and it felt... good.
When it didn’t freak the hell out of me.
On instinct, I searched out Cam, as if I didn’t already know exactly where he was and what he was doing. I zeroed in on him, watching as he leaned closer to Embry, focused on our injured brother, no concern for himself or his own injuries.
Typical Cam. Predictable. And it had nearly got him a bullet in his skull when Rubi had gone down. That night, Alexei had saved him. Saved us both, perhaps, and maybe that was why I was so drawn to him. Because he’d spared me the death sentence of watching Cam die.
“Mir. On v bezopasnosti.” Alexei didn’t touch me, but I felt him all over my skin. “Uspokoysya.”
“I am calm,” I retorted absently.
Alexei narrowed his starry eyes. He fired something else at me, but I had nothing. Learning Russian on YouTube washard.I couldn’t speak a word, but I understood a few.
“When?” he said.
I shrugged, understanding the question. “When I realised he was going to fuck you more than once.”
“He had fucked me more than once before you knew I existed.”
“Technicalities.”
“Details, wingman. They are important.”
I leaned against the wall in the dark corner of the bar I liked to frequent at parties, a safe vantage point where I could do my job and keep watch but avoid ninety percent of the people in the room. Occasionally, a girl crept up on me and asked to suck my dick, andoccasionally, I said yes, but most often I partied alone. Just me and my cigarettes.
Alexei slid the box from my back pocket and placed one between his lips, moving it from one corner of his mouth to the other with his tongue. He lit it and took a lungful of smoke before he passed it to me.
“That’s all you want?”
“I am not much of a smoker.”
It surprised me that he smoked at all. Despite all I knew about him, there was something pure and clean about him that didn’t suit the grime of tobacco smoke. Not like me. I was born ruined. “I’ve been counting Crows.”
“All this time?” Alexei watched me smoke, his back to the party behind, not acknowledging anyone else’s existence.