“No, because it was Saint.”
“What if it had been someone else?”
He was toying with me, perhaps because he wanted me to say that no one else could ever fuck him because I would always be here.
But that wasn’t the reason. No one else could ever fuck Cam because he was mine.
Because he wasours, and the affinity I felt with Saint gained deeper roots.
He is not in the room, and yet you feel him.
I hadn’t answered Cam’s question. He stared harder at me, and because I loved him, I gave him the truth. “If it had been someone else, then you wouldbesomeone else, and all of this—” I gestured between us, then to where I’d last seen Saint. “—is a waste of all you and him could be.”
“Me and him? What about you?”
“I am here.”
His gaze darkened, saying the words he didn’t.
For how long?
I buried my face in his chest.
I do not know.
The moment passed. Cam kissed my temple, then pulled away. “Come upstairs.”
I followed him to the residence. The staircase was narrow and made from bare and unpainted wood. It creaked beneath Cam’s tread, but not mine. I had memorised the weak spots many weeks ago, when I had slipped, undetected, into his bathroom to tell him his security system was unacceptable. I thought back to that morning with mixed emotions. His surprise had amused me. His wet, naked body had aroused me more than I could say.
But I’d scared him. Myself too. And I still did not care for that.
We reached the landing. Cam’s bedroom was at the end, but he stopped at the one I knew to be the chaplain’s and turned to me. “Give me a minute?”
I nodded. It had been a tumultuous time since the injured brother had come home and I wanted an update on his recovery as much as Cam did.
Cam slipped through the door and shut it behind him. I continued to his bedroom and took Saint’s place at the window, staring out over the compound.
I found him immediately. He was still with Ivy. She was sleeping in his arms, her cheek on his shoulder, as he stood by the wood store, fixing a guitar with one hand.
It was a curious image—the guitar, at least. Music seemed to disturb and soothe Saint in equal measure, depending on the volume and genre. I could not see him playing.
I could see him raising a child, though. Many of them. That kind of noise and chaos was perhaps everything he needed.
Everything he deserved.
“Hey.”
I turned, caught off guard by Cam’s approach as I’d lost myself in Saint.That is a weakness.But, alas, not one I could cure. “What is wrong?”
Cam’s frown was deep and marred with guilt. “Do you have any of that Vicodin with you? I threw mine away.”
I stepped away from the window, running a sharp gaze over Cam. He was the strongest man I had ever known and an expert at concealing his pain, but I liked to think I was good at spotting it, and that anything I missed, Saint would find long before I knew about it. I was not missing something now. Unless... “He fucked you that hard?”
Cam rolled his eyes. “Saintly Saint? No.” His expression sobered again. “Embry’s a mess.”
“Oh. That makes more sense.”
“It does?”