No.
I wanted to drown in the deep sounds he made, in the scent of him filling every sense. I wanted every atom of this man he was prepared to share, and I would not stop, I did not stop, until he gave it up.
Cam had never come like this for me, as if I had drained the life force from his strong body. His rough shout faded to a snarled groan. And then he trembled beneath me, fighting for breath, panting into the forearm he’d thrown over his face.
A sight I vowed to see again before the night was over, if he ever recovered. “You are okay?”
Cam’s hand still held my head. His fingertips stroked the back of my skull, his only answer for long seconds before his arm fell away from his face, revealing his glazed eyes. “I’m not built for you two. Don’t ever tag-team me with that, I’ll goddamn die.”
“That is dramatic.”
“It’s fucking true.” His gaze fell on my cock. On how hard it was from witnessing him fall apart so entirely. “What are you going to do with that?”
“I would like to fuck.”
Cam groaned, even as his spent cock acknowledged his primal enthusiasm for the idea. “Give me a minute.”
“I will give you more than that.” I crawled over him and stole a messy kiss. “We should eat first and come back to this later.”
It wasn’t Cam’s nature to push sex aside. He needed release to function. So did I. But I offered to eat with him rarely enough that he caught a second wind and hustled me downstairs, and his happiness as I ate everything he put in front of me was as addicting as watching him come.
As affecting too, for I fell asleep on the sofa before we could fuck, and it felt as good as anything I might’ve missed.
I could not say what became of Cam as I slept. Only that I dreamed of him, and the red-haired woman on the farm, and the conversation he and I needed to have with Saint about what Viktor had told Cam.
The odd combination left me restless. I jumped awake to an alert on my phone—someone approached the house.
I rolled from the couch, landing on both feet and pivoting in the same soundless breath, instinct urging caution more than violence. But I had been wrong before, more than once, and I reached for the weapon concealed above the living room door with little conscious thought.
Cam.
He lay asleep on the other end of the couch. If I had woken a man instead of a monster, I’d have felt his long legs tangled with mine. The warmth of his body.
The love.
But... it didn’t matter how hard Cam’s affection tried to heal me, a monster I remained, and I tracked the shape that hoisted something from the roof of the missing yard van and traipsed its way up the driveway with murderous intent, as if my heart didn’t know exactly who it was.
The figure reached the front door and moved beyond it, to the gate at the side of the house. Another alert told me the bolts had been breached, and I marvelled at Cam’s capacity to sleep through such things. At my own restraint as I stood, unmoving, in the dark for half a second longer.
Then I was in motion, darting through the house to the glass doors I wholly disapproved of. I slid them open enough to slip through as the would-be intruder emerged into the garden, setting his load on the patio Cam had dug and laid with his bare hands, exertion the only therapy he’d put his faith in.
The scent of pine hit me, needle dust misting the air as Saint stepped forward and cupped my face with his cold hands.
A yolka.
“For you,” he whispered. “On New Year’s Eve.”
24
ALEXEI
I had spent many long nights with Saint, but perhaps the longest I could remember was one I was so sure he’d forget.
He did not forget many things, but that endless night in the hospital when he had woken, but I was still not sure if he would live or die, he had not seemed present enough to recall the Bolshevik history lesson I’d murmured to keep him with me.
But I’d been wrong about that too.
And he’d stolen the tree, naturally. He planted it in the hole he’d dug in the garden, and then he lay down beside Cam on the sofa and went to sleep, leaving me to shake my head. And to blink when he was gone again by morning.