I went limp in his arms, but he wasn’t through with me yet. His hands gripped my ribs and pulled me from the dresser before guiding me around and over until my hands were on the surface, and his chest was pressed to my back, pushing me forward. When the scruff of his chin brushed over my shoulder, my body moved automatically, accepting him inside me and reveling in the wash of heat from his breath.
“Ayda…”
Lifting a weak hand, I reached over my shoulder and cupped his cheek, my ass wiggling against him. “I know.”
It didn’t take long for him to follow me over the edge. My body worked with his, my toes curling in the shag of the carpet, pushing me up and deeper as I slammed back againsthim with as much force as he was pushing into me. When he came, he came hard, my body bent so far over the dresser that my cheek was pressed against the wall, the paint damp from my panted breaths.
I was pretty sure there wasn’t a soul other than the two of us who would understand our relationship, but that’s what made it special. We spoke a language of our own, and as long as we were fluent in it, we’d be okay. As I lay with my fingers curled against the wall, I realized that it was exactly what Deeks and Autumn had. They had a language of their own, too.
My thoughts were soon cut off as Drew’s heavy yet satisfied breaths blew into my ear, and I heard the one confirmation I didn’t need, but loved more than he could and would ever realize.
“I really do, Ayda. Fuck, I really do.”
Chapter Four
Drew
The final smash of Ramirez’s fist landing square across Pete’s jaw had been designed to do nothing except finish the whole thing for good. I didn’t have to wait for a verdict. I knew he was gone three hits ago. The dread had been pooling in my stomach until the sickness had rendered me immovable. Everything happened in slow motion. Pete’s head flew back one final time, the spray of blood washing out to the side of the ring, raining down over my face and clothes as Jedd used every bit of his weight to hold me in place, just like he’d been ordered to do.
Pete’s eyes rolled to the ceiling, all the life draining away from every feature he held until his body finally gave in to gravity and fell limp to the ring.
There was no convulsing. He didn’t shift. His didn’t push out his arms to stop himself from falling, and when his body made contact with the floor, every Hound in the room froze.
Jedd couldn’t stop me as I threw him away like he was nothing more than a fly for me to swat before I charged toward the ring. Flashes of leather and darkness passed me by as I grabbed the ropes and jumped over them in one swift leap. The moment my feet landed, the ring shook and Pete’s body bounced from the weight of it, yet he never groaned or calledme the thoughtless dick he normally would have.
I didn’t breathe until I’d scooped him up in my arms and was cradling his lifeless head against my chest. Blood poured out of his ears. The gashes to his cheeks were so deep he was an abstract work of purples, reds and browns. His bare chest felt like glue. Cold glue against searing skin. Glue that was once warm but was already turning to ice from all the lifeless crimson that was escaping him. Each eye was swollen as I sucked in the harshest breaths I could force myself to take and begged him to stay alive. The razor blades in my lungs were nothing compared to the knives in my heart. I felt his chest move and for a single fucking moment, I saw a glimmer of hope that he would make it out of this alive. But then it was gone, and that’s when I knew that the man who had brought me up, the man who had loved me more than all my brothers put together, and the man who had been a father figure had just taken his last breath in my arms.
My knees sank into the floor, my legs parting as I adjusted and pulled him harder against me, squeezing him so tight I could practically hear his bones screaming in my grip. The strength he’d always possessed vanished, and all that lay in my arms was a broken shell of the greatest Hound I’d ever fucking known.
Pete was dead.
The world around me shifted until my mouth eventually fell open, my eyes scrunched together in agony, and I roared out in anger. I’d killed men before that moment—many, many men—but there were no words for the destruction I was about to cause Ramirez for what he had just done to my brother.
The laws of our lawless community were broken.
The calls to end the fight were ignored.
More blood would have to be shed, and I was desperate to spill the first drop.
Men charged around me but I couldn’t see them. My eyes fell to the mass of broken muscle in my hands as my fingers clawed at his skin and the silent tears of agony fell straight from my eyes, down onto his wounds. I gasped for air. Every nail I possessed dug into his flesh as I rocked us to hide the violent shaking that was taking over my body.
“No,” I began to whisper, my tight lips barely able to move as I watched and waited for him to move, as I watched andbeggedfor him to be okay.
My skin turned cold and a shiver of disbelief rolled down my spine like death himself was taunting me with the fingertips that had just dragged Pete away and tossed him into a pile of the deceased.
My head rolled back as I pulled his body farther up to mine and screamed out my brother’s name in despair one final time.
The arrival of someone new, and the sudden touch upon my shoulder felt misplaced. There wasn’t anyone who would have approached me as carefully as that person was doing. Harry would have wrapped me up in his arms the way I was holding Pete. Jedd would have gripped me to the point of causing pain, passing on his sorrow because a man like him couldn’t handle feeling so helpless or lost. Slater would have taken Pete from me. The others would have stayed away. The Emps would have run. The strays and the spectators would have fled the fucking country.
This touch stayed there like an angel on my shoulder.
Then the voice followed, but I was too lost to hear it thanks to the grief that was currently tearing a knife throughmy dark soul, moving at an extra slow pace to make sure the pain hit every nerve-ending I held inside me.
“Drew…”
I growled, the tears staining my cheeks and the fire burning harder in my throat.
“Drew, it’s me. I’m here.”
