The silence extended, but it had never been my style to just stew away internally and not let my feelings out. Besides, unless I explained, he wouldn’t truly understand why this had triggered me so hard.
“You four are the most important part of my life,” I rasped, not even remotely disguising the pain I felt. “Every single time you hide me away while you face danger without me, it feels like you’re stabbing me in the chest. I feel like you’re putting me in a gilded cage, separate from you all, and I don’t want that. Not now or ever.” I sucked in a deep breath. “We’re a team, right? I mean, we either are or we’re not. Why don’t you trust me in these situations? I’m not a fucking idiot who randomly throws myself into danger or anything like that. So… why do you treat me this way?”
It was a long speech, jumbled and messy, but since that was the norm for this relationship, I just went with it.
Grayson took a second to answer, such a long second that I wondered if he was even going to answer, and then he shocked me by taking a swift right turn, getting off the main road, and coming to a halt down a side street under a few large trees.
He turned in his seat, reaching over to unbuckle and haul me out of my seat and into his lap before I could take a surprised breath. He wrapped me up tightly, his arms briefly trembling before they stabilized around me.
Despite my lingering pain and anger, I melted into this hold, realizing that I needed this connection more than anything. A few hot tears escaped as I pressed my face into his chest, and he appeared to be breathing me in as his face buried against the side of my head.
“Baby, I’m sorry,” he murmured. It was so odd to see Grayson vulnerable like this that it knocked what remained of my anger loose. Knocked it loose so it could drift away until the pressure in my chest was gone.
Until I could finally breathe again.
“We don’t put you in a gilded cage,” he continued, voice still muffled against me. “We protect you because you’re our reason for existence. It’s not that you’re not capable. Fuck, we’ve all seen you shoot, and I have a feeling with a little more practice, you’re going to outshoot every man I’ve ever known. Including myself. But we are your men. The boys of Bellerose. We were put on this fucking world to ensure that you were surrounded by love and protection. We can’t stop doing that, not even for you.”
Fucking hell. Now I just sounded like a petulant brat getting mad at them for loving me so much they had to protect me.
“It goes both ways,” I told them. “A king is nothing without his queen, you know? We stand together, or we fall apart.”
His hold grew even tighter, and despite the fact that I could barely breathe now, I would die like this before I told him to ease up. Poor dude was so worried about someone else breaking me that he’d forgotten he was the strongest person we all knew and could crush me in a heartbeat. Maybe that thought occurred to him in the same second because the pressure eased up. “Maybe we can both try and work on it,” he finally suggested.
Grayson compromising on safety rules. Fuck. Second surprise of the day.
“I’d like that,” I whispered. “If you had just let me in on the plan, we would have fought about it before, but we’d have reached an agreement eventually. I don’t like being kept in the dark because you all think I’m a girl and can’t handle this shit.” I mean, Vee and Giana more than proved that chicks could handle anything.
“We’re all sorry for that. It was a last-minute decision made when we watched our fucking soul drive away in a car on her own. When we had to trust that Wilson wouldn’t just walk up and put a bullet straight into your head. You have to understand how that felt, Prickles, for all of us—including Rhett, who has been blowing up every single one of our phones since you drove away.”
“Fuck,” I breathed. “I guess the fact that you did let me be the main distraction in this plan kind of negates mykeep me in a gilded cageargument.” My anger before had wiped out some of my reasoning skills. “And I love you all so much for loving me the way you do. I don’t want to change your protective instincts—”
“Never,” Grayson rumbled. “You can scream all day every day, Prickles. You’re ours, and we protect what is ours.”
That one hit me hard in the chest… and a little lower.
Damn.
“I don’t want to change you,” I continued with a smile. “Just don’t leave me in the dark again.”
“Deal,” Grayson said immediately, and before we could utter another word, his mouth descended on mine. “Time for make-up sex.”
My groan was low, and I had to start wiggling to try and ease some of the tension swirling in my gut. “Out here,” I moaned, “in public?”
Grayson laughed, and it was finally carefree. “We can do whatever we want, baby girl, but I won’t be sharing you with the world in that way. You’re just going to have to wait until we get home.”
I was back in my seat, belt in place, hands clenched in my lap as I fought the urge to touch myself. “Drive like we’re in danger, big man,” I said in a rush.
He laughed again, and fucking hell, I was growing addicted to the sound.
We made it back to Angelo’s place in record time, and I was already figuring out how to ditch all my clothes before we’d even made it into the garage, only it seemed our plans were going to have to wait.
We had a visitor.
She was standing in front of the gates, two of our security on either side of her, not touching her but also not allowing her in. Grayson slowed to a halt, and when Fiorella Ricci, Angelo’s completely absent-for-most-of-his life mother, approached my window, he shook his head and gestured for her to step around to his.
He hadn’t been kidding about the protective thing going nowhere, and I only felt love from his actions now. Fiorella didn’t argue as she moved to where Grayson had lowered his window a fraction, his gun in his hand as he eyed her cooly. “What are you doing here?”
Grayson clearly knew who this was: the Ricci wife who was no mother to Angelo, since she’d spent most of her life overseas shopping or in a pill-induced stupor.
