A pause stretched out between us. Loaded. Heavy. And devoid of the magic I felt when I’d stretched out beside him in his bed and slept.
Then Alexei sighed. “I will always want you.”
And of course he hung up.
I closed my eyes. When I opened them again, Saint was in front of me, his stare more intense than I could take. “What?”
Nothing. It was as predictable as Alexei hanging up on me and the prickle of emotion that ran through me was the same.
I stood, getting up in his face. For weeks now, I’d been so entranced by Alexei that I’d forgotten how Saint’s close proximity could make my knees weak if I didn’t lock them and grit down on how crazy he made me feel.
My guard was compromised. I took a lungful of him, and the dizzying impact propelled me forward.
I backed him against the wall, pressing my chest against his. He felt different to Alexei—harder, bigger, and nothing like the dudes I’d forced myself to be attracted to since Saint had scowled his way into my orbit all those years ago—but fuck, I liked it.
I love it. “Take a breath,” I growled. “If you’ve got something to say, get it out before my head fucking explodes.”
Saint swallowed, the panic I hated so much dancing in his eyes as he fought to gather his words enough to form a sentence. His chest rose and fell too fast, like Alexei’s had the night I’d found him crouching on his kitchen floor like a cornered animal. And like that night, all I wanted for Saint was to make it better. To let him know I’d take his pain a thousand times if it meant he didn’t have to.
So tell him, Alexei whispered in my brain, and I glared harder.Why?What did it matter to him what went down between me and Saint?
It didn’t make any fucking sense.
“Cam.”
I blinked as Saint uttered my name. His voice was rougher than Alexei’s and raked over my soul like gravel. I pressed against him harder and my gaze fell to his lips.
The chapel was suddenly airless and hot. I licked my own dry lips and took a breath that went nowhere. Alexei’s voice came again in my head and I wanted to fucking scream.No. I want you. I can’t want him. I fucking can’t.
But I did. So much. And I knew Saint wanted me too. I felt it in every inch of him that touched me, from his denim-clad thighs to his ripped abs to his tattooed chest. His hair was a warmer colour than Alexei’s and it had a dishevelled wave that made him look as if he’d ridden the cliff paths with no helmet, even on the rare occasions he made an effort to tame it.
He hadn’t made that effort now. With his desperate gaze, he was as wild as I’d ever seen him, and for reasons I still couldn’t accept, instinct drew me impossibly closer to him.
He smelled of cigarettes and the forest where he’d been left as a baby. “Saint—”
A phone rang.
Alexei.
But it wasn’t my phone. It was Saint’s, a man I knew to ignore ninety per cent of his calls.
He jerked to snatch this one from his pocket, breaking the mad haze that had descended over me.
I backed off, sucking in a much-needed breath, and half staggered to my chair.
Saint answered the call with a low grunt, his eyes on me, unreadable, but full of the fire I’d lit beneath us. He listened to whoever was on the line and I saw the instant that something changed—that whatever had just happened between us was obliterated by what he was hearing in his ear.
He hung up.
I stood, battle ready. “What is it?”
“Sambini shipment. It’s coming in tonight and intel from the Crows says there’s a truck of girls on its way to meet it.”
It didn’t surprise me. I’d dispatched Rubi because of the suspicion crawling in my gut. But being right hit hard. I wanted to puke. And I wanted tokillthe motherfuckers responsible. My dad had died to stop this. I couldn’t let it happen on my watch.
“We need to move.” I picked up my phone, already calling Nash. “Call Mateo. Tell him he’ll have to handle his business with the prospects. I need every other brother with me.”
Saint nodded, still eyeing me, though the heat had morphed into something different.
