For the love of all things fucking holy, Alexei was asleep.
* * *
Soft lips woke me, brushing the nape of my neck as lashing rain hammered the windows of Alexei’s penthouse in the sky. There was warmth in my aching shoulder muscles.
I opened my eyes to a heat pack and Saint’s potent stare, his face inches from mine.
The gentle kisses had come from Alexei.
I sucked in a breath that became a sharp gasp I wasn’t prepared for. Instantly, arms wrapped around my waist—Alexei. Hands gripped my face—Saint.
My pulse stuttered. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
Saint hooked his stare deeper, drilling into me. He let go of my face to rub my arms. I wasn’t cold—how could I be?—but goosebumps prickled my skin.
“You were dreaming,” Alexei murmured. “And it was not nice for you.”
“What?”
He kissed my neck again, as if that explained everything, and of course, Saint said nothing.
“I wasn’t dreaming.”Was I?Actually, I had no idea. Last thing I remembered was curving my body around Alexei as he’d slept against Saint. Now here we were. There was nothing else.
Alexei made a sound of discontent. He tipped me onto my back and replaced Saint’s gaze with his. “You are still not okay with the fact that someone put a needle in your neck and drugged you. It is why you will not take good painkillers for your injury.”
“I don’t need them. It’s fine.”
“You are a liar, Cam. To yourself if not to us.”
Us. How the fuck could I feel any pain when he said shit like that?
I grinned at him. His scowl deepened and he rolled off the bed, ghosting from the room before it registered that he’d been naked and pressed against me. “Jesusfuck.”
Beside me, Saint was eerily still. I turned to him and he was so fucking beautiful I couldn’t help my damn self.
I pulled him closer. He was as naked as me, warm and solid. He wasn’t hard, but he wasn’t as driven by sex as I was. Never had been. Other shit was more important to him. Things I was slowly learning after too many years of looking the other way.
Skimming a hand down his flank, I buried my face in his neck, not kissing or biting, just breathing him in. He smelt of Alexei’s expensive body wash, but beneath it his earthy scent remained, soothing and familiar.
Safe.
I took deep lungfuls, and the indecipherable mess I’d become in my sleep calmed. “I don’t remember dreaming.”
Saint pushed my hair back from my face. “Maybe you don’t have to.”
It was all I was getting, but it was enough. His voice was rough and unused, tight with all the words he couldn’t speak. I rubbed his chest and kissed his cheek. “Sometimes I can’t remember if I’ve said it enough, or even if I’ve said it at all, but I fucking love you. I hope you know that.”
“He knows.” Alexei slipped back into the room carrying a box. He dropped it in my lap before climbing back into bed. “I tell him when you forget, but love is more than words, no?”
It really was.
I opened the box. Inside was a selection of dark pancakes with fruit, jam, and honey, a couple of pastries with nuts, and other things I didn’t recognise enough to name. “What’s this?”
Alexei said something in the sharp-edged language I knew to be Russian. “Breakfast,” he translated. Then he reached into the box, scooped a pancake out, and shoved it in his mouth, eating with an enthusiasm I’d never seen in him before.
Wow. What did you know? My cold-blooded assassin had a sweet tooth.
We demolished the box. Then while Alexei tidied whatever, I kissed the sugar from Saint’s lips and debated my options. We had a long drive to get home in time for the Sambini meet at midnight, and after that, with the council camped out in my house, it would be a while before we had this kind of privacy again. Before I had them to myself with no outside distractions.
