His grey eyes held a challenge.
I laughed. “Appear weak when you are strong, and strong when you are weak? Yeah, okay. That’s cheesy as fuck.”
“But necessary, no? If not for that, the Crows would not get this close to you today.” Alexei stood, signalling that the conversation was over. He nodded to Nash. “Now is your time to shine.”
I was none the wiser as Nash hooted out a laugh and jumped down from his spot by the driver’s seat. He hit the ground and limped forward, cupping his hands to his mouth and hurling abuse up the lorry park to who the fuck knew until Rubi appeared in the distance. They clashed in a cartoon squabble, drawing the eye of every driver in the park.
It made no fucking sense to me whatsoever until it did, and by then Alexei was already gone.
He and Nash seemed to take the air in the cab with them. Mateo was still standing on the passenger-side steps. I searched for his gaze. Found it, but he wasn’t there. Fuck me, he wasmilesaway, a bad place to be when we were about to throw hands.
I fixed the tea he’d brought me in the cupholder, plucked the spent smoke from his fingers, and gripped his hands. “You climbing over, or you want me to drive?”
Startled, he zoned back in. “You ain’t driving. Even if you had the right licence, you’d blast this motherfucker off a bridge or some shit.”
“Something wrong with my driving?”
“You’re a maniac.”
Facts, not humour, according to him and every brother I’d ever ridden with, except maybe Saint.
Whatever. The first part of my question remained and I ran out of patience to wait for an answer.
I stood and tugged Mateo into the cab. He let the door swing shut behind him. There was plenty of space between my seat and the dash, but he filled it with his rangy frame and dark stare, his face inches from mine.
Mother of Christ. I wanted to kiss him so badly my lips felt like a separate entity from the rest of my body. It wasn’t even sexual—though it sofuckingwas. It was a primal reaction, like a wolf to its mate. My body needed his. I couldn’t fucking fathom how we’d lived in each other’s pockets for so long without banging each other senseless.
On a literalnightmarelevel, I understood it, but the basic biology didn’t add up.
Ineededhim. And only a fool couldn’t see how he needed me too.
We were still holding hands, clutching tight like we were drowning. His extra height put his throat at the perfect level. I pressed a soft kiss to his pulse point and a tormented moan breached his lips.
“I can’t... fuck.” He squeezed my hands, swaying on his feet. “That’s so fucking good.”
I knew it. He’d done it to me in the chapel kitchen, and revenge was so sweet. This close to him, his lemon and mint smell was muskier. Deeper. More like him than like me. I pressed my face against his skin and breathed him in. He’d drained me dry a few hours ago, but desire flared in every part of me, wicked and hot. I wanted him naked and stretched out in the sun, beneath the moon, or under the shade of the forest trees. Anywhere that wasn’t my compound bedroom.
“Mat—”
A blaring horn cut me off. Then Nash’s voice,again, over the radio. “Coats on, kids. Time to go.”
Time tofight. A release I’d been chasing for months, to bare my fists and drive them into a man’s jaw, knuckles crunching bone, validation tomyselfthat I wasn’t as vulnerable and fragile as I’d felt carved up on a hospital bed.
With Mateo’s pulse hammering against my lips, it didn’t seem to matter so much.
It didn’t matter at all, because maybe it wasn’t violence that would heal me for good.
Maybe it was love.
I licked Mateo’s hot skin, slipping an arm around his waist as he shivered, for once holding him up. “Think they’d notice if we didn’t show up?”
Mateo chuckled, his fingers digging into my wrists. “Won’t have much choice if you kill me stone dead with your fucking tongue.”
I let him go. He dropped his head to my shoulder, hiding his face just for a moment. Then he sighed and sidestepped to his seat.
He jammed the key in the ignition and started the engine. Diesel fumes flooded the cab through the open windows. The charged air faded but somehow kept its stranglehold on me, binding my muscles and stealing words I should’ve said.
Focus. We were heading into a fight and I had a job to do. Brothers who needed me. But as I watched tension creep back into Mateo too, club business faded, obscure and annoying.
