It was too easy to let my hand drift to his waist, fingers slipping into his belt loop, thumb seeking out the bare skin that was as much of him as I’d ever let myself have. “I’m good. Just sulking over you working all night when you should be with her.”
Nash leaned into my touch. “Why do you give a shit?”
Cos you’re the best mate I’ve ever had that I didn’t share a womb with. “She deserves better. You both do.”
“This is the life. We don’t know any different.”
“Always time to learn, brother.”
His smirk returned. “You gonna teach us?”
My restraint deserted me. I wrenched him close enough that I felt the stone column he was packing in his jeans. Resisted palming it by the grace of fuckin’ God.
Then I pushed him away. “Get on your hog, Nash.”
He laughed, but the mellow sound carried the same tension binding my own muscles. This thing between us... it burned so good, but every wicked moment left a scar, just like Logan said it would.
“You’re gonna get hurt.”
I jammed my helmet on with that beauty rattling around my brain. I mean, Lo wasn’t wrong, but the most painful secret I had was that he didn’t have a clue what had fucked me up the most, and he never would.
Not if I could help it.
Nash’s bike was a shit-hot loud V-Rod. It started with a clattering roar and reset my brain, hauling me back to the present. I silenced my blood brother and slipped back into bodyguard mode like I’d never been gone. I gunned my Dyna and waited for the other brothers to flank him before I took point at the rear, watching his back with the best view.
The convoy moved out, leaving Mateo behind to take care of our queen.Inside, not on the landing of purgatory where I spent most of my time when she was home.
CosMateodidn’t want to fuck her,andI wondered what that was like, to look at someone as stop-traffic beautiful as Orla O’Brian and not have the whole fuckin’ universe descend to your dick. These cats who saw her as a surrogate sister didn’t know they were damn born.
And there it was. The circle came back around, and it was a truly special thing how my obsession swung from one second to the next. Nash and Orla bookended my sexuality. I loved every gender. I loved itall.But I only felt truly whole when I had them both on my brain.
Fucking each other.
Fucking me.
Or even just laughing.
Justliving.
The way Nash gazed at her. How she watched over him when he wasn’t paying attention, catching the small things that slipped through the cracks.
It was an epic kind of love, the best, and before I’d become a King, I’d only seen it in Logan and his sunshine lover. Now I saw it every day in the men I’d come to count as family, but inthem, Nash and Orla, it warmed my fuckin’ heart when I wasn’t incinerating myself with dirtier thoughts. Distracting shit I didn’t have time for as Nash led the pack deep into southern Devon, a place that should’ve felt like home but made my skin prickle the second the landmarks coalesced into a decade I’d rather set on fire than remember.
It was longer than that.
Details. Who really gave a fuck?
Nash pulled into a lay-by. His band of brothers followed, and so did I.
He tugged his helmet off. “This is as far as you go. Dodgy Dave gets jumpy if I’m not alone.”
“Dave can fuck himself then.” The snap was out of me before the thought completed. I had no regrets. “Where’s the meet?”
“Tap Lane.”
“No fuckin’ way.There’s three exits to that shithole. If this goes moody, you’ve got no chance on your own.”
“It won’t go moody. I’ve met this idiot a thousand times. He’s too scared of Saint to flip on me. He just wants his grubby cash.”
