One of Beast’s requirements for allowing Grey to stay here was to make sure he had zero access to a phone or internet. Or really anything. Beast even took the power cord from the smart TV in the living room. His trust for Grey is minimal.
“He’ll either kill me or believe the truth: that I was trapped here on the compound with no way out.” Grey pauses as Reba reenters the room, coming to stand beside me with an awkward set to her shoulders.
She’s worried about me, but she’s also afraid of what’s going to happen now that Grey’s spilled her secret.
She was feeding him information.
It’s a crime punishable by death.
Reba has a right to be afraid.
Fem, on the other hand, isn’t afraid of anyone or anything. My dog struts right into the room behind Reba, tail raised, triangular ears perked, and lets out a low, rumbling growl. With a click of my tongue, I call him over to my side and he turns, putting his back to my legs before sitting down.
It’s a defensive position to be sure, but that’s okay. Feminist and I have each other’s backs. And anyway, it’s kind of nice to see that he still really is my dog and not Reba’s. If he wanted to go with her to the convent, I’d let him. My hand drops down to stroke one of his silky ears, and he turns his head toward me, resting his muzzle in my lap.
“Beast …” I murmur, feeling sick at the idea of having to rely on anyone for anything, but knowing that I sort of have to right now. I need to heal, and I need to heal quick. Rest will do that. Being a dickhead and whining about how I can do everything myself, well, that won’t help me much at all.
“Wife,” he replies, setting a glass of orange juice down beside me and piling some pills beside it. A bunch of painkillers, an anti-inflammatory, whatever else the doctor sent me home with. I’m sure most of it is smuggled, and purchased from the same suppliers who sell the club product for redistribution. “We don’t have anything to eat in here.” Beast mulls that information over for a moment as I scoop the pills up and pile them into my mouth two at a time, using the juice to help me swallow.
I’d make a lewd joke but now doesn’t feel like an appropriate moment.
“We’ve always been so alike, you know?”
Cat said that to me, just before he shot my brother in the back of the head. Why? What did he mean by it? I’m obsessing over the moment and rightfully so: this is still very much a ‘life-or-death’ type incident. It’s not over by any means. I scratch Fem-fem’s head as I think.
“Can you please acknowledge me so that I know where I stand?” Reba whispers, coming around to my other side and yanking out a chair. She puts her hands delicately in her lap, but her emerald stare, when she directs it at me, is anything but delicate. She is going to make a terrifying fucking nun. Like, God help any little children under her care; that stare dives straight to the bones.
I glare right back.
“I trusted you,” I tell her, and she cringes like she’s been hit. None of this is fair. I get that this game that Grey and I are playing comes at a price. We’re friends, but we’re not … I don’t know how to explain it. We’re still rivals. He’s still mafia; I’m still club. He’s a Montague; I’m a Capulet. Just like Kian and Queenie.
“Grey said it would keep you safe, and it did. He was right. I was right to trust him. You are—relatively speakin’—safe.”
Beast grunts at her, and I decide to keep to myself how damn lucky the two of them are that I’m here. I’m not sure what he’d do to Reba—I just can’t imagine the man killing a child or an innocent woman like Reba Keller—but he certainly wouldn’t be handling this as calmly and painlessly as I am.
“Are you my friend now or his?” I snap, which really isn’t fair. The only reason Reba ever met Grey was because of me, because she is and was my only real friend. Well, her and Grey and the goddamn dog. My men are my men, but they are not my friends, not yet anyway. Eventually, I’m sure, but it’s much easier to cultivate lust and need than it is true friendship. The sex can even get in the way sometimes.
“Gidge, I am always here for you. I always have your best interests at heart.” Reba sounds choked up, and that’s when I’m reminded that she’s still seventeen. She hasn’t clicked over into being eighteen, and she’s going through worse than most people do in their entire lives.
“I know that,” I reply, raking my fingers through my hair and cringing when they get caught on several snarls. My curls are raging today, as if they’re pissed off that I dared pin them into place for the wedding. I must look insane, especially when paired with the split lip and swollen eye.
Some wedding night for me and Beast, eh? I can’t even quite remember which part of the night I was even in his bed, which part was spent holding Grainger’s hand as he flatlined, or which part was spent kissing three other men.
We are both owed some deliverance for this shit.
I look over at him, leaned up against the edge of the counter, huge arms crossed over his chest. He’s wearing jeans and nothing else. No shoes, no shirt, please let me service … I blink away the silliness and groan, folding my arms on the table and leaning my forehead against them.
“I know that, Reba,” I repeat as her hand strokes down my back.
“Let me get some detangler and a hairbrush,” she remarks after a moment, and I don’t protest as I hear the sound of her chair legs scraping across the old linoleum floors, the softness of her receding footsteps.
“How many people did you end up losing?” Grey asks absently, and I lift my head up to glare at him before Beast gets the chance to react. He won’t appreciate these sorts of prying questions. Having spent months locked up with this boy, I know it for what it is: a hint.
He’s pushing me toward something.
We stare at each other, and I’m reminded of the way the sunlight used to slant through the stained-glass windows of our luxurious prison and light up his pretty hair with jewel tones.
I glance over at Beast, and he frowns. The expression is far darker than it would be on another person. He isn’t going to answer my question in front of Grey, but I need to know.
“If we’re going to make some sort of truce, we need to be equals,” I state firmly, splaying my fingertips on the surface of the table as Grey’s lips twist to the side in a trenchant smile. “The mafia lost forty-some people during the wedding; if we haven’t lost at least that many, then we won’t get either group to work with us.”
“You’re so sharp-witted, Gidge,” Grey says appreciatively, lifting his mug to his lips as Beast steps forward, putting his own hands on the tabletop. I close my eyes at the sensations that spike through me at his nearness.
Turning my head, I take him in, the bandages on his muscular arms, the cuts on his face that add to, rather than detract from, his rugged beauty. There’s a bit of blond stubble on his jaw that wasn’t there the day of the wedding, marking the passage of time.
Oh, I like this, I think, reaching up a hand to brush my knuckles against that rough hair and shivering. The effect is amplified when those blue eyes swing over to mine. Beast captures my hand in one of his and brings it to his lips for a kiss, making my body tremble in ways that have absolutely nothing to do with my fatigue or pain.
This is all heat.
It’s the burn of a broken promise, that’s what it is.
We were supposed to have a wedding night. Instead, we had to deal with a violent coup.
Our bodies are aching for what should’ve been.
I inhale deeply, taking in that old books and Earl Grey tea smell that clings to Beast as stubbornly as the musky scent of male. I see now it’s because he’s been living at Gram’s, storing his clothes in a chest in the library. He sleeps in there, too. There’s a cot there that I figured was just for guys on guard duty or something. I didn’t know until recently that Sin, Beast, and Grainger all lived there.
How sad.
They’ve been living in a graveyard. And they certainly wouldn’t have been allowed under any circu
mstances to bring women back there. Not to say they weren’t fucking groupies or whatever—the thought makes me rage in a way that I don’t care to examine right now—but they never had anyone to warm their actual beds, to go home to at night, to curl up against.
Am I damning them to more of that by requesting the hearts of all four? Is that fair, for them to only have a lover in their beds one-fourth of the time? I know I’d never allow it, for them to date other women. That’s not how this is going to work.
My selfishness makes my jaw clench because, in reality, Beast and I haven’t talked about this at all. He’s my husband now, and even if I’ve never liked the idea of marriage, I’m determined to keep the lines of communication open.
“I’m not entirely sure you understand how precarious your situation is,” Beast says finally, turning back to look at Grey with no small amount of disdain. He doesn’t care for my friend. That’s okay. I know what I’m doing here. Even if nobody else can see it.
Can’t see the forest for the trees, am I right?
The club and the mafia are going to destroy each other.
There is only one way out of this.
My eyes meet Grey’s, and something unspoken and impossible passes between us.
Regardless of what happens next in this filthy war, there is one truth we can both count on: we will have each other’s backs, always. Even if that means playing dirty. Even if that doesn’t always look the way one might expect.
Reba fed Grey information; that helped both him and me. I might’ve figured as much. Those last few days before the wedding, if she asked to use my phone, I let her. And I didn’t check to see what she’d done when she was finished. Am I still too trusting? Or just trusting enough?
“I’m well-aware of the peculiars regarding my situation,” Grey muses, frowning down at the coffee with a wistful sigh. He sets it aside. Guess it isn’t up to his usual espresso loving standards. “But you’re not going to kill me, are you? Gidge will never forgive you.”
“Do not tell me what my wife will or will not do,” Beast growls out, and the sound gives me goose bumps all over—in the best way possible. I want him to cart me off to his bed and fuck me into the mattress.
My head throbs, and I reach up with my right hand, putting two fingers against my forehead. My migraine might not like that, but my cunt sure as hell would.
We all pause at the sound of a motorcycle and Beast stands up, moving over to the blinds to peek out. Lights sweep across the kitchen just before he releases the slats and turns around.
“Crown,” he explains, and the tense set of my shoulders relaxes somewhat. At the same time, a nervous ball of energy forms in my belly, and I find myself twisting my hands in my lap. If Sin or Grainger is dead, it’d be just like Crown to come home to tell me in person.
Reba comes back into the kitchen with a bag of my toiletries, settling herself into the chair on my right. My body hums with energy as Beast moves over to unlock the front door, and Crown’s impossible presence fills the farmhouse. I haven’t even seen him yet, around the corner in the front hall as he is, but I can sure as shit feel the change in atmosphere.
As my best friend reaches up to run her fingers through my tangled hair, I hear the men having a low conversation near the front door. A moment later, there he is, the vice president in all of his glory. Fem growls from beneath the table, and I snap my fingers at him. With a reluctant sigh, he curls up at my feet and allows Crown to step into his own kitchen.
His eyes find mine immediately, and my body twitches with indecision. Do I get up and kiss him? Would he like that? Would I? Crippled by a sudden hesitancy—a very un-Gidget-like trait—I just sit there and allow Reba to soak my hair with a fruity-smelling detangler.
I know right away what product it is that she’s using. She must’ve dug the first thing she could find out of my bag. It’s one of Posey’s detanglers. I’ve kept it for years and never used it. When Nellie brought me toiletries from home, she just scooped up whatever she could find—including that.
So now, not only do I have a duffel bag full of my dead sister’s clothes, but my hair is soaked in her scent.
I consider asking Reba to stop, so that I can preserve what remains in the bottle, but then … I think it’s time that I stopped holding onto artifacts and moved my life forward. I will never stop missing my sisters, but maybe I need to let go of some of that pain?
Killing Giulia Wolfe would help. A hot shiver of violence lances through me. Oh yeah, that’d help a lot. If possible, I would love to know the identities of the men who were present at my house that day. Then, if I could be left alone in a room with them tied up, and a hot curling iron, I’d show them what it’s like to be violated.
Crown stares at me for a moment before looking over at Grey.
“What the fuck is this mafia shit doing at my kitchen table?” he asks as Grey lifts up the coffee mug yet again, staring into it with an uncertain expression before finally taking another sip.
“Pleased to meet you. Calder Reid, right? My father hates you almost as much as he despises Gidget—and slightly less than he loathes the president.” Grey turns to look at Crown, and the two of them end up sharing a long, sticky stare.
The … future president and the future don? Maybe. Hopefully.
That thought, of course, is predicated on the idea of Cat stepping down. Or dying.
I can’t think about that sort of thing right now. I’ve just lost my brother, and while it was a necessary and logical step forward, that doesn’t mean I want to think about losing another family member. Even Cat. Or … especially Cat?
Daddy.
I hate him. I love him, too, and that’s part of the reason that I’m so terrified. I’m woman enough to admit that.
“I’ll ask this one more time: what is this thing doing in my goddamn kitchen?” Crown demands. His voice doesn’t raise or lower, doesn’t darken or get clipped. It’s just that, the same authoritative tone with which he told me to suck his cock, get naked, and then watch him fuck me on all fours.
“My kitchen,” I say, because I know that’ll draw Crown’s attention over to me in a way that nothing else could. Just like I teased a dying Grainger with the thought of me being knocked-up with his kid. This is like catnip to Crown.
“Gidge,” he warns yet again, because that’s all he can seem to do in response to that. Say my name. Just my name. “This boy should be tied up and bleeding.”
“Like he was when I risked my life to save him?” I query back defiantly, cringing slightly as Reba yanks on my tender scalp. I swear, I’m not usually this much of a little bitch. My head just hurts like, well, a bomb went off, I guess. “Don’t be like that, Crown. He risked his life to bring that antidote here.”
Grey keeps watch on Crown, but the man isn’t looking at him.
He’s looking at me.
“Sin and Grainger?” I query, and he nods slightly. My breath releases in a sharp rush. With each minute that ticks by, their chances of getting out of the hospital increase.
“Grainger woke up briefly, but he wasn’t particularly coherent.” Crown moves over to the counter and puts down a paper bag that I didn’t notice before. Delicious smells drift into the room, and I find my mouth watering in a way that has nothing to do with the tight denim sculpted over the vice president’s ass. “It didn’t seem a good reason to bother you.”
“Wife,” Beast says, and I glance over at him, wondering if that isn’t my new name now. He hasn’t called me anything but since. I smirk slightly.
“Husband,” I reply with a cocked brow. “What?”
“I’m cleaning up and taking off for the hospital; you stay with Crown.” He gives me a meaningful sort of look before leaning down and putting that hot, sultry Southern mouth of his near my ear. “No fucking of any kind.”
He grabs my chin and turns my face toward him, his stubble tickling my sensitive skin as he presses a gentle but urgent kiss to my lips. He knows I’m hurting, but he wants me. Badly. His
tongue tells me as much when it sweeps into my mouth and slides across my own in a possessive flick. Marking me for later just before he pulls back, and my overheated body turns frigid in his sudden absence.
I don’t get the chance to ask if Beast means no sex just for now or, like, permanently.
He’s standing up and heading down the hall before I get the opportunity to meet his eyes again.
I turn my attention back to Crown as he pulls out several brown boxes full of takeout.
“They’re all burgers and fries; take your pick.” Crown turns back toward the table and tosses two boxes down in front of me and Reba. “Since Beast is going to eat at the hospital, I have an extra. Here, mafia brat.” He chucks that one down hard enough that the top pops open and the bun and several fries flop out onto the table.
It’d be funny if this situation weren’t so insane.
“Thank you so fucking much,” Grey replies, putting his trembling free hand underneath the mug. He looks up at me with a horrible and disturbingly neutral frown on his face. It’s taking everything in his power to remain calm in here. I see two boys warring for control inside the head of the man they’re trying to become: the reckless asshole who went to the casino to party and ended up kidnapped by a motorcycle club, and the cold, disturbed socialite who wants control of his father’s empire. “Your hospitality won’t go unremembered.”
“If you think I care about your opinion, you’ll be sorely disappointed,” Crown assures him, giving his signature Cheshire Cat grin. It’s decidedly darker than Grey’s neutral frown. The latter takes note of the former’s expression and sets his mug down very, very careful.
I forever stand by my statement that Crown is twice as scary as Cat on a good day.
Beast, despite his propensity for wild violence, is actually much calmer than our VP.
I Will Revel in Glory Page 5