“We love who you are around us too,” Keys murmurs softly, pressing a gentle kiss to my lips. “We love you even if you are fucked up.”
A soft giggle escaped me. “I’m allowed to say that. Not you.”
He winked at me and pressed another kiss to the corner of my mouth. “Perks of being a… what? Am I your boyfriend now?” He mocked, “Girlfriend, it’s your solemn duty to tell me when you want to rip your eyes out because those bombshells are too beautiful to destroy.”
I sucked down a breath as I stared up at him, loving him for doing what he always did—making me feel like Amaryllis. Not the victim, not a woman who couldn’t get over something bad that had happened to her.
To him, I was Ama.
To Saint and Ink, I was too.
That was why I was addicted to them. Why they were my drug and poison of choice. I’d kill for them, die for them, but more importantly, I’d live for them, and that was the greatest gift I had to give them.
And they didn’t even know it.
7
Keys
This woman had the power to decimate me.
And she didn’t even fucking know it.
I swear, she could look into my eyes, and I’d see those gorgeous gray crystals staring back at me, but I saw the terror burrowed within. I saw the past and the present uneasily coalescing.
The torment in her eyes could tear me apart, but only Ama had the power to build me back together again.
I shuddered as I pressed my forehead to hers. “Do you know how much I need you? How badly I need you to be okay?”
She licked her lips. “I think I do. It’s why I never do anything. I know you l-love me.”
“No stuttering required,” I told her on a sigh. “I do. I love you, Ama. I have since I was a kid and didn’t really know what love was. Well, aside from the way my dad used to look at my mom.” I swallowed thickly. “I’d go insane if anything… if you did anything, Ama.”
She scowled. “I’m not going to. I was in a different place back then, but that’s in the past. Not my present. And even if you don’t want to be with me in that way, I’m not going to do anything either. I-I’m stronger now. I can do things, but you have to be a part of my life. Even if it’s only texting me a few days a week…”
I reached up and pressed a finger to her lips. “Shut up.”
“Charmer.”
“None of that crap,” I grumbled, ignoring her. “I ain’t goin’ nowhere. If you haven’t realized that by now, then there’s no hope for you. I would have gone to Rhode Island for you, baby girl.”
Her eyes widened. “You would have?”
I nodded, but then I pulled back and looked around the tattoo parlor. “But I get the feeling this is where you intended on being all along, am I right?”
She hitched a shoulder, nibbling at her lip until she muttered, “I knew if I had that validation, if the acceptance came through, that my dads would let me. They’d feel bad about what happened and would want me here rather than me having to fight for it.”
“Manipulative little mare,” I grumbled, but my lips twitched.
“I had to,” she defended. “You know what they’re like. They’d say it was too dangerous for me to be here otherwise. At least this way, they think they’ve done something proactive and it gets me where I want to be.”
“That tattoo, babe, it was phenomenal.”
She beamed at me. “You really think so?”
“I fucking know so.” Nervously, I asked, “Would you do one for me? My ma?”
Her lips parted. “Seriously? You’d want me to?”
“Hell yeah.” I reached up and rubbed my thumb along the line of her jaw—did I have the right to do that?
I wasn’t sure.
I felt like she wanted something I couldn’t give, but I also didn’t have a choice.
I wasn’t a man who appreciated being backed into a corner. All my life, I’d had to do things other people’s way.
Though I adored Ama’s family and was beyond grateful for them taking me in, I’d had to follow the orders of four men, and I truly pitied Seamus and Matty when they were old enough to butt heads with not one, but four dads. Jesus. It had been hard enough when mine was around, but four of them?
Christ.
I’d kind of decided when I was sixteen that I was going to be my own man.
Live my life by my rules, even if I had to bend them to follow the Rebels’ creed, and here I was, bending that shit for a woman. Talk about pussy-whipped, but that pussy belonged to Ama and she was like no other, and that was the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
I’d fucked around. Why wouldn’t I? Even before I’d prospected, I’d had club pussy on tap. Some of the women weren’t treated all that nice, and for a fifteen-year-old looking to get his rocks off, being nice to the ones a brother had been mean to was a surefire way to get some attention.
Women in this life were like Bubbles. Out for what they could get. I’d seen that, had guarded against it, just as Saint had. But Ama? She was inside my defenses because she’d been there before those walls had even been built.
She was as much a part of me as I was, and without her, I was nothing. Just as I knew, from the terror in her eyes at my words, that was exactly how she felt.
So, no, I didn’t want to share her.
But I’d been sharing her every day of my life.
And in this, hell, I’d have more of her. Before, I’d had to put up with erections when I watched her draw, saw that tongue of hers sticking out between her lips as she concentrated. This way, I’d have the right to tumble her to the ground and figure out ways to make that tongue pay for the years of torture I’d suffered, as well as use that time to make her think about anything other than the past where I knew she was stuck.
It was weird.
Ama was weird, if I were being honest.
She moved forward, evidently had plans and wasn’t afraid to use her wiles to attain her goals, but she was also stuck in the past. It was like those old-fashioned records my dad had played—vinyls. Sometimes, they got stuck and would scratch when he tried to unstick it. I figured that was Ama.
On repeat.
“Please?” I asked, turning back to the topic of a tattoo I’d long been wanting. “For my left arm.”
Her eyes turned intrigued. “You have a picture in mind?”
“Yeah. I’ll get the concept together,” I murmured, dipping my head so I could press a kiss to her nose. “I want you, Ama,” I told her. “So fucking badly.”
She swallowed. “Do you want what I do though?”
“Maybe, maybe not. I know it isn’t what I imagined. But, like I said earlier, I think a part of me knew it would go this way.” Just because I’d known, didn’t mean I was happy about it. “I-I want to try because I need you like this in my life.”
“I need you like this too,” she breathed. “I want to have the right to touch you. I need to be the one you come to when you’re angry and you just want to fuck to forget—”
“Whoa. You want that?” My eyes were wide with my surprise, but fuck, the way my body responded? It was like she’d set me on fire.
“Yeah. I do,” she growled, her hands coming to my hips and digging into my sides. “I need that. I’m not some delicate flower, Keys. I’m not something you always have to protect.”
My jaw worked. “I-I want that from you.”
“I just want to be your everything,” she whispered, stepping up onto tiptoes and uniting our mouths again.
I felt like my soul was breaking when she pulled away, and knew, point blank, I couldn’t live without this connection. I just…
For the first time in my life, I didn’t think my father was a selfish cunt for doing what he had—abandoning me to his brothers to care for, leaving Kenzie alone in the world too.
I got it.
I fucking got it.
When you’d met the one woman who made the chaos calm down, how the fuck were you supposed to go on when
she was cut from your life by an illness you had no control over?
“God, I want you so bad,” she whimpered, “but I’m really sore.”
Even though I knew I should kind of be jealous, I was mostly amused. “Fucked you good, huh?”
She slapped my back. “Shut up.”
I snorted, and when Saint joined in by laughing, I had the weirdest feeling that this would be okay.
Like I’d thought earlier, we’d always shared her. She’d always been between us and nothing was changing.
I reached down and grabbed her ass cheeks, massaging them just because I fucking could.
Because, with her words and actions, she’d given me the right to.
“It’s okay. I want you in full working order before I claim you.”
She shivered. “Will you let me wear your mark?”
My cock pulsed behind my fly. “Fuck. You’d want that?” I rasped, grinding my dick into her softness. “You’d want to tie yourself to me in that way?”
“Y-Yeah. I want that,” she mumbled, reaching up and blindly nipping at my bottom lip. “I want to be your woman. In all ways.”
When Saint stepped up behind her again, I was surprised to find that I didn’t feel aggression toward him. I didn’t want to smack the shit out of him for approaching when he had no right to.
He had every right, because he was as much hers as I was. But that was okay, because to her, we were Ama’s universe.
How couldn’t I be okay with that?
“What about mine?” Saint inquired, his voice a low rumble as he sucked just beneath the hickey Ink had given her. “You want mine?”
She shivered. “If you want to give it to me. I want everything you have to give.”
He chuckled. “Greedy.”
“V-Very,” she stumbled, then gulped. “Selfish too. I’m sorry—”
“Don’t be. I already told you. No self-pity. We are what we are, and we’ve all loved one another for a long time regardless of the many flaws like Keys’ obsessive rattling of his keys and—”
“How bad your boots stink,” I inserted quickly.
He smirked at me, but in his eyes, I saw a question. “You okay with this?”
“Are you?” I countered, uncaring that we were having this conversation with Ama right between us. It was something she needed to hear.
“Yeah. I accepted it a long time ago, just… I figured I’d be the one to claim her first. I guess Ink pushed my nose out of joint. He’s always made me jealous. The way she looks at him?”
At his words, Ama gasped, and when he clenched his jaw, I nodded. “I know what you mean.” In fact, that he felt that way made me feel better about my reaction because, yeah, I’d been working on jealousy, and I was angry that I hadn’t taken what should have been mine to claim a long while ago too. “And yeah, I’m okay with this. She’s mine, just as she’s yours.”
“Just as she’s Ink’s too,” Saint rasped.
I nodded. “Yeah.”
Between us, Ama shivered. “Can we do this again?”
Staring down at her, I blinked. “Huh?”
“Can we do this again? But with you both inside me?”
My lips twitched and Saint barked out a laugh.
“Yeah, baby doll, we sure can,” I growled, and somehow, that sealed our fate.
For an eternity.
❖
Saint
As she climbed onto the back of my hog, I sighed with delight as she settled in like the place had been made for her—and it had.
Her long, lithe legs clung to mine, and her arms settled around my waist like they’d been doing since she’d been old enough to ride bitch.
With her hands flat on my belly, I set off with Keys at my back, and wasn’t altogether surprised when, halfway through the ride, her hand settled atop my cock.
I said nothing because I wasn’t a fucking moron. It felt good, even if it was torture. But hell, there was plenty we could do that didn’t involve us hurting her, and Jesus… the idea of doing stuff to her with Keys taking part? Or just watching him torment her with pleasure?
There was no denying the way my blood pressure soared at that.
It wasn’t something I’d thought about in the past, but here I was, thinking about it now, and my cock was throbbing like a fucking bastard.
When we made it to Ink’s place—he’d texted us the address earlier and told us to come here—I groaned when she squeezed my cock one last time, and hopped off the back of the bike with the agility of someone who’d been doing it for years. Most of those years had been behind her parents’ backs, of course.
As she stared up at the house, I figured she was just as surprised as me. I hadn’t even known Ink had a home in Jonsson, had just thought he lived in the clubhouse to keep costs low.
The place was small, but the plot of land it was on wasn’t. The one-story house was made of brick down the sides, but the front was siding and it had a peaked roof with a bright green motif. The siding was clean and well-tended, and the matching shutters were too.
So, even if he didn’t live here, he kept the place maintained.
As I peered over my shoulder at the garden, saw the acres of lawn that weren’t overgrown either, I mumbled, “Who the fuck is Ink?”
Ama shrugged. “Figured he’d have a place like this.”
“Why?”
“Because he’s got his head screwed on?”
Keys’s keys jangled as he shuffled up beside her. “You mean because he’s old.”
She elbowed him in the side, but her nose crinkled at the bridge. “A little.”
A snort sounded from around the side of the house, where Ink strode out of nowhere. “It’s okay, babe. I’m double your age. You fuckers gonna make me feel like a pervert for the rest of our lives?” He cocked a brow at me, then narrowed his eyes at Keys, and I felt the warning to back off all the way across the yard.
Ama, of course, didn’t think twice about running over to him. She even flung herself forward and let him catch her. When his hands cupped her ass as her legs cupped his hips, I had to sigh at the damn fine sight of those peachy globes parted by tight denim.
Tongue cleaving to the roof of my mouth, I asked, “Why did we have to come here?”
Ink scowled at me over Ama’s shoulder.
I shrugged. “If you think you can keep shit from her, you’re a moron.”
Ama laughed. “He’s right. I have my ways. Most of which were learned at my momma’s knee.”
Ink groaned. “Don’t even go there. I know way too much about your parents.”
“What do you mean?” she questioned, her head tipping to the side.
“I mean,” he grumbled, then shot us a look. “What do you know about Bubbles? She told Lucie that she was carrying Wolfe’s kid.”
Ama gasped, but I snorted. “She pulled that shit on me the night of the run. I told her where to get lost.”
“She said my daddy was the father?” Ama whispered, sounding so despondent I regretted my flippant tone immediately.
“Hey, he isn’t,” Ink soothed. “But it was just a lot to handle at church. We had one issue going down and then Lucie had a meltdown.”
“Can’t blame her if that bitch blamed that baby on the Prez. Jesus, what’s she gonna do next? Tell all the brothers it’s theirs in the vain hope that one will stick?” I snorted. “I’m surprised Lucie didn’t toss her out on her ear.”
Ink shrugged. “Me, too.”
“Momma’s more vulnerable than you think,” Ama chided, twisting around to shoot me a disapproving look when I let out a hoot. “She is! She might look like she’s made of steel, but she isn’t. She has feelings too.”
“Even monsters have feelings, I guess,” I mumbled under my breath, but this time, Keys elbowed me in the side.
“Fuck off. You know Lucie ain’t a monster. She’s good people. I can’t blame her for having a meltdown. Not when some bitch is claiming her husband is the daddy of her kid. I mean, fuck, that’s a bet
rayal on more than one level.” He ground his teeth. “Hope that fucking bitch gets what’s coming to her, pulling that shit.”
Ink grunted. “I don’t even want to talk about that. I was just curious if Bubbles had been spilling her mouth to anyone.”
“Why?” Ama inquired, “Wouldn’t you know?”
He shrugged. “Not really. I don’t exactly hang out with the sweetbutts that much anymore,” he teased, and his words had me frowning. “I wasn’t about to let another woman in my bed when you were sleeping in it, was I?”
Her cheeks pinkened as she burrowed her face into his throat. “Oh.”
“Oh?” I cut Keys a look and saw he was just as confused. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I’ve had a bed buddy for a while now.” Ink shrugged. “Nothing dirty. She just needed a living teddy bear.”
Keys’ mouth opened and shut a few times until Ama whacked Ink in the side. “You were more than a living teddy bear. You chased Aaron away.”
“Monster killer then.” He snorted. “I swear, the shit I say because of you.” Blowing out a breath, he mumbled, “Anyway, I was just turning the water back on. We’re gonna be here for the night. Your momma is bringing Matty and Seamus over.”
“What?” Ama blurted out. “She’s bringing the hellspawn? Why?”
He pulled a face. “We think there may be a raid.”
That had Keys and me striding forward. “What the fuck? By who?”
The way he shrugged? Yeah, it told me he didn’t know much more. “ATF, maybe? We’re not sure. It may not even happen.” He grunted. “Anyway, we shouldn’t be talking about this shit out here. Fuck, we shouldn’t be talking about it period.”
Without uttering another word, he turned around with Ama still glued to him, and began to climb the two steps to the front door.
Opening it, he headed in, leaving Keys and me out in the garden.
“What do you think is going down?” I questioned.
“Fuck knows. Maybe it’s why Lucifer went straight to Wolfe to talk? I thought he was traveling with us for, I dunno, protection, maybe? But it could be for something else.”
Their Saint: Hell’s Rebel’s MC Part II Page 13