I grab a couple of the rifle cases and follow the rest of them inside. Mia is still in the kitchen, and I know as much as she’s healed the last couple of weeks, it’s going to take a while before she’s completely at ease being in a room with a dozen men.
Emmalyn, Misty, and Khloe greet their men before passing around bottles of beer and letting the guys know that the meal is nearly ready.
Dominic walks in, eyeing his wife like a hungry lion would a raw steak, but after kissing her on the lips and whispering something in her ear that makes her blush, he walks toward me.
“A word?” He turns before I can answer because he knows that I’m going to follow.
Kincaid, Shadow, Kid, Itchy, and Snatch all join us in the conference room. Kid closes the doors, and the loud excitement from being home dulls to a murmur.
“Mia’s back,” Kincaid says as he walks across the room.
Shadow doesn’t go to his computer like he normally would.
“She is,” I tell him.
“I’m not going to spend a long time right now discussing all that needs to be discussed because we can get to that later. I miss my wife, and I’m fucking starving, but I just wanted to touch base and see where things are. Where’s your head at?”
They all watch me, waiting for me to respond to my president.
“It’s in the right place. It’s where it should be,” I assure all of them.
“You’re sure,” Dominic asks.
“One hundred percent,” I tell them.
“Good,” Shadow grunts, and he’s the first one to walk toward the door.
“We’re debriefing at eleven hundred hours tomorrow. I expect you in here an hour earlier so we can talk,” Kincaid says as he walks past me.
And just like that, they’re all gone. It feels like a test, and honestly, I don’t know if I passed or not, but it’s not something I’m going to dwell on right now. Mia and an extravagant buffet meal are waiting just outside of this room, and I plan to enjoy both of them.
The guys are huddled in small groups talking and laughing, and somehow a cold bottle of beer ends up in my hand, and I’m welcomed back into the fray like I didn’t royally fuck up three weeks ago. I take what I can get for now because I have no idea what the outcome will be tomorrow.
I chat with Jinx and Grinch as they give me the lowdown on what happened in South Africa. Excitedly, they tell me about the three raids they managed, and even though they complained about being exhausted from hitting the sex-trafficking dens back to back to back in a mission that spanned twenty consecutive hours, they told their stories with grins on their faces. They were able to save the women that were there and eliminated seventeen pieces of shit off the face of the earth.
Exhaustion isn’t going to keep these guys from getting loud tonight, and that meant women were coming, and things were going to go down in the living room that weren’t for the faint of heart. I mentally begin to make a plan to keep Mia away from seeing things that may trigger her.
But when I look toward the kitchen, I find her watching me. I’m worried that the swirl of activities around her will set her back, but she grins at me and winks. I fall a little harder for her knowing that eventually, she’ll be comfortable around the men I see as brothers. It makes me want to ask Kincaid for a small piece of land across the street. They’ve already broken ground on Hound and Gigi’s house, and I can’t help but picture my future starting right across the street as well, but then again, I don’t know how tomorrow is going to go.
“Dinner is served!” Misty yells from across the room.
Shadow doesn’t bother to unwrap himself from her back as she begins to hand out plates to the guys as they line up for food.
Mia steps out of the way, shuffling close to the wall to join me in the living room.
“They act like they don’t eat while they’re away,” she mumbles with a grin when she reaches me.
“Food isn’t really on our minds when we’re working,” I explain.
My eyes track Jasmine and Max as they enter the clubhouse. I’m surprised they weren’t here when the guys arrived, but telling from the flush on both their cheeks, they aren’t complaining about the delay. When Tug spots them, I see more fire in his eyes than I saw when Dominic laid eyes on his wife. With a quick jerk of Max’s head, Tug breaks off from the line of men waiting to eat, and all three of them disappear down the hallway.
My eyes immediately find Dominic’s, waiting to see if he’s going to go tear into their asses, but he’s too wrapped up in something Makayla’s saying to notice them disappear.
“I think we’re going to have to sleep in my room tonight,” Mia whispers as she turns and wraps her arms over my shoulders.
She’s right. Unless those three get it out of their systems enough to head to their apartment, we’re going to need a room of separation between us.
She doesn’t want her brother to hear what goes on in my room, and I know for a fact she doesn’t want to hear her brother going at it with his guy and girl.
I look down at her. “Do you want to eat, or do you want to go to the room?”
She knows what I’m offering. If being out here is too much for her, then we can come back when things die down.
“I’m starving,” she says, and it’s just more proof that she’s healing.
Chapter 36
Mia
I fall to the mattress, breathless with my body tingling from the last hour of exertion.
We spent some time eating and chatting with the guys, but then people I didn’t know started showing up, and it was time to get out of there. I was already over-stimulated from helping cook and serve the meal, and the added people were just a little too much. Ryan didn’t bat an eye when he saw my eyes darting toward the hall. He simply made an excuse about being tired and led me away.
“You know,” I swat my hand at Ryan’s chest, “I should be insanely jealous of the women you had before me, but I also kind of want to thank them for letting you perfect that tongue game of yours.”
He chuckles but doesn’t feed my jealousy. It’s just one more thing that makes him perfect.
“Can we have another lesson tomorrow?” I ask when my breathing finally returns to normal.
“I’ve created a monster,” he says with a grin, his head shifting until his face is turned in my direction and our noses are mere inches apart.
“Maybe?” I shrug.
“I don’t know how tomorrow is going to go. I have a meeting, and I get the feeling that it’s going to determine if I’m going to be allowed to stay with Cerberus or if they’re going to give me my walking papers.”
“What do you want the outcome to be?” I turn on my side, bending my arms and curling my hands into the center of my chest.
“I want to stay.” His eyes search mine as if he’s afraid that the confession will change the way I feel about him.
“Then I hope you get to stay.”
“You really mean that.”
“I do. I think this organization is doing amazing work, and I’m proud that you’re a part of it.” I mean every word of it.
Without Cerberus, I know I’d be dead. Lots of women would be. They fight every time they leave the clubhouse to eradicate the world from vile, evil men who don’t value life, and that’s commendable. That’s something to be proud of, and if there was a way I could help, I’d step up and do just that.