“Calm the fuck down, Q,” she commanded, her grip tight and firm.
“Get your hands off me, Minx, before you see what happens when I let go of the monster.”
Her hard voice didn’t waver as she said, “I can take him.”
I looked down at her and felt all the muscles in my body unclench and begin to relax. She was here. She wasn’t fucking him anymore. She was okay.
I didn’t think, I just grabbed her, lifting her into my arms and crushing her body to mine. She smelled like blood and sex, but I didn’t care. I basked in the scent, simply because it was hers.
Her arms came around my neck, one of her hands at the back of my head as I buried my face in her hair.
Three hundred years I’d been alive, and never once had I ever felt more content than I did when she was near, when she held me like this. No one had ever done that, no one dared get close enough to try.
She took a deep breath and pulled on my hair, silently asking me to look at her. “We all need to talk. We have so much to figure out, and I need you to stay calm, or I’ll go insane.”
“You fucked him,” I accused.
“I did,” she nodded.
“I wasn’t there to watch,” I snarled.
Shocked, her eyes widened. “You…you wanted to watch?”
“I don’t want you out of my sight!” I shouted, the Bull taking over. I tried to pull him back, but it took more effort than I was used to. He was stronger with her near.
“Whoa, okay, okay.” She soothed him, the beast, like she knew I was two seconds from shifting and letting him run rampant through the house.
“I’m sorry,” I stated, feeling like shit for yelling at her. “I’m not sure what the fuck is happening to me right now.”
She laughed, a sweet and pretty sound. “Join the club, handsome. Will you come with me? I want to talk to you all, and I need to make sure that everyone is on board before we tackle this little mission we’ve sent ourselves on.”
I couldn’t say no to her even though I wanted to say fuck the family meeting and take her to my bed. I nodded, setting her back down. She reached back and grabbed my hand like she was dealing with a lost child, and in some ways, she was. I was drowning in feelings I’d never felt before, and I didn’t know what the fuck to do.
She walked us into the living room where Cabe and Lanier were watching TV, both with beers in their hands. Lanier looked freshly showered, Cabe looked like he was barely holding on, and Annalise marched a determined path to the center of the room. She left me at the love seat, pushing me into it, before standing below the mounted TV and turning to face all of us.
“Lanier and I fucked,” she stated, eyeing us all with a careless expression. “I know that you’re dealing with jealousy, I get it, I probably would too in your position, but let me be clear. This is just sex. There is no need to be jealous, because my goal here is not to pick just one of you to fuck and run with it. My goal is to find a way to bring the ceremonies back and end this. But I can’t do that if I have to fight the bond too. Emotions are running high in this fucking penthouse, and I need it to stop.”
“Yeah, that’s not going to happen,” Cabe spat.
“Oh, yes it is, Cabriel, because I can’t live with it.” She gave him a hard look before seeking out my eyes and then Lanier’s. His green eyes softened for only a second as he took her in, then he leaned back on the couch with a smirk like he knew something we didn’t. It was his usual look, his mask.
“So here is what I propose. We are a unit. From this moment on, we treat this bond like a pact, a gang symbol—for us ghetto kids—something that is understood by all of us as: all in, all out. We can’t leave the unit, we can’t abandon the mission, until we find a way to bring the ceremonies back. I say we do this; we trust each other on the most basic level. We all have the same goal here, anyway. I’m cool as fuck; you guys are Dolphins fans, but that’s okay.” She shrugged, a smile gracing her swollen lips. “I’ll change that. But honestly, I just don’t want all kinds of bullshit getting in our way. I’m sure that we can find a way to not let jealousy fuck with our end goal.”
There was a seriousness to be heard in what she was proposing. If we let our emotions—the negative ones—get in the way, we’d never get anything done. But if we put that shit aside, we could be a family. At least for a little while.
“So you are just going to fuck all of us?” Cabe questioned, eyes hard.
“Don’t think of it like that!” she argued. “That, right there, is the problem. No, I’m not just fucking all of you, I’m going to try and live in the moment, and wherever the moment leads us—we try not to question it. But we can’t tear each other apart. I won’t break up your friendship, but I can’t exactly leave. I’m honestly not sure what would happen if I did.” She paused, looking down for a moment before meeting all of our eyes. “But I know that when Lanier was gone, I felt it and it sucked. So I’d like to avoid that feeling while we do this. Can we agree to keep this casual but be friends outside of it?”
“You want to be friends?” I spoke up, incredulous. I couldn’t do friends with her. Friends don’t touch their friends. I planned to touch her all the fucking time.
“Outside of sex, yes, I’d like to be friends.”
“But like…” I started, sitting forward in the chair. I understood what she was saying, but I wanted to ruffle her feathers a little. A smirk graced my lips. “What kind of friends?”
“Are you an idiot?” Lanier laughed. “Ignore him, Annalise, he’s just goading you at this point. Yes, we will be friends, all of us. A unit. Until we break this bond, everyone needs to keep their fucking cool.”
“Yeah, let’s see how well you do when she fucks me and you have to listen,” Cabe spit out, still fuming.
“I won’t care, because I’ll fuck her right after. Take what you want, isn’t that what we agreed to? While the bond lives, we do what we want. When it dies, we go our separate ways.”
The room went quiet at his words, the finality in them. He truly believed we’d all be able to just walk away from this unscathed, that we wouldn’t get used to her being around?
Annalise cleared her throat, looking momentarily uncomfortable before she schooled her features back to normal. “Okay, so let’s talk about what we know so far.”
She came over to me and sat down on my lap, wiggling her hips until she was seated comfortably—right on my dick. I bit back a groan and put my hand on the back of her neck. “This isn’t very friendly, Pup, not with your ass on my dick.”
“Stuff it, Quint, focus,” she replied sharply with another little wiggle of her hips.
Cabe got up from where he was seated on the couch. “I’ll get the pizza.”
Her face fell. She watched him walk away with sad eyes, like she didn’t like that he was upset, but she wasn’t willing to go over there and make him feel better. I wondered what that was all about, but Lanier spoke up before I had a chance to ask.
“About a month ago, Lucifer asked Quint to search for a female Neph here in the city. He said that she would be from the shitty parts and might run in the dirtier circles. That’s why we showed up to the fight that night. We had already looked into strip clubs, shady bars, homeless shelters, and street corners where drugs are known to be sold. We figured that if she wasn’t in any of those places, she would be in the more brutal parts. I didn’t think we’d find her in an underground fight though, that came as a surprise.” He smiled at her with warmth and pride in his eyes. I doubt he realized it, but he was already looking at her with more feeling than I’d seen him express in the entire time I’d known him.