“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.”