I Will Revel in Glory

by Stunich, C. M.

Beast goes still suddenly, releasing my arm just in time for Crown to appear around the corner.

  He stares at the two of us with this expression of impossible rage on his face, and I ask myself yet again how the hell I think this is all going to work.

  “You animal,” Crown says lightly, reminding me, oddly enough, of Giulia Wolfe. Pretty sure she said the exact same thing to me once upon a time. The thing is, we’re all animals. Some of us are wolves, some are bears, some are rats (like Gaz). Giulia is a fucking viper.

  Beast slides out of me and manages to catch me around the waist before I fall. He hefts me up and turns me around so that I’m leaning back against the side of the house, panting heavily. I don’t even bother to fix my pants just yet. No point.

  I stare at Beast’s profile as he studies Crown.

  “You’re back already?” he asks, like he’s annoyed by the idea.

  “Gidget is right. I’m exhausted. If I don’t get some sleep, I won’t make it another step.” Crown is staring at me now, but I can’t seem to bring myself to look away from Beast. “There are still men that I trust in this club, believe it or not.”

  “I don’t trust anyone,” Beast tells him, but even though I’m not looking at him, I see Crown give a loose shrug of his shoulders.

  “Sin and Grainger are at least awake now; they can babysit themselves.” Crown turns away, but not before trying one, last time to get me to look at him. I finally do, and I see that his eyes … they’re blazing. He looks at me like something that should be devoured whole.

  I just stare at him for a minute before he turns away and takes off.

  Birds chirp in the late afternoon sunshine as I close my eyes and lean my head back against the house, feeling warm rays on places that don’t usually see the sun. The air is hot and thick with smoke from those stupid, goddamn wildfires.

  “Come on, wife,” Beast says, his voice substantially less dark than it was earlier. He waits for me to open my eyes and pull up my own pants, meeting my gaze as I look up at him. He touches a thumb to my lips, and I shiver. “That’s when I knew, that night. It wasn’t right, what we did. But I wasn’t strong enough to resist you. Of everything I’ve ever encountered, every person, every situation, I’ve been able to make the right choice regardless of what I wanted.”

  Beast steps closer to me, putting his big hands on my waist and drawing me close. I tilt my head back automatically, groaning and sagging against him as he kisses down the side of my throat.

  “You’re the only exception.”

  “Beast, I’m … pregnant,” I whisper, hating that I even have to say it, but knowing there’s no other choice for us now but pure, raw honesty. “And it’s not yours.”

  “You’re my wife,” he says, kissing my neck again and giving me goose bumps. “So it’s mine. I explained that to you.”

  “Grainger won’t like that,” I whisper back, but Beast just grunts, as if his opinion is inconsequential.

  “Come with me,” he says, giving me such a long, studying sort of look that I know I’m not leaving his bed until tomorrow. Or maybe the day after that. Maybe longer.

  Beast holds out a hand to indicate that I should move past him, and I do, loving the feel of his heavy shadow trailing along behind me. He’s got my back in a way that I’ve never had before; I trust him implicitly.

  Trust.

  Wow.

  I make quick work of the front steps and head inside to see Grey leaning against one wall, watching us with heather gray eyes.

  “That was quite the show,” he murmurs as I pass by him, just a hint of that cocky playboy he used to be in his words. Without so much as a breath of hesitation, Beast reaches out and wraps the fingers of his left hand around the mafia brat’s neck, slamming him into the wall.

  Grey grits his teeth and curls his hands around Beast’s, but he doesn’t fight him. He goes perfectly still, as if he knows that’s his only chance to make it out of this alive.

  “Be quiet, boy. I wouldn’t lose a lick o’ sleep putting you in the ground.” Beast shoves him hard against the wall and Grey grunts as I watch impassively, offering a silent apology with my eyes but little more. He’s on club turf now, club rules. These are my men and my house.

  “I warned you,” I tell him as he coughs and puts a hand to his throat, his eyes steely as he watches us walk down the hall. The only reassurance I get that he isn’t going to do anything stupid is the faintest hint of a smirk before we pass through the living room and into the second hall.

  The door to Beast’s room is on the right.

  He pauses behind me, but he doesn’t touch me.

  “Your wedding dress is in the bag on the dresser,” he tells me, and I blink in surprise, glancing back to look at him. But he’s staring down the hall in the direction of the living room instead. “Put it on.”

  He takes off as I exhale and open the door, slamming it closed behind me and putting my back to it.

  Oh my god. Holy fuck. Holy fucking fuck.

  I rub at my face with both hands.

  “What have I gotten myself into?” I whisper, pushing away from the door and stumbling over to the dresser on shaky legs. I unzip the duffel and find my dress—Nellie’s dress—stuffed haphazardly inside.

  How many days ago was the wedding? I’m so disoriented. I unzip one of the jacket pockets and slide my phone out. Two days.

  “It’s only been two fucking days?!” I choke, starting to put the phone down and then realizing that I never checked the message that came in earlier. I feel a frown pull at my lips when I see that it’s an automatic alert.

  Lane County Emergency System - this is an automated message. Your area has been upgraded to a Level 1 - Be Ready - Alert. Please be aware that fire danger exists in your location. Make preparations, perform precautionary relocation for those with special needs, pets, and livestock.

  “Fuck.”

  The year my sisters died, there was ash on the wind. Now, it’s back, and I can taste it every time I step foot outside the goddamn door. I’m not someone who generally believes in omens, but nobody could argue that this is good news in any way, shape, or form.

  The club and the mafia are both powerful entities, but even they can’t stop a literal firestorm.

  Still, it’s only a level one alert for now. The club won’t move any of its people for anything less than level three—and even then, it’s questionable. We have hoses, water tanks, and other firefighting equipment on the compound.

  With a sigh, I chuck the phone aside. One nice thing about throwing in with four outlaws of questionable motives, all of whom are nursing alpha male complexes, is that this isn’t my problem. Let them worry about and talk over the fire danger.

  If it’s time to move, we’ll move.

  Part of me wonders if it wouldn’t be nice for this whole damn city to burn to the fucking ground, but then I remember that the sorts of grudges held between the club and the mafia are the kind that taint the very earth with blood, all the way down to its liquid, molten core.

  I snatch the dress up and take it with me into the bathroom, starting the shower and stripping down to nothing. Like I did in the mafia’s hideout the morning before my wedding to Grey, I lean over the sink and stare into the mirror.

  My face is still swollen, yes, but it’s substantially better already.

  I managed to escape that entire mess with minimal injuries.

  My dark eyes look accusatory, even though it’s only myself that I’m staring at. My makeup is expertly applied, but it looks almost desperate in this light, covering up those bruises, that swelling. It almost makes me look younger, as opposed to older.

  Next time, I won’t cake it on quite so heavily.

  The mirror begins to fog up and I push away, staring down at the white dress draped over the closed lid of the toilet.

  When Nellie put that dress on for the first time, did she have any idea of what a shit show her life would turn out to be? Would she have cared? Would her love for Cat still have spurr
ed her to do what she did anyway?

  Her son is now dead. She isn’t, but only because she was on her best behavior the night of the reception. In that, she didn’t need any of the antidote from Grey or Reba because she’d been true to her word and hadn’t touched the kegs or cocaine.

  If I have a baby, will he just end up like Gaz? Rotten to the core, head blown open by his own father? Or what if it’s a girl?

  A shiver takes over me, and I shake my head again.

  I shower, dry off, and then spend a stupid amount of time braiding my dark hair so that it doesn’t frizz all over the place. A bit of light foundation, a very light dusting of eyeshadow, and some gloss to help disguise a bit of the damage.

  I look at myself again.

  Better.

  I slip the dress on but not before donning the lacy undergarments I picked out for this exact purpose. Reba cursed up a storm—in her own way, like son of a biscuit—when she saw what was in the package I unwrapped.

  White.

  What an ironic color.

  For the wedding itself, I chose the red thong. For the wedding night … I caved in and went semi-traditional. Mostly so I could see Beast defile these pretty white slips of sensuality and satin.

  I sit down on the edge of the bed to wait, eventually turning onto my side and staring at the far wall. My stomach twists with nausea, but it’s just because I’m nervous for Beast to come back and nothing to do with … that.

  “You chased and you pushed until you got exactly what you wanted,” I whisper, and for a split-second there, I almost manage to convince myself that I picked the wrong thing.

  I should’ve left Grey and taken off by myself, gotten on a plane and left for Paris. Or Tokyo. Or Seoul. Anywhere but here.

  But then what? What the fuck would I do? This shit is in my blood; the club has its ugly claws so deep inside of me that I’d probably bleed to death if those sharp objects were torn abruptly out. Who am I kidding? I can’t live a normal, boring, easy life. I would suffocate.

  This is where I want to be, in the heart of everything.

  In the hearts of those four men.

  The door cracks open, but I don’t look up.

  I can’t.

  I feel frozen in place.

  Footsteps enter, and the door closes with a soft, strange finality, cutting off this moment from the rest of the world.

  I finally convince my nervous heart to look and see that Beast is standing there in the doorway, watching me.

  “You look good like that,” he says, voice rougher than I’ve ever heard it. “Stretched out on my bed.”

  “What were you doing?” I ask him, because he wasn’t just giving me time to change.

  It was something else.

  “Talkin’ to Crown,” Beast drawls, but he doesn’t look particularly happy about it.

  “Did you see the fire alert?” I ask, and he steps forward, shrugging out of his cut and tossing it onto the dresser.

  “I saw it,” he says, and his voice makes me shiver all over. I could bathe in that sound.

  I think back to the night of the clubhouse party two years ago, when I saw him fight, how much I wanted him even then.

  Now he’s mine.

  He’s actually mine, and it’s fucking official.

  And I know, without a shadow of a doubt, that this man would not only kill for me, but that he’d also die for me. He proved that—more than once.

  His eyes rake over me and he curses, rubbing at his stubble in a way that says he very much misses his beard.

  That makes me smile.

  “You can grow it back if you want,” I tell him, and he pauses, seeming to realize what it is that he’s doing. The expression on his face grows darker, as if he knows what I’m about to say. “Or you can rub it against my inner thighs while you fuck me with your tongue.”

  “You’re lucky we had a quick rut out back or you’d be in some serious trouble,” Beast tells me, slipping off his shirt and revealing a drool-worthy midsection that was clearly carved up by the hand of a horny goddess. If I closed my eyes and imagined what I wanted a man to look like, and then opened them, I’d be seeing the same damn thing.

  Beast is just as bruised as I am. Worse, actually. There are some splotchy areas with deep redness around them that would concern me if the compound doc hadn’t already taken a look. Also, he’s got bandages up and down both arms, covering a myriad of minor cuts and burns.

  He might get hurt if we end up naked and tangled together, but I think, like with me, that he doesn’t give a shit.

  We were supposed to have a wedding night, and even if the whole world has gone to shit since then, we’ll put it on pause for this.

  Beast puts one knee on the end of the bed, and I sit up, leaning back into his pillows. Everything in here he likely brought over from Gram’s place, and it all smells like him. I take in a deep breath to drink it all in, filling my lungs with his scent.

  I take it we’re not going to talk about the Crown thing right now which is just fine by me.

  This isn’t about him or Sin or Grainger, not at all.

  This is just about me and Beast.

  “Spread those pretty thighs for me, and I’ll give you exactly what you want,” he promises, his voice a sultry kiss for my senses. Only one thing about that statement bothers me.

  The scars …

  My fingers drop down, tracing a ridged line of pink flesh. Beast follows the motion, but he doesn’t acknowledge it. Instead, he moves forward on the bed, reaching out to take my knees and pushing them apart.

  “I spent a lot of time figuring how this might go,” he admits, staring at the white lace thong I’m wearing, the one with a simple split down the center for easy access. “I waited not so patiently. I watched you fuck other men.” His blue eyes lift to mine, the light catching on his septum piercing and his dirty blond hair as he takes me in. “I touched myself every night thinkin’ o’ you, sugar.”

  He runs his fingers down the thigh-highs tucked into my white motorcycle boots. Ironically, they cover the best parts of my legs and leave the scarred parts bare. I figure that’s okay though, right? Now my thighs match the shape and texture of my heart.

  “You’re a sadistic bastard,” I whisper as Beast turns his head, rubbing his stubbled cheek against the softness of the thigh-highs. The whispering sound of his roughness against that gentle lace, it gives me chills. “You organized that gang bang in the living room.”

  My voice is almost accusatory, and Beast picks up on it, smiling more to himself than he is to me. With the curtains and blinds shut on both windows, it’d be near pitch-black in here if it weren’t for the almost disturbingly lovely pair of lamps on either side of the bed.

  They’ve got glass shades, Tiffany style or something. Guess not all of Crown’s taste is bad.

  As carefully as he did that night on the sofa in my grandmother’s living room, Beast removes first one of my boots, and then the other. I’m glad now that I put them on, just so he could take them off. It’s the sense of anticipation in all of this that makes it fun.

  “I want you to choose me,” Beast says, and not in the past tense, like it’s already done, but like it has yet to happen. He crawls forward so that his hands are on either side of me and I’m sliding down the mountain of pillows to lie flat on my back.

  My heart is on fucking fire. My chest burns. Old Gidget is breaking into pieces, and someone new is emerging from the ash. Not yet. But I’m clawing my way out of the grit, one desperate handhold at a time.

  “Choose you …” I start, trailing off, studying him. It’s hard to think clearly with him hovering over me the way he is, his bare chest within reach, the rest of his gorgeous body swathed in denim. My only complaint right now is that there isn’t a cheap, seedy mirror on the ceiling so I could watch his ass while he fucks me. “I do choose you, Catcher,” I say, thinking about how he said he was going to take me to Tennessee and show me off. “I married you.”

  He gives a shake of
his head, still watching me from a ruggedly handsome face. I keep joking about how all the boys are old and shit, but this is timeless beauty. I rest my hands on either of his cheeks, teasing my fingers up and into his hair. It’s styled the way it always is, a very particular sort of way for someone who doesn’t seem all that concerned with his appearance.

  A slight smile curves my lips as I purposefully muss up that perfect hair, but it slips right off when I realize that Beast hasn’t actually replied to me. He’s still thinking, staying quiet the way he does sometimes.

  “What if I told you that this was it?” he asks me, and the question is like a stake to the heart.

  I start to feel sick; I start to panic.

  “You and me?” I query back, and he licks his lower lip.

  “You and me, wife. Just us.”

  I look away for a moment because I can’t possibly think clearly with him staring at me like that.

  “That’s a hard pill to swallow,” I admit, and even though he tries to hide it from me, I can feel him tensing. His emotions are written into every line of his body, whether he wants to admit it or not. I let myself have a minute before turning back. Both of my hands come up to slide over Beast’s muscular shoulders, tracing one of his tattoos with a fingernail. “Because that would mean it was just me, vulnerable and open in front of you with nobody else around. That terrifies me. I’m not sure I can handle that.”

  “Which part of it?” he grumbles, lowering himself onto me. His mouth finds mine, and then his tongue is just there, and it’s hot, and I’m having trouble remembering what we’re even talking about. “Gidge.”

  I huff out a breath that fans against his lips, sliding my palms greedily down his back and drinking in all of his hardness, all of that strength and power. It’s mine. It’s all mine. He is all mine.

  “You seeing me for what I am.” I frown and then shake my head. “No, more like … me seeing me for who I am, if that makes any sense. If you’re around, and Crown is around, Sin, Grainger, then it’s … I have other things to do. But if it was just us? Eventually, I’d have to look inside and see who I really am.”

  “Sometimes, we hype up things in our mind to the point that they start to scare us, but if we just tackled them head-on, they ain’t so bad. I don’t know a lot of things, Gidge, but I do know this: if you looked inside yourself, you’d like what you see. I promise that.”