I Will Revel in Glory

by Stunich, C. M.

  It sounds like a simple question; it’s anything but.

  I consider how I want to answer that, but there really is only one way: the truth. There can only be truth between the five of us now.

  “Four,” I respond, and Sin goes completely still and completely stiff.

  “Four,” he repeats, almost like he feels sorry for me. But then he repeats the number, and I can see that he isn’t. He isn’t sorry at all: he’s pleased. “Four.”

  Sin strokes a hand over my hair before rolling us over and stripping off my clothes. He slips out of bed and returns with the handcuffs—guess he packed those up to bring over here with this specific situation in mind—and something else altogether.

  “Turn over,” he tells me, and his voice is darker than I’ve ever heard it. The sound makes my skin ripple with chills as I do as he asked, waiting on all fours as he shackles my wrists to the headboard in such a way that I can brace my weight on the chain of the handcuffs, keeping my upper half lifted.

  That’s when I come to find out what it is, exactly, that he has in his other hand.

  Sin turns the vibrator on and then slips it beneath me, easing it against the aching mound of flesh at the apex of my pussy. The buzzing sensation ricochets through my already sensitive body, and I groan, wiggling against it, unsure if I’m trying to get closer or further away.

  Doesn’t matter either way because Sin is braced above me, one of his hands flat on the bed for stability, the other manipulating the vibrator, finding that perfect spot that makes my heart jump and my body buck in pleasurable defiance.

  “That’s it, Gidge,” he purrs, rubbing against me as my body quivers and shakes, and I wonder if I’ll even be able to go through with this. It’s almost too much, all of that sensation bombarding me at once. I can’t take it; I can barely breathe.

  The orgasm is like a tear inside my soul, ripping me in half, stealing my breath away. Sin grunts with satisfaction, keeping the vibrator where it is with his left hand and using his right to angle himself against my opening. He drives into me yet again as I’m mid-climax, and the feeling is impossible to describe.

  Did I say I was being torn asunder before? It was nothing compared to this. I think I even cry; I might scream. Sin keeps the vibrator where it is, thrusting through my contractions, finding my core, and then releasing his hot seed inside of me. I’m pulsing so violently that I can feel his cum being pushed out around his dick, dripping to the bed beneath us as he finally turns off the vibrator and then shoves it aside.

  “If you weren’t already pregnant,” Sin murmurs against my ear, kissing the side of my face with that sharp mouth of his. It cuts; it bleeds. And I don’t even care. I would bleed forever, just for the privilege of kissing this man’s horrible mouth. “You would be now.”

  He’s addicted to making girls come, is he?

  I can learn to live with that.

  Oh, fuck.

  Grainger is home.

  Nobody told me he was coming. Instead, I head downstairs in the morning only to run right into him in the front hall. Not sure he was expecting to see me either. The look of sheer horror on his face is fucking priceless.

  “Gidge,” he says, almost suspiciously. He looks a little shaky, a little less like the asshole who once told me I needed a leash than I feel he should. The sight of him shouldn’t make me weak in the knees, shouldn’t make me tremble, shouldn’t make me burn.

  But it does. Oh fuck it does. My body and heart ache for Grainger in a way that’s criminal, in a way that makes me ashamed even as it makes me feel whole. It doesn’t make any sense, but then, we never have, me and him. It doesn’t make sense that he wanted me to be his before he even knew who he was finger-fucking in that dirty clubhouse bathroom. It doesn’t make sense that I should be so attached to someone I hate.

  “What are you doing here?” I blurt, and he shakes his head at me, giving an awful smirk before meeting my brown eyes with his own. Mine are more of a red-brown than his, but close enough.

  “What am I doing here? What, I’m not welcome in your little harem?” He gives me a dark look, like he really wants to tell me something but is holding himself back. I know what that look is for, however. He’s looking at me like he wants to talk about the pregnancy.

  Not sure if he knows that I know or …

  “I meant, what are you doing out of the hospital. Sin just got back yesterday, and you …” Almost died. Flatlined on the table next to me. Got chest compressions while I stood and watched with a detached stoicism that scared me.

  “I’m not going to die, Gidge,” he says, as nicely, I think, as someone like him is able to be. He removes his hand from where it was resting against the wall and moves closer to me. Can he sense how fast my heart is beating? Is he reacting to me in the same way or am I the only crazy person in this room right now? “That was a onetime thing; they got me all fixed up.”

  I just look up at him, but I’m not sure what to say, what to do. He’s always been the most difficult man to be around, to fall in love with. My mind strays to other things, to the memory of losing my virginity to this man, to letting him take my ass, to the way his hot seed filled my palm inside the storage room of Reba’s church.

  Shit.

  “Can you get the hell out of my way so that I can sit the fuck down?” he growls, exasperated as he pushes past me. As if we haven’t been separated for too long. As if he didn’t almost die. As if things are the way they’ve always been.

  He moves into the living room and sits down heavy on the couch, letting out a long exhale.

  “I’m still sore all over,” he tells me, letting his head fall back as I linger in the doorway. His dark gaze slides to me, and a look of pure annoyance flashes across his handsome face. “What the hell is wrong with you?” he snaps finally, and both my brows go up. “You’re just going to stand there and fucking stare at me?!”

  He sounds enraged, but I can’t figure out why. What have I done now?

  “What’s your goddamn problem?” I growl right back, storming into the room and planting my hands on my hips. “You’re home for two seconds and yelling at me already?” I splay the fingers of one hand against my chest, glaring down at him with every ounce of emotion that I’ve felt in the last week. My melancholy. My love. My fear.

  I almost lost you, you dipshit. Forever. We were almost separated forever.

  “I’m excited to see you, you fucking piece of shit, worthless, cocksucking asshole.” The words explode out of me, and Grainger frowns hard, blinking back in surprise before he’s scowling all over again. “Excited, Cade. Do you hear me? Goddamn it.” I shake out my hair as I stare down at him, and the edge of his mouth quirks.

  “That’s better. I was wondering if someone had stolen your fire, sweetheart.”

  My turn to scowl back at him. He knows I hate that, being called sweetheart. And yet, I almost like the way he says it. Because I’m that screwed up. And he’s that screwed up, and this is just us. We tell each other that we hate one another when what we really mean is I fucking love you so much that it hurts me, kills me, rips me apart. It’s hell to love you, and I want to burn forever in your flames.

  “My fire is a part of me; it can’t be stolen, borrowed, or bargained for,” I tell him, licking my lower lip as a pleased flush takes over me. It feels suddenly like there’s too much space separating us, so I move around the table and take a seat on the coffee table. “Just because I don’t try to rip your balls off when you come in the front door doesn’t mean—”

  “You’re pregnant,” Grainger tells me, the words grating past his lips in a rush. “Fuck, I’ve wanted to tell you that for days …” He trails off, swiping his hand over his face as he studies me to gauge my reaction.

  Crown didn’t tell Cade that he told me … that fucker.

  I look down at my lap for a moment before lifting my gaze back to his.

  “It’s mine.” He says it like it’s pure fact.

  I let out a scoff, intending to stand up and
move away when Grainger reaches out and snatches my wrist, yanking me off the table and onto his lap. He groans right away, like he’s in pain, cursing up a storm as I sit there and cock a brow.

  “Idiot,” I murmur, but it’s said with affection, my hands sliding over his shoulders. That draws that intense focus of his right back to me.

  “Why are you not freaking the fuck out right now?” he demands as I roll my hips against him, just to see his reaction. He grits his teeth, clamping his hands down on my pelvis with an ironclad grip. “Look at me, Gidge.”

  “You don’t know that it’s yours,” I repeat for the hundredth time, and he laughs at me. I wish he wouldn’t. He needs to take it easy, but knowing Cade, that’s unlikely to happen. “It could easily—”

  “It’s mine.” He stares back at me with this confident surety that makes me want to scream. I could strangle this man. “We made a baby when we fucked in that church; it’s probably the anti-Christ,” he jokes, reaching into the pocket of my jacket like he’s looking for something. Cigarettes, probably.

  “Pregnant women can’t smoke,” I say dryly, and Grainger scowls at me.

  “You seem awfully calm about this. Makes me suspicious as hell.”

  “Crown told me already,” I say, before this conversation goes too far to come back from. Grainger goes very, very still, and I can see that wild anger in him rising to the surface like a storm.

  “He did what?” Cade hisses, pausing at the sound of the front door opening and angry footsteps pounding down the hall. Crown appears a moment later, staring down at his sergeant-at-arms like he might take care of the strangling for me.

  “What the fuck, Grainger?” he snaps, eyes flicking to me again before returning back to his fellow Daybreaker.

  “What the fuck is right,” Grainge grinds out, pushing me aside and standing up to face off against his VP, as if he could actually take him in the state he’s in. “You told her. You fucking told her when you knew that I wanted to do it. You son of a bitch.”

  Crown looks at him impassively for a moment before turning back to me.

  “He wasn’t supposed to leave the hospital for four more days; he checked himself out.”

  I stand up, fury overwhelming me.

  “Cade,” I warn, but he barely looks at me. Instead, he moves toward Crown like he wants to put a knife in him.

  “How dare you take that moment away from me,” he hisses out, and I see this getting bad—and fast. All of those times that Crown warned me off Grainger, that was jealousy brewing hot and violent between them. For some reason, it’s these two that seem to clash the most out of any other combination between the four men.

  “Gidget and I had our own shit to work out,” Crown says, but like the words are being pulled from him like teeth.

  Grainger tosses me a look that I return with a furious one of my own.

  “You checked yourself out of the hospital? Why would you do that?” I’m so frustrated right now that I could spit.

  “I wanted to be here,” he says, turning to look at me with an almost empty expression. “My place is here.”

  With you.

  I wish he would say that. I don’t know why. I guess I’m just fucking nuts. That’s not something Cade Grainger would ever say. But it’s implied, right?

  “What good does that do any of us if you’re dead?” I say, trying and failing to keep my voice that of an ice princess who doesn’t care about anything.

  For years, that’s exactly who I’ve made myself be. This cold, cynical bitch that hates everyone and everything. But it’s been a lie all along. All one need do is peek into my memories from two years ago to see that I clearly suffered a mental break and shut my emotional side down.

  I hated Cat, and I hated Nellie. I hated Gaz. I hated Crown and Beast, Sin and Grainger. I hated everyone—including myself.

  But none of that was true, was it? I mean, partially in certain cases. I did and do hate Gaz, but I was still carrying around this tiny, stupid spark of hope that somehow things could change, that somehow, he could change. I never allowed myself to admit that until after it was too late, and he was lying facedown with his brains leaking onto the floor.

  Cat … I do hate Cat. But I also love him. I love my horrible piece of shit father even though I don’t want to. Even as I know that he shot my dog, I know why he did it. I do. I almost died at that church camp. I could’ve easily been Carol Briggs. I could just as easily have been carted off and gang-raped and murdered by the mafia.

  Cat was teaching me to stay put, to stay safe. Was it right what he did? Of course not.

  If he ever hurts my dog again, I will kill him right then and there, consequences be damned.

  But I’m starting to realize something that scares the shit out of me: all those years ago, when the guys agreed to take a step back from me because I was too young, too naïve … they were right.

  Goddamn, they were right.

  All that time that I thought I was worldly and hardened and experienced, it was bullshit. I thought I was just a hot fuck, some conquest that these men used and tossed aside. In reality, it was the opposite. I thought Cat hated me. He doesn’t. He loves me in the best way he knows how.

  He killed Gaz for me, I think, and then I start to panic a little.

  Cat chose me over Gaz.

  He chose me because he loves me. Because he had two kids accusing one another of being traitors, and he could only keep one, could only protect one. He picked me. He fucking picked me.

  I turn away suddenly, caught in the middle of an emotional firestorm that makes my chest tight. I get dizzy, and I actually stumble a bit, falling to my knees beside the coffee table as both men swoop in to catch me.

  They both manage to grab an arm before I actually hit the floor, slowing my descent.

  “Gidge,” Crown whispers as Grainger’s grip tightens and I glance his way, meeting those dark, impossible eyes.

  “I’m okay,” I whisper, but I don’t sound okay. I sound lightheaded and a little panicky. I let them lower me to the floor, but when Crown tries to pick me up, I wave him off. “I’m okay—physically speaking. I’m just having … I don’t know, an emotional breakdown or something.”

  Grainger crouches down beside me and looks me dead in the face.

  “Over me?” he asks, but I just shake my head and then nod, shake my head.

  “I don’t know. Yes. No. Everything.” I feel like I’m waking up after years of suffering through an emotional coma. Could be the pregnancy hormones. Could be years of trauma finally catching up to me; it’s hard to say.

  “The hell is going on in here?” Beast asks, his voice a low, dark growl from the direction of the other hallway. “I try to give y’all a moment of peace and you put my wife on her knees?”

  “I’m okay,” I promise again, using the coffee table to stand up. Crown and Grainger both assist me, even though I don’t need it, and I shake them off. We all pause at the sound of footsteps on the stairs, preceding Sin as he stops in the archway between the living room and the front hall.

  “What’s going on?” he asks, his voice tight. It takes him a second to realize that Grainger is here when he’s not supposed to be. “Man, what the fuck is wrong with you?”

  “Nothing that a few more days of sleep and sex won’t fix,” Grainger declares, lifting up his shirt to reveal a sea of bandages. “I’m exactly where I need to be.”

  I stand there in the center of these men, and I let myself feel the gravity of it all.

  There’s a weight to their combined presence that presses down on me, makes me feel heavy, but in a grounded sort of way. In a way that I like, that I need.

  “I’m processing a lot of shit,” I explain, holding up both hands. “That’s it. I’m …” I almost choke on the next words I want to say, but they have to be said. I have to say them. I can’t let my intimacy issues get in the way or this won’t work the way I need it to. “I’m glad you’re all here. I’m glad we’re together.”

 
Grainger tosses me a sharp look again, like he isn’t sure what to make of that statement. Or maybe because he’s as weirded out when I’m nice to him as I am when he’s nice to me.

  “We’re … the five of us are having a baby together, so you guys better get your shit together—and quick. I won’t tolerate bullshit.” I turn and storm past Crown, past Beast, using their collective shock to put some space between us before I start to question myself any further.

  I head into the room at the end of the hall, the one that’s supposed to be Grainger’s, and then I sit on the bed with my elbows on my knees, my face in my hands.

  Why did I say that? What am I even doing?

  Grainger appears a moment later, stepping inside and slamming the door closed behind him. I don’t look up. I just sit there, and he moves over to sit beside me.

  “We don’t have to have a baby if you don’t want,” he growls out, as if he thinks I don’t know that already. I look up to find him watching me with an inscrutable expression. And I need that. I need him to be scrutable.

  “I’ve been thinking about that,” I reply, sitting up and leaning back on the bed. “But I don’t think it’s a bad idea. I’m here, right? I have a home. I have a husband.” Grainger shifts uncomfortably beside me, and I can see that he really doesn’t like that statement or whatever it is that he feels it implies. “I have you.”

  “Me.” He snorts and shakes his head, looking over at me with narrowed eyes. “I warned you. I told you that if you got pregnant with my baby, I was never letting you go.”

  “And I told you,” I growl back at him. “That I hate you saying that. It’s like you would let me go without a kid. It makes me not want to have a baby with you at all.”

  “I know this baby is mine,” he tells me with all the confidence of the cocky. “It is. And I want it.”

  “I’m not leaving Beast. Or Sin. Or Crown. Even if it is your baby. Anyway, that doesn’t change a fucking thing about any of this.” He smirks at me, but I can read the possessive surety in his face like it’s tattooed on. “What if it isn’t your kid, what then? I need you to answer that question.”