Pip help up her hands. “I understand. And no, I wasn’t Mundo’s fuck buddy. I used to live here.”
Christie narrowed her eyes. “The only women who lived here were club whores.”
Pip scrunched up her nose. “Yeah. I know. I was one.” When Christie turned red with anger, Pip quickly blasted out, “But I swear, Mundo and I never slept together. We were too friendly for that.”
“I knew her when she was a kid,” Mundo told Christie, seeming unperturbed by his mate’s anger. “It would be like fucking a sister.” He shuddered at the prospect.
“Mundo just used to help me when I was here. That’s all. I swear.”
Christie shot a scowl at her mate, then to Pip said, “I’ll take your word. But if I find out either of you are lying, you’ll—”
“Have my cock in a vise,” Mundo grumbled, sounding even more unconcerned. But then, he had no reason to worry.
They spoke nothing but the truth.
“Don’t worry, Christie, he’ll have more to worry about than his dick if I find out he’s lying,” Major said, his tone almost cheerful at the prospect.
Maybe he was pleased by the idea. They’d yet to discuss the ‘relations’ she’d had with his brothers. He had to be jealous. His Bear had to hate that she’d been with so many of his kin, but it wasn’t like there was anything she could do to change that.
Maybe it was a topic that was better avoided rather than discussed. She couldn’t imagine it going well, and sometimes, moving on was better than dwelling.
Christie nodded at Major but huffed at Pip, “Well, it’s a pleasure to meet you, I suppose.”
“It will be once I’m done.”
“Huh?” Christie frowned at her. “What are you talking about?”
“I mated Major while you were in the hospital. My gift is healing. Mundo said you were suffering, and I can see it from over here. I’d like to help if you’d let me.” She saw no point in beating about the bush. Christie would always be ratty when she was so uncomfortable, and there was no way any friendship would be born when the future mommy was suffering.
Christie bit her lip. “You have no idea how much I want to beg you for help, but what if it hurts the baby?”
“I won’t,” Pip assured her. “I don’t know how I know that, but I do.”
“Is that supposed to make me feel better?”
Pip snorted. “Yeah. If it helps, I told Annette she was pregnant the other night. She didn’t even know it.”
Christie’s eyes flared wide. “Annette’s pregnant? Holy shit, I’m gonna kill that woman for not dealing me the gossip the minute I got here.”
“Babe, in Annette’s defense, she isn’t actually in the clubhouse. She can’t tell you something she isn’t here to say.”
“Bullshit. She could have called.”
“Things have been busy with the fire and all.” Major’s voice was loaded with irony. “I’m sure she’ll spill the beans when she’s able.”
Christie huffed again, then in an about face, murmured, “If you think you can help me, then I’d appreciate it. My back is killing me.”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
Pip had learned that sometimes the biggest injuries weren’t the visible ones. So, while that sense helped, her eyes weren’t how she’d found the majority of the wounds on the brothers this morning.
“It looks a bit weird what I’m about to do,” she tried to assure Christie. “But just bear with me.” When the other woman nodded, Pip approached the bed and let both hands hover over the prone form lying on the mattress.
About an inch away from touching, she closed her eyes and let her palms trace through the air, seeking whatever it was they were looking for.
A hum sounded through the room, and she realized it came from her. The realization didn’t make her stop though. She carried on, humming and exploring, not stopping until she found two ‘something’s.
When she opened her eyes, she smiled at Christie. “I can help.”
A low moan woke Major up the following day. It wasn’t the kind of moan he liked hearing coming from a woman’s lips, and when he realized that the only woman he should be hearing moans from was his woman, he liked it even less.
Eyes popping immediately open, he turned over and saw Pip was curled up in a ball, eyelids closed but flickering, and tears were trailing down her cheeks.
She looked so small, curled up the way she was, and his heart about broke when another scared mewl escaped her.
“Sweetheart?” he whispered softly, not wanting to wake her up with a jarring noise.
Only trouble was, she didn’t budge. Still lost to the dream—or nightmare he guessed was more appropriate—she seemed to tense up, her arms dropping down to cup her knees.
He saw how she was trying to make herself smaller and hated it, hated that she was defenseless in sleep.
He gripped her shoulder, gently squeezing it before he nuzzled his nose against her temple.
“Sweetheart. It’s time to wake up.”
She moaned, but this time it was a little more aware, a little less lost to the dream that had caught her in its maw.
“Major?” she whispered, a whimper in her tone, a scared note that nigh on broke his heart.
“Sweetheart, I’m here. It’s okay.”
The minute the words fled his lips, she rolled over, hurling herself into his arms. He caught her, murmuring, “I’m always here, baby. Always.”
“You can’t be when I’m asleep,” she mumbled after a few seconds. The words vibrated against his chest, but he heard them loud and clear.
“Maybe not, but I can be here when you wake up.” His tone was teasing. “That’s far better, isn’t it?”
She shuddered. “I guess.”
“Want to talk about it?”
She stiffened. “Not really.”
“Why not?” he asked, his tone free from accusation, loaded down more with curiosity than anything else.
One thing he’d always known about Pip, one of the few things he’d known to be a part of her nature before he’d known she was his mate, was her honesty.
She was brutal. All the brothers had known that. They’d all been well aware that her tongue was surprisingly cutting for one who seemed so meek.
Every brother had to be cautious what they asked of her, because she’d tell them straight out what her opinion was.
Which is why it came as a surprise that she didn’t want to share this, whatever this was.
It also made it more suspicious that she didn’t want him to know something.
“It’s only a dream. It doesn’t matter.”
“Now I know that’s a lie,” he told her softly, still keeping the accusation from his tone. “Come on, sweetheart. You’d want to know if I’d had a nightmare.”
“Like you’re frightened of anything,” she scoffed.
He frowned, but she couldn’t see it as her face was tucked away, buried against his chest. “That’s not true. I’ve always been afraid.”
She peeked up at him. “You have? What of?”
His grimace was close to being a grin, but grimace or grin it was self-deprecating either way. “I was scared shitless I wouldn’t find you.”
“That’s not a fear.”
He barked out a laugh. “Have you any idea how long I’ve been alone, Pip?”
She blinked up at him, and in the murky light of dawn, he saw the thick lashes fall and rise like angel’s wings against her cheek. “How long?”
“More than you’ve been alive. More than your parents have been together, I’d imagine.”
“That won’t have been long then. They divorced when I was young.”
He grimaced. “Well, okay, that was a bad example. But I’ve been alone for nearly sixty years. For all that time, I’ve been waiting for you, so you can bet your damned ass that I was scared. Hell, I was petrified. And now I know what I do, I realize I had every reason to be petrified. I could have lost you, Pip. If I hadn’t gone to the dine
r that day, I would never have scented you. We’d have gone our separate ways.”
A cry escaped her. “Don’t talk like that. Please!”
He shook his head. “I’m not saying it to scare you, baby. I’m just telling the truth. I didn’t even know that particular truth back then. I just knew that I was dying inside without you.”
Her arm tightened about his waist. “You’ll never lose me. Never.” The vow warmed his soul.
“I know. We’re together forever now, honey. Whether I get on your tits or not.”
Muffled laughter blasted his chest. “You’re crazy.”
“I know,” he teased. “But I’m your kind of crazy.” When she giggled, he carried on, “You tell me what happened with your dream, and I’ll tell you what my errand was yesterday.”
She froze. “It was MC business, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah, but it was personal too. Nothing bad, but I’d like you to know. I don’t want anything to ever come between us.”
“Why would it?” she asked, her words hesitant, and, dammit, slightly scared.
“Because I know what you women are like. You can be damned difficult sometimes.”
She snorted. “And men can’t? It’s just females, I suppose?”
He grinned. Sheepishly. “No. We’re all perfect specimens, didn’t you know?”
As she rolled her eyes at him, she moved away, putting distance between them he’d have preferred to avoid. She sat up though, cross-legged, and stared at him.
Maybe it would be easier to share this in the semi-darkness. With dawn breaking, maybe there was no better time to share the truth about Juanita.
“You go first,” she told him, shoulders hunching a little as she spoke.
He realized she was bracing herself for whatever he had to throw at her, and he wished he could comfort her, but he wasn’t sure what her reaction would be.
Technically, he hadn’t done a damn thing wrong.
But Ross and Rachel had been on a break, and she’d held his one-night stand against him right up until the end of the fucking show.
He hauled himself upright. Back against the headrest, he murmured, “The day before I found you in the diner, I split up with someone.”
She let out a shaky breath. “The day before?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay.” The two syllables were drawn out, and he sensed her confusion.
“She’s a gangbanger for the cartel we’re at war with.”
“Wow, that was stupid, wasn’t it?”
“I’d prefer romantic.” He snorted. “I thought it was very Romeo and Juliet, and totally fitting for what I believed was happening.”
She frowned. “What did you ‘believe’ was happening?”
He sucked in a sharp breath and prayed to the Goddesses that she’d accept this hard truth as well as she’d accepted everything else he’d doled her way over the past week. “I thought she was my mate.” When silence was his only reply, he cleared his throat. “I realized she wasn’t. That’s why we split up. Then, the next day, I found you, and I... Why do you think I was so stunned? It seemed insane. How could I go from believing Juanita was... to knowing you were my mate? I didn’t believe it, couldn’t believe it at first. It seemed like a joke or some kind of prank. But my Bear was so fucking stressed, that I knew this was different. You were different.”
“Why did you think she was your mate?”
He sighed at the chill in her words. She hadn’t moved an inch, but she might as well have shifted a mile across town.
“The older we get, and the longer we’re unmated, we stop feeling so much. It’s not like a legitimate problem. It’s just... You’ve seen so much the world has to offer, you stop being surprised. Shit stops hurting you. You’ve seen one thing, you’ve done the other. Been there, done that, bought the T-shirt, and all that shit. I think that’s why Jefferson found it so easy to get into trafficking. I’m not excusing him, but I think he figured what’s one crime over another?
“Age, it gets you like that. You see so much shit in the world, and it changes you, until stuff you’d never have dreamed of accepting as a kid is easy to understand as an adult.
“Now, don’t get me wrong, I was against the trafficking, and when I saw what Jefferson was willing to put the MC through to hit a certain profit margin, I was disgusted. But these past few years, I’ve been coasting, not feeling much, caring even less about stuff that once upon a time would have been pretty damn fucking important to me.”
“But she changed that?”
“Yeah. She did. For a short while, anyway.” His tone softened, not in memory, but out of caution. He didn’t want to hurt Pip, but he had to tell her this. If Juanita managed to help the MC crawl out from under this war, and she agreed to let him help her escape the cartel’s clutches, then Pip might meet her.
He didn’t want her to be jealous, not when it wasn’t necessary. And it wasn’t. Seeing Juanita yesterday had only emphasized what and who Pip was to him.
His everything.
“Then why didn’t you bond her like you did me?”
“My Bear didn’t feel it, and he’s the one who binds us to you.”
“But you did feel it,” she stated, for some reason finding it important to reiterate the point.
“Yeah. I did.” He whispered the confession like he was admitting to ten acts of murder. He felt like it would have been easier to admit to that anyway.
“What changed?”
“Nothing. That was the problem,” he told her. “Nothing changed. My feelings didn’t develop. They just stayed the same. She got to me where nothing had for months—hell, years. She made me feel again, and made me happy. I hated hiding her, hated the fact she was from the cartel, but I figured she was my mate. I’d do what I had to do keep us together. But no matter what I did, the Bear just wasn’t feeling it.”
“What happened? Why did you end it?
“Mars found out. He told me, the day before I met you, that there was no hesitating, no second guessing with a mate bond. Until I met you, I never could have understood. With you, it was like a lightning bolt.” He sucked in a sharp breath at the memory of walking into the diner and her scent hitting him. “I swear, that morning, I felt like shit. I broke up with her when I was at the hospital waiting on news about Christie and the cub. I believed Mars when he said I’d know if Juanita was my mate, so I called her and ended things between us. I was hurting because I didn’t want us to be over.” He let out a sigh. “That’s not true. I didn’t want to be alone again.” The confession sat heavily on him. The selfishness of it floored him. “Then, I walked into the diner, and it was like a woman named Juanita had never existed. I saw you and was so confused because you’d never smelled that way before. It changed everything and made my already confused world all the more confusing. And yet, through it all, I was just praying I wasn’t wrong.”
“Do you want to be with her?”
“Jesus Christ. No!”
“Do you wish she was your mate?”
Her wooden tone had him flinching. “Aren’t you listening to me, Pip?” He reached forward and grabbed her. She didn’t put up a fight, which worried him more than anything. He hustled her onto his lap, arranged her until he could wrap his arms around her waist. She sat there like a still doll, and he wanted to breathe life into her, but knew he couldn’t—not until she’d heard it all and could forgive him. “I never wanted her at all, don’t you see?” he asked, pleading with her to understand. “I just... I was so tired of being alone. I was scared she was my only chance. You think you know what fear is, Pip? It’s the prospect of living another hundred, maybe two hundred years without feeling this connection we have. That’s what fear is. Not having this.” He pressed his face to her chest. “Now I know what the mate bond feels like, I’m even more scared for that poor bastard who almost lost out on having you for his mate.”
Silence fell between them, interspersed only with his ragged breaths. She didn’t move, didn’t say a word. T
hen, and he felt like weeping when she did, she started to run a hand through his hair. He shuddered at the sensation, pressed his face deeper into her chest, smashing his face between her breasts until he could barely breathe, just needing to be close, needing her to know how much he needed her.
“It’s okay,” she whispered.
“No, it’s not. I’ve hurt you. But I didn’t want to keep this from you. Shit sticks, and I knew it would come out eventually, and it would hurt you even more because you’d think I’d been lying to you, or you’d think there was something I needed to cover up. But I needed you to have spent some time as my mate, to know that nothing is stronger than the bond between us. I would have waited longer, let you realize how much I need you, but the situation has been exacerbated. I didn’t want it to have any power to hurt you.”
She continued stroking his hair. “How has the situation worsened?”
“You know the fire?”
She hummed her understanding.
“Juanita started it.”
She gasped. “The psycho bitch! She started the fire? Jesus Christ, does she know how many people she hurt? She’s lucky nobody was killed!”
“Don’t worry. She knows,” he told her grimly. “I nearly fucking died when I saw the CCTV footage and realized why she’d done it.”
She froze, her hand stilled in his hair. “You went to see her today, didn’t you?”
He nodded. “Yeah. I wanted to explain to her that I hadn’t done any of this to hurt her. S-She loved me, Pip. I’d just broke it off with her.” He clicked his fingers. “Like that. No warning, no chance for her to reason why. No wonder she wanted revenge. I just never figured she’d take it so fucking far.”
“Will the MC punish her?”
“They would have,” he said. “But we’re at war with her cartel, and we don’t want to be.”
“So? What does one have to do with the other?”
Her hand started its stroking again, so he relaxed a little. “It means maybe she can help stop the war.”
“How can she do that?” Curiosity had leeched into her words, and suddenly, he knew everything would be all right.
He might have to grovel a little, but hell, that was okay. Anything to make sure she knew she was his world.
MAJOR (MC Bear Mates Book 5) Page 12
