Page 46 of Ruthless Son

“You’re thinking really loudly, princess.” His chest vibrated beneath me, his fingers dug into my scalp, the massage doing its best to ease the pounding that was starting behind my eyes. “Someone who came that hard and so many times should be well rested.” Rolling me over, he leaned above me, one elbow in the pillow beside my head. “Clearly, I haven’t done a very good job.”

He loomed over me, his hair loose and hanging forward, the thick brown mane framed his face and added a savagery to his look that belied the softness in his blue eyes. The dark tattoos up both arms stretched across his chest, linking together in the middle to show the skull of the Street Kings, the crown jutting toward the dip of his throat. I traced the lines of the pattern, stroking my finger over his neck. “Trust me, you did a very good job.” He swallowed and I felt the gulp across the pad of my finger.

His eyes searched mine. “Then why the serious look?”

My mouth clamped shut and nerves swirled in my belly. Words stuck in my throat, excuses rose up, made up ideas that I could use to grab his attention, and change the subject from my thoughts that revolved around taking him up on his offer. Did his offer even still stand? It was days ago, but he’d been ignoring me, and those days of silence had created a void within me filled with uncertainty. It felt too soon to bring the subject up, and the waters needed testing before I broached that topic with him.

“I was just thinking about that guy, you know the one that Millie ID’d.” It was as if a shutter came down over his face, his body froze above me. “What?”

His head shook slightly, shaking off the seconds of stiffness. “Nothing, Sly is chasing it up, looking at CCTV, but nothing.”

“Nothing? Just nothing?” I questioned, confusion pulling at my eyebrows. A niggle of unease tried to push its way through and I squashed it back down, trusting the men to find who this stranger was.

“Just nothing so far, princess.” Rex’s head lowered, peppering kisses across my chest, the conversation finished before it had even begun, but I shoved at his shoulders, wanting—needing—to look in his eyes that were slowly being overcome with shadows.

“You’ll tell me as soon as you know who he is, right?” My brows arched in question. “Right?”

“As soon as I know anything, you’ll know,” he muttered before his breath joined mine in a promise that he was more than capable of fulfilling.

Rex

I don’t think I’d fucked a woman this much since I first lost my virginity, and that wasn’t even with the same woman. But every time I slid my dick inside Mia, it felt like the first time. I couldn’t get enough of her, and when I wasn’t inside her, I was thinking about being inside her. The boys had been ribbing me about it since I got her back in my bed. Twice now, I'd zoned out in church and been brought back to the present by Cal’s hand slamming down in front of me, and the laughs of my brothers. It’d been a week since Sly got shot, now he was back to the table, his arm still in a sling. He still wasn’t able to ride, but he was better—much better. Life was back in his eyes and he rarely flinched from the pain anymore.

It was hard sitting at this table without my best friend beside me and it had been a hard lesson to learn that we were not invincible. In fact, I had a whole new outlook on life after his shooting, and I was planning on making the most of it. There were things I had put in place to get what I wanted. Best laid plans to ensure that the thing I coveted the most was going to stay.

“Gauge’s watching Rutter’s house, Threads is at his office keeping track of the secretary. He’ll get in there and plant a listening device, we just need to be patient. So far, he ain’t got past the lady. She keeps his room locked up tight when he’s not there, but he has her meeting him for a drink later in that fancy bar that just opened in town.”

Sonic finished his update on Miles. The VP looked wrecked, his eyes bloodshot, he’d been parked outside the lawyers house all night, and it was only when Gauge forced him back here to get some sleep that he finally left Rutter’s house.

All eyes turned to the prez, a pile of papers beside his arm looked ominous against the dark wood. He picked up the top sheet, the rustle of the paper had everyone on edge as we waited for the inevitable.

“I’ve got some news about the Irish. They’ve made an offer and we need to take a vote.” Cal sniffed as he straightened the sheet of paper out, it looked crumpled as if he’d screwed it up and re-opened it, which didn’t bode well for our offer of a new pipeline. He threw out a number, a fucking bullshit figure that was half what we were making selling to the Mexicans.

“That’s a fuckin’ insult, Prez,” I countered. Curses spat across the room, my brothers’ faces were red with their anger. The Irish were offensive with their proposal, and everyone felt that slap in the face.

Cal’s face was like thunder as he looked around at us. “So it’s unanimous then? I should tell them no.”

“You should tell them fuck no.” Link sat slumped in his seat, his irritation obvious. The younger man rolled a coin across his knuckles, back and forth in a display of extreme control, but everyone could see the guy was one step away from exploding. Link had a young son at home, a single dad who relied on the income to provide for his small family of two. But unlike Wheeler, he would never take a handout from us and even the offer of cash would have been thrown back in our faces. The most he would accept was the leftovers from dinner, that Emma would wrap up and let him take home to feed his kid. Times were tough before with the crackdown of the feds, but it was even worse now that we had a fuck ton of cocaine in storage and nowhere to sell it.

Finally, Cal sent Sonic to bed with a bottle of whiskey and a promise to wake him for the night shift. It should have been Ryan’s job, he was the prospect, but Sonic was adamant that it was him and no one else watching the lawyer’s house. I shifted on my seat, trying to shake off the feeling that there was something else at play that I was being kept in the dark about. On top of the knowledge that someone had shared information about our last run, and the rat was still hiding in plain sight, my senses were screaming at me that there was something I was missing, yet I had no fucking clue where to even start.

“You and the woman seem pretty close.” Cal poured himself a shot of tequila, and threw it back in one hit. It was a testament to how well he knew me that he grabbed me a bottle of cold water from his fridge and chucked it at me. The brothers had all left to go to their day job, we still had a business to run, although it was fucking slow at the moment… the slowest it had ever been, and we were feeling the burn in our pockets.

Flashes of the past few nights with her sleeping beside me had warmth curling in my chest, her sleek body tucked in next to me and waking up to her hair spread across my chest had me wanting to stay in bed each morning and laze the day away. My gym routine was all fucked up, but I had been getting my workout in other ways.

“Are you listening?”

“Of course I’m listening,” I huffed, as his smile widened around his glass. “Fuck you, old man.”

“She seems… happier, more content.” Cal was right on that front, Mia had spent yesterday with Jenna, helping her make Bailey’s graduation display. Just seeing my woman get on so well with the first lady had infused me with pride. “Less argumentative too.”

I snorted. “That woman lives to argue with me, Prez. She complained this morning that I take up all the blanket, then threatened to kick me out of my own goddamned bed.” That threat had been idle though, and like I’d told her, she slept much better once my dick had been inside her at least once.

She was helping Jenna at the front today, the end of the month was always busy with paperwork, and while Mia had been getting dressed this morning, and rummaging around in my drawer that I’d cleared out for her, I’d spotted a flash of dark blue nestled among her underwear.

The sight of it had me agitated, my fists clenched as she’d closed the drawer, shutting her ticket outta here away from me.

“Well, you’re doing something right, Brother, because despite all the shit happening around us, I haven’t seen you laugh this much in… well… ever, I don’t think.” Cal watched intently, looking for any sign that I wasn’t as happy as I showed. Because I was.

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