Page 108 of Caged Bird

I pressed up to kiss his mouth. “You’re kind of perfect, you know?”

His nose rubbed against mine. “I love you. Go back to sleep. There’s plenty of time for everything else. Let me start your day right.”

I caught his hand, feeling sassy. “If you want to start my day right, it’s not breakfast that I need…”

He turned back, groaning at the look on my face that was as suggestive as I could make it. There was no confusion as to what I meant. He glanced at the door, then dove beneath the blankets, burying his head between my thighs and devouring a breakfast of his own.

Thirty minutes later, my skin flushed and glowing from an early morning orgasm, I wandered downstairs.

There was a squeal of excitement from Eve and Lyric, who rushed me, the two of them dressed in matching silk dressing gowns. I laughed with them, their excitement contagious, and I let them drag me into the living room where Lyric had already set up her makeup case and Eve had hot curlers ready to go.

But my attention caught on Zane standing with my brother and sister, the three of them thick as thieves.

“What’s going on over there?” I called to them.

All three of them glanced over guiltily. Especially my brother. Vincent never looked like that, so I knew in a heartbeat that Scythe was steering the ship today.

Not ideal for a wedding. I’d heard all about the chaos he’d caused at Ophelia’s wrecked nuptials. I narrowed my eyes at him. “You promised you’d be on your best behavior today.”

Scythe feigned innocence. “What did I do?”

I raised an eyebrow. “I know you’ve done something.”

He snorted on a laugh. “Fine. I did something. But for the record, it was Vincent who promised to behave. And he will. At the wedding. But we aren’t at the wedding yet.”

I huffed out an irritated sigh.

Zane gave me a small smile. “It’s my fault. I asked him to.”

“Asked him to what?”

The three of them were being so cagey, and though I’d noticed the growing bond between them over the past month, since Zane had proposed, I wasn’t one-hundred-percent sure my siblings weren’t corrupting my husband-to-be.

And as much as I loved them, Zane wasn’t like them. And that was one of the things I loved about him. I didn’t want a life where he came home with traces of blood on his hands.

I wanted someone who cooked with me in the kitchen, and who watched TV with me at night. I wanted Sunday drives and school plays and a quiet life, where family was all that mattered and I was never worried he wasn’t going to come home.

Scythe and Ophelia needed that excitement in their lives.

But I didn’t.

Zane glanced around. “Where are the kids?”

Eve nodded toward the back door. “Josh took them outside to burn off energy.” She pointed a curling wand at him. “Okay, now you’re all starting to stress me out too. Who’s lost the rings?”

My mouth dropped open, and I glared at my brother. “You didn’t!”

He rolled his eyes and took a small blue box from his pocket. “They’re right here.” He shook the box. When it didn’t make a sound, he cringed and popped it open.

The entire room let out a sigh of relief at the two gold bands wedged into a white cushion on the inside.

“See?” Scythe waved them at me. “I’ve got this best man gig down. And since you’re all being nosy, Ophelia and I were just filling Zane in on our trip to see his brother earlier today.”

A trickle of fear ran down my spine, and my heartbeat suddenly got too fast.

But Zane caught my fingers and squeezed. “Hey. Look at me.”

I did. Because I loved him so damn much I would do anything he asked of me.

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