Page 130 of Love Thy Brother
Relief almost sent me to my fucking knees.
Cam gripped my elbow. “What’s the matter?”
I shook my head, the lump in my throat too thick and meaty to speak around, gaze leaving him and searching for River.
He was by the water, waiting to help Folk out of the waves. Not that Folksie needed it. Dude was half merman.
River, though, he was fucking everything to me. I loved Cam. My brothers. The club our fathers had built from nothing. But without River, everything was hollow, and the years I’d spent waiting for that to change—forhimto change when he was perfectly imperfect the way he was—fuck... what a wasted life.
I walked away from Cam while he was still talking and strode across the wet sand, reaching River as Folk emerged from the black waves.
Reading the room, Folk nodded to River and kept walking. Tracking him turned River around. To facemeas he shivered in the cold wind, his clothes wet through.My fault. And my clothes were wet too—
“Oi.”
Cam’s jacket hit the side of my head, and I glanced over my shoulder in time to see him and Folk already leaving the beach.
Love that dude.
I draped the jacket around River. He slid his arms in, rolling his eyes. “What about you?”
“I run hot.”
“No, youarehot. That doesn’t make you invincible.”
“Shh.” I pulled him close, slipping my arms around his waist, and for a long moment, I fucking held him. But I had so much I needed to say, and a sudden sense of running out of time descended on me. “Riv—”
The motherfucker sealedmymouth shut with his freezing hand. “Oh no. You don’t get to do that if I can’t.”
He held firm a moment, then let me go.
I bit his neck, revelling in the angst-felling heat that swept through us. The instinctive press of his body against mine. “Do what?”
“Say crazy-lovely things. Maybe I need you to save it for when I need it most too.”
Crazy-lovely. What a fucking phrase. Couldn’t argue with it. “You don’t need it now?”
River rubbed his cheek along my jaw. “We’re both breathing, boo. That’s enough for me tonight.”
It wasn’t enough. It never had been, and it wasn’t now. But it was cold.Hewas cold. Maybe the words burning me up inside could wait until he was warm again.
Besides, actions spoke louder than words. Could I show him how proud of him I was by sucking his dick?
23
RIVER
There were rocks at the far end of the beach, in the opposite direction to the one where we’d left our bikes. Where my brother and Folk were disappearing into the distance.
Rubi put his hands on my chest and guided me backwards, away from the frigid ocean. He had a smile as gentle as the faint light of the moon but a devilish heat in his gold-flecked eyes. A resolve that left me no room to fight him.
Not that I wanted to. Raiding the stash house had left me pumped, but the boat-load of other shit that came with it was fucking exhausting. Mentally, I was done.
Emotionally?
Who the hell knew.
We reached the rocks. Rubi pushed me against them and claimed my mouth, his lips cold from the winter air, but his tongue so hot it scorched my synapses.
