Page 196 of Five Brothers

I think about that a lot. How he wants things and refrains from taking them because he thinks the cycle will end with him.

But he wants me in his bed because he remembers how good warm things feel. He doesn’t want to be alone.

I’m going to let another man have her …

I drop the pillow back to the bed and pull my T-shirt over my head. Slipping my shorts down my legs, I pick up my pillow again and hug it to my naked chest. Underwear still on, I try to slow my breathing as I see his room through the hair hanging in my left eye as I cross the hall.

Stepping inside, I watch him stand at his bedside table, his back to me as he sets his alarm.

I almost can’t talk for a second. “You’re … you’re warm,” I say in a soft voice.

He turns, his gaze dropping to the pillow over my naked skin. “Right?” I swallow. “Like a shower?”

He can warm me. My heart pounds in my ears.

The slight pinch between his brows digs deeper, and I’m not sure what that means. He doesn’t look as if he likes what he sees.

“You’re bold,” he says, arching an eyebrow. “For a teenager.”

Yeah. He’s pissed. He thinks I’m spoon-feeding him. Pitying him.

I whip around to leave, but he’s on my back and shoving the door out of my hand as soon as I start to open it.

“The last Saint on my bed got off without punishment.”

Clay. I breathe hard.

We broke into their house last spring, and she lay on his bed while Callum Ames took her picture.

As a joke.

She was fully dressed, of course. And Macon wasn’t here.

I wet my lips. “I never want to leave your bed,” I whisper.“And I want you to take that woman’s number out of your phone, too.”

His fingers play with locks of my hair at my back. “You want to do for me what she wants to do?”

I nod.

A hard breath hits my ear, and he lifts me up, back against his body, burying his face in my neck. I drop the pillow, moaning as I tilt my head back, close my eyes, and reach my hand around to touch his face.

“Macon …”

His hands slide up my body, covering my breasts, and I shift on my tiptoes, trying to keep contact as his mouth moves over my neck—touching, brushing, biting, breathing …

He rises up straight, taking me with him so my feet leave the floor. “How are you so powerful?” he growls, sliding a hand down the front of my panties. “Goddammit, you make everything worse.”

I smile. My skin fires under the surface, and I feel like everything is vibrating. “I know,” I groan.

His mouth leaves my neck, and I catch his lips with mine, cutting off his breath.

Twisting around in his arms, I let him slip his hands down the back of my underwear, cupping my ass and pressing me into him. His hard ridge digs into me, and my belly floods with heat.

I climb into his arms as he wraps my legs around his body. I hold the back of his neck and hover close, nearly brushing my nose to his. “I wish it had been me that night on your bed. What would you have done if you’d caught me?”

He reaches behind me, and I hear the lock click. “Given you the licks you deserved.” He breathes out.

My heart spins inside my chest, and I love the double meaning behind that. I wish I had been the one on his bed. I wish I’d known how to listen to my instincts, because from the start, it was him I noticed. The first time I saw him up close in the garage during thescavenger hunt. That first time—while everyone else was scared—I just kept thinking how smart he was. That he wasn’t some ruthless nobody who thought small and just liked to cause trouble. That whole time he had Clay in his clutches, I kept thinking that he was stronger than anyone I’d ever known.