Page 60 of Wolf.e (The Soldiers of Bedlam #1)

Jake

Good man.

Jake

You got it.

Gabriel

The St. Henry’s cabin is the perfect spot to meet up with some shady guy Jake knows to buy ANFO.

It has nothing on site, so if the guy is a crook he can’t steal from us and it’s registered to a numbered company making it totally untraceable back to the club.

We’ve owned it for almost fifty years and usually only keep an overflow of bike parts there.

I toss my phone on the bed and glance down at Brinley beside me, still naked and asleep in our cabin at the rally. I run my finger through her hair and down the smooth slope of her spine. I can’t sleep and the sun hasn’t even come up yet.

The feeling I have when I look at her overwhelms me. The woman whose body first became my obsession is now the woman I can’t live without. The woman who snuck up on me when I least expected it and took me out at the fucking knees.

We never even made it back to the festivities last night.

Instead, we made it inside where we showered and ate barbeque from the grill outside the cabin, watching the fireworks show Jack put on for everyone from our deck.

I listened as she talked about leaving Crimson, starting her own design studio, starting fresh after I put down the threat.

And that’s when it hit me how much Brinley trusts me to keep her safe.

She doesn’t think for one second this thing we’re planning can go badly and that makes me feel something for the first time in twelve years.

Fear. But not fear of what could happen to me. Fear of someday losing her. It fuels me and pushes me to get this job done faster, more efficiently. I’ve been awake for hours, triple checking Kai’s notes to ensure every single possible scenario has been thought of.

I kiss her shoulder through her hair. I try not to wake her as I stand and head for the shower.

I have to meet with the guys this morning before this rowdy place wakes up.

I stand and realize I’m still covered in her blood but it doesn’t fucking bother me in the slightest. I want every single part of her laced with me.

I turn the shower on and let the hot water cover me.

Today.

Today is the first step in ending the Disciples of Sin and all their years of bullshit with us.

I’m desperate to put it behind me and move forward.

I know now, after less than two months, that I want Brinley with me.

But I don’t want to hide her away, I want her everywhere I can take her.

I want her to thrive in my world with me and come home to her every night.

I want to sink into that perfect pussy every day until my last dying breath.

I want to do things I’ve never fathomed, like add on to my home and create space for as many sons as she can give me.

Somehow, the thought of her body changing and growing, her carrying my child, fucking exhilarates me.

And to watch her become a mother? To give a child everything I never had—with her it doesn’t seem pointless or impossible.

It seems inevitable. It seems like everything my mother wanted for me that I never thought she’d see.

I shut the water off and grab a towel from the shelf.

Today, Jake and I will meet his contact for our ANFO explosives.

Then tomorrow, we make our move on the DOS clubhouse.

We’ve had one of our newest prospects on watch, their entire local club is here somewhere in Benson for another two nights, minus their president who’s apparently in Savannah to meet with K6.

When we take their clubhouse, we’ll take them over. We want to remind every single one of them, every day, that they will serve us. They’re going to help us clean up the Atlanta and Savannah streets instead of infecting them. Without their leader, we’re confident we can bring them under our wing.

But before any of that can happen, Marco Foxx has to die and I’m bloodthirsty with the thought.

We’ve spent months planning this. We’ll pull it off and come out the other side.

When I dry off and get dressed, I start to silently pack up the room as Brinley breathes softly in our bed. I watch her as she sleeps, and the warm feeling I get when I look at her that’s been plaguing me for a while now, spreads through my chest.

Shit is just uncontrollable. Ax tells me I love her, but I know better. This isn’t love. Love is just a word—this is something more. This is an unadulterated need. I need this woman more than I need air.

When this is done, I’m gonna tell her just that, but until then my only mission is to keep her safe.

***

“Where are you going tonight?”

I look into the beautiful blue eyes, that are the means for my entire existence, on the other side of the kitchen island when we get home later that afternoon.

“I want to stay here, Gabriel. With you. Permanently. I don’t want to leave. I want to sell my parents’ old home. What’s happening between us, how I feel, it’s…”

I look up at her from adding balsamic dressing to a large salad for us, surprised by her honest and confident words.

“Unexplainable?” I ask.

“Yes,” Brinley says with the cutest little smirk, her cheeks start to pinken and it goes straight to my cock.

“Did you think I was gonna let you leave?” I ask her in a teasing tone, but not joking in the slightest. There isn’t a fucking chance on earth she’ll ever be sleeping in a bed other than mine again.

Brinley gets up and makes her way over to me, her warm body presses against my back as she wraps her arms around my naked torso. She stays like this for a beat before she speaks while I finish making our dinner.

“I want to know it all or I won’t stay,” she says simply then kisses my back.

“And I don’t mean physically, because I know if you want to keep me here, you will.

” She kisses me again. “I mean this, us, how we’ve become, how we’ve grown.

If I don’t know it all, I won’t trust you and if I don’t trust you, we won’t be us. ”

I turn and face her, wrapping my arms around her, I kiss her sweet lips, her jasmine scent filling my senses.

I sigh. “There are things I’m programmed to keep from you, to protect you.”

“I don’t need protection. I know both versions of you.

I know the man you are and I know the man you have to be.

I want every part…the same way you do,” Brinley says with a true boldness I haven’t seen in her before.

She’s embraced her place beside me in this life.

Not only has she embraced it, she seems like she will take it with pride and flourish in it.

“Tonight, Jake and I are getting the tools we need to take out the DOS clubhouse. Explosives.”

“Why are you doing that?”

“It’s a matter of principle. It’s where Gator had his way with Mason’s sister, it’s personal to him to get rid of it, plus it’s a total shit hole.” She looks up expectantly, knowing I’m not telling her everything. “And then we’re gonna take out their president, Marco Foxx.”

Brinley looks into my eyes. “For threatening me?” she asks.

“Yes, but also for threatening all of us. And for letting Gator assault who knows how many other young girls there. He’s poisonous.

The building is poisonous. Once it’s done, we’ll patch over the rest of the club.

DOS doesn’t have chapters like we do—they’re small time, relatively speaking.

Their closest chapter is in Texas. They aren’t coming all the way down here to fight if we patch over twenty members, they’ll probably be glad we took them off their hands. ”

“When will you be back?”

“We meet the explosives dealer at nine, I’ll be back here long before midnight.”

“Is it that simple?”

“Normally, not really. But this time, we’ve planned this right. Jake and I are going alone. We’ll be fast, we’ll get it done.”

Brinley thinks for a minute.

“Just you and Jake alone? That doesn’t worry you?” she asks, pulling her plush bottom lip between her teeth.

I chuckle. “It’s the way we do things. It’s Jake’s contact, but we take the risk together. Taking anymore guys would draw too much unwanted attention.”

“Okay…and then after all this, things will settle down?”

I kiss her lips and push her dark hair from her forehead, tucking it behind her ear. “Yeah, I hope so.”

Brinley nods like I just told her about a business acquisition. Like I didn’t just tell her my plan to destroy property and kill someone, while making her dinner.

“Once it’s done, I’m looking for my own design space. I want something of my own. I don’t have any illusions about you or this life. This is who you are, and I won’t try to change that. If I sell the house, I’ll have my own money to play with to find a spot. I know downtown has some vacancies.”

“I may know of some,” I say, thinking of the buildings the club owns.

“I don’t need you to handle this for me,” she says then grins.

I kiss her.

“I’ve never…cared for anyone other than myself,” I tell her truthfully. “This is foreign to me, but I want to keep club life and my private life separate. As separate as I can.”

Brinley nods. “I respect that, but you will tell me what I want to know,” she adds with a matter of fact tone.

I can’t believe this woman has this kind of power over me. I’d tell her anything if it kept her here, warm against me every night.

“Now, you have business to handle, Mr. President,” she says with a commanding sassy look on her face. “But first, where’s my dinner?”

I grin. “Demanding, aren’t you?” I smack her ass and she yelps.

The sound is downright fucking irresistible.

I check my phone to see that nothing has changed with Jake and then I start to plate my queen’s dinner with an actual smile on my face.

Holy fuck , is this what it’s like to feel happy?

***