“Tend to show up when I got family who needs me,” Priest agreed with faux ease as he ran a possessive hand down my hair and wrapped it languidly around his fist. “Can I help you with somethin’, Officer Travers?”
The cop squinted at him, hands on his gun belt, legs braced as if for war. He had the face of a pugilist and, apparently, the manners of one too. “Seeing as this is a crime scene, you can tell me what went down here.”
“He just arrived,” I told the asshole, sticking my chin in the air to glare down at him from my advanced height perched on Priest’s hip. “If you want a statement, ask me. I witnessed the entire thing.”
Officer Travers opened his mouth to speak, but Priest turned his back on the man, dismissing him. Before the cop could protest, my psycho moved us down the slight incline to the parking lot where the rest of our family milled together in the chaos.
“You called us family,” I said quietly, not wanting to spook him by repeating his words. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard you refer to anyone as family.”
Priest slanted a look down the strong line of his nose at me. The skin beside his eyes and lips was smooth, no smile lines or brackets around that expressionless mouth because he so rarely emoted. But I could read the depths in those peridot eyes, and I saw the way they flickered with bank flames.
“Death makes you realize real quick how you feel ’bout someone. Lost Mute and realized what the club meant to me. Feels like I’m nearly losin’ you just as I got ya, and that did it too.”
“Did what?” I breathed as he manoeuvred through the clusters of shocked churchgoers to the far side of the lot where the club congregated, outsiders by their choice yet also ostracized by the parishioners. It was amazing to see social divides existed even amidst all the calamity.
“Made me realize you make me feel human,” he grunted without looking at me. “Not sure I like it, but there it fuckin’ is.”
“Human’s good,” I promised him, pressing a kiss to his beard because I couldn’t help it. Because joy was ballooning inside me with nowhere to go, and I needed some outlet for it.
“Human’s weak.”
“Hey.” I tugged on the short end of his beard, then raked my nails through it in a way that made him shiver despite himself. “You think I’m human, and once, you told me that I’m not weak.”
He considered me for a moment, a muscle in his cheek popping as he chewed over my words. Finally, he dropped me to the group and took a step away as if I was suddenly infected with some highly contagious disease. As if he might catch my feelings.
“No, Little Shadow,” he murmured even as he turned away, only his fingers still connecting us together as they curled hard around my wrist. “You’ve never been weak.”
When we broke through the last of the crowd separating us from our chosen family, they were all watching us, clearly having tracked our progress from the sidewalk down to the lot. Priest hesitated, boot suspended mid-step. I watched from slightly behind and to the side of him as he cocked his head to study their varying expressions of confusion and open curiosity.
I waited, wondering how he would process their interest in whatever was going on between us.
Loulou broke free from Zeus to come toward us but stopped abruptly when Priest stepped in front of me, blocking her way.
They stared each other down, my big sister and my beloved psycho, communicating in the way of alphas, without words using only intense body language.
Slowly, Priest pulled me by the wrist to his side, then deliberately wrapped his big hand around the back of my neck under my hair to anchor me to him.
“She’s mine,” he said slowly, each word barely leashed with aggression.
Loulou mimicked him, cocking her head and narrowing her eyes. Her hip cocked to the side as she folded her arms across her chest and arched a brow. “And you’re hers?”
He shrugged one shoulder casually, but the hand on my neck flexed in spasm. “Whatever there is of me to have.”
I made a little noise of protest in my throat, but Priest only pressed his thumb tighter to my throat.
“Someone seems damn intent on hurting her,” Lou continued as if there was no one but her and Priest in the parking lot, no firemen or policemen, no eavesdropping neighbours. I realized this was the MC Queen speaking to her soldier, seeing if he could be trusted with the biggest responsibility she had to dole out.
“I’ll kill them before they get to her,” Priest stated flatly.
A little shiver moved through my badass sister before she could quell it. “You’d kill me if I hurt her too, wouldn’t you?”