She shook her head. “Do you?”
He shook his head.
A humorless laugh slipped out of her mouth. “But it doesn’t feel like he’s dead, does it? We killed him three years ago, but he’s still here. A ghost in this town. Watching us. Judging us.”
“Then let him watch,” Sloan said fiercely. “Jake was my only family, he was my best friend, but he was not a good man. It wasn’t anything you or I did, sweetheart. He was sick and he got addicted to the power. You didn’t make him do what he did. Neither did I. So if he wants to be here with us?” Sloan gestured to the empty space around them. “Let him. Let him watch. But you and I? We’re not giving him another second’s thought.”
The heat in his eyes made it hard to breathe. She’d seen it when he’d kissed her, when he’d let Rylan suck him off. That kind of passion wasn’t supposed to be restrained. It should be allowed to flow free, and Reese found herself cursing Jake harder than she ever had, for keeping Sloan on a leash he didn’t belong on.
When he kissed her, she welcomed him with an eagerness that was almost embarrassing. His tongue slid into her mouth, and Reese gasped because he tasted like . . . Sloan. Like whiskey and man and something so heady it fogged up her mind.
She clung to his broad chest, digging her fingers into his pecs. When her thumbnail brushed his nipple through his shirt, he hissed out a breath. His big body was trembling, but she knew he wasn’t scared or nervous. He was fighting the same loss of control that she always fought.
“Sloan,” she started, but she had no idea what she wanted to say.
It didn’t matter. Sloan kissed her again, long and deep and drugging, making her dizzy with the hungry swirl of his tongue, the greedy clasp of his lips. He pushed her back onto the mattress and slid the top of her bra down. One breast popped free and instantly he had his mouth around it, sucking deep enough to make her cry out.
“Reese,” he groaned against her aching flesh. But he didn’t finish his sentence either. He simply flicked his tongue over her nipple while freeing her other breast.
God. Her entire body was on fire. Everything about him called to something hot and carnal inside her. His wicked tongue. His cropped hair sliding beneath her palm as she ran her fingers through it. His beard on the swell of her breast, scratching her sensitive skin. His impossibly hard cock pressing against her thigh.
She wanted to free it from his jeans, take him inside her mouth, inside her body. The need to have him was so overpowering it turned her into a crazed woman. Suddenly she was clawing at his zipper, growling when it snagged halfway.
Sloan chuckled and reached down to help her out. “You want my cock?” he rasped.
Reese couldn’t even form the word yes. Raw, unchecked lust had clogged her throat, and all she could do was give him a desperate nod.
Anticipation swelled between her legs as he slowly dragged his zipper down. He reached inside and gripped what she was craving more than her next breath, but before he could release his erection, a knock sounded on the door.
They both hissed in displeasure.
“Reese, we need you.” It was Nash, who must have drawn the short straw again, because he always seemed to be the one interrupting them.
“What is it?” she ground out. She knew both Sloan and Nash could hear the throatiness of her voice, thick with desire.
“Uh . . . we need you,” Nash repeated, sounding like he’d rather be anywhere but outside her door at the moment.
Sloan’s expression flashed with annoyance as he hurled a question at the closed door. “You feel like telling us why? Or are you just gonna keep repeating yourself?”
There was a brief pause. “Bethany’s gone into labor.”
18
Bethany looked terrible.
For a moment, Reese was tempted to spin on her heel and let someone else handle this, but she forced herself to stay put. The panting, red-faced woman thrashing on the bed was one of her people. She couldn’t turn away from someone she’d sworn to protect.
“She was walking home from the restaurant and suddenly bent over. Something like . . . piss, I guess, poured out of her and she started crying. We carried her up here and then . . .” Nash grimaced helplessly, making that face men wore when someone was hurting but they couldn’t do a damn thing to help them. “Then that started happening. We didn’t know what to do.”
He gave Reese a pleading look. Fix this, it said.
Reese glanced back at Bethany, whose body bowed off the bed from a wracking pain that left her visibly drained and weeping.
Sloan had followed Reese into the bedroom but backed away almost immediately, his normally stoic face full of horror. But at least he was still here. Travis and Beckett were hiding downstairs—hell, they may have even left, those cowards—and Nash was already inching away.