grinned when she giggled, but her fingers tightened on my hair, telling me silently she needed to know more. “There you were, always surrounded by books, always so clean in your pretty dresses…” I shook my head. “I just wanted to muss you up. Not to be mean, but just to see you light up, I guess. Like, when you went on the swings, there was nothing better than watching you enjoy that. And when you were in the family room, you always looked so alone and lonely. I hated that.”
“So, you dragged me outside and helped turn me into a tomboy?”
I grinned at her. “Saint corrupted you too.”
“Do you know why he was always hanging around at first?”
“No. Why?”
She chuckled. “My momma had threatened him. First day we arrived. Told him to look after me, pretty much on pain of death. Stuck to me like glue after that. Bet that’s half the reason he’s still here. Just in case Momma castrates him for making me upset.”
She was joking, one-hundred-percent, and that filled me with relief because she knew, fucking knew, what she meant to us.
I cleared my throat, my voice hesitant and shaky, as I whispered, “Ama?”
“Yeah.”
“I love you. You know that, right?”
Her eyes flashed, diamond-bright for a second, before her lips curved. “I know it, and I love you too. Have since before I knew what was what. Loved you as a friend first, and then I loved you as a girl loves a boy.”
“And now?”
“Now I love you like a woman loves her man.”
I released a shaky breath. “You mean it?” Fuck, I knew I sounded like a wimp, but I just… It wasn’t often a man went into a relationship with two other men. Hell yeah, I was insecure.
Her fingers stopped fiddling with my hair, and instead, she gently stroked the back of my neck. “I mean it with all that I am. Jamie, I need you more than I can even express. But how I love you? It’s all encompassing. Not one part of me doesn’t belong to you.”
Another shaky breath escaped me, and I tilted my head around and decided to do what any man should in these moments.
Thank his woman for her love.
❖
Saint
When I heard moaning down the hall, I hesitated. Ink had gone out for another emergency church, so there was no denying who it was—Ama and Keys.
I pulled at my bottom lip as the urge to go and see what they were doing hit me, but did Ama want that? Would she be embarrassed and flustered?
We hadn’t really spoken about these things. Hadn’t had the chance, but she had mentioned wanting to repeat that ‘sandwich-style’ hug from the tattoo parlor, but had that been a joke?
Her brothers had only left last night, and hell, they might be returning if the emergency church deemed it so. We’d been busy keeping them occupied, as well as Ama, and when one of us was with her and them, the other had to go on runs—shorter ones, to warehouses all over the county and beyond.
Letting her take her time, make the first moves, hadn’t been something any of us had outright said, but it was just an organic step in the right direction.
Ama knew what she wanted from us, so we just had to wait on her for that plan to reveal itself.
I regretted that now.
Regretted it because I’d never asked her if she wanted us sexually, or just like a… Well, an umbrella relationship. She was with us all, we slept with her, but did she want more with all of us as a group? Or just individually?
Hell, could she handle us en masse?
I’d seen more shit in the clubhouse bar than most porn stars could imagine, but I’d never actually had a threesome. It made sense, though, that if I was going to have one it would be with Keys.
Never in my wildest dreams did I think the woman we might be sharing was Ama, but that was actually a wet dream come to life now that I thought about it.
Still, just because I wanted it didn’t mean Keys or Ama did.
But when I listened to her moans growing louder, wilder, fuck. I couldn’t stay in the kitchen, dicking around with a cooking game on my phone.
I couldn’t just listen to that and not need to be a part of what they were doing to each other.
Selfish, yeah, but hell, she could always toss me out if she wanted.