Helpless (Steel Demons MC #5) - Crystal Ash Page 0,13

hoped was comforting. Gunner meandered back to us after a few moments of quiet. He held a plate out to me, then quickly pulled it out of reach when Reaper made a grab for it.

“I was gonna give it to her,” Reaper laughed.

“Like fuck you were.” Gunner stayed out of arm’s reach, then jerked his chin at me. “Come here and let me feed you, baby girl.”

I smiled against Reaper’s neck and kissed him there before standing up. “Can’t say no to that.”

“Get, woman.” He swatted my ass and stood after me, heading toward the kitchen, presumably to refill his drink.

Gunner laughed lightly with a small shake of his head. “Still throws me for a loop.”

“What?” I followed him to a small table near the pool, just outside the overhang.

“That the president’s girl is also my girl,” he grinned. “And he doesn’t want to slice my dick off and feed it to me over you.”

“And you’re still okay with seeing us together?” Reaper warned me that Gunner might need some extra reassurance about our relationship, considering he was resistant to the idea for so long and wasn’t familiar with a multi-person dynamic.

“More than okay.” Gunner squeezed my knee under the table. “I thought it would be harder, like I’d have to figure out how to tolerate it. But I actually really like seeing you with them.”

“You do?” I folded up my tortilla around its filling and took a cautious bite of my overfilled taco.

“Yeah, it’s like Jandro said,” he mused thoughtfully. “It’s weird how not weird it is. I just love seeing you happy and taken care of. And when you’re with me—” His eyes flicked away from my face for a moment, then back to me. “It doesn’t diminish anything between us. When we’re together, it feels like I’m the only guy in your life.”

“Aww, Gun.” I reached for his face, leaning over the table to kiss him just as a screech and a whoosh of air warned me to duck my head.

“Shit, Horus!”

Gun pushed his chair back to the sounds of thumps and ruffling feathers. I looked up to see that Horus had crash-landed on one of the couches, and everyone on the patio had ceased their conversations to see what had happened.

“Is he okay?” I rushed over to where Gunner had picked him up and inspected his wings.

“Yeah, he’s fine.” He looked sheepishly at me. “I guess he didn’t expect you to touch me right then. It’s hard enough grabbing onto my shoulder with only one foot.”

I stared at him. “Why would he grab you with one foot?”

Gunner looked down at the bird on his lap, now seeming nervous. Everyone was still staring. “Because,” he sighed, “he was supposed to land on my shoulder and then hand you this.” He lifted Horus to show that the falcon held a small box in his talons.

A jewelry box.

A giddy laugh escaped me as I gently took the box from those fearsome claws. “This was his errand?”

“Yeah,” Gunner frowned. “Tried to have it all planned out and romantic—”

I leaned in, kissing him to the sound of whistles and cheers from our spectators. “You’re the sweetest man ever. Thank you.”

His smile touched mine, one hand reaching up to stroke my cheek. “You haven’t even seen what I got you.”

“Doesn’t matter.” I kissed him again. “You’re still the sweetest.” His face was flushed, throat working nervously as I sat back and opened the lid on the box.

“Gunner!” I gasped and looked up at him with my mouth open. “Are you serious? Are these…”

“From the dagger on my wall, yeah.” He swallowed again. “It didn’t mean that much to me, was too old to be used as an actual weapon. But I knew you liked it, so—”

This time, he saw the kiss coming. My ears recognized Reaper’s sharp whistle, the only hint that there was a world outside of my gunman’s beautiful smile.

“They’re perfect.” Both of us were smiling too hard to really kiss properly.

“Put ‘em on,” he whispered, his grin reaching up to his sky-blue eyes.

The earrings were shaped like two daggers, the sharp end pointing down with a slight curve like the original weapon they came from. The silver had been polished to an almost mirror-like finish, while the carvings had been etched and blackened to show them more clearly.

It felt like putting on a unique kind of armor as I slipped the hooks into my earlobes. I realized the gifts of each of my men represented the nature of my