Inked in Lies (The Fallen Men 5)

My heart stopped, the fist of furious sadness wrapped so tightly around it I wondered if I might have an embolism.

Wide eyed, I looked at Zeus who was watching the scene grimly with arms crossed over his chest. He caught my eye and sighed as he tromped through the wreckage on heavy boots and took my shoulder in his hand.

“Leave us for a while, yeah? We’ll get ’im sorted,” he said softly as he lead me gently back out the door.

“I should be here,” I protested, aching to go to Dane and wrap him up in my arms.

“No,” he argued. “This is the man who raised you, he wouldn’t want you to see him like this which is why he hadn’t had a breakdown yet. Let ’im be, Li girl, and I’ll call you when he’s through it, yeah? Trust me.”

I stared up at the patriarch of the best-found family I’d ever known with tears in my eyes because I was so struck by the beauty of his heart, I almost couldn’t breathe.

“You’re going to help me fix him, aren’t you?” I wheezed through the tears. “Just like you helped Mute and Ares and me?”

“Hey now,” he said in his monstrous voice, rough and deep with eyes as soft as cotton. “I didn’t do dick. Just got to watch as all’a ya found your own way.”

I nodded, muted by my tears and gratefulness. I rose on my tiptoes to plant a kiss on the edge of his bearded jaw and cast one last look over his shoulder at my brother, still cradled in the firm hold of Bat’s unwavering arms, before I left.

It was one of the hardest things I’d ever done, which was saying a lot given the events of the last six months, but I was glad I did it.

I was even happier when, a year later, I got to watch Dane patch into The Fallen, and then some time after that, when I got to attend his wedding.

After years of taking care of me, of giving me the Booths and a better life, it was finally my turn to offer up my family, The Fallen, to Dane, and know that I was giving him a better life too.

* * *

* * *

Two Months Later

* * *

“Hey all!” I shouted as I swung through the door of Street Ink Tattoo Parlour to pick up my man for lunch.

No one greeted me.

Sara wasn’t behind the reception. Jae Pil, Axe-Man, and Chelsea were gone.

There was only Nova, sitting back in his own tattoo chair with his hands behind his head as if he was just waiting for me to walk on over and service him.

I grinned, dropping my purse to the reception desk as I made my way to him.

“Hey, handsome.” I leaned over him to speak against his lips then kissed him deeply, drinking in the taste of him like a woman’s first drink out of the desert. “Where is everyone?”

He didn’t answer. Instead, he pulled me closer, fisting a hand in the back of my hair to pin me against his lips. I groaned as the silken slide of his tongue parted my mouth and dove inside. My body melted against him instantly, growing liquid and languid as instant lust poured through me like hot water.

When he finally pulled away, I couldn’t peel my heavy lids open at first.

His smoky chuckle wafted over my tingling lips, and when I looked at him, he was smiling so beautifully, it literally made it hard to breathe.

“That was some greeting,” I murmured, holding onto his wrists to keep from wobbling on my weakened knees. “What’s going on?”

“I got somethin’ I wanna show you,” he said with that roguish grin.

I groaned. “Babe, I’ve seen it, I love it, I know it’s big.”

He threw his head back and laughed, that rich, warm sound wrapping me up tight in its hold. When he recovered, he stamped a kiss on my mouth still flavoured with his mirth.

“Somethin’ new,” he quantified as he started to lead me out of the shop.

I watched the way our feet fell in tandem as we walked, such a little synchronicity that stood for so much more. In the weeks since we’d ended Irina’s operation, Nova and I had only grown closer.

I didn’t think it was possible to love him more than I did, but it happened every single day. We sunk deeper into our relationship, making room for each other and our shared dreams. We talked late at night in the hours before sleep and after fucking about where we would travel, the things we would do, and the family we might one day have.

The look in Nova’s eyes when we spoke about family moved through me like an earthquake every time. I knew he wanted a baby with me more than anything, not only because of that look, but the way he pressed his cheek to my belly sometimes and drew circles on my hips, as if he was just waiting for a time when he could plant a baby in there and watch it grow inside me.