The Bonds We Break by Becca Steele
EPILOGUE 1
ONE WEEK LATER
Cassius threw his phone down on the sofa with a grin as I settled into place next to him after carefully placing the mug of tea I’d made him down on the coffee table. “Your brother always has the best memes.”
“My brother? Austin? Sending memes?”
“Yep.”
“How is it that I didn’t know this? And also, why do you talk to my brother more than I do?”
He tugged me into his lap. “No one can resist my charms, not even Austin.”
“Okay, I suppose that’s true.” I kissed the side of his throat. “Mmm. You smell nice.” Breathing in, I trailed my nose up his neck, noticing the hitch in his breath as he tilted his head.
“I’ll never get enough of you.” His hand slid up my thigh.
“Did you forget we were here?”
I jerked away from Cassius to see Weston grinning at me from the armchair, with Lena stretched out on the floor and leaning back on his legs, tapping at her phone screen.
“No, I didn’t forget.” Shooting him a smile, I watched in satisfaction as he shook his head.
“You’ve been spending too much time with Cass. He’s rubbing off on you.”
“I’d like to rub one off on you right now,” Cassius murmured in my ear, and I reached up to cover his mouth. He licked my palm, and I made a noise of disgust, yanking my hand away.
“Do you have to?”
“Yep.” His voice was unrepentant.
“Did I tell you about the time Cass licked my ear, right when we were in the middle of a serious mission?” West leaned forwards in his seat, his fingers sliding through Lena’s hair. “We’d managed to infiltrate this illegal dog-fight—”
“Infiltrate? You make us sound like secret spies,” Cassius interrupted him.
He rolled his eyes. “Spies are secret by nature. You can’t be a secret spy.”
“You can.”
“You can’t.”
“You can.”
“You can’t.”
“Okay, is someone going to tell me about this illegal dog-fight?” I cut in before the conversation could get out of hand. I noticed Lena smirking from behind her phone screen, so I stretched out my legs and nudged her calf with my toe. If I had to be involved in this conversation, then she did, too.
She placed her phone down and gave me her full attention. “Yeah. It was your ex-best friend, Portia, who gave me the breakthrough in the end.”
“Portia? What?”
“Technically, it was James Granville who identified her, but Portia was instrumental in the whole thing.” Pulling up her legs, she wrapped her arms around her knees. “Ready for a story? It all started when I found out about these illegal dog-fights that were taking place in Alstone…”
As she spoke, I curled into Cassius, soaking up his warmth and listening to the three of them weave a story that I wouldn’t have believed if they hadn’t been the ones to tell it. The whole time they talked, Cassius had his hand on me, stroking my hair, my leg, my sides. Constantly reminding me that he was here.
I couldn’t ever remember being so content.
A while later, when it had grown dark outside and I was starting to feel sleepy, Zayde wandered in to join us, followed closely by Winter and Caiden. They all sprawled around in the large lounge, relaxed, the conversation low and easy.
“Austin gave me the big-brother talk.” Cassius suddenly broke the comfortable silence we’d both fallen into.
“He what?” I twisted my head to stare up at my boyfriend.
“Yeah, you know. The ‘don’t hurt my sister or I’ll be forced to tie concrete blocks to your ankles and throw you into the River Thames’ talk.”
“He did not say that.” I narrowed my eyes at him.
Cassius widened his eyes, full of attempted innocence, but I could read him too well. I saw the humour sparkling in them as he met my gaze. “Maybe I was paraphrasing.”
“Misinterpreting, more like.”
“Cass gave me that talk, too,” Weston said, and it was then that I realised that everyone else had also fallen silent and was listening to our conversation. “He said he’d cut my balls off if I hurt Lena.”
“You keep saying you’re a lover, not a fighter, but you have such violent tendencies, Cass.” Winter shook her head in mock disappointment.
“Wait, no. I said Z would cut his balls off,” Cassius protested.
“So it was you who started that rumour? As if poor Zayde doesn’t have enough to deal with already, what with his serial killer stare and everything.” Winter darted a look at Zayde, who was clearly unimpressed. To my surprise, she untangled herself from Caiden and threw herself into his arms. “You know I don’t mean it.”
Even more surprising, he hugged her back.
“The words ‘poor’ and ‘Zayde’ don’t belong together in a sentence. He’s like the mysterious bad boy, with all that and his motorbike. He could probably have more girls than any of us ever had, if he could be bothered.” Cassius pointed at Zayde as he said “that,” and I assumed he meant his many tattoos and piercings and his general “keep away” vibes that he threw out.
Zayde gave Caiden a casual shrug, and I scrutinised him. Yeah, there was an appeal to him, if you liked that sort of thing, but as for me, my type consisted of one man only, and he was currently trailing kisses down the side of my face.
I smiled, turning my head up to capture his lips.
The conversation turned to bikes, and then to cars, and then something about revs and torque, by which point I’d slyly opened my Kindle app on my phone and begun to read the fourth instalment in my elf fantasy series, keeping my screen tilted away from the others.
“His weeping mushroom head stared up at her, angry and purple, seemingly throbbing with delicious anticipation. As she spread her legs, exposing the delicate moist petals of her flower—”
“Cassius!” I buried my head in the sofa cushions to the sound of everyone’s laughter.
Again.