Page 53 of Unchained

Brooks snapped his head toward the front door. She dropped her arms from around his waist and stepped back, her legs as sturdy as jelly. “Go ahead.”

He grimaced, as if he hated to step away from her, but turned and moved down the hall leading to the foyer. She watched as Brooks checked the peephole, then she dashed further into the kitchen so the person at the door wouldn’t see her in her barely-there tank. Brooks’s voice mixed with another man’s.

“Thanks,” Brooks called, before he shut and locked the door. He came into the kitchen bearing a box and two plastic bags.

“Holy cow. What’s all this?” She took the bags as he set the box on the counter. Reaching inside, she pulled out a bag of grapes.

“Food from Lexi and Nash,” Brooks said, chortling. He reached into the box and pulled out meat, vegetables, bread, and snacks. “Enough for a family of five.” His beaming smile radiated pure happiness. It was the glow of a person who’d found out where he belonged.

“Wow, that was so thoughtful.” She picked out a bag of dark-chocolate treats and stashed them in the pantry for later. She turned, but Brooks had his phone pressed to his ear.

“Hey, just got the food. You trying to feed an army?” His relaxed and easy tone made her grin despite the situation with her mom. He deserved to have a sense of normalcy.

Brooks talked for a few more minutes, and then his eyes lifted to lock with Cam’s. “She’s okay. Actually, not great. We got a call from her nephew.” The cautious arch in his eyebrows suggested he was asking for permission before continuing. She gestured that it was okay, and he broke into detail about her mom and Isaac.

Hearing the threat all over again made her throat clog. Cam pressed her fingers to her breastbone. Brooks had to be right: hurting Linda wouldn’t help Isaac get what he wanted—her. Her mom was smart and resourceful. She wouldn’t take any shit from Isaac. But that was another problem entirely because Linda’s backbone would only irritate Isaac more. Isaac had been a loose cannon before prison. Eighteen months in jail, stewing in his fury, wouldn’t have softened him.

* * *

Against his better judgment, Brooks went into the basement, following Nash’s instructions. He’d just gotten off the phone with his soon-to-be brother-in-law—man, was that a weird term he was quickly getting attached to—and Nash had said he and “the guys” would be over soon. Involving Nash in Brooks’s vengeance against Conrad was bad enough, but he wasn’t going to turn away help. And if Nash trusted them, he could too.

He hadn’t asked who they were, but Lexi had hinted at Nash’s brother. He moved to the door that led to a space underneath the basement stairs. Spotting the toolbox Nash had described on the tool bench, Brooks grabbed it and dug into one of the compartments. After retrieving the key, he unlocked the padlock on the door beneath the stairs, removed the lock, and swung it open.

A six-foot-tall gun safe stared back at him from the storage closet. Anticipation rattled his joints. He turned the combination, stopping at each number Nash had given him, and cracked open the door. The heavy metal creaked as he opened it. Glare from the overhead light inside the safe illuminated what had to be two dozen guns.

Jesus.

Reaching inside, he ran his fingers over a rifle. The stairs creaked over his head, and he peeked around the wall just as Cam reached the bottom stair. Her normally full, pouty lips were stretched into a thin line. “You okay?” he asked. The question was moot. Until her mom was safely with them, she’d be a nervous wreck.

Her cheeks relaxed a fraction. “I’m fine. Just keeping my hands busy upstairs. Whatchya doing?”

“Nash called and told me to come down here,” he said, nodding at the safe as she came to stand beside him. Her sharp inhale through her teeth made him wince. “He said to pick one.”

Cam pressed her fingertips to her lips, her gaze locked on the weapons, her profile revealing the slight upturn of her nose and her thick, long eyelashes. “You’re really doing this.” It wasn’t a question.

Guilt hardened his gut. It wasn’t fair to make Cam an accessory to murder. He turned to her and wrapped his arms around her waist, forcing her to look at him and not at the guns. Her cheeks had turned pale, and a dark-forest-green ring circled her brilliant irises. “You don’t have to be here for this, you know.”

She reared her head back. “What does that mean?”

“The guns. The plan . . . what we’re going to do tonight. You being in the house while we’re planning this—I don’t want you involved.”

Her eyes lowered, and tension made fine lines dent her forehead. Her hands settled on his forearms. Seconds ticked by. Fuck. She’d better not think he was using this as a way to ditch her after having sex. He caught her chin, and her gaze stabbed into his. Fierce and raw.

She pushed out of his arms and snagged a Glock from the top shelf. “Take this one,” she said, shoving it into his hand. She propped a hand on her hip. “For the record, I’m kind of already involved, so it doesn’t matter. I want to be here with you.”

He cupped her cheek and pressed a kiss to her forehead while moving his thumb over the scabbed cut beneath her chin. Just the fact that she’d been hurt, even a slight cut, was too much. Too close a call. He was still living in a nightmare, with the odds stacked against him. But for some messed-up reason, he’d been given a wild card—something that gave him hope. He might not deserve Cam, but she’d been sent to him. “I hoped you’d say that.” He forced the words through his restricted windpipe.

She beamed. “They’ll be here soon. I made food.”

He reached up to thread his fingers through the end of her ponytail. The strands flowed over his knuckles, weaving around them in an act of possession. Her lips quirked and a spark lit her eyes. Need built inside him. He pocketed the gun in the waistband of his pants then caught her hipbones and lifted her. She wrapped her legs around his hips.

A throaty giggle shook her chest. “Brooks!”

He pressed her back to the wall and connected his abdomen to hers, securing her in place. “Damn, you make me horny.” That was an understatement. Having her sleek wetness wrapped around his dick was something out of this fucking world. Sex had always been heaven, but with the drug in his system, or hell, maybe it was just Cam, the sensations reached a new level of intensity. He bent his head and nibbed her collarbone. “I’ve never been so turned on by someone in my life.”

Her fingers gripped his hair, urging him on. Pulling down the neckline of her shirt, he moved the cup of her bra, freeing her hardened nipple. He let out a growl and took the bud into his mouth, licking over her flesh.

“Ah.” Her nails nipped the skin at the back of his neck.

---