Bear chuckles. “Finally. It seemed pretty fucking touch and go for a while.”
Hawk ignores him. “You’re right. You do have all of us, and Dario’s gone. He’ll never fucking touch you again. No one is. Not unless you want them to, and they'll still have to be approved by us.”
The rest of the guys nod and grunt their agreement.
“You guys are too good to me,” I sigh and snuggle into Bear's arms. It's like having a living fuzzy blanket that wraps itself around me.
Snark laughs. “Nothing's too good for the mother of our baby.”
“Is that all I am to you? The mother of your baby?” I mean to ask it in a funny way, but none of them take it that way.
Hawk literally tears me out of Bear's arms so he can pull me down on top of him. “I don't say this kind of shit often, so you'd better listen the fuck up.” He frowns, making the scar over his eye twist. His expression is dead serious.
I wet my lips nervously. “Okay?”
“I fucking love you. I was fucking worried, and if you fucking try to pull a stunt on us like that again, I'll make you wish you were fucking dead. If someone needs killing that bad, send us. We know what the fuck we're doing.”
I blink at him. That was a lot of fucking. “I don't know if that's the sweetest or the most terrifying thing anyone's ever said to me.”
Viking laughs. “Well said.” I'm not sure if he means Hawk or me, but maybe it doesn't matter.
I collapse onto Hawk's chest while I draw circles on his skin with one finger. “Thank you. All of you. You saved my life, and you saved Dad's life. Without the four of you, I would've been trapped with Dario—maybe forever.”
Did Bear just snarl?
But Snark leans in to run his fingers up and down the small of my back. I wiggle as the goosebumps rise on my arms. “To be fair, without the four of us, you wouldn't be in this mess anyway.”
“There would still have been Dario, and without you guys, who would've protected me from him?”
This time, Bear definitely snarls. He yanks me off Hawk so fast I squeak in surprise, then envelops me in an embrace so warm and complete, I melt right into him. “You're ours. Never fucking forget that.”
I nod. “I'm yours. Always. I'm sorry. I did something really stupid and I put us all at risk. I'm so, so sorry.”
Snark grins. “Good. Though, you going all solo vigilante is a little sexy, too.”
“Jesus, Snark, don't give her more ideas.” Viking smacks him on the arm.
“No!” I declare as firmly as I can. “No, no, no. I'm never doing that again. My nerves can't handle it. Or my heart.”
“So how about we make a deal?” says Viking in his gruff voice. “You don't go out hunting mob goons, and instead you let us watch over you and Izzy. We're not making your life a prison, like that Dario fuck wanted, but we'll be there, and we'll make sure you're safe. And if you ever need anything—fucking anything—you just call us, and we will make it happen.”
“Yeah,” I say, while smiling like an idiot. “Yeah, I'd like that.”
“Good!” He punctuates it with a smack on my ass that makes the room echo. It reminds me that we're basically all naked, beyond some more or less strategically placed blankets. It's amazing what you forget when talk gets serious, and you're comfortable with each other.
“Hey! Watch it.”
“Oh, trust me, I was.”
“So what, you guys think you can just sweet talk me for a while and then I'll just roll over for you and spread my legs?” Honestly, they're not wrong, but they seem to like it when I play a little hard to get. And they do deserve a little extra attention after all the effort they went through, right?
“I think,” says Snark, as he pulls me over to kneel in the center of the bed, “that there really isn't that much sweet talking needed.” Then he flicks his tongue at me. “As they say, a single tongue is worth a thousand words, even if those are words like 'oooh' and 'aaah'.”
“You’re not a big scary biker. You're a dork.” I smack him on the arm.
“Yeah?” He slides his fingers into my hair and gets a good grip, then tugs it down so I have to look up at him. He's not rough, not yet, but the tingle in my scalp makes me tingle other places too. I'm waking up in more ways than one. His usual smirk has gone from teasing to sexual in a moment. “Call me shit like that and you’re asking for trouble. That ass of yours is made for spanking.”
I wiggle my ass at him, like a dare. “What if I like it?”