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I held my eyes closed, my ears ringing in the silence, waiting for Roark’s response.
When he spoke, his deep accent shivered through me. “I made a promise to God.”
“Then make a new promise, dickhead.” Jesse’s arm flexed around me. “He sent you something rare and beautiful, a goddess in her own right. The only vow that matters is the promise to love her.”
My pulse raced. I wanted to climb up Jesse’s chest and kiss him senseless, but I held still, feigning sleep.
“I do—” Roark lowered his voice to a whisper, “I do love her, ye arrogant fuck.”
“Bullshit,” Jesse hissed, his heart banging against my ear. “You drop to your knees and turn to God every time you touch her. How the fuck do you think that makes her feel?”
The floor groaned as Roark rose to his feet and took a step toward us. He stood above me. I could hear the steady pace of his breaths and feel his eyes tracing the lines of my back, and the curves of my arms and legs where they wrapped around Jesse.
The bedding rustled as he lowered behind me and scooted in. His chest slid against my back, his hand snaking quietly around my waist and following the path of my arm across Jesse’s stomach. He stopped at my fingers, flattening and straightening each of my digits with his closed fist.
There was something in his hand, and when he opened it, a string of beads cascaded into my waiting palm. My breath caught as he closed my fingers around the rosary.
I turned my head and searched the calm features of his face. “Roark?”
Leaning over me, he kissed my lips, rested his forehead against mine, and stared at me with bright, clear eyes. “I know ye were listening, and he’s right.” Another kiss, this one delivered with a soft smile. “Ye are the incarnation of love. The only vow that matters.”
I hoped we would sleep until nightfall, but instead we slept through it. I woke with the light of a new day glaring in my eyes and an impatient fist pounding on the bathroom door.
“Rise and shine, motherfuckers,” Link sang from the hall.
Jesse cracked an eye open, his hand curled around the crease between my thigh and ass. “You hungry?”
I lay half-on, half-off his chest, my leg hooked over his thigh and my cheek on his shoulder. My body felt lovingly-used, yet recuperated and quenched, despite the gnawing hunger in my stomach. “I could eat.”
“I’m fecking famished,” Roark mumbled against my spine. He uncurled his body from around my back and shouted at the door, “If ye didn’t bring us cheeseburgers, feck off!”
The doorknob rattled, and the wood frame groaned against the nails Jesse had hammered into it.
“Get your asses up,” Link shouted, but I heard the smile in his rumbling voice. “I’ve got thirteen women out here, asking a million fucking questions and giving me a goddamned headache.”
The doorknob stilled, and the scrape of his footsteps faded down the hall.
Grinning, I rolled to my back and stretched my arms and legs, the sunlight warm on my nude skin. “Did you hear that? The women are awake.”
“God help us.” Roark stood, retied his knot of dreadlocks, and slipped on a pair of cargo shorts over his boxers.
Standing there in the halo of the window, looking rested and as gorgeous as ever, did he remember what he’d said last night? Did he really intend to surrender his vow?
I picked up the rosary where it lay beside my hip and threaded the beads around my fingers. “I can’t accept this, Roark. I can’t ask you to give up your vow.”
Jesse sat up and bowed over my back, his lips resting at the juncture of my neck and shoulder. “That’s just it, darlin’. You didn’t ask him. You accepted him with or without his stuffy robes.”
Roark cast Jesse a narrowed glare and crouched before me, his fingers beneath my chin, lifting my face. His expression softened, content, maybe even relieved. “Ye didn’t ask me to give it up. Ye love me too much to ask that.”
I released a shuddering breath. “I do. I love you both.”
The risk in loving people I could lose combined with the gravity in admitting it out loud sank into my heart, pulling it down. But the strength in this moment—in their understanding smiles and mere presence—floated my heart right back up and held it firmly in place in my chest.
I leaned back against Jesse, my eyes on Roark, my fingers sliding over the rosary beads. “So you’re done with celibacy? Just like that?”
“Just like that.” Roark planted a kiss between my furrowed eyebrows.
With his face so close, I could smell myself on his whiskers, the tangy scent flooding me with images of his mouth between my legs.
But he’d clung to his vow for so long. Had he considered the ramifications? Turning away from his promise to God and running toward me, right foot, left foot, until the nights sprinted away beneath our blankets? Until he’d ran so far from his beliefs that the man who remained was no longer the bleeding heart I fell in love with? Until all that was left was a hollowed-out renegade consumed with angry regret?
