Sinful Like Us (Like Us, #5)

by Krista Ritchie

I text Charlie Cobalt my location,

Once her five brothers learned that I’m their sister’s real boyfriend, I thought they’d all have something to say to me. Cobalts aren’t known to holster their opinions. Inst...

Jane isn’t really a peacemaker and terminator of conflict. She’s the co-pilot, the second-in-command, and she unites side by side with whoever the hell needs another pistol in the fight. But I hesitate to say no to my brother because… “That’s something a wing-woman would do?” Banks nods. “Fuck yeah.” Goddammit.

It’d be easier if Tony Ramella were an Omega bodyguard. Akara, the Omega lead, would know where he is, and I could just ask him. But there’s a problem with that: I fucked Akara over, and we’re not speaking. My fucking fault.

The kid still wants to fight, even after his dad told him, “Not over my dead decaying body.” Xander asked Farrow, Banks, and me to convince his parents to let him box again, and we agreed to be his advocates and to keep training him if he made a promise to stick to throwing punches in the ring. Or else, we’re out. The only reason we’re not siding with his parents is because we all know how much boxing can help Xander feel empowered. Especially in situations where he feels helpless.

“My sins are your sins.” He bites harder on the toothpick. “Not everyone is a knucklefuck who treats us like one person.” “Not everyone is Akara,” I sling back since Akara is still speaking to my brother.

A rock lodges in my throat. I want to unburden Akara after the hole I sunk him in with the other leads, but I’m not in charge. I can’t help him anymore, and not being able to do anything of worth—that fucking suffocates. I swallow hard.

I try to remember this is routine. Before we even stepped through the doors, we were asked the same thing. Twice. It’s aggravating me since I’m not in a great fucking mood. Banks ignores her completely and orders a beer. Leaving me to handle this interaction, which usually I don’t mind. It’s how we operate. I lead. He follows.

I have to be vigilant. I can’t lose sight of what matters. Of who matters. Everyone in that townhouse.

Nothing grates on me like people trying to shove me out of the place where I grew up. This is my fucking home. I’m South Philly born and bred.

He leers over the bar. “Women around here aren’t good enough for you? You gotta go eat that expensive pus—” “You want your head inside your asshole, keep fucking talking,” I growl, blood coursing hot through my veins.

I rub my sore jaw that I’ve been clenching.

I hang onto a fact: I’d rather take a million strangers critiquing me than have Jane take the unwarranted, toxic rage they shoot. Even when she’s used to this shit.

Banks licks beer off his lips. “I’m supposed to go on this trip and help protect Maximoff, and you’re supposed to stay behind and protect Xander.” His lip rises. “Switch places with me.” I think I hear him wrong. I know my twin brother is like a strong wind. He can adapt to any fragged mission and fly through hellfire. But he can’t be suggesting that. “Say again?”

“It’s just one week, Thatcher.”

I lied to my superiors. I became romantically involved with a client. I chose Jane.

What Banks says, I feel, but if we’re caught deceiving two leads, I’d be putting my brother in a broiler, and he’s my responsibility.

“No, but I’m the boyfriend to your client.” I glare through sheets of rain. “And I’m allowed direct access to my girlfriend, so I’m telling you one last time. Move.” Tony lifts his chin like he thinks I’m bluffing. I touch my mic almost instantly, and I open my mouth to speak into comms—and just then, Tony finally sidesteps. Jane is all I care about, so I don’t even acknowledge him again as I grab the handle and open the door.

No, I’m an independent, self-sufficient woman, and I don’t need any man for affection and love and emotional support. I can still provide all of this to myself now that we’re together. Do not fall into his lap like a bird without wings, Jane. You’re born from lions.

How easy it can be—to be swallowed by all of what Thatcher offers me, and I claw for equal ground where I can engulf him just as fully.

I’m not supposed to cower or unravel this way. “I’m not unraveling,” I whisper to myself, but he surely hears. “Just talk to me, honey.” His deep voice practically cradles me and pushes me to a metaphorical stance.

“I was born right where you’re sitting,” I realize aloud, and my cheeks heat.

“Their daughter struggling to talk to the man who she…” Loves. I withhold the word, even though I’ve said it once before. My body floods with the sentiment that overwhelms my senses, that rips breath from lungs and pricks my eyes. Love is a violent emotion. Full of fortitude and might, and I’m going to be destroyed under ours, aren’t I?

He never pauses, so assured that I ease a little.

Usually I bask inside the intensity of his gaze, but in this moment, I can’t meet him head-on.

I want to tell him absolutely everything. I want inside his head, and I know he wants inside mine, but in the same breath, what I have to say will just stoke his anger and aggravation towards Tony.

I long for Thatcher in ways I’ve never longed for a man.

I can’t read his hard features. My pulse won’t slow, and I have to ask, “What are you thinking?” He looks me over. “You keep me on my toes.” He lets out a laugh. “And it’s driving me nuts, and it’s un-fucking-real how much I want you.” “You have me,” I remind him. Thatcher nods a short nod, and in a long beat, he looks deeper into me. “When I was your bodyguard and we were fucking, you’d let me help you no hesitation, and now that I’m your boyfriend, you’re frozen.” My eyes flit down. Thatcher shifts uneasily. “You’re confusing the hell out of me, and I want to walk with you through this, honey. But I don’t know where you’re going.” “I want you to hold me so badly,” I admit. I want you to swallow me whole. Fear pinpricks me, and I hate that I’m unwilling to drown in his comfort right now and yet I hate that I want to be completely and wholly consumed by him. “But I feel like I have to stand on my own first.” I cling onto my autonomy by my fingertips, and he’s there, reaching a hand out and asking me to grab hold, to pull me up. And I won’t let him. Not entirely.

If you’d rather not be touched, I’d rather not touch you, Jane.” I love him. It chokes me. It throttles me. I don’t want it but I want it, and that is my tragedy.

I breathe in. “What if I pull you at a million different speeds? What if I slow and speed and stop and speed and slow? Are you prepared to grow exhausted of me?” My eyes burn. Thatcher doesn’t recoil. “I’m prepared to be with you at every speed, and there’s no way you’ll exhaust me.” I arch my brows. “How can you be so sure?” He is all confidence and man. “Because I don’t tire that easily.”

Maybe there is good in sharing the bad with Thatcher. Nothing strengthens a bond like a common enemy, and we both dislike Tony very much.

Thatcher brushes a hand along his unshaven jaw and nods to me. “It’s okay.” “It’s not,” I wince. “I’m being unfair to you.” “Because you can’t get the words out? Welcome to the fucking club.” I want to smile, but everything I need to say weighs on me.

I scoot nearer, the air winding around us as I do, and he looks down at me and I look up at him. Our breath coming heavier. He holds out his hand, knowing why I moved. Gently, I take his palm in mine and inspect the healed wounds. Thatcher has been through grief and war. His hands have carried the body of his brother and my badly beaten cousin, and if he could, I’m sure he’d carry more.

The body wants what the body wants, and I suppose so does the soul. I’m just struggling with feeding the latter.

“He got us confused,” Thatcher clarifies. “Banks is the one who never goes to the cemetery.” I wonder why. If I could classify my relationship with Banks Moretti now, it’d be filed under new. Simply, he’s been more of a bodyguard to me and I’ve been more of a famous client to him. Whatever we know personally about each other has been what Thatcher has shared.

We’re impossibly close now, and I don’t move away anymore. I don’t freeze, and his large hand hovers next to my cheek. Sensitive places tingling, electricity sparking, and an ache pulses harder and begs for him to just pick me up and devour me whole. I whisper, “Thatcher.” His forehead nearly presses to mine. My eyes scald. “I can’t believe I’m going on a trip without you.” It’ll be strange. He was my bodyguard for almost a year. With me every day, and now… I drop my gaze. His hand encases my cheek. “Fuck it.” He’s a breath from my lips. “We’re switching places.” “What?” I shake my head, utterly confused. “Me and my brother. I’ll explain everything.”

Thatcher has taken the stool. And while I clutch a pint of beer, I sit across his lap, his strong arm around my waist—and I’ve been really, really taken with our seating arrangement. Especially the nearness of his chest, his body heat flushing me all over, and how my arm brushes against his abs.

I begin to smile, sensing their energy. “You’re both excited about this, aren’t you?” Thatcher enjoys his job, and it’s often a high-octane, high-risk one, and I suppose this will jolt them with more adrenaline. “To spend more time with you,” Thatcher says, looking down at me. “Hell yeah.” A smile explodes across my face, and I sip my beer, feeling like my thirteen-year-old easily smitten sister.

I take another sip of beer. Thatcher keeps a hand on my binder that I placed on the bar counter, as though someone might snatch it and leak Maximoff & Farrow’s wedding plans. It is a possibility, and I love how he ensures that all parts of my life are safe.

His palm slyly disappears under my robust, tulle skirt. The better to hide my boyfriend’s hand with. I smooth my lips together and try to subdue my shallow breathing. His warm hand tracks hot lines up my thigh. Thatcher kisses the nape of my neck before whispering, “Okay?” “Yes.” Oh my God, yes. If I blink three times, I feel like this raw, sexual, warrior of a man will disappear in a poof, and I’m wide-eyed and too eager. Banks… is staring right at me. He nearly laughs. Am I panting? Am I childishly head-over-heels? My face is on fire. “I like your brother,” I state outright. “Right on.” He smiles and swigs his beer.

I sweep Banks more curiously. Whereas Thatcher carries himself like a commander in a mythic warzone, Banks is a primed soldier who would fill every frame of a documentary. He’s background that can’t be unseen.

Banks nods. “My four,” he suddenly says to Thatcher. “I see them,” Thatcher replies, but he never shifts his gaze or hand off me. I just now notice a few men ogling me from afar. Not nicely either. I’d say snidely is more like it. I lean more of my weight against Thatcher. He pulls me closer to his chest, and I feel his heavy heartbeat that thumps in a calming rhythm.

They didn’t write “hypocrite” on his butt like I thought they would. Like Thatcher said they could. Instead, SFO decided on something that “better fit” Thatcher. And so they tattooed the word, Cinderella. The cursive lettering and placement is actually quite beautiful. When I first saw the tattoo in bed, I was overwhelmed. Thatcher has always been the one living the rags to riches story. He’s been the one with everything to lose.

Thatcher hones in on his brother. Banks stares directly back. Neither one blinking. Tension pulls uncomfortably, and I look between them, something unsaid gripping them and the air. “You want me to tell her?” Banks asks. I freeze. Thatcher is dead-set on Banks. “She already knows.” “Yeah? She knows that everyone in our family blames each other for his death, but no one thought to point a finger at him?” A chill slips down my spine, and I realize this is about their older brother. “Fuck him,” Banks says with bite. Thatcher’s nose flares. “Don’t.” “I love him, but Mary Mother of God, I hate him like a thousand pounds in his direction, and my dumb ass has to live with his death on my thigh.”

“It could be worse.” I offer my beer to Banks. He takes the glass, his brows knitting. “How?” “You could’ve tattooed it on your ass.” Thatcher laughs first, the sudden noise deep but light. Banks smiles into laughter too, and I brighten and realize how somewhere deep down, I knew Thatcher would find humor in this exchange. He’s become less of a mystery, and I’m so incredibly fond of the man next to me. Or rather…the man I’m sitting on. I blow out a breath, my heart beating wildly. He presses a kiss to the top of my head. I’m in love. Don’t be frightened, Jane. I’m trying.

Banks says, lips upturned. Happy that Thatcher is smarter, but Thatcher already shakes his head like his brother is brighter and better. Their pride in each other and for each other is as deep as the Bering Sea.

“That question was for me,” Banks says to him. “She already knows you have no piercings.” He scowls. “Statazitt’.” “You shut up,” Banks rebuts. I smile into another sip of beer, finding their relationship the sweetest as can be.

“It’s just you and me, old chap.” I smile more. “And my boyfriend, your fiancé, and my boyfriend’s brother.” My cheeks hurt at this declaration,

“I told him everything,” I whisper and breathe out a lighter breath. Maximoff smiles, able to see that I’m at a better place. “So Janie Dark Ages is diverted?” “Sufficiently.” “Forever.” “We can only hope.” I lean my hip into his side, and he wraps an arm around my waist. Our backs to the bar, we stare ahead.

My dad would not appreciate that mention of God. I don’t mind as much.