Vice and Void (The Savage Wolves Brotherhood #1)

32. Chapter 32

Chapter 32

Dakota

The morning sun filtered through the gap in the curtains, bathing Dakota in warm light as she woke. She stretched her arms over her head, smiling at her sated and sore body. If she had told her younger self three years, five years, or eight years ago that she would be here…her younger self would have likely knocked some sense into her. But as she lay there, tangled in his bedsheets and surrounded by everything him, she couldn’t help but think something was missing from their story.

A muffled curse broke from the kitchen, drawing Dakota’s attention to Callum’s empty bedside. She threw off the sheets and grabbed the nearest article of clothing, tossing it over her head before padding from the bedroom.

Her heart soared when she spotted Callum in the kitchen, wearing nothing but an old pair of gray cotton sweatpants, the sides stained with green paint. He bent over the stove, and the reeking scent of burning food began filling the house.

Dakota grinned as she entered the kitchen, hopping onto the counter to let her legs dangle toward the linoleum floor. “You’re supposed to put oil in the pan first. You know, to keep it from sticking.” She glanced down at the burnt…whatever it was before looking up at him.

Callum huffed a laugh, switching off the burner and tossing the soiled pan toward the back of the stove with a clatter. “Thanks for the tip.” He reached to the other side of the counter, handing her a mug of fresh, steaming coffee. “How did you sleep? ”

“Better than I have in a long time.” Dakota took a small sip, struggling to swallow back the bitter liquid. “Wow, this coffee is…”

“Phenomenal? Expertly made?” Callum plucked the mug from her hand and took a gulp. “I stole a bag from the mechanic’s shop. It won’t be the best thing you’ve ever tasted.”

“It’ll do. It’s needed.” She took the coffee back, letting the warm mug rest against her thigh. “How did you sleep?”

Callum sighed, lifting his hand to scrape it through his tousled hair. “Turns out, princess, that fucking you all night is a requirement for a perfect night’s sleep.”

“Callum!”

“Yeah, just like that.” He grinned, leaning forward to press his lips to hers. “You got pretty good at saying my name last night.” He kissed her again, and she sighed as his hand rested where the hem of his shirt sat against her thigh. Her fingers trailed up his chiseled chest, scraping the stubble on his jaw. He deepened the kiss, and sudden need seeped into every cell of Dakota’s body.

She spread her legs wide in an invitation, letting him settle between them. Callum's hand drifted north, the fabric of his shirt bunching around her hip as a groan of satisfaction burst from him when he swiped his thumb up her center. “Sore, princess?”

“Only a little,” Dakota breathily answered, his thumb circling her clit with the lightest of touches.

“Enough for me to stop?” He grabbed the coffee mug from her hand to set it on the counter before wrapping his arm around her waist and tugging her to the edge. “You sure don’t feel like you want me to stop.”

Dakota tipped her head to rest against the cabinet door behind her. “Don’t stop.” She fucking loved it. His touch. That smirk. How she could see her name still tattooed on his hand as the muscles in his forearm rippled with every circle of his thumb.

“Nice and slow,” he said with an uneven grin that set her soul on fire. “I want to watch you this time. Even after all these fucking years, you’re still so responsive to me.”

She gasped as he increased the pressure, arching her back and reaching upward to wrap her hand around the first thing she could find—the knob to the kitchen cabinet. She felt his lustful gaze watching her, but she couldn’t take her eyes from where his hand had disappeared under the hem of his shirt.

But he pulled his hand away from her, and a mewl of disappointment crept up her throat. Her eyes tracked his hand to his mouth, where he sucked her arousal off his thumb. Her core clenched, her lips parting as he groaned like it was the best thing he had ever tasted.

Dakota leaped from the counter, accidentally knocking over the mug of coffee as she tackled him to the floor. His shirt was yanked over her head as she fumbled with the band of his sweatpants. It was hands and heat and desperation, and before Dakota knew it, Callum’s back was against the linoleum tiles, and she straddled his hips, sinking down onto his cock with a sound that she was sure she had never made before.

After Callum remembered to oil the pan, attempt at breakfast number two was off to a better start. Dakota resumed her position on the counter, a new coffee in her hand as she watched him scramble the eggs with a spatula. She took a sip from the mug. The bitter liquid still tasted like shit, but she cared less this time.

“I never thought I would get to experience this.”

Dakota lifted her gaze away from the mug’s chipped rim. “Experience what?”

His stare brought something to life inside of her. He leaned over to gently press his lips to hers as though he couldn’t help himself. “You. In my shirt. Cooking you breakfast in my house.”

She smiled against his lips before pulling away to stare dramatically down at the stove. “You were a terrible cook then, and you’re a terrible cook now.”

“I can teach you how to make alcohol in a bag that you hide in the back of your toilet if that’s what you’d prefer.” He sent her a smirk that she returned with a playful glare hidden behind a sip of coffee.

“Eggs will be just fine.”

Callum chuckled as he spooned half of the pan onto one plate he handed her and half onto another he kept for himself. With the edges burned and dried, the eggs were a bad attempt at anything remotely called breakfast. But she didn't realize how much the gesture meant to her, and she ate a polite amount before setting her plate on the counter next to her hip.

“We have to talk about it.”

Dakota looked at Callum, who reached for her plate and scraped the remaining food into the garbage bin. “What? How bad those eggs were?”

He threw back his head and laughed but quickly sobered as he put the plates into the sink, wrapping his hands around the edges of the metal to lean into his palms. “About the letters.” Dakota began to hop down from the counter. Callum was faster. He nudged his way between her thighs, bracketing her hips with his hands to anchor her into place. Face-to-face. Exactly where she wanted to be in any situation that wasn’t this one. “We have to talk about the letters.”

“I—I can’t talk about the letters,” Dakota said. She hated that she could already feel that lump in her throat, that the mere mention of the memory sent her spiraling. She took a deep breath, willing the burning behind her eyes to cease.

Callum watched her, his brows notched together, but he didn’t move from where he had pinned her. “We have to talk about it. If only for that visceral fucking reaction you just had.” When she continued to say nothing, he sighed. “Dakota. Despite what everyone fucking told me, I went through the entirety of my sentence confident that you would be waiting for me on the other side. I didn’t believe a fucking word when the Brotherhood told me that you skipped town. Please.”

Dakota lifted her gaze to the kitchen lights, willing them to catch fire and burn her alive. It was a battled effort not to look at him. She wasn’t getting out of this. He wasn’t going to let her out of this. And though she now knew he had nothing to do with those letters, the thought of admitting what was in them dug a shameful pit in her gut that she was having difficulty climbing out of.

His fingers gripped her chin, dragging her gaze back down to meet his. Storm gray met forest green.

“I was pregnant.” The words were out before she realized she had spoken them, words she hadn’t spoken out loud in nearly twelve long years. “That’s what was in the letter. It was to tell you that I was pregnant and keeping it. And that we would be waiting for you when you got out.”

Callum went so still that Dakota could have sworn he turned to stone. Anger and outright fury were expected. Instead, he fastened her with a stare filled with unimaginable grief. “How far along?”

“Three months.” She paused to laugh, one that was sardonic rather than amused. “Probably in the days right before your arrest. We were…active. And not particularly careful.” She trailed off, dropping her gaze to where her fingers played with the hem of his shirt .

“What happened?”

She couldn’t read him—couldn’t tell if the monotony to his voice was out of pure sorrow he was struggling to contain or if he was rifling through every excuse to figure out how to get her out of his house.

“I lost it,” she whispered. She couldn’t hold back the burning in her eyes any longer, and the tears dripped down her cheeks. “I called Lyra. She busted ass to get to Blackdon, but it was too late. She brought me to the Guildhall where I—where I finished delivering it.”

The memory of waking up in a pool of her own blood, of the cramping, of the screaming, of Lyra sinking onto the bathroom floor next to her, not caring that she was kneeling in her best friend’s fluids. Of thinking that was the only thing she had left of Callum and the guilt that she had gotten so depressed that she had potentially caused it. She knew now, of course, that wasn’t the case. But the shame remained.

A shaky breath passed through her lips. "The letter I got from you said you knew about the pregnancy. That you had no interest in being a father. That what we had was fun for the time, but it was over. I didn't believe it at first, but after three months of being told you didn't want to see me—"

Callum lifted a hand to run through his hair. “Fuck. Dakota, I—“ He paused to take a shaky breath. “You have to believe me. I had no fucking idea. I would never—I didn’t—“ He let his head fall against her shoulder, his hands fisting into the bunched-up shirt at her hips. Her eyes burned at the sound of his breathing, brittle at best and filled with an insecurity she wasn’t accustomed to hearing from him. He finally lifted his head. “I would have wanted nothing more than to take that journey with you.”

The lump in her throat grew astronomically as she struggled to control the tears.

“I should have been there with you,” he went on her in silence. His hands lifted to rest in the crooks of her shoulders, his thumbs dragging across her cheeks. “It should have been me holding you while you went through that, not Lyra. And I’m sorry, Dakota. I’m so fucking sorry.”

Dakota sniffled, attempting to pull away from Callum, but he held her in place.

“No, I gotta fucking say this to you because I can see it in your eyes,” Callum said, tightening his hold on her. “None of this was your fault. Not my arrest, not losing the baby, none of it.”

Dakota tried to stifle her sob, but Callum just pressed his forehead to hers. “I just,” she started, shaking her head between his hands. “If I wasn’t so stressed. If I hadn’t tried to take on the world. If I—“

“None of it was your fucking fault,” he repeated with a crackle to his voice that wasn’t there before. It only made her tears come faster. “None of it. What I put you through. What whoever wrote those letters put you through…you were nothing but my fucking foundation when the world came down around me.” He brushed the tears from her cheeks again, leaning back to search her red-rimmed eyes. “We both know I’m the fuck-up here, Dakota. I barely graduated school without you. But you…I don’t know what I did in a past life to deserve you. And that baby? That baby would have been so fucking lucky to have you as a mom.”

Dakota’s arms wound around Callum’s neck, pulling him in tight as she let twelve years’ worth of tears fall. For them. For Lyra. For that baby she loved so fucking much it hurt even all those years later. His arms banded around her in a grip that pinned her chest to his, a hug that was a decade overdue and filled with everything that had been unsaid between them.

She didn’t know how long they stayed like that, just embracing one another. Grief for the years lost. Sorrow for the time gone. Devastation at where they had ended up. Vulnerability for sharing things she swore she would never think about again. When she finally pulled away, the tears had long dried, and the sun tracked into the early afternoon. Callum lightly kissed her.

“Let me show you something.”

Dakota’s brows knitted together as he turned away, showcasing the field of ink spread across his muscular back. He reached toward a corner drawer, tugging it open quickly before rifling through the contents. He faced her again, a journal held in his hand.

“My dad left this for Kane and me.” Dakota could sense his hesitation as he extended it to her. “He didn’t want to deal in distills. Hunter—the guy with the kids you’re helping? They all wanted to move the Brotherhood toward its original purpose.”

Dakota set the journal on her lap and opened it, scanning page after page of Tex Reynolds's dreams and aspirations for the club. Dreams and aspirations she wondered if the Brotherhood could even come back to.

“I always loved your dad,” she said, noting his scheduled plan in the back of the journal for letting go of the blood collection and shifting focus toward protection instead. “He was such a kind man. I can see him writing this.” She closed the journal, letting her hand rest on the smooth leather. “I remember one day I was waiting for you after school at the shop. He pulled me into the back office to make sure my plans for being a mender were my own. Paving my own path is what he kept saying.” She shook her head and chuckled. “Did they ever find out who killed him?”

“Not officially.” Callum sent her a dark look. “But I have an idea now.”

“Oh no.”

He nodded, taking the journal from her hands and placing it back in the drawer. He leaned against the counter across from her, crossing his arms over his chest. “I overheard a few things I shouldn’t have. Got some confirmation on it, too.”

Dakota blew out a breath. “What are you going to do?”

Callum shook his head. “I don’t know. I can’t let Duke stay alive if he killed my father. And I can’t fix the Brotherhood from prison.” A faraway shadow dulled his eyes. Lost in a memory. “And I’m not going back to fucking prison.”

Dakota hopped from the counter, taking his hand to lace their fingers together. “We'll figure this out. Together. Without you going back to prison.” Her heart pattered as he leaned forward to press his lips against her forehead, but her mind was already a scattershot of thoughts. “While we’re on the subject of secrets…”

Callum glanced down at her, his eyes narrowed in suspicion. “What?”

She tightened her grip on his hand, feeling her palm slickening with every passing second. “Do you remember seeing my journal?”

“The one with the formula you had no interest in talking about?”

“Yeah, that one.” Her stomach clenched as she broke her stare away from him, looking beyond his elbow toward the front bay window, where the sun was cutting a path across the living room floor. “Do you want to know what the distill is for?”

“Do you want to tell me?”

“Kind of.”

“Is it going to piss me off?” Dakota bit her lip and nodded. Above her, Callum’s sharp sigh was a phantom kiss across her cheeks and the bridge of her nose. “Alright, princess. Out with it.”

“You have to promise not to say anything.”

“I gathered that much. Quit stalling.”

Dakota almost smiled. “Well…I’m extremely close to finding a long-term solution to a healing distill that can be ingested.”

“A long-term solution to—“ Callum trailed off, his shoulders stiffening. At that point, she knew he had figured out what she was trying to say. He reeled back, unspooling their hands to grab her chin and force her to stare back at him. “Are you creating what I think you’re creating?”

“If you think I’m creating a distill that can heal at a cellular level…”

“Immortality? Are you creating a distill for immortality?”

Dakota swallowed. “I wouldn’t say that exactly…”

“What would you call it then?”

“Age prevention and lifespan longevity?” Dakota tipped her chin to look up at him. Callum’s narrowed eyes were still pinned on her. “It could change the world.”

Callum scraped a hand down his face, curling it around to rest on the back of his neck. “You’re so fucking smart, Dakota. Too fucking smart. But this is a bad idea.”

Whatever hint of a smile she had on her face slid off. “Why? It could cure cancer. Decrease the necessity for surgery after injuries. Mortality would—“

“You just saw what distillation experiments do when put in the hands of Vanguard. Can you imagine what would happen if he got ahold of yours?”

Dakota looked away, shaking her head. “Does that mean everyone should suffer because of how some might use it?”

Callum reached forward to thread his fingers through her hair before bracing the back of her head. “It isn’t how they might use it. It’s how they would be willing to kill for it. Vanguard. The governors. The prison. Any of them would slit your throat in your sleep to get ahold of that. All I’m saying is that you need to be really fucking careful going forward.”

Dakota nodded. “I’ve been careful.”

“No. Whatever level of careful you think you’ve been, fucking triple it.”