Page 11 of The Saint

It had to be.

There was no other explanation for the stars inked on my arm. For this lifelong dream coming true. For the calm that settled over me like I’d been tucked into bed and kissed goodnight.

A calm I hadn’t felt for far too long.

I didn’t know how I’d made it through dinner after my tattoo was finished. The pain was nothing. The endorphins pumping through my bloodstream had chipped away at the ache left behind by the needles shoved under my skin. The mixture of elation and the overwhelming sensation of being drowned by the figure just down the table from me left me feeling like my head was under water, my mind lost to some foreign land.

This little trip outside, it was freeing. Allowing me to step away from D’Angelo’s lieutenants and their families, my own family. To step away from the past that swallowed me up and held me close. Allowing me to come up for a much-needed breath.

Basking in the light of the moon.

“There she is.” The voice didn’t so much startle me as grate at my frayed nerves. Had they not been closed, I would have rolled my eyes. “I hear congrats are in order, Major.”

Major.

The term made me want to pound my fist through Lev’s face.

I never got further than the equivalent of a sergeant in the IDF, but my men, the men who’d helped me protect Queenie out in the middle of nowhere-Kansas for two years, got a kick out of calling me Major.

All because Queenie had once called me a major pain in her ass.

I’d only been doing what I’d been told to do: looking after Queenie and the youngest Silva girl, Tessa, who’d been kidnapped away from her tyrannical father in order to save her life. How could I look after them if they insisted on going shopping in a place where me and my men would stand out like a sore thumb, drawing attention to us, and worse, to them. I was only trying to protect them. If that made me a pain in her ass, so be it.

Trying to tame the aggression that rolled beneath my skin, I tightened my grip around my arms and allowed myself just a glare.

Lev raised his hands in front of him, a crooked smile on his face as he came to my side. He placed those hands on my biceps, squeezing lightly, making me squirm.

Shrugging him off, I rolled my shoulders back. “What do you want, Lev?”

“Came to see your stars.” He towered over me, his shoulders blocking out the light of the moon, casting me in darkness as his head was lit up from behind. “That is what’s under that bandage, right? You didn’t opt for a unicorn or a smiling piece of shit?”

My lips twitched, and when Lev saw it, his smile widened into a huge grin. My stomach churned, but there was no keeping my smile from following suit.

I held my arm out, showing him my bandage. “Can’t see it right now, but I swear, it’s three blue stars and not some flaming pile of shit.”

“You can take it off, you know,” he said, taking my arm. “It’s been long enough.” His fingers skirted the edge of the bandage. His big body leaned closer, and the familiar musk coming off his skin clogged my nose.

Back on the farm in Kansas, that smell had brought me some sense of comfort. But now, standing outside D’Angelo’s house, it was all I could do to not back away.

With a nod from me, Lev pulled the bandage off, being more slow and gentle than necessary. It wasn’t like I was fragile, and Lev had never treated me that way before. I yanked my arm from his grip and ripped the rest of the bandage away.

His hands returned as he chuckled, admiring the blue ink decorating my forearm. “Damn. Never seen one of these close up before.”

“A tattoo?”

Lev nudged me, dropping my arm and standing too close. “The stars, David. Who’d have thought our very own Major would be sporting something like this? This is big.”

I shrugged, my arm bumping into him. “It’s nothing,” I lied, but he called me out.

“Bullshit. This isn’t nothing and you know it.”

I did know it. Pulling my gaze away from his, I couldn’t keep the smile off my face.

“Congratulations,” he murmured beside me. Close. Closer than I wanted.

But this was Lev.

The only man I’d allowed…