Page 65 of Wicked Mafia Beast
She braces. I can see it in the way her shoulders draw up and her jaw tightens, her whole body tensing against my lap, preparing for my reaction. She's expecting panic. Anger. The cold calculation of a man treating an unplanned variable as a threat to be neutralized.
She's not expecting silence.
But that's what I give her, because the truth is, nothing about this confession alarms me. Not a single syllable. The only thing moving through my chest right now is a warmth so deep it borders on primal.
She tilts her head back to look up at me from my lap, her blue eyes searching my face, and the confusion written across her features when she finds no concern there is almost amusing. Her brow furrows, her lips part, and I watch her brain scrambling to reconcile my lack of reaction with the bombshell she just dropped.
"You don't seem worried about this." She says it slowly, her eyes narrowing, that sharp journalist gaze cataloging my lack of reaction the way she catalogs everything. Filing it. Flagging it. "At all."
"Nyet."
"Kon." She shifts in my lap, turning to face me more fully, disbelief written across every line of her face. "I just told you I've been having unprotected sex with you for over a week and your response is one syllable of Russian indifference?"
"It's not indifference." My thumb traces the shell of her ear, my voice dropping low, the accent thickening around every word because I'm done pretending this doesn't affect me. "It's the opposite of indifference."
I watch the implication settle with her. Her lips part. Her pupils dilate, the blue shrinking around expanding black. The pulse at the base of her throat kicks into a rhythm I can see from here, rapid and hard.
"You want to get me pregnant." Not a question. The journalist has connected the dots and she's staring at the picture they formwith an expression caught between terror and a heat she's trying very hard to hide.
"I want you." I hold her gaze, steady, unapologetic. "All of you. Every version of what that means."
"We've known each other for eight days."
"I knew after two."
"That's insane."
"Probably." My mouth curves, and I let her see the satisfaction I'm not bothering to hide. "And yet here you are. You are laying in my lap. In my home. Wearing my shirt." I splay my hand across her stomach, warm and heavy and deliberate, letting the gesture carry the weight of every unspoken intention. Her breath catches, a sharp intake she can't disguise. "If it happens, it happens. I won't pretend that displeases me."
She stares at me. Those blue eyes wide, her lips parted, her journalist brain running calculations that keep crashing against the raw, primal simplicity of what I just told her. This woman who negotiated a contract clause by clause with the precision of a trial lawyer cannot compute a man who wants to put a baby in her after eight days and feels no conflict about it.
"You need to get me my pills." Her voice comes out steady, but the tremor in her fingers where they rest against my chest betrays her. "Tomorrow. Because one of us needs to be rational about this."
"If that's what you want."
"It's what's responsible."
"Responsible." I repeat the word with the faintest edge of amusement, my hand still resting on her stomach, warm and claiming. "Da.I'll get your pills."
I'll buy them. I'll hand them to her. And I won't ask a single time if she's taking them. Because the choice has to be hers. Everything with this woman has to be her choice, or it means nothing.
But the way her fingers curl against my chest, gripping the fabric over my heart, the way her eyes dart to my hand still resting on her stomach and then away, tells me she's not as certain about those pills as she wants me to believe.
She settles back against my lap, her eyes already heavy, the confession spent. Within minutes her breathing deepens and her body goes slack against mine.
The signed contract sits on my desk. Her name in bold, black ink, a promise as binding as any vow spoken aloud.
I look down at her face, soft in sleep, the freckles scattered across her nose barely visible in the low light. The small scar on her left palm catches a sliver of warmth from the kitchen.
I would burn the world for you.
The thought rises unbidden, certain, absolute. Not a threat. A vow.
I've never thought that about anyone. Not once in forty-four years of violence and survival and the carefully maintained isolation that kept me alive.
My fingers gentle in her hair.
It should scare me. It doesn't.
