Page 19 of Her BRATVA Protector
She shifts. A soft, sleepy sound at the back of her throat. Her juicy arse pushes back into me and my cock jumps against thecotton of my boxers and I have to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from groaning out loud.
Down, Maksimov. Have some fucking dignity.
I have none. The Mad Scot of Edinburgh, the man who put two of our enemies’ enforcers in a cooler last month with a wee note, has none. He is lying in a falling-down house in Halo City with a hard-on for a woman whose name he has known for sixteen hours, and he isgrinningabout it.
I open my eyes.
The room is grey-blue, dawn coming up slow behind the curtain. My shit is spread out on the nightstand. A wee altar to the day I had yesterday. On her side of the bed, the lamp is still on. She fell asleep with it on. I left it because I did not want her waking up in a dark room with a strange man.
She breathes against my forearm.
I bring my eyes to her face, slow, like I dinnae want to scare my heart. Her cheek on the pillow. Her mouth parted. There’s still a small crease between her brows that hasnae softened, even now, evenhere, and I want to put my mouth on it and kiss it away, but I won’t. Not yet. Let her have her rest. The lass has been sleeping with one eye open for fuck knows how long, and last night she finally went under in my arms and I am not the cunt who interrupts that.
So I lie still. Cock pulsing. Grin still on my face. Looking at her.
Mine.
The thought is so quiet and so settled it doesnae even feel like a thought. It feels like plain, simple truth. Fact.
Aye. Mine.
The crease between her brows softens a touch. Like she heard me think it.
I want to put a fucking baby in her.
The thought comes to me fully formed, and I let it sit. There is no part of my brain that argues with it. The Mad Scot is settled on the matter. He’d put one in her right now if she were awake and willing, and he is currently rearranging his entire life around the question of how soon he gets to begin.
Then a fucking cat walks in. Just like that. The bedroom door is shut. The cat does not give a fuck. It’s grey, with half an ear missing on its left side, scrawny in the way old rescue cats are, and it’s materialized at the foot of the bed like it fucking owns the place.
It looks at me. I look at it. It looks at Lisa. Then it looks at me again. Slow. Judging. With the look of a creature that has run this house since before I existed and is now considering whether to let me in.
“Aye,” I murmur, low and quiet. “I’m Adam.”
The cat blinks. Slow. Like a monarch acknowledging a peasant. Then it jumps on the bed, walks across the comforter and curls up against Lisa’s thigh,exactlywhere my hand wants to be.
Fucker’s faster than me.
Lisa doesnae stir.
I keep my eyes on the animal for a second. It returns my cautious look. Truce, apparently, is declared.
I peel myself out of bed, silently chuckling.
Slow. One vertebra at a time. My arm comes out from under her in stages. My hand slides off her belly an inch at a time. She sighs, rolls deeper into the pillow, and settles. The cat watches me like I am the worst thing it has ever seen. And I wink at it, grinning. I tuck the comforter up around Lisa’s shoulder.
I pull a pair of sweats from my duffel, cross to the door, and look back.
Lisa is in the centre of the bed, the cat curled where my hand was.
Christ Almighty. Look at the household I started.
I shake my head, grinning like a damn fool.
I close the door behind me quietly.
The kitchen, in daylight, is worse than I thought.
I knew last night that the house was a shitehole. I knew it from the porch. But the kitchen tells a different story than the foyer…the foyer’s just neglected, the kitchen isworked in. There’s a laptop on a table in the corner, next to it a notepad covered in tight, neat handwriting:Mrs.Reyes…Q3written across the top. Two mugs holding down paperwork. A pencil with the eraser chewed off.
