Page 23 of Rent a Mob Boss

“You’re sure?” I ask in a voice I barely recognize. It’s taking every ounce of my self-control not to impale her here and now.

She nods, arms winding around my neck. “I’m sure.”

But she tenses once I press my swollen head against her quivering hole. I stop. Completely. My forehead against hers, my arms shaking with the effort of holding still.

“Look at me,” I tell her. She opens her eyes—so wide, so trusting, so blue.

“Stay with me,” I urge.

She nods, and I move, and the sound she makes is not only pain, though it has to be in there. She’s indescribably tight, so tight it has to hurt even with the wetness dripping from her pussy. It’s the sound of something changing, a threshold being crossed, and I hold her through it, steady, as still as I can manage.

Then her body eases, and her grip on me shifts from holding on to pulling closer, and the permission in that shift undoes me.

After that, I stop being careful.

Not reckless. Not rough. But I stop holding back the thing that’s been building since the morning she walked into my house. Every morning, every stolen glance, every time she said Mr. Moretti, and I wanted to hear her say my name exactly the way she’s saying it now—all of it pours out of me, and she takes it, she meets it, and her body rises to mine like she was made to be here.

I have been powerful my whole life. I have controlled rooms, controlled men, controlled outcomes. Nothing has ever made me feel as powerful as this girl saying my name in the dark.

When she comes apart, I feel it everywhere—her whole body tightening around me, her nails in my back, the sound she makes pressed against my neck—and it pulls me after her, and I let it. For a few seconds there is nothing in the world except her and me, and the dark and the way we sound together.

Afterward, I don’t let go.

I pull her against my chest, and she fits there, the way I knew she would; her head under my chin, her hand flat over my heart, her breathing slowly evening out. The sheets are tangled. The moonlight has moved from the window to the floor, and the house is silent except for the two of us.

“Dorian,” she says softly, half-asleep.

“Mm.”

“That was…” I feel her smile against my skin. She doesn’t finish the sentence. She doesn’t have to.

Her breathing changes. Deepens. Slows. I feel the exact moment she falls asleep. The weight of her going heavy, her hand loosening against my chest. I lie there, holding her, staring at the ceiling.

There are guards on the perimeter. There’s a rival family that knows where I sleep. There’s a little girl down the hall who’s going to wake up in the morning and find Quinn in this house, and I will have to explain something I don’t yet have words for.

There are a hundred reasons this was a mistake.

I pull her closer anyway, and I close my eyes, and for the first time in years, I fall asleep holding someone, and the last thought I have before I go under is not about the life I’ve built to keep people out.

It’s about the way she said my name.

9

QUINN

We’re in the kitchen.

It’s Dorian’s kitchen. Or my kitchen. I mean, I think it’s Dorian’s? But it doesn’t look like the kitchen in Dorian’s house. It’s bigger, brighter. And instead of Ms. Beaumont doing the cooking, I’m the one standing at the stove. I’m wearing an apron over a turtleneck and jeans, and Lillie is doing homework at the marble-top island behind me, sitting on a stool. She asks questions about geography, and I can actually answer them because I always liked geography. Math was always a little tricky for me, but geography? Locations don’t change around. They pretty much stay in one place.

There’s coffee brewing, and I’m flipping pancakes, and Dorian walks in, asking Lillie if there was some reason she couldn’t get her homework done last night when she was supposed to. I give him a look over my shoulder—loving, but maybe a little disapproving. Sometimes he’s too hard on her, and we can clash about that, but it’s always with love at the forefront. Love for each other. Love for our girl.

“And how is my boy?” He comes up behind me, wraps his arms around my middle, and rests his hands on my belly. Now that he mentions it, it is kind of… swollen. Like I’m pregnant.

A baby. I’m going to have his baby. “Be careful with my little brother or sister,” Lillie warns from behind us.

This is my life. There’s sunlight everywhere, and Lillie starts singing softly; the pancakes are ready to be plated up, and I live in this life. I’m not a visitor. I’m not the nanny. There’s a great big diamond ring on my left hand, and I’m swollen with life inside me, and the man I love has his arms around me while he kisses the nape of my neck.

And then I smell something.