by Zoey Parker
His thoughts cast back to his unconventional childhood. It was like something out of a comic book super villain’s backstory: a shadowy organization that adopted orphans under false pretenses then trained them in a rat-infested facility that was made up of terrors. Kids died. Some were reborn as the kind of assassins who erased themselves from society and dealt with the darkest elements of society. Some just died. Bastille had been one of the best, better than Milo in a tight corner, though he’d lacked the kind of quiet and deadly calm that their teachers had complimented in Milo. They’d been friends for a while, competitive, comparing kill counts like they were a dwarf and an elf. And then they’d both gotten colder, and friendships had been different. Difficult. And then unnecessary.
Tess stirred on the bed, and despite his pointed reminders to his cock to behave itself, he stiffened noticeably. She stretched languidly, all soft curves and fluid motion as she propped her head up on her elbow. Her fingers went to her belly, tracing patterns there as she cast her gaze in his direction, as if they hadn’t fucked themselves exhausted just a few hours before.
“Hey, Daddy,” she said, her voice a throaty purr roughened by sleep. “You got out of—” Something crossed her face, a look of almost panic. Her hand flew to her mouth, and she swallowed hard once, then twice. And then all grace was gone as she scrambled out of bed, her hand cupped hard over her mouth. Naked, she rushed into the bathroom, slamming the door behind her with a kick of her foot. He heard the lid of the toilet slam up, and then the sound of retching into the toilet bowl. His lip curled; he hated vomit. He hated being sick, throwing up, the entire process. They hadn’t eaten anything out of the ordinary yesterday, and he hadn’t felt sick at all. If she had the flu or something, got him sick, he would be furious.
Chapter Ten
When the retching finally passed, Tess let her head rest on the cold porcelain of the tub and made sure the tears leaking down her face stayed silent. There was no question what was happening. She’d been hoping that she would somehow avoid this mess. She’d hardly had time to grab her pack of birth control pills when Milo rushed her out of Toro’s penthouse, and it definitely wasn’t like they’d been using condoms. When a trained killer tells you he’ll be using your body as payment for keeping you safe, telling him to wear a rubber wasn’t exactly a priority. At first, she’d thought he’d leave after a day or two, and she’d be fine. Then, she thought that the odds were for her and that her period would show up any day. And then it was two weeks late, maybe a little more, and now she was throwing up. There was only one reason for all of that.
She made her mouth form the words, but she couldn’t put any air behind them. Not when he could hear her.
Trained killers didn’t leave witnesses. Trained killers didn’t fucking leave pregnant women behind them to complain about the men who’d knocked them up. They didn’t leave anything behind, that was how they survived.
If she could get out of the hotel room, she could find someone to take care of this for her, but she didn’t know how to get out of the hotel room. He hadn’t left her alone and unchained for days, and she hadn’t complained about it. Bitching at this point was going to be obvious that something was up. He’d assume the worst – that was also how men like him survived – and then he’d kill her.
Tess did not want to die.
And, shockingly, when she thought of getting out of the room to take care of her growing problem, her arms curled protectively around her abdomen. She knew that whatever was in there was barely more than a clump of cells at this point, so it was weird to feel possessive of it. She’d been on the pill for years, and she’d held the hand of other dancers, before Toro, while they terminated pregnancies. It had never bothered her. She’d never imagined a baby bouncing on her knee or being sung to sleep in her arms. She was a stripper and a whore, and she’d never thought of being a mom. Sure, some of the girls she’d known in the life had left because they married some john and got knocked up. But she’d never once wanted that to be her.
Milo had been debating what to do with her for days. For Chrissakes, when she woke up, he’d be sitting at the table, his gun next to him, staring at her like he was deciding what to do with her. All he needed was one excuse.
She could tell him what was happening. She could lie and say she wanted an abortion – beg him to take her to a clinic. Then she could tell the staff that he was her boyfriend, and she wanted to keep the baby. They’d help her get away, she was sure of it. But then what would happen? What happened to a pregnant stripper with no one to watch out for her? Nothing good, that was what.
Another wave of sickness passed through her, and she was back over the bowl, holding back her hair and vomiting, tears streaming down her face at the force of it. Everything in her fought to escape all at the same time. Except the one thing she couldn’t afford to keep.
Chapter Eleven
Milo sat in the chair and listened to the girl get incredibly sick. There would be a round of vomit, a pause, and then another. He’d gotten past his own revulsion into a strange emotion that was unfamiliar to him. It took some attention to understand this tightness in his chest, this twisting in his guts. He was worried about her. He was worried that she was so sick. Not because he’d have to take her to a hospital and someone there would point a finger towards him as involved in various murders over the years. Not because she was a risk. Because she was a person, and she sounded terrible, and he… he liked her.
This was just as much of a goddamn problem as watching her sleep and thinking that she was pretty. He couldn’t do this. He couldn’t be this person. Not for himself, and certainly not for her.
But when he heard shaky footsteps on the tiles, heard the sink running, he got up and went to the door, knocking gently. For no reason, he assured himself. Certainly not because he wanted to be sure she was alright.
“Tess?”
It took her a long moment to answer, and he wasn’t completely sure his heart was beating in the space of her silence. When she did finally answer with a, “yes,” her voice was shaky.
He rattled the doorknob, but it was locked. He had a long moment of something not entirely unlike fear. His instinctive response was to slam his shoulder into the door; the cheap wood would give quickly, and he’d be in the bathroom and finding out exactly what was happening before he had time to get any more worried. He wasn’t wasting his time pretending he wasn’t worried. Whether he likes it or not, he cared what happened next. His mind was giving him all sorts of concerning images about what a desperate person could do in a bathroom if they felt they had nothing else to lose, and although he’d never once gotten the sense that Tess was the kind of girl who would take extreme actions, she was also one hell of an actress.
“Tess, honey?” He almost gagged on the word, but wasn’t that the kind of thing men said when they needed women to do something?
He heard her snort on the other side of the door, and the fear morphed into rage in his belly. He slammed his fist against the door once, hard enough to rattle it in the frame.
“Tess, goddamnit, open this door now. What the fuck are you doing in there?”
“Fuck off,” she said back, and the rage spiraled higher, but before it had a chance to coalesce into anything that was blotting out his vision, he heard the lock turning. She pulled the door open, and she had that same loose smile she always wore on her face. She’d worn that expression plenty of times in the last few weeks; when she was about to suck his cock, when he was balls deep in her cunt, when he was fucking her tits because she was too worn out everywhere else. He’d seen it with many different variations already, and he’d gotten a pretty good sense of which ones were totally fake, and which ones were more real.
The one she wore now wasn’t even a good copy of one of the fakes.
“Hey, Daddy,” she said, leaning all her weight into one hip.
That pose made him growl more often than not, but this time it was so exaggerated he held himself back. Of all the things he’d
seen Tess be, off-kilter wasn’t one of them. He’d surprised her in the bath, a total stranger, and fucked him without a word of warning, and he still hadn’t seen her calm falter. But now, she had clearly been scrubbing tears off her face. Her eyes were too bright and her pupils way too wide. If he’d had her here less time, he would have suspected she was on drugs. But there was no way she could be getting high here, and way too much time had passed for her to be detoxing now.
“Tess,” he said, and then surprised himself for the millionth time just today. “Come here.”
She went to slink into his arms, but instead of that, he took her hand, guiding her over to the bed. She sat down, clearly still trying to pose for him, her face a pretty mask of seduction. He reached over to the end of the bed and managed to hook his shirt off the end of the bed where he’d thrown it last night. He draped it around her shoulders and tried to keep his expression just as calm and cool as it could be.
He took a moment to organize his thoughts. It helped that, after a moment of hesitation, the poised little slut expression faded off her face, and she slipped her arms through the sleeves of the shirt, hugging it around herself.
“Look,” he said, finally. “I know I said that thing about earning your keep. But if you’re sick – I don’t want to get sick any more than you want to be sick. I have shit to do, and I can’t do it with my head over the can, you know?” He tried to laugh; she didn’t share the expression. “Is there something going on?” he asked, after a long and quiet moment.
Milo watched as Tess folded in on herself, her arms wrapping tight around her middle. “Something is,” she said. “I thought—Man, I feel like such a bitch, and I hate myself a little. The thing is… when you yanked me out of Toro’s place so fast, I didn’t have time to grab anything, you know? I was basically naked, no shoes, you had to go get me everything I’ve got, right? And I just… I didn’t think. And we haven’t… When we’ve fucked, you haven’t…”
He got it. He got it at that moment, and he had to put up a hand to stop her from talking so that he could take a moment to figure out what the fuck he was even thinking. Bile rose in his throat, and he swallowed hard against the growing knot in his stomach.
Two thoughts were present, crystal clear and full of sharp edges.
One: this girl was pregnant. Because of him.
Two: He was absolutely not a father. He would never be a father. He was a killer. A killer wasn’t a father.
He tried to think of something to say. Distantly, he was aware of Tess collapsing just a little bit more, of fresh streaks of tears rolling down her cheeks. He wanted that to stop like nothing he’d ever wanted before. His brain was locked up hard, though, and all the words were gone.
“I’ll get rid of it,” she said, and once the words started, they flowed out fast. “If you just take me to a clinic. I won’t fight, I won’t argue, I swear. I’ll do whatever you want. I just—Please don’t leave me here. Please. Toro took care of me for long enough that the other men – and women – in the city will treat me like poison, just in case he finds out and gets pissed that I’m on someone else’s arm. I’ll be a vulnerability to them. I won’t even be able to get a job dancing again. And that’s if anyone even wanted me, knocked up and stretch marked and my tits all—” She made a gesture at her chest, and suddenly, Milo wanted that. All of that. The idea of a beautiful woman swollen with his baby. He’d never thought of it before, not ever, and he’d never understood men who craved it, but suddenly, fucking her like this was the sexiest thing he’d ever considered. He’d claimed her in the most primal way, made her his, and that was a connection that…
He couldn’t have. He couldn’t have it. He was a goddamn killer, and why did he have to keep reminding himself of that? Why was he in this room, fucking this woman instead of doing the work he needed to do to track down Toro and sort out this goddamn mess, and thus keep his reputation and livelihood? Why was he having bullshit fantasies about being a man who could settle down with his pretty wife and raise a kid?
But that wasn’t the same as needing her to do what she was talking about. Not if she didn’t want to. If she weren’t up for this, he wouldn’t force her – that was a hundred thousand kinds of wrong – but if she wanted it…
“Slow down, Tess,” he said, and she looked up at him through a haze of tears. He slid just a little closer to her on the bed, reaching out to lightly touch the back of her hand with his fingers. One thing he’d always been good at was mimicry; it was how he got close to people when he had to do it, when the long-distance kill wasn’t an option. He could mimic a man who was good at being loving. Maybe he’d even figure out how to do it eventually. If he ever had the chance. If he ever got to retire from this life, this nightmare, this horror show that had seemed like such a good life until a month ago.
She turned her hand over and grabbed on to his fingers. He liked that. He liked that way more than he should have done. There was hope in her eyes, and it killed him to see.
He took another long, slow breath. “What do you want?”
She blinked at him like it was a question she’d never considered. “What?”
“Do you want to… terminate this? Or do you want to keep it?”
Her laugh was harsh and grating. “That’s rich, Milo. A pregnant whore. A dancer with a baby at home. Come on.” She shook her head. “However, if I had a kid, you can bet your ass its life would be better than mine.”
“What if you could give it that better life?”
She absolutely froze. “What are you saying, Milo?”
The problem was that he wasn’t sure at all.
Chapter Twelve
Tess stared at the man in front of her. He looked just as fucking confused by his words as she did.
“I just… I think before you make any decisions, you should know what you want the outcome to be, you know? If you’re saying you want to get rid of the pregnancy because you don’t want a kid, that’s fine. I will help you take care of that, I swear. But if you wanted the kid, and it’s just – all of this that’s making you say that you don’t… maybe we could work something out.”
Her heart went absolutely still. Something close to hope was stirring in her, and Tess had learned a long time ago that hope was something that existed just to make her crazy.
“Who do you think I am, Milo? I’m no more a parent than you are.” He flinched at that, but she didn’t stop. “I’m a sugar baby. I’m an ‘exotic dancer’. I’m a damn prostitute who has a higher profile than someone who walks the street. That’s all I am. Babies ruin your body and make you responsible, and it’s been shown to me over and over again that I am not capable of being responsible. Can you imagine me going to a PTA meeting? Fuck.”
But the thing was that even as she spat the words at him, she could imagine it. She could imagine the life where she wore leggings and a down vest or whatever the hell the suburban moms wore in real life instead of on TV. She could imagine getting her kid off the bus and meeting them with a cup of cocoa and having baked cookies in the kitchen of some nice little two-story three-bedroom house. Seeing them play in the yard. Maybe she could get a real job, do something that made her feel… different. She’d cultivated this life, and she was proud of how far she’d gotten. She loved sex, and she loved being wanted. But the idea of a kid… it should have made her feel tied down, and instead, it made her feel like maybe she could afford to dream.
Milo was quiet for several moments after her rage ran out. When she slowed down, her breathing no longer an angry rush but a dull roar, Milo reached out and touched her hand very, very gently.
“If that’s what you want,” he said quietly, “I will help you make that happen. We can set up an identity for you, get you out of the city, set you down somewhere real nice. I clean up better than I am right now, and I can look like a nice, respectable husband who travels a lot on business. We can have an ‘open marriage’ so that you’re even free to date whoever you want. I’m just…” He scrubbed his hands t
hrough his hair, and there was something in his eyes when he looked up. “I don’t know how exactly to phrase this, Tess. But maybe… maybe it’d be nice to have somewhere to come home to. Somewhere with someone who didn’t consider me a monster.”
And there it was. Two broken people talking about playing family. It was sick in a way, Tess thought, but at the same time, her broken heart wanted it. Sweater sets and pearls. She’d have to learn to bake brownies, but she could figure that out. There were cooking shows on every damn channel now.
“What if you get tired of it?” she asked, her voice quieter now, trying to hold back the feeling that was definitely hope, which was taking her over.
“Non-revocable trust,” he said, without a pause. “One set up for you, one for the kid. Plenty of money, enough to last the rest of your life. No jokes, no games. You could toss me out and refuse to see me ever again – if you wanted to. Everything in your name.” He sighed. “After the way I took you away from everything, chained you down here, I don’t have a right to you. Not really. But if you let me?” When he looked up at her after a long pause, his gaze was incredibly heated. “I’ll keep you. Chain you down with something better than shackles. Keep you where I put you and not let you go.”
