Don't Take My Baby (Twisted Ghosts MC)

by Zoey Parker

  “The next time you speak,” he said, keeping his voice carefully level, “you had best answer my question. If anything comes out of your mouth other than an answer to my question, you’ll get five more just like that. Do you understand?”

  She opened her mouth to speak, thought better of it, and nodded.

  “Good. Now. Tell me how much of that conversation you understood.”

  There was something softer in her expression. God. She was good at the play, good at enjoying it. It’d been so long since he’d had someone at his fingertips who enjoyed this so much and he was not thinking about that. He needed to not think about that.

  “Not much. A few words here and there. It was hard to not pick up some from Toro, but I’m nothing like fluent.”

  “What words did you understand?”

  “Drugs. Money. Murder. You know, the usual.” She shifted, clearly weighing something in her mind. Another girl, he might have prompted her with another slap, but he suspected that Tess wasn’t the sort that would take kindly to that. She would want to earn her slaps by being a good girl, not get them because she was a naughty one. “I know you were talking to Silk Road.”

  That sentence jarred Milo out of the Dom mindset he was so easily slipping into, despite not having used that persona in years.

  “Say that again,” he snarled out. Part of him desperately hoped she’d said something else, anything else.

  “You were talking to Silk Road,” she said, softer this time. “I caught that much. Toro said the name often enough, usually paired with a string of swears. I know he thought of Silk Road as his main competition in the drug trade around here.” She was quiet for another minute, and he waited some more. He could be patient with her. She wanted to tell him everything; it was adorable and delicious all at once. “And I can put a few things together.”

  “Like what?”

  “You’re a hired gun. That’s obvious. Toro got away from you, and you were being yelled at by Silk Road. I think Silk Road hired you to take out Toro and is pissed that you haven’t done the job yet. And I think that was him on the phone, telling you to get it done.”

  She watched him cautiously, but he thought there was a little bit of pride in her eyes. How often had she been asked what she thought of a situation, and how long had she been dismissed as a bit of tits and ass to pass around the office with the added bonus that she didn’t bitch about taking it? How many tidbits of information had she stored inside that brain? How much could she be worth to Silk Road? Maybe, if he couldn’t catch up with Toro, he could trade her…

  No. No, he was a murderer and an assassin, but he didn’t treat women like bargaining chips. Well, except for when he did because it was the only way to get out of a room alive. He never did except for then. He managed not to laugh.

  Tess was watching him from her spot on the bed. She wasn’t cuffed anymore, but she was just as neatly pinned in place. He tried to keep his mental notice of her impassive, but there was something about the way she sat, about the way she kept her chin lifted just so, the way she kept her eyes just north of his, just barely avoiding his gaze. A different sort of man wouldn’t have noticed; he had trained himself to notice these little details.

  “If you want to leave, get out,” he said, surprising himself. “I won’t help you, but you can get out of here, you can go wherever you want. Away from here. You’ll want to get away from anywhere you think Toro might be, but that’s on you. And if you ever breathe so much as a word about my name, my face, anything, I will hunt you down, and I will make you wish that you were dead, and it won’t be sexy and fun. It will be brutal, and at the end of it, you will be maimed. Do you understand me?”

  “I can’t very well leave naked,” she said, but there was something in her eyes he didn’t entirely understand. Something less than interest and more than fear.

  He pointed at the closet. “There’s a spare pair of jeans and a T-shirt in there. They’ll be snug on you.” He let his eyes shift down to take in her heavy breasts again. “But you’ll be less naked.”

  “And what happens if I stay?”

  Something inside him that he’d thought was dead for years gave a little twitch. He choked it down and locked it away. For the millionth time today, he reminded himself that attachments weren’t something he could afford.

  “Turns out I have some pent-up aggression to churn out. I need to release some of it so that I can go out and get some research done and start figuring out where the hell your boyfriend went to ground. I’ll buy you some clothes that will actually fit while I’m out. You’ll stay here with me. This is the only chance you get to go, because after this, I have to go dark, and I can bring you with me into that, but I need to trust that you’ll do as I say. There are no second chances.”

  He saw her chew it over, which he respected. When someone was presented with that kind of choice, it was good that they thought it through, came up with the right choice, the decision that they could live with. Because that was the hell of it, from her perspective. There wasn’t a right answer. There was just the answer she could live with.

  “I’ll stay,” she said after a few heartbeats of internal contemplation. “If you want to keep me.”

  He managed to keep the snarl internal; at this moment, he wasn’t sure she would interpret it correctly.

  “You understand what you’re asking for? You’ve seen the edges of how I like to play. Your ‘no’ won’t matter. If you tell me to stop, I’ll take it under advisement. You will be mine to use in any way I want. That’s what you want?”

  This time, her answer came fast almost panting. “Yes.”

  He didn’t say another word. He’d been ready to thread his belt through its loops when she’d come out of the bathroom; now it lay in his hands. He folded it in half; the leather was stiffer than he’d have liked, but he’d been wearing the belt a while. It would do. It would do just fine. He snapped it once, twice, three times, watching the effect on her eyes and her breathing. She watched his hands and the leather with a hunger that he liked just fine.

  “I want you to cry for me,” he said as he raised the belt.

  She inhaled as it went up, and when it came down hard on her breasts, she let out a gush of air in a low, steady moan, her hips shifting under her.

  “Be still,” he snapped, and she went motionless, her eyes wide and focused on him. “Sit on your hands.” They went under her ass, palms down so she couldn’t sneak her fingers in to stroke her cunt. Someone had trained her well. It couldn’t have been Toro. That fucking limp-dicked clown couldn’t have gotten a girl to behave if he’d had chains in his hands.

  The belt came down again, and she stayed still this time, within reason. She hissed again, though, her gaze going soft as she slid farther down into the space where the lines between pleasure and pain blurred and lightened. He went again, feeling his cock stiffening now, and growing harder every time she cried out under the leather crack.

  It took a dozen strokes of the belt before tears were running down her cheeks. She still sat on her hands, although they were curled into fists now. Her breathing was ragged, and her eyes were unfocused. She was out of practice at taking this, he thought, but she wanted it, craved it. What a good girl. How long had she been without a master, without someone to properly train her?

  He bit back that thought as hard as he could. This was a game, a way to keep from losing his mind while he laid low and poked leads and didn’t do any of the things that helped him stay sane. This was not him keeping her. He couldn’t afford to keep her.

  No matter how good she tasted when he pushed her thighs apart and bit her sodden clit, making her gush on his face as she writhed through waves of pleasure that deepened farther and farther.

  No matter how good she felt when he slammed into her, so wet this time that there was almost no resistance, and she came around him again, crying out and clawing at his back as she screamed.

  When he dressed, afterward, ready to go out and start the work he neede
d to do, she grinned at him sleepily. “Not going to chain me up again?”

  He fought the smile that wanted to spread across his mouth. “Not unless you’re very, very good.”

  Chapter Nine

  Milo relaxed – as much as he ever relaxed – at the small round table that graced the corner of the hotel room. The thing wobbled, and the chair he sat in made his ass hurt after about fifteen minutes, but it was what he had. His weapon was laid out on the table, disassembled for cleaning. He hadn’t fired it since the day he’d gone after Toro and taken Tess as his own, which made it even more necessary to clean. A man’s weapon was what kept him alive; you took care of it, or you ended up dead. Hell, sometimes you took care of it, and you still ended up dead. No need to take extra chances.

  Tess was sleeping on the bed, her pretty face relaxed in sleep. She had a tendency to sprawl when she was alone in the queen-size bed, snoring softly. Last night, he’d told her to put on makeup, heavy eyeliner, and bright red lipstick, just so he could wreck it as he fucked her. She’d cleaned up a little before they fell asleep, but she still had faded makeup around her eyes, and a brightness to her lips that was more than just her natural beauty.

  And that little thought was exactly the problem that had kept him from sleeping last night, even though he’d fucked her so hard he’d thought he was going to be shooting nothing but sand by the end. She’d fallen asleep hard when he was finally done with her, after she’d come several times, clawing at his forearms and screaming into her pillow. And then, in her sleep, she’d turned towards him, curling up into a little ball that was tucked up against his chest. Before he’d thought about it, he’d pressed a light kiss against her hair, loving the soft, herbal scent that rose from her locks even though he hadn’t bothered buying anything more than the hotel shampoo.

  Then he’d recoiled up and out of bed. He’d watched her reach out for the source of heat – for him – and when her questing hands didn’t find it, she’d pulled his pillow in tight against her chest with a sleepy little grumble that reminded him of a kitten.

  He’d been fully aware of what was happening, and he’d forced himself to ignore it. When she called him ‘Daddy’, when she begged him to handcuff her to the bed again while they fucked, when she’d fallen so easily into the sort of 24/7 kinky play that made him groan and get hard, even now with his weapon in his hand, he’d told himself that it was all just a way to pass the time until he figured out the next move he was going to make. He’d told himself that all he had to do was figure out where Toro was, and then he’d leave her behind, moving on to the next job, and the one after that, and the one after that. This was his life, and even if it was chosen for him, that did not mean he could just walk away from it. He wouldn’t last a handful of days if he tried to step away from the life. And what would he do? Traveling the world as a top-tier assassin didn’t give a person much in the way of life skills.

  His life did not allow for a woman. For softness. For someone who curled up into him and then made sleepy, irritated sounds when he got out of bed. And even though Tess wasn’t a woman who was soft when anyone else could see, she was so very pretty.

  Part of him wondered if she might make his life easier. A pretty woman could get access to spaces that rugged men who struggled to hide the chill in their eyes could not. With her on his arm, accessing the places that many of his targets hovered would be easier. And if she wasn’t going to make his life easier, he needed to kill her and move on. Killing her sounded harsher, the longer he knew her, which was a perfect example of why spending time getting to know a target was an amateur move. Murderers in TV shows and movies might be able to slaughter someone without knowing anything about them, but that wasn’t how most people he’d known operated. They killed from a distance, content to let poison or a long-range bullet or anything else take the hit for them. They didn’t need that up close and personal moment of watching the light fade out of the target’s eyes. Bunch of romantic bullshit.

  He finished reassembling his weapon, checking the chamber and making sure it was unloaded, just like always. He set it down and went back to the woman asleep in his bed. What the hell was he going to do?

  Silk Road had called once a week since the first failed attempt on Toro’s life. The drug lord was getting more and more annoyed at the lack of results from Milo. It didn’t help that Milo hadn’t been able to produce even a general idea of where the target had gone. This was not a thing that happened to him – that Toro had gotten away the first time, and Milo couldn’t track him down now. If Milo’s masters in France had been aware of his poor performance, they would have slit his throat and left him to die alone. This was totally unacceptable.

  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.