by Nora Ash
“Does it hurt a lot?”
“Not really. The hospital gave me excellent drugs.”
“Hmm,” he rumbled, his brows knitting into a frown as he looked down at me. “Don’t ever take a bullet for me again.”
“I wasn’t planning to,” I said. “But maybe don’t provoke any more crazy men with guns, either.”
Blaine made a noncommittal noise.
“So… what now?” I bit my lip as the bliss of being in his embrace slowly withdrew. As good as it had felt to kiss him, and as much as I wanted to just stay in his protective arms forever, reality began to seep through the cracks.
I was still pregnant with a baby who didn’t deserve to grow up in the brutal world I had.
He shrugged. “You tell me. You’re the one who ran away. What happens next really depends on whether or not you want to stay.”
I blinked. “You would let me go?”
“No.” Blaine’s lips flattened, but he kept his voice calm and business like. “I won’t force you to stay as my wife, but I can’t let you leave again. It wouldn’t be safe. Especially not… with the baby.” His eyes flickered to my stomach for the briefest moment, but I saw the yearning in them clear as day.
I swallowed the lump forming in my throat. “It’s not that easy, Blaine. I…”
“I love you,” he said softly.
“I love you too,” I whispered, sniffling. I was quickly losing the battle to the tears. “But I saw you hurt that man. I know you… I know you hurt people all the time. It’s what men like you do. And I can’t… I can’t put my baby through that. I can’t hurt it like you and I were hurt by growing up like this.”
Blaine reached out and wiped the tears from my cheeks with a thumb. His other hand curved around my belly. “It’s our baby, love. And I don’t want him to grow up like we did, either. I want him to grow up with love and safety. That man you saw me… saw me torture—he was scum. He’s kidnapped and brutally raped countless women. But more importantly, he had insider information about your family’s connection to the Belfast prostitution ring, and I needed him to tell me so I could nail your father for what he did to you as a kid. Make sure he never walked free again.
“I’m not sorry for what I did to that guy, and I’m not sorry for every sleazeball I’m going to hurt in the future to make sure you’re safe. But I will promise you this, Mira: if you stay with me, if you let me be the husband you deserve, I won’t hurt anyone who isn’t a threat to you or our family. And I will spend every moment of every day worshiping you. You are the only one who has ever made me feel whole—like there is more to me than what my father created with his violence and terror. You are the only one I could ever love. You, and our little one.
“Please, Mira. Please stay with me.”
I was crying in earnest now, and no matter how much Blaine stroked at my cheeks, the tears kept coming thick and fast. But despite my outright sobbing, the swell of emotions in my chest were for once strikingly clear.
I had a man who had gone against everything he’d been taught just to make sure I was safe, and who swore to do anything and everything to keep me that way.
A man, who loved me despite everything I’d put him through in my fear.
The only thing I felt as I raised up on my tiptoes and pressed a salty kiss to his lips was happiness so strong it nearly took my breath away.
“Yes,” I whispered against his lips. “I will stay with you. Forever and always.”
* * * *
Chapter 25
4 Months Later
Blaine
“Blaine!”
I smiled at the irritated voice calling from the nursery. The closer Mira got to her due date, the outright bitchier she was getting, but I didn’t mind all that much. Her pregnancy hormones were still ensuring multiple rounds of sex every day, so I took her equally frequent yelling in good spirit.
It was pretty hard to be too upset when you were working on a constant orgasm-high.
I stripped my T-shirt off and jogged up the stairs toward the nursery.
“You called, my beautiful love?” I said with a smirk as I stepped into the room we had both spent so much time picking out furniture and decor for these past few months. I had never been much of an interior designer, to put it mildly, but when it came to our baby’s room, I’d found myself having an opinion about cots and lambskin and those colorful things you hang over a baby’s crib that I had no idea what was called. I wanted this kid to know he was loved from the moment he opened his eyes.
In the center of the room, with her hands on her round hips, my balloon-shaped wife was standing with an irritated scowl on her face. “You painted it blue! After I specifically said we would go for something gender neutral.”
I shrugged and swaggered over to her to put my hands around her face so I could lift her chin and kiss her on the nose.
“Ugh, Blaine, stop that!” she hissed, swatting at my hands as I let them travel down to her full breasts. “They’re sore, and I’m mad at you!”
“You’re mad at me because I painted the room blue?” I asked innocently, without taking my hands off her tits. I knew how to navigate her pregnancy-swollen body without causing her any discomfort, and I also knew she’d be up for a quick fuck once she was done yelling at me.
“Yes! We don’t know the gender, and what if it’s a girl?”
“Then she’s getting a pretty, robin's egg blue room, Mrs. Shrink. Shouldn’t you be all about color-equality? Besides. I have a feeling it’s a boy.”
Mira’s cheeks flushed a pretty pink, and I hid my smirk against the top of her auburn hair. She didn’t particularly like it when I pointed out I had her beat, and I was looking forward to a quick romp before I had to get back to work.
“Yes, well… just because you keep calling the baby ‘he’ doesn’t mean it’s a boy.”
“Mmhm,” I agreed, letting my hands slide underneath her heavy breasts to gently lift them up the way she especially liked after they’d grown two cup sizes with the pregnancy. I loved to feel the weight of them in my hands. Everything about her had always been so lush and beautiful, but seeing her heavy with my child really revved my engine. The twins called me perverted, but I didn’t give a fuck. Nothing was sexier than the feel of my pregnant wife underneath and around me.
“I know what you’re doing,” she grumbled, but the way she tilted her head to give me better access to the sensitive spots on her neck told me she didn’t mind in the least.
“You are a smart bird,” I hummed into her ear before I obligingly dipped my lips to her throat.
“Jerk,” she growled angrily.
“Mmhm.” My cock was already hard in my jeans, and I regretted not getting out of them sooner. But when I reached down to undo the zipper, Mira jerked against me.
I looked up from her neck. “You okay, love?”
A pained spasm went across her face, and my heart dropped. Something was wrong.
“Love? Is it the baby?”
Mira breathed deeply a few times before she looked up at me. “Yeah. I think… I think it’s time, Blaine.”
“What do you mean, ‘time’?” I said, doing my best to fight back the rising panic in my gut. I’d left my phone downstairs, so I couldn’t call anyone for help. I could always run down the stairs and alert the guys out front, but then I’d have to leave her behind—
“The baby’s coming,” she interrupted me with an eye roll, seconds before I was about to lift her up and carry her down myself in a full sprint. “Stop panicking and go get my bag. It’s time to see if you’re right about it being a boy.”
I stared at her for a couple of seconds, my mind slowly shaking off the panic.
“It’s time?” I said.
Mira smiled, probably at my slow processing. “Yeah, it is. Are you ready?”
Was I ready?
Nine months ago, I would have said no—absolutely was I not ready to be a father, not now, not ever.
But then she had come into my life
. My wife. And I had finally learned what it meant to be truly happy.
Starting a family with her… No matter what happened going forward, with my father and our tense truce, with the business and with all the bad blood selling out the Clerys had brought down upon us, I knew it was all worth it. Because I had my own little family now, and no one was ever going to take it away from me.
Yes, I was ready.
* * * *
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Monster
Marcus
They call me crazy. Sociopath. A monster without a conscience.
I always thought they were right. I don’t back down from anything, and the only thing that can quell the rage in my gut is killing.
Then she walked into my life. The woman who seduced me to steal my Family’s secrets.
I should kill her, but when I look into her eyes, all the monster in me wants is to protect her.
Eve
It was supposed to be an easy job: Seduce a ruthlessly handsome man and steal his pen drive while he’s sleeping. Not the worst thing I’ve had to do to while working on the streets, by far.
I didn’t know he was the son of London’s most dangerous crime family—and I didn’t know that looking at the pictures on that goddamn pen drive would make the entire country’s underworld hunt for me.
He’s the only one powerful enough to protect me now, but I’m not sure if that’s what he’s got in mind. I’ve seen what he does to the people who cross him.
He’s a monster.
And now, his sights are set on me.
Out August 2016
Also by Nora Ash
Demon’s Mark
Amazon US| Amazon UK
Darkness
Amazon US | Amazon UK
