Vengeance Aside (Wanted Men 0.5)(48)



“Yes,” she rasped. “Yes, I give you my word.” She put her fingers between their mouths when he would have kissed her again. “But I’m not finished.” She was freaking out!

He hesitated, then shook his head as if to clear it. “Okay. I’m sorry.” He put her down as his energy buzzed through her body. “What else?”

“You can smile,” she said, wryly, when it looked like he was hurting himself to hide the fact that he wanted to.

He blinded her with the rays that shone through when the expression engulfed his face. He exuded a genuine happiness no one could have faked, and Dale responded to it, her mood automatically mimicking his by forcing her to return that beautiful smile.

“You’re lucky you’re adorable. Otherwise, I’d probably hate you,” she muttered with little heat.

“What else? Come on. Let’s get this done.”

“You’re a gloaty winner, you know.”

“Gloaty?”

“Yeah. I just made it up. Now shush. Let me get my grump back on so I can get through this.” She walked a few feet away, and when she returned, coming up behind him, she was ready. “You can’t kill anyone else because of me.”

“Non-negotiable. If anyone hurts you, they’re dead. Next.”

Miraculously, warm and fuzzies abounded, and she thanked him for that with a kiss she placed between his shoulder blades. Then she moved again because she’d go crazy if she didn’t. “I want whatever ceremony we’re going to have to be small, and I don’t want any announcement made in the papers or anywhere else you people blast your news.” For some reason, she was feeling greedy. She didn’t want her family to know about this. They’d moved on, after all, and now, so would she.

Lukas’s hand came up to grab her, but she snaked by it and walked away. When she reached the foot of the bed, she bent in half and hugged her calves. Her back had never been so fucking tight.

“Jesus Chriiist,” Lukas said roughly. “Are you trying to get me thinking of nothing but fucking you during such important negotiations?”

She released her legs and came up so she could laugh. “Would you shut up. I’m tense.”

“You’re flexible.”

She pointed at herself with her thumbs. “Yoga instructor.”

“A tense one. I can help with that.”

“You will. When I’m done.”

“When I’m done,” he corrected, “because you’re not the only one who has some points to make.”

“Oh? What are yours?”

“You stop working. Last night was your final shift at Scorch.”

She was about to laugh in his face until she remembered he’d said three or four kids—she wanted to bawl her fucking eyes out in gratitude. She’d be too busy to work. And not only that, with the line of work her—gulp—future husband was in, maybe being a bird on a wire wasn’t the smartest thing she could insist on.

“Okay. But can I work until I get pregnant?”

“No. You’ll be too busy trying to get pregnant to leave the house much less work while you’re gone.”

Her body readied to take him. Slow down, you horny thing. “I don’t want a nanny.”

“Done. We’re having an actual wedding. Who will you invite?”

A wedding. A fucking weeeddddiiing. “I don’t know. Farah?”

“She’ll be there with Samuel.”

“Okay. Then we save on invitations.”

“There won’t be time for invitations. You won’t ask your parents to come?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“Because.”

His mouth did that thing where it stretched into a thin line. It slowly relaxed as he made his way over, and he began circling her. “I want honesty from you at all times, Magdalena.”

“Okay.”

“How many lovers have you had aside from that boy whose headstone I’m still trying to get out of my mind?”

She tried to turn to gape at him, but he landed a gentle swat to her ass.

“Eyes forward,” he commanded. “I let you look, now you let me.”

She bit back a smile. Jerk.

“How many, Dale?”

He’d tricked her by demanding honesty before asking this question. “Are you sure you want to hear about exes?”

“How many?”

She had to force herself to focus because, where she’d kept her hands to herself, he wasn’t. A finger trailed across her hip. A knuckle down her spine. His palm swiped over her shoulder to move her hair aside. His entire hand rubbed over her midriff as he went by.

“Why do you want to know that?”

“Curiosity.”

“Just Liam.”

He stopped behind her right shoulder. “The boy you told me about…took your virginity? Less that four months ago?”

Every hair on her body stood on end as she nodded, and it was a while before the strands laid down again because her mobster went on a rant in Russian that had him prowling the room like a pissed animal. His hands fisted and opened repeatedly, and the tendons in his neck stood out with every curse he spat.

But when he came back to her, his tone changed. Went low and soft. “You have no idea the rage I feel knowing I lost that to him. By a few motherfucking months.” He growled under his breath as he grabbed her hips from behind and came down to sink his teeth into the muscle that joined her neck to her shoulder. Her knees nearly gave out.

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