Brutal Vows (Queens & Monsters #4)(90)

I lie there, my mind blank. “I’ve never had anyone ask me what I want before.”

“I’m asking.”

“I wouldn’t know where to start.”

“Start with what a good day would look like. Your perfect day. Picture it.”

“Then what?”

“Then I’ll make it happen.”

I squeeze my eyes shut, take a deep breath, and try to talk around the frog in my throat. “Quinn, you don’t have to take care of me.”

“Someone has to do it. Might as well be your fake husband.”

I wrap my fingers around his hard biceps and shiver in delight. He makes me feel as if a red carpet has been unrolled under my feet, stretching out in front of me as far as I can see. And when I walk down it, I’ll be showered in rose petals from the choir of singing angels floating overhead.

“Okay…my perfect day.” I think for a while, trying on different scenarios. “It would start with breakfast in bed. That someone else made for me.”

Quinn makes a soft noise of encouragement.

“Then I’d get a massage. At home. From a very good-looking young man who was getting paid an enormous sum of money to pamper me.”

“You wouldn’t have to pay him anything. Men would line up in the street for a chance to get their hands on your naked body.”

“Shut up, please. This is my fantasy.”

“Right. Sorry.”

“Where was I?”

“Naked on a massage bed with a handsome young man.”

“I can tell by your tone that idea doesn’t please you.”

“It doesn’t. He’d leave the house with an imprint of my fist on his face.”

I sigh. “Anyway. After the massage, I’d have a lovely long hot shower.”

“Alone?”

“Will you shut up?”

A grumble of displeasure is my answer.

“Then I’d get dressed in something that made me look ten pounds thinner.”

“You think you’re overweight? That’s daft!”

“For fuck’s sake. This is going to take forever.”

“Sorry. Go ahead. My lips are sealed.”

“Ha! As if that would ever happen.”

Stifling laughter, he squeezes me and nuzzles my neck.

“As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted, I’d get dressed. Then I’d…”

I have to stop. The image that presented itself to me is so unexpected, it’s shocking.

Inconveniently being a man with finely tuned antennae, Quinn senses the change in me. He lifts his head and stares at my profile.

“Then you’d what?”

My heart pounds. It’s hard to catch my breath. Staring up at the ceiling, I say in disbelief, “Then I’d wake up the kids and get them ready for school.”

Every ounce of relaxation flees from his body so fast, it’s as if he’s been replaced by a robot.

A scorching hot sex robot with burning eyes and a dick of steel.

“Don’t say anything, Quinn. Please. I don’t think I can handle whatever’s about to come out of your mouth.”

He stares at my profile with the heated intensity of a thousand suns.

Suns that are melting my ovaries to the consistency of warmed butter.

I close my eyes to try to hide from him.

He demands, “You want children?”

Oh fuck. Here we go. Why didn’t I just keep my damn mouth shut?

“I never really thought about it.”

“Until now,” he says instantly, his body as taut as a live wire beside mine.

“Not exactly. Not before—”

He barks, “What?”

I open my eyes and glare at him. “Dial it down! This isn’t an interrogation!”

He lowers his head until our noses are touching and I’m trying not to go cross-eyed because he’s so close. His voice deadly soft and his body vibrating tension, he commands, “Finish. That. Sentence.”

I swallow and moisten my lips, wondering if this is what a mouse feels like when it spots the hungry cat about to pounce on it. Very softly, I admit, “Not before I met you.”

Pressed against my hip, his erection throbs.

Seriously, the man takes too many vitamins.

He grips my jaw in his big hand. He slides a heavy leg over both of mine. Holding me in his searing gaze, he says, “So what I’m hearing you say, Reyna Caruso, is that you want to have children…with me.”

I snap, “Not if they’re going to have your scary intensity gene. They’ll terrorize all the other kids at school.”

“Say it. You want to have my children.”

“Quinn—”

“How many? Tell me.”

“Can we please—”

“If you think I’m letting you out of this room before we finish this conversation, you’re bloody mad.”

I say through gritted teeth, “Fine. If you must know how many fantasy offspring I’d like, the answer is five.”

His blazing eyes flare wide. In an elated, astonished whisper, he says, “Five.”

My God. I’ve created a monster. If I thought his ego was big before, now there will be no containing it. We’ll have to move out to the country on a hundred-acre farm to give it enough space.