Brutal Vows (Queens & Monsters #4)(91)

I say tartly, “Or maybe none. I’m just winging it here. You put me on the spot.”

He rolls on top of me and grips my head in his hands. He kisses me. So wildly, it’s as if he wants to eat my soul right out of my body.

I try to push him off, but the man weighs a ton. And there’s that erection to contend with. The thing has a mind of its own, not to mention the appetite of a teenage athlete.

When he finally breaks the kiss, he’s breathing hard, his eyes are ablaze, and his expression can only be described as exultant. He looks as if he just returned from a trip to heaven where he took a personal meeting with God himself.

“You want my children.”

I cover my eyes with a hand.

He pulls it away and insists, “You want me to get you pregnant.”

I groan.

He laughs, and it sounds crazed. “That’s why you begged me to come inside you, baby. You want me to knock you up.”

“What I really want is to go back in time to before we had this stupid conversation.”

“Oh, no,” he says, still laughing. “That cat’s out of the bag, lass. You might not want to be my wife, but you want to grow my babies in your belly. Five of them.”

“I feel like this is a good time to remind you that I’m perfectly capable of murder.”

He kisses me again, then rolls onto his back, flings his arms out, and laughs at the ceiling. He laughs and laughs, shaking the bed, until I rise, pulling the fuzzy blanket around me.

With as much dignity as I can muster, I say, “I’ll be in the bathroom until room service arrives. Enjoy this moment, funny boy. Laugh it up. Because when you wake up in the morning, your lips will be sewn together.”

I slam the bathroom door to the sound of Quinn’s gloating laughter ringing in my ears.





35





Spider





By the time the food arrives, I’ve calmed down to the point where I feel as if I’ve only snorted half a key of coke, not the entire thing.

She wants to have my babies.

She can deny it all she wants. She can make up any kind of lie. But the expression of longing on her face when we started talking about it will be seared onto my memory forever.

I let the room service lad into the room and sign the bill. I tip him four hundred percent, because holy fucking baby Jesus on a buttery Ritz cracker, Reyna Caruso wants me to get her pregnant.

I’m light-headed. My heart is palpitating. I have to guzzle two entire glasses of water before my mouth starts to feel normal again.

When I knock on the bathroom door, Reyna opens it reluctantly.

“Are you done cackling in glee yet?”

“I’m done,” I say, grinning. “When do you want to start working on getting you knocked up? Because I was thinking right now would be bloody grand.”

A flush of color spreads over her cheeks. She mutters, “I regret every decision in my life that has led me to this moment.”

I grab her and plant a hearty kiss on her mouth. When I pull away, she sighs.

“Ugh. You’re going to be really unbearable now.”

I pick her up. She’s still wrapped in the blanket, and makes a comfy, fuzzy weight in my arms. Setting her carefully onto the edge of the bed, I roll the room service cart over to her and start removing lids from dishes.

“Okay. We’ve got steak. We’ve got chicken. We’ve got veggies.”

She says, “And we’ve got two hundred side dishes. What happened, were they having a sale?”

“I couldn’t decide what I wanted, so I got one of everything.”

“Of course you did. And stop smiling like that. You’re blinding me.”

“Don’t be so grumpy. It’s bad for the baby.”

She flops onto her back on the bed and hollers incoherently at the ceiling.

“So dramatic,” I tease, feeling like an overfilled helium balloon. “Oh—is it too soon to start picking out names? Because I’ve got a bunch of ideas.”

Closing her eyes, she mutters, “Where’s a good asteroid strike when you need one?”

I make my voice firm. “And I want you to eat a lot of this steak. You’ll need the iron. Developing fetuses have high iron requirements.”

“Quinn?”

“Aye, lass?”

“You’re insane.” When I grin at her evil glare, she adds, “Certifiably. There’s a padded cell somewhere out there with your name on the door.”

My grin grows wider. “Casa de Spider. Love it. Now sit up and let me feed you.”

“I’m not an invalid!”

“Be quiet, or I’ll put something else in your mouth to shut you up.”

If a man could be killed with a look, I’d be dead a thousand times over.

I can’t remember ever feeling this happy in my entire life.





36





Rey





We eat. And by that, I mean Quinn feeds me small portions of carefully cut-up food, making sure to include all the veggies he can coax into my mouth as he drones on and on about the nutritional needs of infants.

After supper and the first of what I fear will be many forthcoming lectures about eating for two, he takes us into the shower, washes us down with the enthusiasm of a Labrador on its first outing at the doggie park, then heads right back to bed with me in his arms.