“Do it again, baby.”
“I’m a good boy,” he whispered. “The best boy.”
His cock was weeping against my stomach, swollen and red, but the fullness was what he chased, and once he’d gotten it, he was content.
For now.
“My little cock warmer,” I hummed.
Satisfaction was weaved throughout his smile, his eyes a little glassy. “I had to shoot him, Papa. You know that, right? You’re not mad?”
“No, baby, I’m not mad.”
My boy had spent his whole fucking life unprotected, living under the control of other men. It was a vulnerable place to be, and it wasn’t a surprise he had such a vicious reaction to the man who’d tried to rip everything out from under him.
“Is that what you need, baby? To feel like you have a little control?”
He nodded. “You’re putting together a whole task force to protect me, but the only thing I’m actually afraid of is losing you. The feeling is cavernous, and hollow, and I swear it’s going to swallow me. Teach me to shoot because on the off chance another rat crawls from the sewer and attacks my papa, I don’t want to fucking miss.”
I grinned.
Christ.
He was a goddamn dream… violent and possessive and a brand of needy I couldn’t get enough of.
“I’ll teach you to shoot, baby, but there’s going to be a lot of fucking rules, and if you break even one, we’re done. Iwill notfuck around with your safety. Understand?”
“Yes, Papa.”
He sucked in a breath, smiling wide, and I swore my Solnyshko had never looked brighter.
“You kept your promise,” he whispered, and it wasn’t until he laid across my chest, wrapping his arms around me, that I understood.
I held him… crumbling to pieces so he could remain as one.
ChapterTwenty-Two
Marcos
Ithink I was that boy… the one drowning and all he ever had to do to save himself was to just stand up.
I think my father was drowning too.
I think, maybe, he still is.
The tube down his throat pulled at the corners of his pale lips. Cords came off his body from all directions, hooked up to monitors I couldn’t understand. His hospital bed was on a slight incline, the gown he wore loose enough to expose a patch of his chest. There were tubes in that too, and thick strips of gauze that started at the base of his neck and ran down the length of his sternum.
Beneath it all was a heart… one that hadn’t stopped beating. Not once.
It was a miracle,they’d said, and I understood then that it wasn’t me who was supposed to save Manny.
It was him who’d saved us.
“Thank you.”
Epilogue
Marcos Cabrera-Koslov
