Page 88 of Pregnant By A Rich Demon 4

“And five,” Truth added, her voice dropping into that quiet, unbreakable tone she used when she was laying down a law. “He does not use that visit to talk about us. He does not bring up the past, he does not bring up the clinic, and he does not try to play on my sympathy. He comes in as an uncle, he pays his respects, and he leaves. The first hint of manipulation, and I’m the one who tells him to get the fuck out.”

I looked at her, feeling a grim, quiet satisfaction settle in me. “Deal.”

Truth let out a long breath, leaning her head against my shoulder. I wrapped my arm around her, pulling her close against my side, and let my eyes drift back to the bassinet.

I’d spent my whole life believing that protection was just about having the bigger gun, the faster trigger, and the willingness to burn down whatever was standing in front of me. That was how I’d handled Victor. That was how I’d handled Rahsaan.

But looking at my daughter sleeping in that bassinet, with Truth’s weight leaning heavy against my shoulder, I understood something new. Protection wasn’t just violence. Sometimes, protection was having the discipline to hold your fire, set the boundaries in steel, and let a threat walk into your house under your terms just so you could control exactly where the line was drawn.

Kaisen was coming. I knew it in my gut, the same way I knew the sun was gonna rise over the river in a few hours. He was building something in the dark, dressing his obsession up as grief.

But when he stepped through my front door, he was gonna find out real quick that fatherhood hadn’t made me soft.

It had just given me something I was willing to obliterate the entire world to protect.

Chapter 14

TRUTH

Six weeks postpartum will humble you in ways a medical textbook never warned you about.

I stood in front of the full-length mirror in our bedroom wearing a black lace nursing bra and a pair of seamless panties, turning sideways to look at my profile. My stomach wasn’t flat anymore. It was soft, with a faint brown linea nigra still running straight down the middle and a few silver stretch marks on my hips that looked like lightning strikes across dark brown skin. My breasts were two cup sizes larger, heavy with milk, and my ass had widened out enough that half my pre-pregnancy jeans wouldn’t make it past my mid-thighs.

I let out a heavy sigh and pulled at the skin on my belly.

“Stop doing that,” Amai’s voice rumbled from behind me.

I looked up in the mirror. He was leaning against the master bathroom doorframe, freshly showered with a white towel slung around his neck, wearing a pair of heather gray sweatpants that hung low on his hips. His hair was wet, his beard lined up clean, and his chest still showed the faint outline of the scar from the warehouse.

“I don’t look like myself,” I muttered, turning back around to face the dresser. “Everything is softer. Nothing sits where it used to sit.”

Amai didn’t say a word. He walked across the hardwood floor, slow and deliberate, until his chest was pressed against my back. Before I could move, his big, calloused hands reached around and grabbed two handfuls of my ass, hoisting me up slightly so my hips settled hard against the front of his sweatpants.

“Amai,” I gasped, my hands flying up to his forearms.

“Look in that mirror,” he ordered, his voice low and raspy against the side of my neck. He gave my ass a firm, possessive squeeze that made my toes curl. “Ain’t a damn thing wrong with how you sit. You got more ass than you did six months ago, your hips wider, and every single inch of this shit belongs to me.”

“I’m serious,” I said, trying to sound annoyed even as a shiver ran down my spine. “I feel like a whole different person.”

“You are a whole different person,” he said, burying his face in the crook of my shoulder and inhaling deeply. “You a mama now. You built my daughter inside this body. I was obsessed with you before, I was obsessed with you when you were pregnant as hell, and I’m damn sure obsessed with you right now.”

He slid his right hand around to my stomach, his palm warm and heavy over the softness, fingers spreading wide before moving down between my thighs over the thin cotton of my panties. He rubbed slow circles right over my clit, making me let out a shaky breath.

“Amai, stop.” I laughed, pushing his shoulder with my elbow as I wriggled out of his grip. “I have clinicals at eight o’clock. I cannot walk into University Medical Center smelling like sex.”

“You got cleared at Dr. Broussard’s on Tuesday,” he said, leaning back against the dresser with a greedy smirk, crossing his arms over his chest. “Doctor said everything healed up clean. It’s been six weeks, Truth. Six weeks of me sleeping next to you, smelling cocoa butter and lavender while I damn near got carpel tunnel in the shower every other night.”

“And you survived.” I smiled, stepping into my navy blue scrub pants and pulling the drawstring tight. “Besides, I’m not giving you a ten-minute quickie before I have to go pass meds on a med-surg floor. When I give it to you, I want you full throttle. No rush, no interruptions.”

Amai’s eyes darkened, his pupils dilating until the brown was almost black. A slow, dangerous grin spread across his mouth. “Fuckin’ right. Tonight, then.”

“Tonight,” I promised, pulling my scrub top over my head and securing my hair back into a sleek, high ponytail.

I checked my watch. 6:45 a.m.

Adjusting to life with Trumai had been the most exhausting, terrifying, beautiful thing I’d ever experienced. Every morning felt like a brand new discovery. Just yesterday, she’d learned how to track my voice across the nursery, turning her little head until her big, dark eyes locked right onto mine, blowing wet milk bubbles and letting out that tiny, high-pitched coo that melted every worry I had in the world. She had Amai’s long eyelashes and my smile, and whenever she fell asleep on my chest, her tiny fists gripping my shirt, I understood why women fought wars for their babies.

“We need to talk about that nanny again,” Amai said, picking up his watch from the nightstand and strapping it to his wrist. “You starting clinicals three days a week, plus your coursework. I had Priest pull background files on three certified infant nurses from an agency in Metairie.”