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“Is Alice still determined to hate you?”
Kane snorts and kisses my pulse. “Yes, but I expect that’s just something I’ll have to learn to live with.” He pulls back, and then his finger touches my chin, urging my lips to meet his in a soft, tender kiss. It’s unlike him, and I’m wondering if maybe this whole wedding and baby thing is making him sentimental.
It reminds me of the boy he was—the boy I first loved. The wild-eyed demon full of hope that one day he’d live in a world that wasn’t covered in blood. And I was right there with him.
What fools we were.
“Maybe give her more credit than that,” I tell him. She’s a clever, clever woman, after all, and she’ll see the same thing in him that I do. She just has to understand him a bit better first. I drag my hands up his back, carding them into his hair, feeling the way so much of it is now coarse with age.
I’m certain he looks gorgeous. His entire family ages well, and I know he wears it like a fucking king. I move my hand to cup his face, my thumb tracing the wrinkles near his eye, and he huffs quietly.
“Old man now, eh?”
“Not quite,” I tell him, then kiss him because it’s a little bit of a lie. The truth is, we both are. “You’re still limber.”
He laughs, sounding lighter than he has in weeks—hell, months. He grips me by the hips and walks me further into the room. The door slams somewhere behind me, and I allow him to propel me to the void until I hit the bed. He doesn’t let me fallover. Instead, he twists us around and then immediately goes for my belt.
“Want to see just how limber I can be?” he asks.
My mouth goes dry, and all the pent-up frustration of the past week goes immediately to my dick. I let him free me of my clothes as I work on him, and as I lay him down and push his knees toward his chest, I can’t help but grin.
My hands feel the shape of him, creating a newer picture than the one I used to have. And he’s just as perfect. Just as gorgeous as he ever was.
“Ready for me?” I ask him.
He leans up slightly against the hand I have pressed to his chest, and I hear the smile in his voice. “I’m always ready for you, Phoenix. I always will be.”
Chapter 11
ALICE
I wakeup alone in bed, which doesn’t help the pressing frustration of the past twenty-four hours. We’ve been holed up in the middle of nowhere, and all I’ve done is eat and sleep. It’s a nice change from all the puking, which seems to have abated for the moment—and hopefully forever—but it doesn’t mean I feel better.
Now I just have more time to focus on the shitshow we’re in.
None of it is Kane’s fault. It’s not really anyone’s fault, though they seem pretty eager to blame Leo for it. I’m not sold on the idea that he’s the one who managed to hack into our system. I know it’s not Marco either, and definitely not Guido, but that’s not saying they don’t have the resources to turn someone against the Walshes.
In fact, Phoenix came up with a literal laundry list of names, and Kane’s already dispatched their freelancers to round them up. They’re all confident enough that Ari’s been sharpening both metaphorical and literal knives because he’ll be the one to drag answers out of all of them.
We’re making progress, it seems.
But it doesn’t change the fact that I expected to wake up today a married woman. It’s ridiculous, the way it hurts. I triednot to show that half of my anger was disappointment that Kane was just using our wedding as a ruse. And I’m doing everything I can now to make sure he can’t tell that I’m starting to believe he’ll never marry me.
But it’s hard not to see the wedding as a decoy and nothing more.
I’m carrying their child, and obviously, those boys love me. But Kane? I’m not sure his words are anything but pretty pacifiers he’s sticking in my mouth to shut me up.
I almost cracked last night when Phoenix came to lie with me. He smelled like Kane—his rich cigar smoke and the scent I now know is his come. He curled around me and got me off with pressing fingers, kissing me through it. Then he laid his hand on my stomach and just held me.
The questions were on the tip of my tongue then. He and Kane love each other in a way no one will probably ever understand, and I think Phoenix would tell me the truth if I asked him directly.
But in the end, I was a coward. I was weak. And I stayed silent.
Throwing my legs over the bed, I peer at the clock and see it’s well past noon. I’m sick and tired of sleeping, but there’s not much to do around this house since we’re completely cut off from everything, and it feels like this baby’s some sort of energy vampire, sucking the life out of me.
Pressing my hand to my stomach, I let myself just feel the way my body’s different. My eyes close, and though it’s far too early to feel any movement, I try to imagine what it’ll be like. Will it sink in then? When I can’t ignore the fact that I’m growing an entire human being?
And not just any human but a misfit child?
