by Belle Aurora
And when he looked at me the way he was looking at me right now, with his heart on his sleeve as well as in his eyes, I lowered my gaze as my heart thumped. “Stop it.”
He sounded confused. “Stop what?”
My cheeks flushed. “Stop winning me over.”
His gruff chuckle hit me right in the ovaries, and when he wrapped me up tight, lowering his head and laughing into my neck, I held onto his pockets and smiled bashfully.
It was then I realized I wanted more children with my beautifully tortured king, and maybe if he came through, putting the Dragon queen well into the ground, we’d talk about that.
Twitch was the medicine I didn’t know I needed, and I wanted to shoot him up, right into my veins, and stay high on him for a lifetime.
What did that say about me?
Lord.
I didn’t want to think about it.
Molly walked into the kitchen, and groaned, “Oh, God. Stahp.”
When Twitch twisted to look at her, his eyes crinkled in the corners. “You know, you could just fuck off.”
Molly poured herself a cup of coffee. “Seriously. It’s like seeing your hot mum making out with her newest boy toy.” She swept out her arm toward Twitch. “And her boyfriend is a tattooed tank who doesn’t wear his shirt around the house. Ugh. Gross.”
I tipped my head back and laughed out loud.
This was why I loved Molly. Her level of sass was extraordinary.
“Whatever.” I struggled out of Twitch’s hold, and as I did, he made a low growl in his throat. I touched a gentle hand to the neatly trimmed scruff on his face, and stated, “I need to shower.”
Molly stepped closer. “Hey, Lex, you’ve got something right here.” She pointed at her collarbone, and when I made no move to, she took another step and made to wipe it off of me before she realized what the mark was. Her eyes widened in surprise before they narrowed then settled on Twitch with a glare. She spoke low, “How old are you? Fourteen?”
When Molly turned, shaking her head in disbelief, and walked out of the kitchen, Twitch lifted his leg and kicked out, catching her lightly on the butt. The moment her coffee spilled, she let out a sound of pure infuriation before spinning on him and screeching, “Jerk!”
And that was my cue to leave.
I made my way into the bathroom, and the sounds of family argument settled upon me, making me feel both light and happy.
Seriously.
I was a freak.
***
Twitch
“You don’t remember me, do you?”
Molly sat on the sofa with A.J. on her lap and her eyes watched me intently. Her voice remained sweet as she ran a hand through my son’s hair.
I looked up from my phone. “Should I?”
A.J. was on his tablet, his ears covered with headphones as he watched some stupid show where grown-ass men and women unboxed surprise eggs and showed the youngsters at home what they got. I seriously didn’t get the things kids watched these days. It was obscure.
And people thought I had problems.
“You knew my dad,” was all she followed with, and when she didn’t continue, I lifted my hand and threw her a “give me more” gesture. She took in a deep breath and let me have it. “I was about eight years old, and when you walked into our house, I hid behind a bannister, watching you.” She smiled. “I was convinced you were a Mokoi.” When I frowned, she explained, “An Aboriginal spirit who kidnapped and ate children. My dad told us stories about the Mokoi. They were tall and unusually thin with dark hair and red eyes, and they slept high up in the trees, looking out for their next victims. The Mokoi were undead, born of dark magic, and they often bore the souls of those who misused magic in life.”
At my perplexed stare, she looked at me and bit her overly full bottom lip, her melodic voice haunted. “My home life was not good, and even though I was just a child, I felt I was better off taking a chance with a Mokoi than to stay where I was.” She lowered her face and looked down at my son with an affection she reserved only for him. “I was barefoot and dirty. My curls were badly tangled, the t-shirt I wore was torn, and the soles of my feet were bleeding.” She swallowed hard and blinked rapidly. “And I approached you, put my sticky hand in yours, and said—”
Oh, fuck.
I remembered her.
How could I forget?
“I’m ready,” I completed her sentence, blinking at her in disbelief.
She nodded, her eyes shining. “Yeah.” She cleared her throat. “You looked at the state of me and knelt down, wiping the tears from my cheeks. See, I was sad that I’d never see my sisters again, because when a Mokoi took you, you didn’t come back. You looked mean, but you were kind to me, and for a split second, I was okay with you eating me.”
Ah, shit.
I thought about my son in a similar situation and my chest ached.
It was a hard limit for me. I never could stomach cruelty to children.
“But you did something I didn’t plan,” the little woman enlightened.
Yeah. I recall.
I looked down at my son and muttered quietly, “I killed your father.”
She smiled widely, nodding. “Yeah. Shot him dead, right in front of me.”
My brows knitted. “I never meant for that to happen.”
“I know,” she said on a hush. “But it changed my life. It changed my sisters’ lives too. Our dad...” She paused. “...was a cruel man. He liked to psychologically torment us, and when that didn’t work, he physically punished us.” Her lips thinned. “For nothing more than being girls.”
Monty “The Butcher” Holden was a pig of a man, and I had no guilt over killing him.
I was confused though. “How did you end up here?”
“Completely by chance.” Her brows arched. “I saw Julius at a meet and asked about you. He told me you’d died, and I was—” Her voice quieted. “—upset. Because I owed you, and finding out I would never get the chance to repay you was beyond frustrating. He asked how badly I wanted to relieve myself of that debt, and I told him I would have done anything. That was when he suggested meeting Lexi.” She stroked my son’s hair and A.J. reached up, pulling her arm down to hug it close as he watched the screen on his lap. “And when I met this little thief, he stole my heart.”
Where was this going? “Why are you telling me this?”
Molly looked at me with meaning. “Because I need you to understand that I’m ready to protect your family, to the death if necessary.”
She meant what she said. I could tell.
“Hopefully, it won’t come to that,” I muttered. “My son seems to like you alive.” And that meant something to me.
Her eyes rested on the little monster in her lap and she smiled softly. “It doesn’t matter what he wants. If it comes down to it, I’ll shield him with my body.” She hugged him, and A.J. smiled up at her, unable to hear what she was saying. She smiled through her words. “And I’ll kill anyone who tries to harm him.” When her eyes settled on me, she sobered. “Anyone.”
Good. We were definitely on the same page.
I looked back down at my phone. My voice was low.
“I knew I liked you, Molly.”
Chapter
Twenty-Five
Ling
As I sat on a stool, wearing nothing but his shirt, my eyes smiled at the beautiful man cooking for me.
“So I told him—” He paused to flip the frying gözleme. “—he’d better fucking watch his mouth or I’d add another hole to his head.” He turned to grin at me. “And I’m pretty sure I watched a grown man shit his pants.”
I chuckled under my breath, shaking my head. He was ridiculous, my beautiful Turk. And he was starting to mean more to me than anyone in the world. So I needed to tell him.
He was bare-chested, and my eyes roamed the muscular planes of his body. As he turned back to cook, I cleared my throat, then spoke up, “I found him.”
Aslan stilled. He kept his back to me
a long moment before he twisted to face me, his expression unreadable.
“Yeah.” I ran a hand through my long hair and sighed. “You were right.” My eyes met his. “He’s back.”
Az searched my face, before drawling, “And how do we feel about that?”
We.
Ugh. He was killing me.
“We,” I started, “feel betrayed and hurt.” And rejected. My gaze drifted down to the counter, and I ran a perfectly manicured nail over the cool marble. “We don’t know what to think or what to say.” I sighed then looked him in the eye. “But we don’t feel good about it.”
“Right,” he said lightly a moment before he turned off the stove and moved the pan off the heat. With his back to me, he uttered a quiet, “And where does that leave us, baby?”
The fear in his voice called to the fear in mine.
“I don’t know,” I muttered honestly.
He spun on me, those dark eyes darker than I’d ever seen them. His voice was low, dangerous. “Do you want him back?”
Again, honesty, plain and simple. “I don’t know anymore.” I lowered my eyes. “I thought I did.” My heart pounded. “But I don’t think so, because...” I swallowed hard, avoiding his blistering gaze, and speaking low, “I have you.”
Aslan had filled the gaping hole inside me. I no longer wanted or desired Twitch. I needed the man standing right in front of me, the man by my side, despite the odds being ever against us.
Despite the fact that no one would want us together.
Despite the fact that the man I loved was married and was never leaving his wife.
We were royalty in our own right but would never rule together. We were a tragedy in the making, and that only made me want him more.
I watched as his body drooped, losing some of the obvious tension in his face. His lips parted and he let out a long breath, running a hand across his nape.
Our desperate stares met across the counter, and everything wrong in the world melted away.
My voice was whisper-soft. “I love you.”
Az closed his eyes, and he kept them closed as he responded in kind. “Love you too, Ling.”
The tightness around my heart loosened, and I watched the man who had won me over with damaged roses and soft kisses breathe a sigh of relief.
Let Twitch have his little family.
I had something better.
***
Twitch
I felt her watching me in the open doorway. As I pulled my hoodie on, I heard the quiet words she spoke.
“Where are you going?”
Her voice was soft, but she couldn’t hide the concern that lined it.
Zipping myself up, I turned and wished I hadn’t. She wore her worry like a second skin. “Just making a house call.”
Lexi’s arms came up and she hugged herself, and that small move had me wanting to stay in and be by her side, sleep beside my woman, and feel at home with my family. Unfortunately, I couldn’t. This shit needed to be nipped in the bud, and my brothers and I were the only ones capable of doing what needed to be done.
She jerked her chin, gesturing to my side. “You always take a gun on house calls?”
Didn’t miss a beat, my angel. “On these types of house calls, I do.”
I was worried about her reaction.
I shouldn’t have been.
Straightening, she nodded and then sighed softly. “Okay.” She dropped her hands to her sides, and said, “Well, tuck your son in before you leave.”
Jesus fucking Christ.
This woman.
Solid.
When I moved, I did it slowly, with purpose, and when I reached her, I looked down into her big blue eyes before I spoke low. “Kiss me before I go.”
She looked me deep in the eye. “No.”
When my brow furrowed, she smiled widely, and my dick jerked.
When she backed out of the room, I moved down the hall to say goodnight to my son. After I did that, I noticed her waiting for me at the front door. I approached leisurely, and when I got close, she stepped into me. It was second nature to have my arms around this woman.
This woman who had given me so much.
Her heart, a son, a home. She gave everything I didn’t know I wanted and continued to give on the daily.
I was a lucky man, and one day this angel would be my wife, wearing my ring, and after we made our vows, I’d keep her barefoot and pregnant and fucking happy.
Looking at her the way she was, I decided I needed a daughter with Lexi’s rare sweetness and diamond-like strength. A girl who loved her daddy regardless of the piece of shit he was.
Her gentle caution cut through me like a hot knife through butter. She spoke quietly into the crook of my neck. “Be safe.” When she pressed a soft kiss to the old gunshot wound, the rounded scar that I got protecting her that fateful day six years ago, I lost my composure.
I growled low in my throat then pulled back to set my dark gaze on her. “Keep lookin’ after me like this and I’mma marry your ass.”
Her response gave me shivers.
Looking up at me, wide-eyed and pretty as a peach, she tilted her head slightly, and asked, “Promise?”
The sound of a car pulling into the drive caught our attention, and I leaned down to press a kiss to her forehead. “Later.”
Without another word, I stepped out of the house and made it over to the black SUV, opening the door and sliding into the passenger seat. The second I closed the door, the car took off and I turned to Julius. “What’s the go?”
Happy spoke from the backseat. “Her shit’s tight, man. I don’t know how we’re gonna get in, let alone get close enough to pop her. Her men guard her like she’s the second coming of Christ.”
Julius grunted. “She’s got an apartment in the city, off the books. Ling thinks she’s smart, but the cockier she becomes, the sloppier she gets. She goes to this apartment to lay low. Almost every night, she’s there and—” When I turned to him, he glanced at me a moment before he turned back to the road. “—you won’t believe who I see coming in and out that place on the regular.”
“Who?” I asked, my brow lowered.
“Aslan Sadik.”
When Julius said what he said, the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end.
“Motherfucker.” I slammed a fist onto the dash, hard enough to make the plastic creak. I looked to Julius. “Guess who saw me at the fuckin’ mall a couple weeks back?” I twisted to look back at Happy. “Aslan the fuckin’ Turk.”
Happy’s frown was deep. “What? You think he and Ling are a thing?” He shook his head. “No way. The Dragons and The Lost Boys hate each other, man, have since the dawn of time, and that hate runs deep. She’s already disgraced. I don’t think she’s that dumb.”
“She is,” Julius stated darkly. When he peered over at me, his lips were thin. “Why didn’t you say anything?”
I threw him a look that said “are you fuckin’ kidding me?” then blinked at him a long moment. “You weren’t answering my calls, because I,” I drawled slowly, “hurt your feelings.”
Julius narrowed his eyes at me before turning back to the road. A while later, he spoke. “Okay, so Aslan is feeding Ling info.” He looked in the rearview mirror to look at Happy. “That’s the only thing that makes sense. The question is, why?”
It was obvious.
Happy reluctantly uttered, “Because they’re a thing.”
“Because they’re a thing,” Julius repeated, sighing under his breath.
Ling was suicidal if she thought The Dragons would look past this transgression.
No. They’d have her head on a platter.
Maybe that was the smartest way around our problem, to let her destroy herself.
“Okay.” I looked out the window of the moving car. “Let’s go have a word with the Turk.”
The house was a fortress. It was huge, imposing, and they had security to match Alcatraz. But we had something they didn’t.
Ha
ppy.
From the backseat, he typed quickly on the laptop. “Give me a sec.” He kept typing. “They’ve got two consecutive systems running at the same time. It’s confusing.” His fingers moved fast along the keyboard. “Okay, I’m getting there now.” The sounds of buttons clicking was doing my head in. “One more command and—” He hit Enter. “—they’re offline.” He looked from me to Julius. “Let’s go. I don’t know how long till they realize and send someone to fix what I fucked up.”
Pulling the hood over my head, I stepped out of the car and opened the app Happy installed on my phone. I pointed it to the three-door garage and hit the button. One of the doors began to rise, and I turned back to Happy, my face solemn. “Fuck me.”
Happy simply lifted a brow and grinned.
The man knew his shit.
The right technology in the wrong hands was a dangerous thing.
We all moved inside and I hit the button again, closing the door behind us. There was a door at the back of the wide-open space, and when I made it there, I gently put my hand to the knob and tried to twist, but it had no give. It was locked. Julius lifted his hand and tapped lightly next to the keypad attached to the door. I stepped back as Happy moved in, opened the plastic casing, and fiddled with the wires. Moments later, the red light turned green, and when Happy tried the knob, it turned.
We were in.
The moment the door opened, a feminine voice called out, “I thought you said you were going to be late?” We moved down the hall, weapons drawn, and she went on with, “Well, I just started season three of Game of Thrones. Come watch with me.” She chuckled. “I swear to God, Az, this stuff is so screwe—” When she came into view, her head jolted in shock, her wide eyes darted between the three of us, and she whispered, “Oh.”
The young woman in the wheelchair was overly thin, her big brown eyes wide with fear, her long black hair pulled into a low ponytail. She wore a thick sweater and had a blanket pulled over her lap. Her full lips parted in distress, as she spoke quietly, “Are you going to kill me?”
I felt like an asshole. She was clearly unwell. But that wasn’t my problem. “I don’t know yet.” I stepped closer to her, my tone gentle. “That depends on your husband.”