Page 75 of The Girl and the Cobra

“I wanted it to be a surprise,” I tell her, and frankly seeing the look on her face right now, keeping it a secret was totally worth it. “We got there around nine this morning, so… all day.” Sitting still in a single spot for hours and hours on end was akin to torture, but the end result is definitely worth it.

Mabel’s name is finally on me, as it should’ve been from the start.

“I love it,” she says, flashing a dimpled grin my way. “And you didn’t have to hurt yourself to do it.”

“No, but I did have to sit still for… probably the longest amount of time I’ve had to sit still in my life.” Besides when I was trapped in that cell with Nix as my guard, that was, but I don’t feel like bringing that up.

That’s another lifetime ago. This life, here and now, with Mabel, is incomparable. It’s different. I am Tristan Arrowwood, the Cobra, the man who would gladly give it all up as long as it meant I’d get to stand by Mabel’s side.

She is my life. She completes me. She makes me a better man, and that’s not something I ever thought I’d say. I relished in pain. I loved the misery and death that came with being who I used to be.

No more.

As we lay back down, my tattoo now exposed, Mabel whispers, “I really do love it. It’s so sweet.”

Sweet. Not a word I ever thought would be used to describe me. With the things I did, me and sweet are antonyms, if anything, but that’s the thing about Mabel: she can see all of me, she can know every single aspect about my past and how bloody it is, and she still can see the good.

I love her so goddamned much. Someday I want to marry her—but that’s not a topic we’ve discussed yet, and I don’t want to scare her off by bringing it up just yet. In the grand scheme of things, we haven’t known each other long.

Hmm. How soon is too soon? If I had my way, Mabel would wear a ring twenty-four seven; that way any man with any ideas would see she’s off-limits.

Off-limits and already taken by someone who will very gladly defend his territory.

“And I love you,” I murmur, rolling onto my side as I press my lips on hers. She giggles, but soon enough she’s kissing me back in that soft, sweet way she has a habit of doing. I want to get straight to business—that means ripping off her clothes and making her sweat before we head downstairs and make dinner together—but there is something else I want to talk to her about.

Something Wolf brought up to me today, ironically.

I wait until I have my fill of her soft lips before I pull back and say, “There is something else, too. Wolf mentioned it while we were at the tattoo parlor.”

Mabel’s head rests on the pillow beside mine, mere inches between us. “What is it?”

“He’s thinking of taking on new patients. Depending on their…circumstances, he said he might need some help making sure they stay in line.”

“So he offered you a job?”

A job. Huh. “Yeah, I guess you could look at it that way. He also agreed to make one of the extra bedrooms into an actual exercise room. As much as I hate the man, I can’t complain too much.” Softer, I add, “He did bring us together, so he does do something right every now and then.”

“You shouldn’t hate him so much. He’s not that bad.”

Easy for her to say; she doesn’t know the full extent of Wolf’s involvement that night she nearly died. She knows about thetrackers; I was there when she asked him about it, and he said the trackers were in her shoes so he could find her if she ran off again. Mabel accepted this statement.

Wolf was probably waiting for me to refute him, to tell her the full truth, but the more I thought about it, the less I thought she needed to know. Sometimes ignorance really is bliss; I’ll keep the full truth to myself. It’d only hurt her and make her mistrust Wolf if I tell her… and that might mean she’ll visit me less. Can’t have that, obviously.

My silence is enough for her to groan and roll her eyes. “Boys. You can be twenty-six and thirty-whatever, and still act like boys, I swear.”

“Let’s make a promise to not talk about Wolf when we’re in bed together,” I suggest, and Mabel sighs out an agreement.

We don’t exactly have a timely dinner that night. Mabel and I get too lost in each other’s bodies to pay attention to the world around us.

We are both in the midst of some heated passion when there’s a knock on my door and Wolf’s voice in the hallway: “Mabel, you forgot to message your father that you arrived safely. He called the house asking. Next time be more mindful, all right?” Though he doesn’t come in, thank fuck, he does sound slightly annoyed.

Good. Fuck that guy.

I have to stop myself mid-thrust so Mabel can say, “Sorry! I’ll remember next time, I promise!”

Wolf wanders away, and I’m pretty sure I hear him say something about don’t make promises you can’t keep.

What can I say? When Mabel sees me, she forgets everything else, just as I do when I’m with her.

One day soon I’ll slip a ring on that finger, but until that day I’ll keep reminding her that she belongs to me by the way I make her sing when I’m inside of her.

Mabel is mine in every possible way… and I am hers. She changed my life in ways I never anticipated, and now, for the first time in my entire life, the future is bright.