Page 62 of Baby for My Ex’s Dad

“This is my final confession and apology. You are thirty-one, having been a man much longer than you were my boy. Whatever I damaged in your childhood, the man you became built himself into someone who dines with his family’s enemy and threatens a pregnant woman. No childhood wound justifies this. That was your choice as a grown man.”

The fire ticks. I make myself finish it.

“You picked a new family, and you picked badly. So I will treat you as a man who chose the other side.” A breath. “I loved you before you were anything at all. I will always love the boy you were and the man you had started to become. But I don’t recognize you anymore, Klaus. You are no son of mine.”

I end the call before my voice can tell on me.

Then I go upstairs to the one room in this house that has nothing to do with the war.

She’s awake, reading in the lamplight. When she sees me, she lifts the blanket without a word. I go to her the way a man comes in out of weather, and when I feel her heat, everything else falls away.

Time may be short, so I don’t waste it. Our mouths meet, and her sweet lips are everything. Especially when she whispers my name.

“Quiet, bratty girl,” I tell her, against her silken throat. “I’m working.”

She laughs, and I catch the end of it with my mouth and turn it into a moan. I strip the thin shirt off her and take my time with what it reveals. Her tits are perfection, her belly even more so. I make my way down her body, tasting as I tour her every curve. They keep changing shape, so I memorize them again every night.

When I fit my head between her thighs, she unravels fast. That taste—fuck, her taste makes an animal of me. I do the same with her clit, use it to turn her from brilliant woman to fiery animal. Her hands fist in my hair and her spine lifts off the sheet as she comes on my tongue.

She gentles back into her body as I climb up her, watching her settle down as she waits for me to take her. When I set my teeth below her ear, she says something in Russian that takes the wind out of me. “Don’t stop.”

“You’ve been studying,” I murmur.

“Shut up and⁠—”

The rest leaves her on a gasp, because I glide into her wetness in a smooth thrust. I brace on my forearms, careful of her body, and she wraps a leg around me and drags me to her.

“Careful. You’ll strain something. At your age.”

“Earning your title, eh?” I drop some of my restraint to show her whose boss. I’m certain that’s why she said it.

I take her deep and without mercy. I pin both her hands with one of mine, and when she murmurs, “Please,” I would burn the city to the ground to hear that from her again.

Instead, I whip my body into hers, harder, faster, and I hear it again. Feel her pulse against my shaft. See the pink take her glistening cheeks. She’s closing in on it.

The words growl out of me. I need to say them. I need her to hear them. “You’re mine. Your orgasm is mine to give you. This body, mine. These lips⁠—”

She leans up, capturing my mouth as I pound into her body. “Yes, I⁠—”

Her words break when I make her come on my cock. I dig in at that magic angle, and she gushes on me, gasping, groaning, gone as her eyes roll back in her head. It’s then that I lose myself in her and tip right over the edge into sweet madness.

There is no pier where I’m to be murdered. No Alexei. None of it. Only her breath falling on my chest as her eyes drift shut.

She sleeps like the dead beside me. Only me. It’s an honor I never knew I’d have.

But it’s one that haunts me, too. If I die, how will Thea sleep?

She should want to leave me. Me and all of this behind. A sane woman would. If she asks it of me, it’s done. She’d be a fool not to want it, and she’s no fool.

Perhaps I should send her. Force the issue. Put her on the plane and let her hate me while she’s warm in Portugal. Better than mourning me in the cold here.

Then she shifts against me and settles deeper, one leg hooked over mine. The thought of sending her away does not survive the sight of her face.

She chose this bed with me. She could have any room in this house. But she’s here. Beside me.

Thea chooses me, and God knows, I cannot stop choosing her. I close my eyes, and the woman and the child breathe against my side.

There’s nowhere else I’d rather be.