“It sounded, from the text I received from Evangeline, like you had taken the job.”
“I said I’d think about it. I would never take a job without talking it over with you first.” He had told Donovan he was willing to learn more about the job.
Meiling remained silent and just looked at him. It was impossible to keep anything from her. She knew he wasn’t telling her the entire truth. He didn’t want to share. She wouldn’t like it. Why was he even considering it? Because he needed the adrenaline rush.
“Tell me, Gedeon. All of it.”
He turned back to her. “I’ve lived too long being a fixer, Lotus. I can’t just retire. I know myself. I need the rush. The physical and mental activity.” He made the admission reluctantly. With the admission came the reality of being who he was. What he was. Fixing problems didn’t just meannegotiating. Calling in favors or trading them. Sometimes—often—it meant killing someone.
She didn’t move or take her gaze from his face. She simply listened to him. He couldn’t find judgment in her expression or in her mind.
“Donovan came to me and said he had a proposition. He noticed the way we were able to move so fast. He has been slowly taking out the heads of crime families and replacing them with men who will keep the crime from spilling beyond a certain level. I’m not explaining this very well.” He pushed a hand through his hair. “There’s always going to be an underworld, with criminals exploiting good people. The goal is to minimize the damage to those people, by controlling the underworld.”
Her dark eyes stayed on his green ones. Focused. No blinking.
“They have people in place to stop human trafficking, but at the same time, they have to appear to be criminals. They work with other criminals. That way they always know what’s happening in that world.”
“What does Donovan want you to do?”
“He’s setting up another one of his men to take over a territory. It’s a particular brutal one that needs cleaning out. His man needs someone to head up his security detail. He’d like me to be that man. I thought if we liked the idea, we could take the job together. At least until you know if you’re pregnant or not.”
Her dark, feathery lashes fluttered. “Is that what this is all about? You’re worried I’m pregnant? You’re concerned I can’t back you up properly anymore?”
He sank down onto the side of the bed. Close. “No, I’m not afraid of you. Just for you. I can’t live without you, Meiling. As in I wouldn’t want to be alive. I know you think I’m strong and I can do anything, but I couldn’t do that. I wouldn’t want to. So best answer, find a professionwhere I keep you at a distance from it. I put babies in you and hope like hell you want to stay home and raise them.”
He blurted out the fucking truth. She could take it or leave it.
“I’ve loved you for so long, I don’t even know when it started. I don’t love anyone else. You’re it, Lotus. I know I make you crazy with the way I do things sometimes, but I do them because I can’t lose you. I won’t lose you. You can get angry with me. You can give me that stare down you like to think is going to burn me but I think is cute. It doesn’t matter. I’m keeping you alive any way I can. While we’re at it and I’m laying this shit out for you, we’re getting married too. No more stalling.”
He was losing it. Hedidlose it. He’d just blurted out everything that was in his mind, in his gut, pressed deep into his chest, and had unfurled all at once and burst out of him before he could censor it.
Meiling stared at him without moving. Without blinking. Just stared at him as if he’d grown two heads. Hell. Maybe he had. He felt as if he’d run a mile. He pressed his hand over his chest. She turned him inside out.
“You said you love me. Out loud.” Meiling whispered it, her dark eyes going liquid.
Gedeon forgot everything he was going to say. “Lotus, I tell you I love you. You have to know I do.” She had to know.
“I know. You show me all the time, but you don’t say it. This was the first time. It just caught me off guard is all.” She looked up at him again, her eyes filled with love. “So, do you think you’re going to take this job?”
“Only if Donovan offers us a good salary. By that I mean equal pay for you. I don’t anticipate you working long because I think you’re pregnant, so we’ll need to negotiate money immediately.”
“I’m not showing any symptoms.” Meiling was indignant.
“Honey, in the last four days, you’ve cried a total of sixteen times. Three of those times were over shoes and how cute you thought they were. Two were because we were out of your favorite berries. Once was because the bed wasn’t made properly, and you were too tired to make it. I pointed out that we were going to get in it, and that brought another flood of tears because you were so relieved. I’m just saying you aren’t a waterworks kind of girl as a rule.”
Meiling made a face at him. “Has it occurred to you that the raging hormones are leaving my body, and now I’m just trying to lead a normal life?”
“No, that didn’t occur to me.”
“It could be happening.” She glared at him and then burst out laughing. “At least I’m not puking everywhere. That’s a plus. If I were pregnant, I’d be puking. And I could be crying all the time, which I’m not, because I wanted to be pregnant and I’m not. Did you think about that? No, you didn’t.”
She wasn’t making the least bit of sense. Meiling always made sense. And they had veered far off topic. He studied his woman carefully, trying to hear what she actually meant, the underlying subtleties that he might be missing. The truth was he didn’t know shit about women or relationships. He only knew he loved her and he wanted her safe.
She looked especially beautiful to him, even with tears tracking down her face. Her skin had that glow to it that should have meant her leopard was coming close to a heat, but he knew she’d just gotten out of one.
Slayer, is it possible for Whisper to be going into another heat so soon?
Everything about Whisper’s heat had been different than what he’d been told by other shifters. She’d risen too fast, almost without warning, and when she did, the results were nearly uncontrollable. It was almost as if she had too many hormones spilling from her body. She was such a small thing, but Gedeon suddenly remembered that, like Meiling,Whisper would also carry the genetics for the special gifts. That might be the answer for the raging chemicals that had been dumped into Meiling’s body just as Slayer dumped them into his.
