“I love it.” She slumps in my arms, and I caress down her back until she calms down.
“Now I have to get one too,” she murmurs.
My jaw sets in a hard line. “Don’t blemish my skin.”
“Is that so?” she asks, the brat slowly rising.
That request is nonnegotiable. She’ll learn that when it comes to her body and heart, they’re fucking mine. My possession.
I grip her chin and make her look at me. “It’s my body, my skin, my holes. What I say goes.”
She gulps, glimpsing the man she so desperately wants to have. That side of me is uncivilized, more savage than human.
She pokes her tongue out. “Fine.”
I shake my head at her, tsking. “Such a brat.”
She giggles, not apologetic at all. “Your brat.”
Isn’t that true?
“Why didn’t you tattoo your fingers?” she asks, reaching over to pick the wine glass.
“I don’t have to flash who I am to everyone.” Whoever doesn’t know me, better pray they never meet me.
She lifts the wineglass to her lips, taking a small sip. “Your reputation precedes you?” she asks, her tone playful.
The reddish succulent juice trickles from the corner of her mouth, and I gather it with my thumb, bringing it to my lips. It doesn’t even come close to her sweet taste.
“I worked hard to earn it.” And by work, I mean killed, annihilated, slaughtered.
“So modest,” she says, not bothered by the line of my work.
She places the glass down, her focus returning to my body.
I smirk, and she caresses each intricate tattoo as if mesmerized. “No wonder you never take off your shirt…”
It wouldn’t take much to connect the dahlia flower to her.
“Your brother knows about it.”
Her chin shoots up, eyes rounding into huge globes. “What?”
“I wear on my back my loyalty to him and our cause. But I wear my oath to protect you on my heart,” I say matter-of-factly.
Red colors her cheeks, the flush of anger striking. “You hid it just from me?” She slaps my chest, trying to get away.
Good luck with that. Too fucking late now, baby girl.
I have a vise-grip around her, easily bringing her back down onto my lap. “It would only give you hope…”
The fight leaves her, and she lets out a heart-shattering sigh. “And God forbid, you’d let me think my feelings are shared, that you felt something more than…”
I kiss the top of her head, wanting to comfort her, but also make her see my one truth. “I’ve never had trouble showing you I love you from the very beginning, Dahlia. That’s nothing new. New is the part when that asshole tested me by leaving me alone and unsupervised with you.” I grit out, my loyalty split between my brother and my woman.
“Don’t worry,” she says through a broken smile. “I would never come between you, Mika.”
The thought doesn’t sit well with me. I am ecstatic for Enzo, being in love, finally happy, and starting a family with the only woman he has craved to the point of madness.
