“It’s not?—”
“Reese called,” Hawk inadvertently speaks over me, his voice low and clipped, getting straight to the point. “It’s not good news.”
My stomach drops. “What is it?”
“It’s slow,” he continues, his gaze unwavering. “The humanitarian parole is a long shot, and even if it goes through, it could take weeks or months. Too much time. Too many variables.”
The hope I’d nurtured on the ride back withers and dies. Weeks. Months. Maryam and Aliyah don’t have months. The clock is ticking. They have days at most before their so-called family starts pulling on threads that will lead right back to that hospital room.
“So that’s it?” I ask, my voice sharper than I intended. “We just wait?”
“No,” Jagger replies, his voice firm, a finality in it that cuts through the despair. He turns to me, and the look in his eyes is one I’ve seen before—intense, focused, and utterly terrifying in its certainty. “We don’t wait. We’re not putting her life in the hands of bureaucrats.We get herout. Tomorrow, the four of us will devise a plan.”
I straddle Blake’s waist, the mattress dipping beneath my weight, as I bind her wrists and tie her hands to the bed frame. A soft gasp escapes her lips when I cinch the rope that makes my cock jerk.My sweet little doc has a naughty side.Noted… I could get used to her pinned and completely at my mercy.
“Do you trust me?”
She gives a single humorless yank at the bindings, then smiles. “What do you think?”
When I reach across the mattress, her eyes lock on my hand, and the thin, gleaming needle between my thumb and forefinger as I position myself over her.
“Jagger… what are you doing?” Her voice is a whisper, a tremor running through it as she tugs fearfully at the ropes holding her hands to the bed frame.
“Shhhh. Relax, Doc,” I soothe, tenderly running myknuckles along the perfect curve of her face before placing my palm on her chest, finding her heart racing.
“Jagg—”
“Trust me. Daddy would never do anything to hurt you. Ever.” Her breathing slows slowly, as does the rapid thud of her pulse. “I just don’t want you to move and hurt yourself.”
After removing my hand from her chest, my fingers trace the delicate skin of her inner arm, right over the faint, raised line I know is there. Her birth control implant. A tiny nuisance of a plastic, full of synthetic hormones. A barrier I’m about to obliterate.
“You’re coming to Chicago to be with me… To bemine…” The final word is a growly possessive rumble from deep within my chest. My fingers press down slightly, feeling the hard rod buried just under her skin. The thought of her, in my city, my bed, and growing round with my child, consumes me. It’s an obsession, a fire that’s been burning me from the inside out, and I’m finally here to extinguish it by making it real. “And I want you to be mine ineveryway.”
Her breathing is even and pulse steady beneath my fingers. Blake looks at me, her gaze darting from my eyes to the needle and back again.
“Do you trust Daddy?”
She gives a timid nod, so small I almost miss it.
I slowly lower the needle. “Do you want to be mine?”
“Yes,” she answers assuredly.
Shifting my weight, I bring the needle to her arm. I can feel her muscles tense as her body braces for the prick. “I know what I’m doing,” I assure her, a smirk playing on my lips. “I watched a YouTube video.”
Before she can protest or flinch away, I poke her with the needle. “JAGGER!” she shrieks, her voice a mix of outrage with a tinge of pain as her body tenses beneath me. After the quick, sharp jab right over the implant, I inject a small amount of lidocaine as a tiny bubble forms under her skin.
“I’m kidding,” I deadpan, pulling the empty needle away and leaning down to brush my lips across her forehead in a set of feather-light kisses before setting it on the nightstand. “I watched three.”
Blake shakes her head, a disbelieving laugh escaping her. She rolls her eyes, a gesture so ingrained in who she is that it makes my chest ache. “You’re insane.”
“Maybe,” I concede, my smile widening. “But I’myourinsane.”
In the tiny combat surgical kit I stole from Damon’s room, I pick up the small scalpel. The lidocaine is already working, numbing the area. With meticulous precision, I make a tiny incision, just a few millimeters long. Her breath held tight, she watches me, her expression a mixture ofdon’t fuck this upand fascination. I use a small pair of forceps to probe the incision—just like the YouTube video—until I feel the implant. I close the tip of the forceps around the slick plastic rod, and with a gentle tug, I ease it out. It’s small and insignificant-looking. I can hardly believe that this little thing has been standing between me and putting a baby in her.
I work quickly to close the tiny wound. A Steri-Strip to hold the edges together, then I wrap her upper arm in clean white gauze, covering the site completely. When I’m done, I lower my head and press my lips to the gauze covering her tiny wound. Then I trail a path of hot, open-mouthed kisses up her arm, over her shoulder, to the sensitive skin of her neck. She shivers, her head falling back to expose more of her throat to me.
“Now I can put my baby in you,” I murmur against the steady pulse throbbing against my lips. The thought sends a jolt of feral lust straight through me, and my cock wastes no time growing painfully hard.
