“Will you… Will you be upset if I’m not…?”
“No.” I chuckle, a deep, satisfied sound, and assure her, “You were perfect. Taking what I gave you. Coming for me so sweetly.” I let my hand drift lower, my fingers brushing through the short, well-trimmed tuft of hair above her pussy. I press the heel of my hand against her mound as my fingers toy lightly with the base of the plug. “This belongs to me now. All of it. And I will keep my sweet pussy full of cum, until you are growing our son.”
“Our son?” she asks, a hint of a smile in her voice.
“Or our daughter,” I amend, though the thought of a little girl with Blake’s dark eyes and my will—or hers—is overwhelming. “As long as she has your spirit and my last name. We’ll have more after that. A whole houseful. I want to see you pregnant all the time, Blake. I want everyone in Chicago to know who you belong to. Who put that baby in you.”
She shivers, and I know it’s not from being cold. It’s the same thrill that runs through me when I think about it. This is what we were made for. Her to carry my children, and me to provide and protect.
I kiss her shoulder, then her neck, my lips lingering over her pulse. “Rest now,” I tell her gently. “You’re going to need your energy. I plan to fuck you day and night until there is no denying the second blue line on a test.”
She lets out a soft laugh. It’s a sleepy, happy sound. “You’re relentless.”
“I’mdetermined,” I correct, my hand resuming its pattern where our children will grow. “And I always get what I want. And I have everything I want right here.”
She doesn’t respond. Her breathing has already evened out, deep and slow. She’s asleep in my arms, exhausted, claimed, and completely mine. I lie awake for a long time, holding her, listening to her breathe, and feeling the profound, earth-shifting certainty that our lives could have just been irrevocably altered. The future is no longer a concept.A reality that could be growing right now in the woman I want to spend the rest of my life with.
The kitchen table looks like it’s survived its own war. Knife scars crisscross the surface like tally marks. Coffee stains bloom, dark and ugly, where mugs sat for too long, and a burn ring where a previous tenant placed a far-too-hot pot from the stove. This table has history.
My elbows are planted on it, hands wrapped around a mug of coffee that went cold twenty minutes ago. Each of my brothers circles the table with me, all of us ready to plan for this bad idea.
Hawk’s cell phone sits in the middle of the table on speaker. Abby’s voice comes through—clean and sharp—already ten steps ahead of us. She sounds like she always does when things are bad: focused enough to be comforting, detached enough to function. “I talked to Reese earlier. There is no fast-track visa option that won’t set off alarms. Humanitarian parole will take weeks at best, and that’s if Washington doesn’t decide to take a moral stand and sit on it.”
Mattis cuts in immediately, his voice bright with irritation and caffeine, with the faint tapping of keystrokes in the background. “That’s the holdup? Seriously? You could’ve asked. I can have her a US birth certificate and passport in maybe three hours.”
The room goes dead quiet. Theeveryone just heard something they can’t unhearkind of quiet.
“Mattis,” Abby huffs.
Hawk closes his eyes for half a second, like he’s calculating how much plausible deniability he can afford.
Hawk opens his eyes and looks at the phone. “I’m not saying do it,” he replies, deliberating choosing each word with care, “but?—”
“—I would never do such a thing on company time,” Mattis barrels right over him, sarcasm dripping thick enough to drown in. “That would be unethical. Illegal. Downright offensive to mydelicatemoral compass.”
I snicker, quickly lifting my cold mug to my lips before I wind up on the receiving end of a Hawk-prescribed lecture.
Abby clears her throat. “For the record, I did not hear that, either.”
“Same,” Damon adds. “This conversation is extremely boring and very compliant.”
Hawk drags a hand over his face, fingers catching on stubble. The line between desperation and catastrophe is razor-thin, and we’re not just walking it, we’re tap-dancing in combat boots. “Focus. We still need a plan that doesn’trely on miracles or Mattis committing illegal acts that could put him in federal prison.”
“Hey,” Mattis replies mildly, “I prefer the phrasecreative problem-solving.”
My voice comes out rougher than I expect. No one argues. “Maryam and her daughter. Clean extraction. No trail.”
“Thirty-two hours.” Hawk glances at his watch. “That’s the window before her brother starts asking louder questions.”
Damon leans forward. “Weapons.”
“Already assumed,” Gunnar says. “Not heavy, but enough to get us a hot exit if this goes south.”
“We’ll need another vehicle,” Hawk declares. “The four of us, Blake, Zahra, Maryam, and the baby. We can’t fit everyone in the Jeep.”
“The Aegis jet is prepped,” Abby shares. “There is a private airstrip about twenty minutes from the edge of the city. Flight plan can be… flexible.”
“There needs to be medical supplies on board,” Blake declares from the doorways. Her voice is steady, but there’s a tightness under it. “Zahra is still in rough shape. Plus, it’s a long flight. We need baby supplies. Diapers, wipes, the usual.”
