Page 63 of Inked in Devotion

We were living our lives on our terms.

Chapter

Fourteen

Kolya

I rushed home.

Sorcha called me in a panic. Actually, I’d spotted Ivan’s Mercedes on my way and debated cutting him off and ripping him a new one. The old man crossed a line. I didn’t care if he was once a pakhan: Chloe’s well-being came first.

The bratva and the Kings had caused enough damage.

Guilt pinched my chest. And I was going to add a few more if I didn’t fix the Vozhokari problem. Dimitri had been texting me, telling me that assassins were on the move or were already in the US.

Sleeper agents came in and out of the country. Ivan knew this. He sent me to protect Renée the night two Vozhokari assassins went after mother and daughter. I killed one of them; the other got away. The bratva had to pay off their organization for our interference. Once again, Duncan King informed Ivan that Esther had hired assassins to go after his mistress and daughter.

Renée hadn’t imagined the extent of Esther’s madness.

When I entered the house, they weren’t in the living room. Sebastian must be sleeping because the house was too quiet. I spotted the kettle on the counter with her box of calming tea beside it. The used mug was in the sink. She’d been doing better since the thunderstorm, even with the announcement following Theo’s engagement to Aralina.

Fucking Ivan caused her to spiral enough she needed the tea to settle her nerves.

I found mother and son sleeping. Sebastian was in the bedside crib which he was going to outgrow soon.

My heart clenched. My family. Instinct was screaming at me to claim them, but with Dimitri’s recent warning, I had to be strategic. Revealing the existence of the Vozhokari to an outsider was frowned upon, and I risked Chloe before I could give her the protection of my name. She appeared pragmatic. Romantic love had lost its significance when she witnessed her mother’s disillusionment. In some ways we were the same when my parents taught me that love for my kind brought nothing but death.

Hell, Chloe herself struck a covenant with Margo, and nowhere was love a requirement. And after witnessing the mismatched pair of Theo and Aralina, she would realize that marriage wasn’t about love; it was about protection.

Yes. That was the only solution.

I stared at her like a stalker watching his sleeping obsession.

Whether she was reading or playing with Sebastian, a nagging ache would throb inside my chest, and I had to massage the sensation away. I was becoming attached to mother and son. That was enough to be concerned about their welfare. My thoughts strayed to them when the bratva wasn’t keeping me busy. Plus, we had attraction in spades. After watching Chloe’s mouth rounding in an oh, after watching her throwing back her head as she came all over my leg, I let my dirty fantasies run wild. I wanted her naked, on all fours. I wanted her on her back with her legs hiked up over my back as I drove inside her.

My cock thickened behind my jeans as my eyes traveled hotly down her body.

See? Most inappropriate thoughts at the most inappropriate moments for her. Our son was sleeping beside Chloe, and all I could think about was railing his mother against the headboard and putting another baby inside her.

Maybe the Petrovs had a mating instinct. But it had to be with the right woman.

I sat on the edge of the bed. She barely stirred while Sebastian started making waking-up noises.

“Hey, buddy.”

Sebastian rolled over and started whimpering. I picked him up.

“He needs a bottle,” Chloe groaned and shifted to her side, cradling her cheek. Sleepy, sexy eyes that in my delusional mind, invited me to fuck her. I stood to remove myself from temptation because...responsibilities.

“I’ll feed him.”

She yawned out her thanks.

Her resistance to my help had waned over the almost two weeks we spent together. We’d fallen into a co-parenting routine. I’d heard more than a few bratva soldiers lament how they’d prefer to be working than to be at home, and admittedly Sorcha was doing the heavy lifting of grocery shopping—a task that I detested because I didn’t like trolling down aisles in public places with boring lists—but I didn’t understand why they didn’t want to spend time with their boy and help the mother.

As I left Sebastian in his high chair with a sippy cup of milk, I checked the fridge for what to feed him. I’d learned to fend for myself since childhood. I hadn’t had a mother to dote on me, cook for me, or do my laundry. When I lived with my aunt and uncle, besides working all day in training like a soldier, they expected me to help around the house. My aunt also left the toilets for me to clean. Sometimes she sent me to the market and ordered me to do the grunt work around the kitchen, like cleaning grease off the stove or sanitizing the butcher block. That was why I had a level of OCD when it came to a job…because I remembered the disgust I felt cleaning after people’s shitty messes.

This was all before I was ten and was sent to a wilderness cabin to help a bratva prince survive and learn toughness.