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“Feel that?” He drags it slowly along my pussy, right over my clit. “That’s what you woke me up for.”
“Then give it to me!”
“Ask nicely, Red. You’re about to be somebody’s mama. You need to work on your manners.”
I am going to kill you. I am going to kill you so dead, and then I’m going to raise this baby alone, and I’m going to tell her that her daddy was an asshole.
He laughs so hard the bed shakes. Then he pushes into me.
I cry out, and he holds me still and lets me feel every inch of him slide in, so slow I almost cry. He’s so deep like this, and with his shadows holding my belly and his arm wrapped across my chest, I can’t move at all. I can’t do anything but take it.
“Look at you.” His mouth is right against my mark. “Full of my baby and full of my cock. You were made for this, Red. Made to be bred by me.”
He fucks me slow and deep. He’s never gentle, not even now, but every thrust pushes all the way to the end of me and stays there. His hand moves from my chest to my belly and spreads over it, and his shadows slide down to my clit. I come so fast I don’t even have time to be shy about it.
He doesn’t stop. He just keeps rolling his hips into me while I shake, his hand on our daughter, his teeth on my neck.
“One more,” he growls. “You woke me up. You’re giving me one more.”
I give him two. The second one is so big my toes curl and I grab his forearm so hard I leave marks. My pussy clenches around his knot as it swells, and he groans long and low into my hair as he locks it inside me and comes. I feel it fill me up, hot and deep, and I feel him in my chest, warm, wild, and so in love with me it makes me cry.
We lie there tied together in the dark, his shadows still holding my belly, his hand still spread over our girl.
She kicks him right in the palm.
He laughs into my neck, so soft I almost don’t hear it. “Go to sleep, Red.”
This time, I do.
Chapter Twenty-Three
KISHA
“Stop fidgeting with your dress.”
Jessie slaps my hands away from the black silk for the third time. “You look perfect. He’s gonna lose his damn mind.”
I stare at my reflection, and I barely recognize myself. My dress is nothing like a wedding gown. It’s midnight black with dark red undertones that shift in the light, the neckline plunging deep, the fabric clinging to every curve I have, including the very round, very pregnant one in the middle, before it pools at my feet.
I’m eight months along. I look like I swallowed a damn beach ball, and I’m about to waddle down an aisle in front of a room full of monsters. The dress cost more than my whole old dorm room, and I didn’t even look at the tag. I’ve learned. And I’ve never felt so beautiful in my life.
“It’s not the dress I’m worried about,” I admit. “It’s the ceremony. What if I say the words wrong? What if the blood thing makes me faint? What if she decides to start kicking in the middle of my vows?”
“Kisha.” Kaylie grabs my shoulders. “You’ve been living with that man for eight months. You’re carrying his baby. You’re going to be FINE.”
She’s right. But tonight isn’t just a wedding. Mama got her church wedding in June, with the white dress, the cake, and Daddy walking me down the aisle. Tonight is the binding ceremony: ancient magic, blood oaths, and our souls tied together for eternity.
No pressure, right?
“Five minutes,” Avery says from the doorway.
My heart starts racing. In five minutes, I’m going to walk into a room full of monsters and pledge myself to one of them. And I can’t fucking wait.
Nik turned the penthouse into something out of a dark fairy tale. Thousands of black candles float in midair, throwing shadows on the walls. The ceiling is gone, replaced by swirling darkness full of stars I’m pretty sure aren’t from Earth’s sky.
The brothers line the room on both sides, every one of them in their true form tonight: the Boogeyman, the Oni, El Cuco, the Wendigo, and a dozen more I still don’t have names for. Behind me, I hear my girls go very quiet when they walk past. I don’t turn around to see why. I only have eyes for him.
Nik stands at the end of the room on a platform made of living shadows. He’s dressed all in black, of course, but his suit looks like it’s cut from the dark itself. His eyes burn when they lock on mine. Lord, have mercy. My husband is fine as hell, and I’m about to make it official in front of God, the Ancient One, and every monster in San Francisco.
