Chapter Eleven
~Nikolai~
“Fluffy!”
“Fuck!” The bugbear slammed the hood closed on his fingers by accident and glared at the mini fiend perching behind the steering wheel of Bubbles. “How did you get in there?”
“Uh-unno?” Isabella shrugged. Nikolai took a moment to rein in the fury that licked up his spine.
After peeling his poor digits out from the mouth of Bubbles, he exhaled heavily.
The tiny terror giggled, smiling up at him.
That’s when he saw Barnibus buckled in beside her and he lost it.
Nikolai barked out a laugh, shaking from head to toe from giggles.
“You buckled in the platypus!” He wheezed.
“Safety first!” Isabella cheered, bouncing in the creaking seat as Nikolai approached.
“Yeah, yeah, safety first.” He rounded the driver side door and extended a hand. “I’ll put you on my shoulders if you release the platypus and come with me inside. Bet your moms back, huh?”
“Isabella—What…Dragon’s breath, is that Bubbles?”
Nikolai was going to kill Jessie. He pivoted slowly on the back of his heel to glare at the woman standing in the lawn.
She was grinning from ear to ear. I’m gonna bite his knot.
I’m gonna pop it like a pimple and have him howling in pain.
Katarina giggled, rushing up the last few inches of the lawn. “She’s so cute.”
“She’s not cute! She’s sexy—” Nikolai slapped a hand to his forehead as the words exploded out of his mouth.
“What’s sexy?” Isabella snickered, hopping out of the car with Barnibus in hand.
“A nice looking car.” Nikolai glanced at Katarina for guidance, but his teasing little succubus shrugged back at him in response with a nod. Yeah, alright.
Isabella slapped her little palm flat against the powder blue exterior of his Piston Armarillo with a cute hiss. “Sexy!”
“That’s a Piston Armarillo,” Katarina crouched beside her kid, tucking the frizzy strands of her hair back behind her pointed ears.
Nikolai let out an appreciative hum. She knows cars, add that to the ongoing list of reasons why I’m gonna…
He let that thought go while the little one was around.
Especially since he definitely said ‘fuck’ earlier.
To be fair, I dropped the hood on my fingers and the little terror snuck up on me!
Isabella nodded her head like she understood what Katarina said. “Pissin’ Armadillo.”
“Okay,” Nikolai huffed, rolling his eyes. “That’s enough mockery at my expense.”
“I’m not mocking you,” Katarina lied through her teeth while laughing.
“Uh-huh.” Nikolai snatched the child off the concrete block and put her up on his shoulders.
She got out of the car with the platypus like he asked, after all.
Katarina stalked around the side of the car, inspecting it.
He couldn’t help it, not as she crouched to look at the side panels he’d just installed the other day. “You like it?”
“Love it, you’ve done a good job restoring her. Well, I mean, from what I can see.”
“You into cars?” He stepped back away from his baby while Katarina peeked under the hood.
“Used to be, still sort of am. My dad was an engineer, so I grew up around a lot of his projects. Loved his cars, so naturally, so do I.” She let the hood close before she followed him back toward the house.
“Then why an accountant?”
“A girl can’t be good with numbers and a wrench?
” She snorted, hands on her hips. Nikolai ducked into the house, ensuring for maximum giggles from Isabella and also that he didn’t run the poor kid into the doorframe.
Then he bent all the way over and allowed her to tuck and roll off his shoulders.
Isabella sprang up onto her feet, rushing away with the platypus like it were able to fly.
When he glanced back at Katarina, she was closing the door, but her gaze was still out on Bubbles.
His ego grew at least ten times just seeing her smile at it.
It was a small one, nostalgia heavy in the way her lips curled, and head cocked an inch to the right.
Katarina sighed, “Accounting happened because I got a scholarship to school. Didn’t have the money to put me in anywhere else.
Then that degree got me an internship, and that internship got me… Gill?”
“Hmm.” Nikolai stepped up to the counter, checking on the slow cooking roast he put in when he got back. “And now?”
“Well…and now I’m divorced, no day job, a kid to depend on me, and a one word answering mechanic who named his baby car Bubbles—”
Nikolai whirled around to face her with narrowed eyes.
She smirked and continued, “Oh, and well, I should probably mention that in exchange for letting me use the shop to work on this S class Reaper I found collecting dust in the junkyard, I’m probably going to…
show Jessie what I showed you this morning. ”
“And what is that?” Nikolai purred, leaning his hip against the counter. His eyes hungrily roamed down her body as he could do nothing else with the tiny fiend running around with airplane Barnibus. “That you’re a hungry succubus?”
“A girl’s got needs, okay?” she retorted, flicking her hair off her shoulder for added emphasis.
One he enjoyed as she gave him her backside, twisting to the fridge.
His temptress even pulled open one of the lower drawers to grab a string cheese out, letting him ogle the backside he was very interested in spanking later that night.
Katarina stood up straight and unwrapped the snack with a sharp tug.
Nikolai’s cock throbbed suddenly in his pants.
She winked and hip checked the fridge shut.
“Anyway, if that’s going to be a problem, you’ll need to take it up with him. ”
“A problem?” He snorted, holding back as she called for Isabella.
The child in question zipped into the question, took the cheese with a kiss on the cheek from mom, before proceeding to fly Barnibus around the living room again.
But now with fuel for the airplane, or so Katarina called it.
When she turned to face him again, Nikolai pushed off the counter.
She walked backward into the kitchen wall, step for step as he stalked forward.
Resting his forearm over her head, towering over her, it brought him immense joy to see that flash of ruby in her eyes come back.
The same flash from the morning. “You think we can’t share? ”
“Can you?” she whispered softly, fingers walking up the front of his chest.
Nikolai chuckled darkly. Pressing his knee between hers still she was practically straddling his thigh, he arched a brow down at her.
“Oh, wicked thing, you’re in for a rude awakening,” he leaned down into her ear, whispering soft enough to elicit shivers, “Jessie and I share everything, even each other.”
“Good,” Katarina exhaled heavily. Her fingers curled around the front of his shirt. “Then this will be easy.”
“You say that now,” Nikolai chuckled as he slowly pulled back. “Wait till you find out about his knot.”
“His what?” She blinked rapidly.
“You’re about to be the most well-fed succubus in King’s Fall,” he winked, pulling away without a shred of shame.
Despite his rock-hard cock and the desire to feed her an early dinner snack, he couldn’t.
Nikolai bowed out to take a shower and clean up before Jessie got home.
He wanted to make sure he was squeaky clean and brushed out before their knotty minotaur got home.
“Ay! Look at you! So big and so strong! Ach—Uncle! Uncle!”
Nikolai snickered to himself at the sound of Jessie getting his ass handed to him by Isabella.
Ruffling his fur, he stood under their blow-dryer.
The most expensive thing they bought and installed into the townhouse.
I remember saying it better be worth it for the money and fucking effort we put into this fucker.
It was a separate knob in the shower that turned on the air.
It’s hard to dry three hundred pounds of fluff and muscle on a towel alone.
Nikolai made sure to knock the water out of his ears, shine up his tusks, and even applied deodorant just in case.
Then he left in a pair of sweatpants he had tied tight around his waist. He came downstairs to find things exactly as expected.
Jessie was cackling as Isabella used his horns like motorcycle handlebars, both he and Katarina at the dining room table.
“There ya are—ooooh! Look at you! So fluffy. So clean.” Jessie teased, ruffling Nikolai’s leg fluff as he sat down with a bowl of his own dinner. “Food’s superb, as always big guy.”
“Thanks,” Nikolai snorted, glancing up at Isabella. “Having fun?”
“Vroooooom!” Isabella made little motor sounds, feet kicking out to the side of Jessie’s head. Katarina sighed, looking up at her kid.
“She’s got you both wrapped around her finger.” Katarina beamed up at her kiddo who swayed happily from side to side on top of the minotaur’s head.
“She’s not the only one,” Jessie blurted out, garnering a ‘you’ve got a point’ finger waggled at him from Nikolai.
Katarina raised both her eyebrows at them, a smug look curling up on her face.
It looked so good on her as she finished her bowl.
Getting up from the table, she dunked her empty dishes in the sink, then returned to the tiny terror on Jessie’s head.
“Alright, Bug, bath time.”
“Jessie, Vroom—”
“Bug, Jessie’s eating.”
“Then bath wait.”
Nikolai tried not to snort into his food as Jessie climbed to his feet. “It’s all good. I can be a good motorcycle and get her to the tub, then you’ve got to hop off, okay, Bella?”
“Vroom! Vroom! Bath!”
Katarina’s shoulders trembled as she slapped her forehead, listening to the ridiculous pair zip off into the house. Nikolai leaned around her to watch Jessie climb the stairs slowly so that Isabella could rev the engine.
“He’s such a good dad,” Katarina whispered.
Nikolai nodded solemnly, not saying a word.
Not my place. Not my kid. But he couldn’t but help and wonder…
what if when Katarina got back up on her feet?
What would happen when she wasn’t in survival mode and starving?
When she looked at life clearly…would she stay?
Would she let Jessie spoil that little girl rotten?
It wasn’t like Nikolai was thinking about things past the present.
Sure, he was attracted to her, and dragon’s breath did he like her.
And sure, the kid was growing on him if only the little shit would stop jump scaring him when he worked on vehicles.
But thinking past the next day was dangerous.
Making plans, expecting more than the next day was a one-way ticket to pain.
He would know. He’d been pining for the floppy-eared, horned bastard currently making engine noises somewhere upstairs for years.
I’ve been in love with him practically our whole lives, and what’s that done?
Imagining a life with Jessie only made the ache in his chest greater.
So, he wasn’t going to do that with Katarina.
Because when she was ready to spread those pretty bat wings again, he wasn’t going to be the reason she was chained to the ground.
She deserved the chance to explore, to be, to exist…
she’d already spent so long chained to the wrong man.
So he’d count himself lucky that she was a hungry succubus with a cute kid while he could.
And when she inevitably found something better than an emotionally complicated mechanic and the mob boss he was in love with, then it wouldn’t hurt so bad.
It probably still will… He thought to himself about how much it’d still hurt as he watched her head upstairs, passing Jessie in the hallway with a flirty wink, and a smile.
Was it wrong to have gotten used to her presence so quickly? Was it wrong to like it?