Chapter 4
CHAPTER FOUR
fawn
I bolt upright, heart hammering like a wave crashing under the full moon. Naked and unnervingly well-rested, I press my palms to the mattress, dread coiling in my belly.
The babies!
What time is it?
Aren’t they hungry?
Have they been crying?
I scramble out of bed and dash into the adjoining nursery, where two cots nestle in a dim corner. Their sleeping forms ease the tension from my limbs.
Safe. Sound.
His perfect little heirs.
My sweet little boys.
Inhaling, steadying my breath, I place one hand on Luca’s cot and the other on Ash’s. I rock them both, tears pricking at the backs of my eyes as my love for them overflows.
This love… it is consuming.
The present slowly rolls in as I stare at them, watching them sleep peacefully. Luca wears a sleeping frown, even at six months—he is sharp, suspicious, and wise beyond his months. Ash, by contrast, sleeps with his mouth open in a blissful grin, as if he can’t believe he’s alive.
My mum used to say she could see colours around living things—auras. I can only guess my sons’ colours. A deep-red aura seems to cling to Luca, while Ash glows in bubbly blue.
Perhaps Luca will take after Clay, and Ash after me, but it’s far too soon to chart their personalities.
The world will shape them, twist and turn them, and I will try my hardest to keep anything bad from happening…
God, they are cute. I used to think that bad things come in threes—it was my mother’s talisman against chaos.
I think it was a way of gaining a kind of control over the terrible things.
Counting them. Expecting them. Accepting them.
Like maths… or… or something. But bad events aren’t neat. Neither are the good ones. Life doesn’t parcel out tragedy and joy in sets; it spills them into being without order. They are unpredictable.
Good things.
In-between things.
Bad things.
I should know; I’ve had my unfair share of terrible things: my mother shot herself, my foster mother despised me, I was raped—and no one believed me until… Sir.
I sigh.
Clay Butcher.
The devil’s prototype.
“You slept well, sweet girl.” A deep rumbling voice rolls into the nursery from the room behind me.
I turn around. In the doorway, is the most impressive man ever to exist, even with the perfectly placed slashes of silver around his ears. It’s as if the devil painted them by hand—meticulous, evenly spaced— nothing but aging perfection for Clay Butcher.
Actually, the grey hairs are hot-as-fuck.
More, please.
On the chest.
Along his jaw.
Kudos, Satan.
He leans against the doorframe, faded denim riding low on his hips, no shirt to hide the intricate tattoos that wind across muscles carved with sin.
My body responds before my mind can catch up—goosebumps rising on bare skin, liquid heat gathering between my thighs. I shift my weight from one foot to the other, hyperaware of my nakedness.
His blue eyes travel down to my trembling knees, then climb back up my body with such deliberate slowness that I almost feel them branding me. Even after all this time, one look from him leaves me defenceless.
“You’re blushing on your thighs, sweet girl.”
Ignoring the way his stare licks my skin, I try to remain collected and mature—a mother first, his needy little deer second. I swallow as butterflies swoop through my belly.
“The boys are still asleep. They usually wake up at least twice. Who fed them last night?” I ask breathily. Did I sleep through their cries? Did someone else come in here while I was lost in dreamland?
It’s my job.
“Last night you were restless.” He steps out of the doorway and nods at the entrance, silently ordering me back to the bedroom so we can talk. “You needed your sleep, little deer. I fed my boys with a bottle.”
But it’s my job.
Strolling from the room, I twirl my hair around my finger.
Being the mother of Clay Butcher’s children is my greatest accomplishment.
It’s all I can do for him. It’s my part in this…
in his life. In his empire. Without it, he won’t see value in me.
I’m nothing like the cruel but sophisticated woman who raised him or the powerful Mafia princess who is now his ex-wife.
I can be a mother—I can stitch my concept of that together, pieces from my real mother, crumbs from my foster mother, dos-don’ts, perhapses and perhaps nots, and be a mother. A good one, if I can.
I look down at the engagement ring on my finger, at the huge blue diamond that matches my right eye. His promise for forever. Our wedding is in four months, and I wonder what the Cosa Nostra will think of his silly little bride.
Doubt and insecurity gnaw at me.
If I can show them I’m an amazing mother, that I find my accomplishments in keeping his house and raising perfect children, I can make myself worthy in their eyes.
“I should’ve woken up—” I whisper to myself, but Sir’s hearing is predatory, just like him, and he catches the words before they can flee back into a swallow.
“Little deer,” he purrs.
I spin to face him. He has followed me into the bedroom, closed the nursery door, and is standing, arms folded, the picture of relaxed dominance.
Ugh, he’s gorgeous.
“This is an enormous responsibility for my sweet girl, and you are taking it so seriously. I’m not taking that from you, but—” He walks to me and wraps his hand around my throat, using his thumb to lift my chin.
“You are still my responsibility, always. Mine. You belong to me. And I need you to sleep.”
My lower lip wobbles. “It’s my job, Sir. They need me. They need… their mother. I am their mother.”
“Oh, sweet girl.”
I bury my face in his warm chest and rub my nose against his flesh, inhaling that whiskey, sweet cigar musk that is exclusively Clay Butcher. He knows. He knows everything. He knows me. I’m being dramatic, but I can’t help it.
No one needs me. No one has ever needed me. I made them. I feed them from my body. I’ve existed in the world of state-assigned beds, siblings that hurt you, mothers who take a cheque to care for you. Of course, I have to take this seriously.
I just have to.
I can feel the pressure of Clay’s affection everywhere as he scoops me into his arms and walks me to the bed. “You have your period, sweet girl. You’re extra emotional.”
Clinging to him like a koala, I realise I am feeling overly emotional, and silly and eccentric. Ugh. My period.
He crawls onto the bed, placing me—in a single, beautifully possessive movement—beneath him on the mattress. Grabbing my wrists, he pins them above my head with one hand. Then his mouth crashes down on my throat before I can even gasp.
God, he’s dominant.
Not slow and steady, but dark and ravenous. He tastes me, tongue warm and strong and his weight… His weight pulls a memory loose within me, a vivid but lost at the edges recall finding its way through my foggy mind of insecurities.
“Wait…” I moan as his tongue drags along my neck, kissing and licking—demanding. “You fucked me in my sleep last night, Sir.”
He chuckles, low and dark, the sound rumbling against my throat. He squeezes my wrists, mounting me further, covering me with the full, relentless span of his body.
“Clever girl,” he rumbles. “Would you like another pretty orgasm? One to remember?”
I moan again. The sound is embarrassingly wanton. “Yes, please, Sir.”
He lets go of my wrists, but I don’t move them. I lay still, trembling, as he leans back on his knees and begins to unbutton his jeans, slow and deliberate, never breaking eye contact nor softening his intent with a smile.
He slides out of his pants, and the sight of his cock—long, hard, covered in pretty blue veins—makes my thighs tremble and my pussy clench around… a tampon.
Did he?
“You have such lovely manners,” he murmurs, voice thick with lust. “Such a lovely tight body. You walk around, flashing me those legs and that arse.” He tsks. “Mine.”
He bends to kiss lines up and down my throat, then across my collarbone.
I arch my back with a whimper. This is Clay Butcher on the weekend.
This is my everything on a Saturday, after a shoot in his underground range, and an espresso, when he is the closest to being normal—not the Don of the Cosa Nostra, or the devil’s prototype, but a man.
My hands ache to clutch at his hair, but I hold them obediently above my head.
All the voices—my mother’s, the police who didn’t believe me, my foster brothers who used me, the old wounds—are silent in this moment. There is only him, the heat of his skin and the way he can soothe me with his touch.
He crawls down my body. When he pushes my knees further apart, I feel the cool air tickling between my legs. He brings his mouth to that special place, and I squirm, my hands landing on his head, gripping his hair. I try to tug him away from my entrance. “Sir! My period.”
He doesn’t stop. “Your clit is not bleeding, sweet girl,” he says, licking the tiny bundle of nerves. “Do not stop me from touching what is mine.”
The sound he makes as he sucks me is the most erotic noise I’ve ever heard—a rumble from his core, a snarl from his throat. “Christ,” he murmurs.
My clit buzzes with sensation.
I drop my head back to the pillow and obey, gently fondling his hair, letting this man do what he wants with my body. Always. Forever. I will do anything for him. I feel his warm fingers at my entrance and then the sensation of my tampon being pulled out.
I blush immediately.
“Good girl. That is trust. I demand it always. You sometimes forget.” He crawls over me; his hands slide along my sides before taking hold of my wrists and pinning them above my head again.
He holds himself up, staring down at me, and then he is inside me—not slow, not gentle—but with a certainty that makes my throat close.
“Mine!”
I gasp, tears spilling from my eyes, not from pain but from ecstasy. The ecstasy of being so entirely filled, so completely seen and cared for—understood.
He thrusts in and out with fierce intensity, braced above me, taking me hard and fast. I surrender to each forceful drive that sends me jolting up the mattress.
Everything dissolves into pleasure—my insecurities, the world’s bad math, all my counting of threes, drown in the sight and feel of being fucked so thoroughly by this man. It all drowns in his pressure, his rhythm, the sound of his breathing and the force of his need.
Abruptly, he pulls his cock from inside me, rolls me onto my front, and hauls my hips back until I am on all-fours, exposed and helpless.
I gasp, trying to find purchase.
He presses his hand between my shoulders, forcing my chest into the sheets. I can’t see him, but I feel him. Feel every supreme atom—his body, his hunger, his power, his love—collide into the centre of me when he enters me again.
He leans over, his lips brushing my ear. “When you doubt yourself, little deer. You doubt me.”
I shake my head into the pillow. “No, Sir. I trust you. With everything. I do.”
“But you don’t,” he growls, fucking me hard. I gasp and moan, my breath catching in time with every thrust. “By doubting yourself, you doubt my decisions. I chose you. To be my wife. To be the mother of my children. To be my fucking air and breath! Do not doubt me.”
I clench my teeth. “Yes, Sir.”
He angles his hips lower, taking my pleasure from simmering to thundering intensity. My entire body shudders, nerves singing and screaming at the same time. Where there is pleasure and surrender, there is also an edge of pain teeming out of reach—an erotic threat.
I come hard and long, my pussy muscles rippling around his cock, causing him to thicken and spill inside me.
“Fuck,” he bites out.
And he’s right. He’s always right—doubting myself is doubting him. I sob into the pillow, and he growls in approval, the sound shaking through my spine and into my chest.
He slows, then stops, breathing hard.
Fuck. I’m still shaking, face buried in the pillow. He slides out and flips me over, gathering me in his arms. For a long moment, he holds me so tight I can barely breathe. I feel the wetness of his lips on my temple, the press of his chest against my ribs, the wild gallop of his heart.
“Good girl,” he says, and those two words are everything. “I love you. Whether you miss a feed or sleep in, you’re the right girl to raise my children.” He holds me as I come down from that lesson. “You’re the perfect choice.”