7. Adam
Seven
Adam
I wake up hard as a fucking rock with my woman’s perfect arse pressed against my cock.
Christ.
I dinnae open my eyes for a minute. I just lie there in the dark with her tucked against me…back to chest, hip to hip, her thick thigh hooked over mine somewhere in the night…and I let myself enjoy it.
I have been a mean bastard my whole life and last night I went down on her against a wall like a man who’d earned it, and now her glorious arse is warm in my lap and her breath is slow and even against the pillow and her little hand is curled around my forearm where I have it laid across her soft belly.
I have not been this still since I was a wee boy.
I grin into the darkness.
Look at ye, lad. Look at the fucking life of ye.
She shifts. A soft, sleepy sound at the back of her throat. Her juicy arse pushes back into me and my cock jumps against the cotton of my boxers and I have to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from groaning out loud.
Down, Maksimov. Have some fucking dignity.
I have none. The Mad Scot of Edinburgh, the man who put two of our enemies’ enforcers in a cooler last month with a wee note, has none. He is lying in a falling-down house in Halo City with a hard-on for a woman whose name he has known for sixteen hours, and he is grinning about it.
I open my eyes.
The room is grey-blue, dawn coming up slow behind the curtain. My shit is spread out on the nightstand. A wee altar to the day I had yesterday. On her side of the bed, the lamp is still on. She fell asleep with it on. I left it because I did not want her waking up in a dark room with a strange man.
She breathes against my forearm.
I bring my eyes to her face, slow, like I dinnae want to scare my heart.
Her cheek on the pillow. Her mouth parted.
There’s still a small crease between her brows that hasnae softened, even now, even here , and I want to put my mouth on it and kiss it away, but I won’t.
Not yet. Let her have her rest. The lass has been sleeping with one eye open for fuck knows how long, and last night she finally went under in my arms and I am not the cunt who interrupts that.
So I lie still. Cock pulsing. Grin still on my face. Looking at her.
Mine.
The thought is so quiet and so settled it doesnae even feel like a thought. It feels like plain, simple truth. Fact.
Aye. Mine.
The crease between her brows softens a touch. Like she heard me think it.
I want to put a fucking baby in her.
The thought comes to me fully formed, and I let it sit.
There is no part of my brain that argues with it.
The Mad Scot is settled on the matter. He’d put one in her right now if she were awake and willing, and he is currently rearranging his entire life around the question of how soon he gets to begin.
Then a fucking cat walks in. Just like that. The bedroom door is shut. The cat does not give a fuck. It’s grey, with half an ear missing on its left side, scrawny in the way old rescue cats are, and it’s materialized at the foot of the bed like it fucking owns the place.
It looks at me. I look at it. It looks at Lisa. Then it looks at me again. Slow. Judging. With the look of a creature that has run this house since before I existed and is now considering whether to let me in.
“Aye,” I murmur, low and quiet. “I’m Adam.”
The cat blinks. Slow. Like a monarch acknowledging a peasant. Then it jumps on the bed, walks across the comforter and curls up against Lisa’s thigh, exactly where my hand wants to be.
Fucker’s faster than me.
Lisa doesnae stir.
I keep my eyes on the animal for a second. It returns my cautious look. Truce, apparently, is declared.
I peel myself out of bed, silently chuckling.
Slow. One vertebra at a time. My arm comes out from under her in stages.
My hand slides off her belly an inch at a time.
She sighs, rolls deeper into the pillow, and settles.
The cat watches me like I am the worst thing it has ever seen.
And I wink at it, grinning. I tuck the comforter up around Lisa’s shoulder.
I pull a pair of sweats from my duffel, cross to the door, and look back.
Lisa is in the centre of the bed, the cat curled where my hand was.
Christ Almighty. Look at the household I started.
I shake my head, grinning like a damn fool.
I close the door behind me quietly.
The kitchen, in daylight, is worse than I thought.
I knew last night that the house was a shitehole.
I knew it from the porch. But the kitchen tells a different story than the foyer…
the foyer’s just neglected, the kitchen is worked in .
There’s a laptop on a table in the corner, next to it a notepad covered in tight, neat handwriting: Mrs. Reyes …
Q3 written across the top. Two mugs holding down paperwork. A pencil with the eraser chewed off.
She’s doing someone’s books at her kitchen table.
Aye, that’ll be sorted.
I dinnae touch any of it. I’m not the kind of cunt who paws through a woman’s papers in her own house.
The kettle’s an old plastic thing with a chip in the handle, the coffee is instant, the fridge mostly empty…
milk, a quarter of a stick of butter, two eggs, a wee tub of what looks like leftover pasta.
The freezer has a bag of frozen broccoli and a half-eaten tub of ice cream.
Christ. These women have been eating fucking nothing.
I fill the kettle and lean against the counter while it heats.
The morning is starting to come in through the windows, and the back garden looks like nobody’s cut it in forever. Tall grass bending in the breeze. A shed at the far end, leaning sideways. An empty bird feeder, hanging from a tree at an angle.
I make a list in my head while I wait for the water to boil.
Locks. Today. Every exterior door, deadbolts on every window on the ground floor, biometrics on the front and back. By sundown at the latest.
Gate. Today. The motor’s fucked and the lock’s a joke.
AC. Today. They’ve been sleeping in a swamp. Triple-rate to whoever can get a unit installed before lunch.
Two lads on the property by noon. Quiet ones. Sitting in cars, not making themselves known. Watching gate and approach. Eyes on until the cameras are up.
Cameras by Friday.
The kettle clicks.
I make two cups. Mine black, instant is fine.
Hers I leave on the counter beside the milk and the sugar because I dinnae know yet how she takes it, and I want to know.
I want to watch her come down the stairs, walk to the counter and make her coffee the way she likes, so I can do it for her every morning for the rest of her life.
I take mine to the window and drink it standing.
I’ll be at the docks by ten. Walk in, plant the flag, let Halo City know the Mad Scot has arrived. Today is announcement day. But I’m not in the mood for action yet. I’m in the mood for coffee in my woman’s kitchen, and a list of things to fix.
Ray’s men can wait.
Aye. I have their names, their addresses.
I know which ones drove away the morning the man died and which ones came back to skim what they could from the wreck.
I’ll be having conversations with the lot of them, conversations I am looking forward to…
But for now they get to live in the purgatory of the Maksimovs are in town and they have not come for me yet .
Enjoy it, cunts.
I take my phone out and ring Kostya.
He picks up on the second ring, sounding like he’s been up since four. Of course he has. The man does nae sleep.
“Boss.” He’s probably already in a car. “You good?”
“Best fucking night of my life. Listen.”
A short laugh on the other end. “Aye.”
“I want the house sorted today. All of it. Locks on every door and window. Biometrics on the front and back. Gate gear replaced. We need a gate that actually fucking closes. AC unit installed and working. Two of the lads on the property by noon. Roman and Mish.”
I pause, giving him time to build the list.
“Cameras?”
“By Friday. Not today. Today is locks, gate, AC, men.”
“Anything else?”
“The grass needs cutting. Next week, I dinnae care.”
“Got it.”
“I’ll be at the docks by ten. And I’m sending you a list of shite I want delivered here now.”
I hang up and drink the rest of my coffee. The cat appears in the kitchen doorway, sits and starts cleaning a paw.
“Aye, I see ye, mate.”
It completely ignores me.
I rinse my mug and set it upside down on the dish rack.
Then I feel it.
The air changes. I dinnae know how I can feel it from down here. I have no fucking idea. But the frequency of the house has changed, and somewhere two floors above me my woman has opened her eyes, and the Mad Scot’s whole nervous system knows .
I grin at the kettle.
Right then.
She’s awake.