r />
“Now!” His voice was like a clap of thunder, making her flinch.
Fuck this shit. I wasn’t going to let him scare her. She shouldn’t be getting upset. The doctor told us she needed to keep stress levels low, and she was shaking. Grasping her waist, I lifted her and placed her at the end of the bed. Standing, I faced her father.
“Don’t talk to her like that,” I snarled at him, taking a step in his direction. Mila wrapped her arms around me from behind, keeping me from getting closer.
“Please,” she sobbed. “Please don’t make him madder than he already is.”
“No one is going to talk to you like that,” I told her, covering her hands, my fingers stroking over her knuckles. “Ever.”
“You got guts, kid,” Masterson said in a calm voice, and I felt Mila tremble against me. I balled my hands into fists, ready to knock this asshole on his ass if he kept scaring her. “But they’re about to be spilled on the floor if you don’t get the hell out of my way so I can take my daughter home.”
Chapter 16
Mila
This was it. It was the end of Lyric.
He’d just told me he loved me, and now Dad was going to kill him. There would be no talking my way out of this. No twisting Dad around my finger to get what I wanted. I was too scared for the father of my babies to even try.
“She stays,” Lyric told Dad, not backing down. His voice was hard, full of just as much venom as Dad’s was. He wasn’t shaking in fear as he should have been doing.
The only thing that told me he was even affected by the sight of my dangerous father and his deadly knife was the pounding of his heart, which I could hear with my ear pressed up against his back. But I wasn’t sure if it was because of Dad or the thought of me leaving.
“Lyric,” I whispered his name. “Please.”
I didn’t want him to get hurt. The thought of Dad hurting him, or worse—killing him—made me sick to my stomach. I tried to breathe through my mouth to fight the nausea, but the world was starting to dim around the edges.
Panic began to choke me. “Lyric,” I cried his name, clutching at him.
He turned in my arms, his hands now trembling as he cupped my face. “Babe? Babe!” he shouted, but it sounded like it was coming from the end of a long tunnel. “Mila, fuck,” he groaned.
I felt him lift me and then the comfort of the mattress at my back. “Baby, the doctor said no stress,” he scolded gently, stroking my hair back from my face.
“What the hell is wrong with her?” Dad’s voice was full of concern now, having lost some of the menace.
When I turned my head, I saw him standing on the other side of the bed, his knife still in hand. “I’m okay,” I told him weakly.
“The fuck you are,” Dad half shouted. “Mila, I swear to God, you better tell me what’s wrong with you right now before I lose my shit.”
“Dad…”
“She’s pregnant,” Lyric snarled at him. “And she shouldn’t be stressed out. You’re waving a knife around and scaring the hell out of her. Her blood pressure dropped, and she nearly passed out. Now, either put the knife down and get me a wet washcloth out of the bathroom, or leave.”
To my utter surprise, the knife went into the holster on Dad’s belt, and he moved faster than I’d ever seen him move before as he disappeared into the connecting bathroom. Moments later, a cool cloth was pressed to my brow.
“Feeling better now, babe?” Lyric asked softly, stroking soothing swirls with his thumb on my wrist he was holding.
“I’m so tired,” I whined, hating how weak I felt.
“It’s okay. You can sleep,” he promised. “Just close your eyes. I’ll walk your dad out.”
“I’m not going anywhere without my daughter,” Dad said in a curt voice, and my head began to throb.
“Yes, you fucking are,” Lyric told him in a voice that was hard as stone. “You’ve already upset her enough. She’s not feeling well and needs to rest. You can come back tomorrow—if she’s feeling up to it.”
It felt surreal that he was going toe-to-toe with my dad. The father of my babies hadn’t backed down once to the man who’d had a gun pressed to his skull only minutes before. Did he not understand how deadly Spider Masterson was? Or did he just not care?