I was having a hard time picturing sweet Andi scolding a fucking cartel leader, but if she were going to do something like that, I could see it being about the right way to raise your pets.
“If you’re worried, we don’t have to bring Andi.”
“Worried?” Niro scoffed. “Nah, man. Andi is as safe there as she is at the clubhouse. The two of them have become friends since all that shit went down a while back. He texts her in the middle of the night if one of the dogs is throwing up or looks like they hurt something. Trust me, A wouldn’t do anything to fuck up his twenty-four-hour vet services.”
“Hey, he happens to just like me too,” Andi grumbled.
“Who doesn’t?” Niro shot back, and I could hear a little squeal from Andi as Niro must have grabbed or tickled her. “So what time?”
“Seven?”
“Want us to meet you there?”
“That works,” I agreed.
“Alright. It’s a plan.”
Before I could even thank him, he ended the call.
“So?” Abigail asked as I walked back into the room.
She was standing at the sink in the bathroom. She must have stretched out the neck of her top while sleeping, because it had slipped down to expose her shoulder.
I didn’t even pretend to resist the urge to walk up behind her and press my lips there, feeling the way she almost immediately melted at the soft touch.
“So, we have more company tonight than planned.”
“We?” she asked, and I watched as her reflection brightened.
“Yep, we. And you get to meet another princess. Niro’s woman.”
“Andi,” Abigail recalled. “The vet.”
“Right,” I agreed. “Long story short, a while back, A kidnapped Andi off the street because he thought she was a doctor. She was wearing scrubs,” I explained when her brows pinched. “And he made her pull the bullet out of one of his men. There was some other shit that went down, but at the end of it all, Andi and A kind of walked away with a friendship of sorts. Niro said that if I was worried—and I am—,” I added, giving her a firm look in the mirror that had her head falling back on my shoulder as a small smile toyed at her lips, “that they would come with.”
“Thank you,” she said, reaching down to grab my arm, wrapping it around her stomach, then giving said arm a squeeze with both of hers.
“Are you always going to be stubborn about this kind of shit?” I teased.
“Maybe,” she said, smiling at my reflection. “You’re just going to have to grow to like that about me.”
“Love, can’t think of a fucking thing I don’t like about you,” I told her.
At that, her gaze fell from mine.
“Hey, what?” I asked.
“It’s just… I’m not the same girl,” she told me, talking to her feet. “I know that you really liked the version of me that wrote you. But she was very different from who I am now. And I don’t want you to go into… this… expecting me to be exactly like that.”
“Listen to me, that girl was sweet and kind and loving and giving. From what I’m seeing, you’re still all those things. Maybe time and life has given you some scars, some bruises that I need to be careful not to press, but who you are at your core? That’s the same woman, Abs. Don’t let that fucker win by making you think you have somehow become less than that.”
“He’s not going to win,” Abigail insisted, her determined gaze meeting mine.
“No,” I agreed. “He’s not.”
“How long do we have until the delivery people get to the apartment?” Abigail asked as my fingers found the sliver of skin between where her shorts and her shirt met, teasing across it, feeling the shiver that moved through her at the barely-there touch.
“Long enough,” I said, smirking at her in the mirror as my hand suddenly plunged down into her shorts and panties, stroking up her pussy that was already getting wet for me.
I wasn’t lying when I said I fantasized about her all those long, lonely nights when I was locked up.
That said, a part of me didn’t think I would ever get to act out on those feelings.
Hell, I didn’t even fully understand how I could have those feelings when I hadn’t even seen the woman I’d been corresponding with for so long. I didn’t understand the concept of having a sort of physical attraction to someone I’d never physically seen. It didn’t make sense.
And after a while of being out, I just chalked it up to being so long without a woman.
But getting to finally meet her, realizing she was even more beautiful than I’d have let myself dream, and that she not only wanted to be around me, but wanted me too?
It seemed too good to be true.
Hell, it felt too good to be true.