I’d admit it to myself, but no fucker else.
My past made me want to cosset and protect them. If that cosseting and protection also came with a side of blowjobs and cream pies, then that was no one’s business but mine.
Plus the lady I was banging.
In this instance, for the foreseeable, it’d be Camille.
The second she’d spread her legs for me, at any rate.
And yeah, she’d spread them. It was a question of when, not if. I wasn’t about to become celibate. Saving her from Abramovicz didn’t come for free. But I didn’t think she’d bitch about having to pay the price—not after what went down between us in the stables.
Most women would be squeamish about being with the guy who’d slept with her mother too, but that was the cruel reality of our world.
Survival meant more than polite niceties and societal dictates.
Protection meant even more than that, as well. I respected her for shoving that aside.
I liked an intelligent woman.
“You’re seriously not listening to me right now, are you? For fuck’s sake. This timing is so beyond bad—”
“Do you want a running commentary or something? Jesus. I’m listening, Forrest, I told ya.” I tipped my cellphone against my shoulder as I grabbed Camille’s arm, moving her back to my side in the line, and pointing at the desk when a space opened up.
She didn’t dislodge my grip on her arm even though she stared down at it a touch vacantly. When her gaze drifted to mine, there was a gleam in her eye, one that I neither distrusted or trusted, just that I was aware was strange.
Inessa was a peculiar girl—I knew that from the random things Eoghan had pointed out about her. But who the fuck was I to judge?
I killed people for a living.
Dealt drugs.
Hit people up for protection money.
What about that was normal?
But Inessa had certain ways about her, was all I meant. It made sense that Camille would too.
“You can let go,” she said softly, and though I knew I could because we were next in line for the clerk, and she had half a brain cell so could register that herself, I didn’t want to.
A plan that was months in the making boiled down to the visit to this office.
Twelve weeks that were loaded down with stress and tension, concerns about a fucking cabal that had limitless power, and yet, she’d always been at the forefront of my mind.
Guilt—it wasn’t often I felt it.
Wasn’t often I acted on it.
In this instance, I did for one reason. A reason that, a year ago, would have been crazy to me.
I was ready.
Keeping her safe, protecting her from her father and his Sovietnik, didn’t have to involve marriage, but I wanted a family. I wanted a wife. I wanted—fuck—what my youngest brothers had.
How was it that the babies of the goddamn family were the ones who’d settled down first?
I’d never been averse to the idea of getting married, but the bitches Da had shoved at me grated on my last nerve, and with the hours I toiled, with the dedication required for my position as the family’s fixer, I knew Da, even though he’d never forgiven me for Ma, granted me a surprising amount of leeway.
Heirs were all he’d been talking about for the last couple of years, though, and Seamus, Declan’s kid, had taken some of the slack off us all, but that was momentary.