With happiness.
Fear.
Happiness.
Fear.
Rivulets of tears clog my vision, but I can still see the moment Clay Butcher finally looks at the cylinder.
His brows pinch.
And I can’t. I cover my face, unable to handle the throes of what all this means, the gravity and responsibility, the excitement and belonging, of growing his—HIS—fucking Clay Butcher’s baby insidemywomb.
I can’t.
What if I lose it.
Oh God.
I’m having his baby.
Clay Butcher’s baby—
Clay.
Butcher’s.
Baby.
He is on his knees in front of me now. Warm hands pull mine from smothering my face. “Do not cover your face for any man. Do not cover your face foranyone.You are my queen. Chin high, sweet girl.” Holding my trembling hands in his, he stares at me. Inches from me. On the floor of this toilet. His eyes are shiny, intense, reaching inside my gaze to find my soul and hold it with authority and care. “Thank you for giving me this gift, sweet girl,” he says in a meaningful, deep timbre that is raw with severity. “I am going to devote my life to the children you make for me.”
I slowly shake my head, staring at my small hands protected in his large ones. Blinking at them, the tears rolling out with each bat of my lashes, I remember the first time I saw his hands. Remember how I considered all the men he had probably killed with them… Now, today, I visualise the way they will look so big, gently cradling a little baby.
“What if they ruin your life, Sir?” I peer up from his hands and meet the most striking clear-blue eyes. “What if you hate being a dad?”
“Impossible.” He lifts my chin. “You are my air, little deer. So any part of you is the reason I breathe.”
And I have my second good thing.
Clay Butcher: number one.
His heir: number two.
CHAPTERTWENTY-NINE
clay
There have beenmany memorable moments in my life, events that changed the very fibres of me. That constructed Clay Butcher. The reasons I act. Behave. Work. My first kill and my mother’s reaction to it… changed me—hardened me.
And now this…
My little heirs.
This will forever mould me. Soften me. I can already feel it. I won’t be the man I was yesterday, as now I have more to lose, more to die for, more to smile for.
I stare at stunned, emotion-ridden, dual-coloured eyes as beads of tears blink through blonde lashes. She is my everything. Love happened quietly for me, and like most emotions, it brewed against my will. There is—was—no place for sentiment in my life… but I feel it anyway. A building upsurge, then just like a wave, it crashes. Now, I’m below the emotion of it all, surrounded by it as its current controls my every muscle, my every thought and motivation.
It is all her.