Page 69 of Pay the Price

Chapter 41

Neo

“Why the fuck did we agree to this again?” I asked, nuzzling Willa’s neck.

She was on my lap in the kitchen. wearing the tiny shorts and tank tops she wore around the house now that it was summer. She was almost five months pregnant and her tits were as luscious as perfectly ripe peaches.

She squirmed as I slid my hand under the tank top to fondle one of her nipples.

“Because they asked,” Drago said. “And we’re not assholes.”

“I thought we were assholes,” Rock said from the kitchen island where he was carefully constructing some kind of appetizer made out of eggplant and mozzarella.

“Okay,” Drago said, “sometimes we’re assholes, but it doesn’t have to be that way.”

“Why would we want it any other way?” I shifted because I was getting hard with Willa’s tit in my hand, her ass creating friction on my dick when she squirmed.

“We’ve been holed up here alone for months.” Rock straightened and looked meaningfully at Willa. “Maybe it’ll be good to have some company.”

“I don’t need company,” I said.

Drago sighed. “Maybe Willa would like some company, ever think of that?”

Now I got what they were saying: they thought Willa might be lonely. Aventine's campus was a ghost town, all of Willa’s closest friends home or abroad or in the Caribbean for summer vacation.

“Seems like Willa’s pretty happy to me,” I said, sliding my hand over her slightly rounded stomach and under the waistband of her shorts. I slipped my fingers over her mound and into her pussy. She was soaked. “In fact, I can guarantee it.”

“I’m pretty happy,” Willa said. “But company will be nice.”

She moved on my fingers, just tiny movements, like it wasn’t obvious what we were doing when Rock was right there making food and Drago was two seats away at the island.

“Jesus fuck,” Rock said. “Knock that shit off or I’m never going to get this food prepped.”

“See?” I said, circling Willa’s clit with my thumb. “We shouldn’t have agreed to company.”

“Daisy’s in a tough spot with the Beasts,” Drago said, his eyes on my hand in Daisy’s shorts. “Wolf thought she could use someone to talk to. Plus, they haven’t gotten the pool in up at the house and it’s going to be hotter than hell today.”

“How is any of that our problem?” I asked.

I didn’t give two fucks that our life with Willa was insulated. We had everything we needed here, and one week slid into the next in a haze of food and sex and movies and bad TV and cuddling (which I would go to my grave denying I enjoyed).

Why the fuck would we need anything else?

Most weeks we only left for groceries. I was more than okay with it, although Rock had been pushing the idea of something called a babymoon for Willa, which apparently was some kind of last-hurrah vacay you took before you had a baby.

Willa removed my hand. “That’s enough of that. I amnotgoing to come in the kitchen while we talk about Daisy and the Beasts.”

She turned her green eyes on me, and for a second, I forgot about everything else. That was how it was when Willa looked at me — like the world stopped, like everything else fell away, even all the bad shit I’d been sure would cling to me forever.

“Our baby is going to need other people,” Willa said. “Community.”

“Community?” I scowled. “Why? They’ll have us.”

We still didn’t know whether the baby was a boy or a girl — Willa wanted it that way — and honestly I didn’t care. If it was a boy, we’d make sure he knew we loved him, make sure he didn’t grow up scared or thinking he was a piece of shit, that he knew how to treat women right.

How to protect them. How to love them, something I was just learning.

Something Willa was teaching me.

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