Page 63 of A Worthy Opponent
She moves her hands to tangle in my hair, and that’s all the encouragement I need to stroke up her thighs to her hips and ass, squeezing and urging her to move. Then there is no more need for words. We’ve said all there is to say; we’re both content to let our bodies continue the conversation.
She rides me slowly and kisses me like she’ll never get enough. That makes two of us. I can’t touch her enough, can’t keep my hands still. I want everything. Fuckingeverything.
When Tink comes, she does it with my name on her lips, a soft moan that I drink down like the best kind of whiskey. I want to hang on, to make this last, but she feels too good, and this is too important. Pleasure shoots down my spine, and then it’s too late to worry about anything but the orgasm turning me wild, pounding into her from below with a single-mindedness I can’t shake. I don’t bother to try.
We lay tangled together as our heartbeats return to a normal pace. “Stay with me. Stay married to me.”
She gives a little laugh. “Most people would hear ‘I love you’ and start making assumptions.”
Most people don’t know Tink as well as I do. “Stay with me,” I repeat. I cuddle her closer and play my last card. “Marry me again. Big church wedding and all that shit. Spend a couple years solidifying our power structure in this place, getting us as far out of the criminal shit as we can manage.” I pause, all too aware that she hasn’t taken a breath since I started talking. I should leave it at that. It’s a lot to dump on her all at once, but hope is a treacherous and slippery slope. “Have a family with me. Make ahomewith me.”
She exhales slowly. Carefully. “It’s really shitty of you to start dangling that kind of thing in front of me. We don’t even know if we’re going to survive the next week.”
“Yes, we do. We’re going to remove that bastard, and we’re going to win.” If I say it enough times, it will be true. We will win tomorrow without any losses. We will embark on a future together that I want more than I’ve wanted anything in my life.
“Jameson.”
Every time she says my name, it’s like she’s reaching right into my chest and giving my heart a squeeze. “I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t mean it.”
“I know.” She lifts her head enough to give me a ghost of a smile. The fact I can see her expression more clearly now means the moon has once again fled the sun. Dawn isn’t quite here, but it’s close.
She reaches up and runs her fingers through my hair. “Wanting a family is what got me into this mess to begin with.”
“No,Peteris what got you into this mess.” I make a face. “Well, Peter, then Hades, and now me. He used your hope against you.”
“And you aren’t?”
The comment stings, but it’s a fair question. I shift her closer, enjoying the way she fits against me. “You know who my father was.”
She blinks, obviously thrown by what appears to be a change in subject. “Only in passing. He was one of Peter’s generals. Peter kept me away from most everyone.”
“He was about what you’d expect.” Not as bad as some. If there’s a ranking of shitty parents, Hugh Hook lands somewhere in the middle. He only roughed me up a handful of times and was usually just a sloppy drunk, not a mean one. But he ran my mother out of town at some point when I was young enough to only have flashes of memories, and he ensured that the apartment we lived in, no matter how nice, was littered in figurative eggshells I had to navigate whenever he was home and conscious.
Tink frowns. “You mean he wasn’t winning any father of the year awards.”
“No. Not by any stretch of the imagination.” I don’t bother to try for a smile. I’m not trying to charm her. I’m dead fucking serious about this. “I want a home, Tink. You know what I mean when I say that. A real home, not just a nice fucking place to sleep. I have my cousins and the people who have become family over the last few years, but I want afamily.”
Her lip quivers the tiniest bit. “You know there’s no guarantee I can pop out a few kids. That’s not always how the world works.”
The fact she’s arguing this means she wants it just as much as I do. She’s just afraid to grab it with both hands, and with good reason. She’s been slapped down so many times over the years. Tink deserves a win. That’s not always howthe world works, but it’s howourworld is going to work. “I want you, beautiful girl. Iloveyou. The rest will fall into place as it’s supposed to, regardless of what form that takes. Maybe we work on getting you pregnant and, as you said, popping out a few kids. Maybe we adopt. Maybe we change our minds about kids and get a small pack of dogs instead. The only rules are the ones we make.”
“Just like that.”
“Just like that.”
She frowns harder and finally sighs. “Can we talk about this after we get through the next hurdle? I don’t think I’m superstitious, but I’m about to find some salt to throw over my shoulder or something because I don’t want to jinx us.” She shifts against me and rests her head on my chest. “I’m afraid to want what you’re offering.”
“I know.” I press a kiss to the top of her head. “But you’re right. We’ll talk about it when the future is cleared of this last barricade.” Of Peter. His death won’t magically fix all the issues in this territory, but it will remove the leader the dissenting voices are trying to rally behind. Without Peter pushing things forward, I’ll have time to actually fix things here. Our operations will never go completely clean. Even with all the money in the world, if we go completely legit, someone else will try to move in. Finding the right balance is a challenge I can’t think too hard about because there’s still so much to be done to get us to that point.
“Jameson?”
“Yeah?”
“Thank you for tonight. It doesn’t magically make the pain go away, but it was exactly the distraction I needed.”
“Anything for you.”
I hold her as her breathing evens out, nearly matching Gaeton’s on the other side of her. In the morning, the big man will be off to fight his own battles, but he sleeps in thesafety of my bed now because itissafe. If we ever go to war with—Well, it’s not the Man in Black’s territory anymore. I suspect it will pass to his eldest daughter, Cordelia.
