Page 206 of Making Choices

Clinging to him, I take every hard, staccato thrust as he finishes inside me.

“Fuckin’ hell,” Zeke mutters. He groans as he pumps his hips through the final vestiges of his release. “Every time I’m inside you, I lose all reason.”

Slumped over him like a blanket, I fight to regain my breath. Beneath me, Zeke shudders, then he gathers me in his embrace and presses our bodies together so tightly that it hurts. Connected by his still-hard cock, I’m content to remain like this forever, but all too soon, reality intrudes and my man puts an end to our brief interlude from our problems.

“Here.” He pushes me back to my feet and passes me the jumper I stripped off him. I take it, but I don’t pull it over my head until he scowls at me. “Wear these too.”

When I accept his sweatpants, the atmosphere in the room changes.

The frost that greeted me when I arrived returns.

I peer at him with pleading eyes.

Zeke refuses to return my perusal.

He’s shut down.

“It’s time to go, Lily.”

“No, not yet.”

Without another word, he strides past me dressed in his briefs and t-shirt, and bangs on the door three times. I hear the guards walking down the corridor so I pull the sweatpants on quickly. When I move to grab my tattered dress, Zeke stops me. He scoops it from the floor and holds it out of my reach.

After the door is wrenched open, Gabriel steps inside.

The three guards accompanying him look everywhere but at me.

“Ready, Cherub?” The man I now know as the Adjudicator holds his hand out to me. In this moment, none of the violence that surrounds his legend is present. Instead, the man who’s mentored me for the past few years is obviously sympathetic as he urges me forward. “We have another meetin’ to get to—the consequences of missin’ it are more than either you are willin’ to pay.”

I look at Zeke.

His knuckles whiten as he stares at the floor.

“Please bring my heart back.”

His response is immediate. “Promise.”

Knowing that this is the last time I’ll see Zeke for a long while, I take my time and really soak him in. He’s going to plead guilty, no matter what I say, and he’ll slam the window shut on visitation too. That’s just the kind of man he is. Maybe if I hadn’t told him about the baby clause, he’d allow me to see him every now and then, but I’m aware that he won’t cope with the sight of me carrying Slash’s child.

It’ll kill his love for me.

So, instead of arguing the point, I leave the man who’s owned my heart for as long as I can remember, standing half-naked in a prison meeting room with the dress I wore to marry another man clutched to his chest.

I don’t know how this is my life.

What I do know is that my faithless father is to blame.

And he needs to die for his crimes.

41

SLASH

“Where is your bride?” Roman Segarra enquires for the second time in ten minutes. I straighten my tie, and glance at the door to the antechamber where we’ve been waiting for Cherub to arrive for the past half hour. “Waiting isn’t one of my limited virtues. She has five minutes to arrive before the deal is off.”

Checking my phone, I discover that my last message to Gabriel has gone unanswered.

“She’ll be here,” I reply as steadily as I can.

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