Page 29 of Seizing Control: Part Two

My sweet thing runs her tongue over her bottom lip. “Why Lazarus?”

“Because, sweet thing—” I offer her a salute and a sheepish grin. “—that’s my name. Lazarus Damon Abaddon. Says it on my driver’s licence and everything.”

“Lazarus.” Lily’s lips form around the word. The sight mesmerises me, but it’s the sound that cements the rightness of my choice to accept Gabriel’s offer. “Lazarus.”

Ezekiel Miles was weak.

A coward.

He tried to control everything around him in order to camouflage his many deficiencies.

As Lazarus Abaddon, I am powerful.

My defects are inconsequential because I have the might of the curia behind me. The areas where I lack are filled by a tailor-made team member. I have insurmountable wealth, technology, influence, and authority. God himself could come for my woman and our children, and I can parry his attack with ease. Even the Trinity, the commanders of the world, bow before the Adjudicator.

It's a weapon I will wield without hesitation.

For metukà shelì.

Only her.

Knowing that Lily isn’t privy to the changes in my standing, I scan her face for clues to her thoughts. She’s perusing me with an intensity I recognise. My woman is thinking. Weighing up options. Reading me like an open book. No one of earth knows me as well as she does. No one has ever accepted me as unconditionally. No one loves me as fiercely as my sweet thing.

The issue now is transferring that connection to the stranger standing before her.

I see the moment she makes her choice.

Lily is going to give me one last chance.

It’s up to me to prove worthy of her trust.

“Nice to meet you, Lazarus.” Her step is decisive when she moves closer to me and extends her hand. I hear the challenge she’s laying down for me when she offers in a steely tone, “I’m Lily Hudson.”

“Likewise, Lily...” After a heartbeat’s hesitation, I take hold of her hand and curl my fingers around hers. My handshake is firm, even as my smile dims when I say, “Hudson. It’s nice to meet you.”

I hate that she bears his name.

It’s an insult to the years we spent together.

She should be Lilianna Miles.

Lily Abaddon?

I smooth my thumb over her knuckles when it becomes clear that my sweet thing is loath to let me go. She responds to my touch by sinking her teeth into her bottom lip. The sight of the plump flesh straining beneath the pressure of her incisors makes me feral. I want to push her to her knees and make her choke on my cock. Every time she gags, my balls would draw up tighter, the punishment I mete out would cool my fury at her last new last name.

Hudson.

Fuck Slash.

He doesn’t own her.

He never will.

I’ll share her with him, but it will always be under duress.

She was mine first.

Forever will be...

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