Page 39 of Dirty Empire

I can’t put into words everything I have been thinking about, but I could show her. I stare at her long and hard. The ball is in her court. I’d acted like an asshole when she told me she was pregnant. I should have been her biggest cheerleader and telling her that it was okay, and we would figure things out together. Instead, I had pulled away, and I will spend the rest of my life, making that up to her if she lets me. I wanted to let her make the move.

“Come,” I encourage. She grabs my hand, and we walk to the upstairs bedroom. I grab her around the waist and fondle her breasts on the way up the stairs before picking her up on the last few steps, and she gasps. I don't set her back down to her feet until we’re in the bedroom. I want to rip her clothes off. There’s an urgency inside me to feel her naked body against mine. That’s where I feel most at home; when she’s underneath me. I have to subdue the primitive beast inside of me. I take a seat on the edge of the bed, and she raises her top over her head. I smile. The light is hitting all her slender curves in the right places.

“Lay down,” she commands. I never let a woman take control in the bedroom. Ever. It isn’t my thing, but I can tell at this moment that she needs it. She needs me to show her that everything is up to her. I can’t make her stay, and I can’t make her leave. I’d do anything for this woman.

I lay back on the bed.

“That’s better.” Her soft murmur makes my dick harden as she straddles me. She tugs at the bottom of my shirt, and I lift it so she can pull it over my head. Her lips move to my chest, kissing lightly down my body before stopping at the waistband of my jeans. I thought she was going to pull them down, but instead, she comes back up my body and locks her lips with mine. She grinds against me as we kiss. My hands grip her ass. I want to roll us over, pull her panties to the side, and bury myself inside her, but I know I have to be patient.

“You’re killing me, Pumpkin,” I groan.

She smiles against my lips. “Maybe this is my form of punishment.”

Her words cause my control to snap, and I wrap my arms around her to roll us over. She giggles as I quickly strip out of my jeans and bury myself inside her. A moan escapes her lips as I sink inside. I’ve tried to take it slow, but I can’t hold back anymore. Her nails dig into my back as I pound into her. The headboard bangs against the wall. It’s been so long since I felt her tight walls close around me.

“Fuck, Maverick,” she moans.

“Come for me, Pumpkin.”

At my words, her breathing picks up before she starts to throb around me. I love watching her pleasure. The way her face tenses up before completely relaxing again. Her eyes seem to shine brighter, and afterward, a small smile is always present on her face. I wait until she’s come down from her orgasm before finding my release. I come inside her, dumping so much cum it would leak out of her later.

“Someone is impatient,” she says as I roll off of her and we both lay on our back.

“I’ll do better next time.”

We made love twice. I had lost time to make up for. Make-up sex. The best kind. We laid in each other’s arms, finally sated. Nowhere to go and nothing to do. Just us. This was what unconditional love was. It wasn’t staying in a bad relationship for your kids or giving up your hopes and dreams for someone else. Unconditional love was me loving Hazel even though I was scared shitless. It's loving her enough to not give a fuck whose baby she was carrying. That was unconditional love.

“I’m starting a business,” she says after we’d both caught our breath. I turn to look at her.

“It’s still early, but I got all my money from Miles’s estate, so I’m working on getting all my licenses. It's a consulting firm. I can work from home a lot.”

“That’s amazing! Why don't you tell me before?” I ask.

“Well, we weren’t on the best of terms. I didn't know if I was going to stay here. I still don’t know.”

“You’re not going anywhere,” I growl.

A small smile crosses her face, but then her lips flattened again. “Are you sure? What if the baby…”

I shake my head. “I don’t care. I want you and our baby, no matter what.”

Her eyes widen. “Why the sudden change?”

I sigh and look up at the ceiling.

“My dad used to hit my mom...a lot.”

“Oh my god, I had no idea,” she says.

“Because I didn't tell you. It’s why I felt like shit the moment I almost left you in Hawaii. Anyways, my mom stayed with my dad for years. She claimed that she wanted us to be a family. I always felt like she stayed because of me. She felt obligated not to leave because I was there. When you told me you were pregnant, it’s like all that shit came back up. I don't want either of us to feel like we have to be together. I know it’s stupid.”

She scoots closer to lay her head on my naked chest. God, she smells like home.

“It’s not stupid,” she whispers.

“I sold my first gun after I saved up enough money working at the grocery store to buy it,” I continue, “I bought it because I wanted to shoot my dad. I hated him. He was arrested and sent to prison before I got home that day.”

Hazel reaches for my hand.

“A friend of mine told me I could sell the gun for five hundred dollars retail. I only paid one-hundred-and-fifty for it. That’s when I saw there was a buy and sell market on the street for guns and ammo. I never intended to be a lifelong criminal. I just wanted to make enough money to get my mother and me out of that neighborhood and into a nice home.”

A moment of silence passes.

“I get it, but your parent's relationship…That’s not going to happen to us. It’s the same reason why I don't want to go into business with you. If this relationship doesn’t work out, we can always walk away from each other. But I love you, and I don’t think I’ll ever be walking away,” she says.

It’s the first time she’s said those three words, and I hadn’t realized how much I wanted to hear them until they left her lips. She turns her head to face me, and I bend down to place a kiss on her lips.

“I love you too, Pumpkin. And I’m done with this two-bedroom shit. I want you here every single night.”

“Every single night,” she agrees.

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