Page 75 of All the Dangerous Things

“All I know is that I want you.”

Her eyes were wide, but she didn’t speak. Maybe she didn’t know what to say. I knew I had found myself speechless more times than I cared to count when she was around.

“Gio,” she finally said, just that one word—my name—sliding from her perfect, pink lips.

“I’d do anything for you,” I continued, my voice getting rough with emotion I never allowed myself to feel, let alone display. “Do you understand what I’m saying, Tatiana?”

She exhaled and licked her lips, but I did my best not to be transfixed by how beautiful she was. I wanted her to know without a doubt that she was mine, and I wasn’t letting her go.

“No one will ever hurt you or our baby. I swear it. I vow it, sweet girl. I’ll protect you both with everything inside me that is dark and dangerous and deadly.”

“Oh, Gio,” she said, her voice choked-up. Her eyes glistened, and I knew my girl was so full of emotion that she was going to cry. And even if they were happy tears, it broke my fucking heart to see them.

She was the one to reach out now and place her tiny hand on the side of my neck. Could she feel how fast my pulse was racing? She moved closer, her little body dwarfed by my own. And when my girl brushed her lips against mine, her kiss spoke volumes.

It was a kiss that told me she knew what I wanted, what I demanded, and she accepted. I wrapped my arms around her and pulled her in tight, curling my body around hers because I craved to have her as close as possible.

I needed to know this was real.

“I love you, Gio,” she finally told me—the words I realized I'd desperately needed to hear.

I pulled back and cupped both sides of her face.

“I’ve wanted to tell you since the beginning. I’ve wanted to tell you when you were deep inside methat first time and all the times after. I wanted to tell you there was nothing else in the whole world that mattered except you and me,” she confessed, and I nodded.

“It’s only ever going to be you and me… and this little one.” I placed my hand on her belly and felt this surge of happiness slam into me. God, it felt good knowing she carried my child and that she loved me.

This was heaven.

Shewas heaven.

“Amore mio. Tu e il nostro bambino siete tutto per me.”My love. You and our baby mean everything to me.

I lifted her and took her to bed—our bed—because this was where she belonged from this point on. Right next to me.

Who knew the devil could find happiness when he’d only ever known hell?

31

GIO

DAYS LATER

I’d called this meeting with Dmitry and Nikolai since all of this shit between us had to come to a stop. We needed to settle this because I wasn’t giving up Tatiana. In fact, I planned on making her mine in all ways. It wasn’t enough that she wasmineand the mother of my baby and all future children. I wanted to make her my wife, too.

Even days later, the tension between the three of us was so thick, even a fucking knife couldn’t cut through it.

As I sat across from Dmitry and Nikolai, the weight of the situation bore down on us like an anvil hanging over our heads. Nikolai sipped on a whiskey, and Dmitry drummed his fingers on thetabletop. Both of their blue gazes were laser-locked on me.

But while the tension between us was fucking suffocating, it wasn’t anything I couldn’t handle. I was pleased to see Nikolai’s black-and-blue eye and the cut on his cheek, and Dmitry sporting a busted-as-fuck lip and bruising on his neck.

All three of us had bruised and scabbed knuckles.

We’d met at a neutral bar, one that was a “safe” place for all parties. I’d promised Tatiana I wouldn’t get into another brawl with her brothers—or, at the very least, I wouldn’t kill them.

If I were being honest, I wasn’t sure I’d ever felt such violence directed at me like I did right now with Dmitry and Nikolai staring at me. I’m sure they were envisioning all the ways they could kill me in the same way I was with them.

The silence and barely restrained aggression reflected from both sides. I was pretty sure, right at this moment, there was nothing as dangerous in the entire world as the three of us.

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