Page 24 of Craving Dahlia

“She’s pregnant, you asshole!” Evelyn snaps, her usually calm demeanor suddenly shattering out of what I can only assume is protectiveness for her friend. She angles herself towards Dahlia, glaring at me, but I barely register her furious look as I realize what she just said. Dahlia shoots her a look that’s somewhere between desperation and disbelief, and I feel like I’m in some kind of alternate fucking reality as I look at them both.

Fuck.“You can’t be serious,” I growl, even as the memories of that night come flooding back, threatening to send every drop of blood in my body straight down to my cock despite theinappropriateness of the moment. I remember her telling me to get a condom, how I’d been too eager to get inside of her, the sight of her swollen, wet, pink flesh spread open in front of me so enticing after so many years of going without. I’d fucked her raw for those few minutes up against the wall, and I hadn’t been able to stop myself from doing it again. I was barely able to stop myself from coming inside of her. Pulling out of the heavenly grip of her pussy wrapped tightly around me was nearly impossible.

And now, if she’s telling the truth, I should have done it anyway,I think grimly. At least I would have gotten the pleasure of coming inside a woman bare for the first time in five years.

But she can’t be telling the truth.

“It’s not mine,” I growl dismissively. “I pulled out. It must be someone else’s.” The arrogance in my voice is meant to mask the flicker of fear that I feel, coiling around my heart in a cold knot, and Ihatethat this woman seems to be the only one who can make me feel anything after so long.

“You’re being a dick,” Evelyn snaps. “How dare you just assume that it can’t be? If you pulled out, that’s not fucking good enough?—”

“What’s going on here?”

My stomach drops as I hear Dimitri’s voice behind me, confused and yet somehow still authoritative. He’s embraced his role ofpakhan, that much is clear, and it’s evident in the way he speaks and carries himself. Evelyn is the only one he softens around, from what I can tell in the very brief time I’ve been here.

“Yourbrother,” Evelyn says icily, “is trying to say that my best friend is so much of a slut that she apparently can’t know who the father of her child is.”

I shrug. “Your words, not mine.”

Evelyn’s eyes blaze, and for a moment I think she might jump at me and scratch my eyes out. But Dimitri speaks up first, holding up a hand as he moves around me and into the living room, looking at Dahlia and his wife.

“Wait a second. Dahlia’s pregnant?” He frowns. “Explain.”

“She just got back from D.C., and she needed me,” Evelyn says, her voice softening as she looks at her husband. “So I brought her here. She only just told me. And then Alek walked in, and he?—”

“It was one night,” Dahlia says, her voice still panicked. “But there hadn’t been anyone before that for a while, and not since?—”

Dimitri reaches up, pinching his nose between his thumb and forefinger, before dropping his hand and looking between Dahlia and I. “You two slept together?”

“I can’t believe we’re having this fucking conversation,” I growl, at the same moment that Dahlia’s cheeks flush, and she nods.

“Yes,” she whispers, and my jaw tightens.

“We’re both fucking adults,” I snap. “I don’t need your permission for who to fuck, brother, even if the woman in question did accidentally end up being your wife’s best friend. Trust me, if I’d known, I wouldn’t have touched her.”

Dahlia jerks as if I slapped her, but I ignore it. I’m having a hard enough time not staring at her as it is, and it’s taking every ounce of self-control I have to keep my arousal from becoming blatant. Even like this, her eyes red and teary and her face flushed, she looks fucking gorgeous. Her blonde hair is a mass of wild, loose curls around her face, and her lips look pink and bitten, like she looked when I had her up against the wall of that elevator.

I can still remember the way she tasted. I’ve thought about it every time I’ve come into my fist these last six weeks with the image of her in my head.

“Family meeting. Now,” Dimitri snaps, moving further into the living room. “Now,” he growls again as I hover in the doorway, and I narrow my eyes at him, going to stand near the fireplace as he sinks into the chair next to Evelyn.

Somehow, they all end up facing me, and I feel like I’m on fucking trial. My teeth grind together. “I’m not a part of your Bratva any longer, brother,” I snap. “You’re not mypakhan.”

“That’s not how it works, and you know it,” Dimitri says evenly. “You’re my brother. Yashkov blood, and my heir, until my son is born.” He glances at Evelyn, and then back at me. “So yes,brother. I am yourpakhan.And we are going to talk about this.”

Dahlia looks frantically at them both. “What’s going on?” Her voice is high and thin now. “I just wanted to talk to Evelyn. We don’t need to have this conversation?—”

“Yes, we do.” Dimitri levels a narrow look at her. “You’re saying that you spent the night with Alek, and now you’re pregnant? And he’s the father?”

“What is this, a fucking episode ofJudge Judy?” Dahlia exclaims, looking desperately at Evelyn. “Yes. I’m sure he is. But he also left immediately afterwards, and he never tried to find me again. So it’s clear he didn’t want more than the one night, and I know he doesn’t wantthis, so I will figure it out on my own, and?—”

“Good.” I push myself away from the mantle. “I’m glad we agreed.”

“Don’t fucking move,” Dimitri snaps. He looks back at Dahlia, his expression turning cool. It’s the expression I saw him use when talking to Vik and Gus, last night after we arrived. Theexpression belonging to the Yashkov patriarch, the boss. “If he’s the father of your child, Dahlia, then he’ll marry you.”

The words drop into the room like stones in a river. Dahlia’s mouth drops open, and I bark out a bitter sound that’s almost a laugh.

“Like fuck I will.”

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