Page 85 of The Vampire Kingpin
“We’ve got a limo here,” Zaq said. “You want us to send you home?”
Home? I blinked rapidly.
I guess I did have a home now.
And a family.
And Spider.
Emotion welled up in me. I got misty-eyed, even as my smile widened.
Spider shifted me in his arms so that my legs were over one of his arms, muttering something about me being barefoot. I slung an arm around his neck and swiped at my eyes.
“Hell, no,” I said with a sidelong grin at my own personal Underworld kingpin. “We have something to celebrate. I wanna dance. Let’s go back to the Masquerade.” I kicked my nylon-clad feet. “But I’ll need shoes. I think one’s in Jared’s limo.”
“I have the other one,” Spider said, and, with a flourish worthy of a Disney prince, pulled it out of his pocket and slipped it on my foot.
“C’mere.” Spider drew me into his office, closing the door behind him.
We’d stayed at the Masquerade until dangerously close to dawn, then returned to Chelsea in the limo Spider had rented for the night. We’d stripped off our clothes and fallen into bed together, where we’d slept intertwined, my head on his shoulder and one of my legs bent over his. I’d woken up to Spider making love to me, slow and sweet.
That night, Jared’s father, Primus Darkman, had flown to New York and tried to throw his weight around. Karoly Kral, the Kral primus, had shut him down hard. Jared had snatched a guest from a Kral event, after all. Even his own people testified to that. Darkman Senior had put out feelers trying to locate me, but the Krals had told him I’d been staked while trying to escape from Jared, and Darkman had given up and returned to Vegas.
“What’s up?” I glanced from Spider to the empty office.
“It’s December first,” he returned.
I scrunched my brows together. “And?—?”
“And the thirty days are up. Our agreement is officially terminated.”
Annoyed, I folded my arms over my chest. “I thought it ended that night you staked Grim and Troll. These last couple weeks, that was me in your bed, not your thrall.”
We were mates, damn it. I’d never been happier, or felt more secure. Had it been different for Spider?
“I know, baby.” His gaze tracked from my face to my crossed arms. “I’m doing this all wrong,” he muttered and steered me to a drawer labeled ‘Lark.’ He jabbed a finger at it. “Open it.”
What now? Still grumpy, I pulled open the drawer. My jaw nearly hit the floor. “That’s—that’s a lot of cash. Way more than we agreed on.”
“One million.”
I picked up a stack of hundreds and fanned the corners. “This is mine? All of it?”
“Yes.”
I slapped the stack back in the drawer and closed it with a snap. “You think you have to buy me?”
He recoiled. “No! It’s…security. You can take that money and walk out of here tonight.”
I twisted away from him, hands on my hips. “Really,” I said, my brows raised. “And you’d just let me go.”
“Fuck, no.” A muscle jumped in his jaw. “Did it feel like I’d ever let you go tonight in the shower? Or last night when I had you bent over the chair?”
Lust stabbed through me all over again, remembering. I swallowed. “No.”
“Damn right, I won’t,” he said between gritted teeth. “Because if you leave, I’ll be right behind you. But I want you to know you can.” Something vulnerable flashed over his face. “I…I need to know you’re staying because you want to. Not because it’s your only option.”
My heart pounded against my rib cage. For the first time, I felt how susceptible he was when it came to me, how he’d do anything for me.
