Page 44 of The Baby Hex
“Let’s get you untied and then we’ll worry about getting out of here. I’m going to trust you, but if you betray me, I won’t hesitate to kill you. This doesn’t mean we’re friends but since you went and used your ‘balls’ on my brother and made a baby I guess we’re family.”
“You just have to unwork the knots in the back. It’s uncuttable but it can be untied. She knows I’m not all that flexible,” Venal groaned. “But look at it this way. As long as she’s here torturing us, Preston is safe.”
“Small mercies,” I rolled my eyes and started working on the knots.
The world spun around me as I squinted at the knots. Was Sharon pumping something into the basement? I tried to say Venal’s name, but the word and the rope slipped from my grasp as my eyes saw black.
“You better hope Teddy’s a helluva lot smarter than your fluffy ass,” Dern’s voice reached my ears. “If he’s not, you’re in deep, huh? Never go in alone and under no circumstances NEVER go in alone on a double mission. One thing at a time is the only way to win. I hope bitching at him was worth risking your life over.”
“Huh?” I said, trying to blink up at Dern but the light above his head was too bright.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Crilus
Mori wasn’t answering his phone, and neither was Preston. I frowned at my phone screen before reaching over Pierce to slide it onto the nightstand. Somehow, I’d entered the cold war between the twins, and I didn’t like it. They’d come to stay with me after a ghost haunted a restaurant that I was responsible for, and a dead wolf told them to stick around in London for their next assignment. Now, they were at odds while the world tried to splatter us with glass shards.
My phone vibrated and another photo of Baby Cutter flashed across the screen. He was all fleshy now with a mop of yellow hair, passed out milk-drunk on Rho’s chest.
“I want one,” I said and bit my lip. “I shouldn’t but I do.”
“Is this your way of asking me to put a baby in you?” Pierce smirked, rolling onto his side to face me.
“Maybe,” I said and bit my lip again. “Have you had enough blood? I ate most of your food earlier and---”
“I had some shakes while you were asleep,” Pierce said before I could ramble on for too long. “Have you heard from Jon?”
“What? Why would you ask about him now? Don’t tell me you slept with him too!” I groaned and shook the mental image from my head.
“Because he could be a complication,” Pierce said. “Not for our sex life but our children.”
“How so?” I asked.
“Children change things. They give you a crack in your armor. We can manage the cracks but that means we have to talk about them.”
“Give me my phone back,” I sighed, and he handed it to me.
I was just about to call Jon but decided to see if he texted me instead. A lot of clients loved leaving long trails of evidence as if they were dumb enough to think they were above the law. If you’re leaving a trail for Medwin and Clarence to find you were dumber than the law.
“I don’t think he’d come after a baby,” I said. “If he did, his spirit mange would look like a mild case of freckles.” I checked through my missed texts anyway. I had one from Nic who I had only met on the one occasion where he came to me for a protection spell for his aging mother. It seemed that Jon had come clean and had also told him about how much I was charging him not to tie him to Nic for all eternity. He made a simple request that I find another way to punish Jon since he didn’t want that headache. Though, he’d be glad to have one of his guys serve me Jon’s head on a silver platter if that canceled out his now ex boyfriend’s debt. I chuckled to myself and scrolled on. I scrolled on to find a text from Preston that I had somehow missed.
“It’s all Pierce’s fault. He’s so much good stuff. Put the phone down and your ass up, okay? I’ll tell you what to do since you seem to have forgotten,”my wolf howled into my thoughts.
I opened the text from Preston despite his protests.
“Oh! It seems our friend ‘Jon’,” I quoted his name with one hand as I scanned the text. “Has been imprisoned for identity theft. His real name is Bob Hanniagan who had swindled more than one heir or heiress out of their fortune. He’s going to be shipped back to the rodent territory above Heartville to face charges there.”
“That’s the place on the west stateside coast, right?” Pierce double-checked.
“Yep, and those rodents hate liars and manipulators. They’re going to put him under the jail or whatever their version of that is. So, back to you putting a baby in me.”
My hands trembled as I blacked out my phone screen and laid it back on the nightstand. Why was I so damn nervous now? I wasn’t some virgin. Quite the opposite. I had sex when I wanted to. Sure, normally I was preventing the creation of life, but sex was sex, right? I wasn’t going to be one of those guys who suddenly worried some man wouldn’t find them attractive. Shit!
“What storm is going on behind those pretty eyes?” Pierce asked, his voice soft as he waved his hand at the ceiling and the overhead lighting dimmed.
“None,” I said, trying to ignore the anxiety creeping up from my stomach to my chest. “Heat’s an evil beast.”
Of course, Pierce tasted the lie on the air. Even a little kid could but he didn’t say anything. Instead, he ran his hand over my chest and stomach through my shirt. My breath hitched and I had to force myself to breathe. His touch spread warmth throughout me but his gaze remained on my face. He wanted me. Of course he wanted me. His hard dick was pressed up against my leg and he smelled like he might succumb to his baser instincts any second now. Only I’d spent so much time in my head constructing a list of reasons that I couldn’t possibly be with him that I never stopped to wonder if he had his own list.
