Page 77 of Iris
Xavier signs and I ignore him.
Her eyes narrow. “You think just because I’m young and come from the Upper Side you can fuck with me? I looked it up. You were sending me to the worst street in the Lower Side, and?—”
“Calm down, Icy, it’s not the worst street.” I give her a slow smile and I pull down a bottle of unlabeled small batch whiskey and take a sip. “Second or third worst at best.”
She stalks up, the dainty shoes that aren’t her peeking out as she does so and she snatches the bottle from me and necks some. Color me fucking impressed. “And you were leaving me there.”
“C’mon, Icy,” I say, taking the bottle back as Xavier slips around us, “I’d have been there, watching, and then picked you up.”
“Pick me up, like what? A common hooker?”
I smile slowly now, my prey in my sights. “You think you’d be above common? What makes a hooker common? Or uncommon?” I say, stepping right up so there’s almost no space between us now. “Let’s focus on uncommon. What kind of skills does your upper-class Sabine schoolgirl upbringing hide? Are you good with your mouth? Or are you all access all the time in all the ways?”
Killian.
Somehow it’s a snarl in my head from Xavier. After we both marked Tamara, and after all the time we’ve spent together, sometimes we’re able to feel each other in our minds. Like a sixth sense, and Xav’s warning is coming in loud and clear. She just got assaulted and I’m pushing buttons.
But she’s holding up, head high, cheeks stained, pupil’s black and wide.
She’s so fucking edible my stomach wants to growl.
Kil.
There he is again, poking my brain.
“Maybe you and I and Xav here can skip the meeting and get to know you and you can practice those skills?—”
And suddenly a voice pipes up, shattering the mood.
“What skills, Daddy? And what’s a snooker?”
CHAPTER
TWENTY-TWO
Iris
Heat radiates off me.
Killian swears, the predator goes back into hiding as he turns, happy, benevolent Daddy to the world’s cutest little girl who not only pulls heartstrings but plays songs on them.
“It’s a game with sticks and balls and pockets,” he says.
If I’d been drinking, I’d choke. He just made that so sexual. He scoops her up and kisses her belly and she squeals laughter.
Killian glances at me and winks. “Though most people here prefer pool.”
“Swimming.” Emmie nods with the kind of wisdom only little kids have. “I like swimming. Can we have a pool?”
“No not that sort of pool,” he says, sidestepping the issue of a pool, “it’s a game with a big table and—look who’s here.”
“Icy!” She gasps, her face lighting up. “You is pretty.”
Xavier takes her and hugs her as she yawns, her owl in one hand. She looks at him. “And Papa is extra pretty,” Emmie says, Delores dangling as she lays against Xavier in pink pajamas.Then she looks up, adding anxiously, “Please don’t sends me to bed.”
“Saved by a four-year-old,” whispers Killian to me and I press my thighs together.
Then she looks at Killian. “You is pretty, too, Daddy. We have the same hair.”
