Page 140 of The Payback

He strides over to the couch, flops Bella down carefully, and approaches me. Leaning over me, his arm braced on the repurposed wooden table, he dips low, taking my lips in a somewhat chaste kiss. “Mmm. Hi. I missed you.”

“You’ve only been painting for an hour,” I say between kisses.

“Entirely too long to be away from you. I don’t know how Nik does it.”

“He needs the excitement of working. And you need the calm of not working.” I shrug.

It’s true. Nik has joined forces with Olivia and her guys, acting as an extra layer of protection and watching her back. Dimitri, on the other hand, has thrown himself into painting. When he’s not with me or Bella, he’s in his studio, and his work has been exquisite. He’s piqued the interest of a few galleries that want to showcase some of his work, but he says he’s not ready.

He’s just happy running an Instagram account and selling the one-of-a-kind pieces that don’t feature us. Those paintings hang in our house, never meant to be seen by the public. Especially the one above our bed, where I’m stretched between them. My body is partially displayed as Nik’s head covers one breast, Dimitri the other, and their hands cover my pussy.

For now, Bella doesn’t know what she’s looking at, but we should move that one somewhere else before she figures it out.

“His loss,” Dimitri says, retaking my lips until Bella regains her footing and pushes her way between us.

“Mama! Papa! I want cupcakes, please.” Her eyes are wide and round as she begs us to get on with it.

I laugh. “Okay, baby. Let’s get baking.”

Our girl is demanding and insistent, pulling me from the chair with her weak arms and pushing me from behind until I’m standing in the kitchen. Dimitri stays where he is, looking me over.

“Barefoot, in the kitchen, but we’re missing something from this equation.”

And pregnant.

His eyes trace my body, and my uterus gives a flip. About six months ago, I had my IUD taken out, and Dimitri met with a specialist for a vasectomy reversal. He underwent the procedure and has been insatiable since they gave him the all-clear. I swear, he’s been doing his very best to get me knocked up. Now that we’ve found our footing in our little slice of paradise, we had the baby talk. He was warned it might not be effective, and the statistics were low, but that didn’t deter him from trying his best to prove the doctors wrong.

The doctor warned him it might not work or that it might take time for anything to happen. Yet here I stand with a pregnancy test in a drawer and a sexy former Bratva leader with super sperm. He’s gazing at me, eating me up as he imagines a possible future.

I laugh it off the way I have every time he’s said something similar over the past half a year. But this time, there’s a strain in my voice that’s clear to both of us.

“Eleanor,” he says, a warning clear in his tone.

“Yes, husband dearest?”

“What are you hiding?”

“Nothing.”

Bella chirps up, proving once and for all that she is a tiny sponge and no conversation is safe from her little ears. “Mama has a secret in the bathroom!”

Little snitch. You’d last three seconds in the Bratva.

Dimitri quirks a brow at me and turns on his heel, heading down the hall.

“No! Stop!” I cry out, giving chase with Bella hot on my heels.

Dimitri does no such thing, continuing and turning into our bedroom. The duvet is still crumpled at the bottom of the bed, and the lube is haphazardly on the floor from last night’s adventures. Yeah, we’re notalwaystrying to get pregnant unless our health education teachers were very wrong about how it happens.

I kick it away as I pass it, scurrying after Dimitri and into the bathroom.

Dimitri is standing there, feet shoulder-width apart and his hands raised like he’s warding off dinosaurs inJurassic Park.

“Where is the secret, princess?”

Bella just shrugs.

He rounds on me. “Eleanor?”

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