Page 101 of That Sik Luv

“He came back only a week later, wanting a new girl to fill his appetite. Nox was ready for his return, sure to have him ushered into a private room, where I could handle business for him.”

She swallows, knowing exactly what that means.

“I wasn’t anticipating much of a fight, but the banker had a switchblade hidden on him. Caught me in the abdomen before I could finish him.”

She’s silent for a moment, lost in her thoughts, and I worry I’ve said too much. I trail her fingers down my abdomen, guiding her hand towards my hip bones. The evidence of how her touch is affecting me has never been more present beneath the simple cotton sheet covering me.

“D-do you want children?”

I turn my head to look down at her as her nervous eyes search mine, not expecting the question after the nature of the story I told.

“I mean, I just...” she stutters, licking her lips. “I just wondered if...”

Her nervousness brings a smile to my face.

“You’re worried you already are?” I ask with a knowing smirk.

Her eyes wrinkle in the corners, a look of seriousness overtaking her. She shakes her head no, and I don’t understand it at all.

My brows lower, my confusion quickly turning to rage.Did they do something to her?

“Why aren’t you worried? I’ve done everything that could get a woman very pregnant. Why are you so sure you aren’t?”

She swallows. “I’m on birth control.”

I still her hand on my stomach, sitting up on my elbow to peer down at her with my mouth open in confusion.

“How? They don’t allow—”

“Call it intuition,” she says. “Call it whatever you want. But some part of me, deep down, told me to do it. That if I didn’t...” She pauses. “Anyone could try to take away everything I’d worked so hard for. To be the first female Magnus Princeps...I just knew it came with conditions.”

She worried someone would try to impregnate her with the mission to dismantle the power she was harnessing. My blood boils at the idea of my girl even being forced to have these thoughts.

“I went to a women’s clinic a town over, where no one knew me, and got set up with a prescription for my own protection.”

“But it’s considered intrinsically evil to the church, meddling in Christ’s will—”

“Guess I made my own rules,” she interrupts, cocking a brow with all the confidence in the world.

A proud grin grows across my face.

There she is again.

The woman of power and strength that needed the time and attention to bloom. She’d always had a backbone in there, ready to defy what they told her was morally wrong. She’d discovered her own moral compass, her own ethics she’d chosen to live by. Laid her own path, even before realizing her worth. Briony made the choice to get on birth control because some part of her subconscious knew these men had the potential to be disgustingly ruthless when trying to keep their kingdom to themselves.

“But that changes now.” My smile drops.

I pat her body beneath the shirt, under her arms, her flat, toned stomach, then between her legs where she snaps her thighs together tightly. She bites her bottom lip, holding back a smile as she squirms beneath me, her breasts bouncing beneath the thin cotton. “Aero, stop!” she exclaims, her hand coming up to grip my wrist.

I roll my wrist out of her grasp, pinning her upper arms down against the bed.

“You better tell me where you’re hiding it.”

She giggles, all cute and shit, smiling up at me with amusement, her brows lifted defiantly.

“Don’t think for a minute I’m not serious, Briony.” I reach over, grabbing a knife from the nightstand, flipping the blade up before her face. “I’ll cut it from your flesh if I have to.”

She gawks at me, and her lips part at the threat.

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