Page 1 of Treasured By 3

ONE

Hunter

I hit the punching bag.It’s been a quiet six weeks. Quiet isn’t good, not in our line of work. Our scouts have found no traces of the Italian mafia rearing their head again. The low level gangs are falling in line under Chase’s new initiative, that we can be friends as long as we stay out of each other’s businesses and innocents are spared. As long as they agree to that and hold each other accountable, we won’t step in and make trouble.

There’s been no need for fighting. No need for hard decisions. So there’s nothing for me to do and I’ve never felt more useless. The last thing I did was call both venues Valerie’s approved and set up viewings. We narrowed down a caterer and Valerie wants to go cake tasting this week, but we need a venue to take care of everything else. The décor Valerie’s left to Roger and us. She doesn’t care. She just wants us ... and no goldfish, which is a fad that results in a lot of dead fish at the end of the night–not exactly romantic.

I kick the bag for good measure, then pant before hitting again. It moves back against me, making me jump back. I punch it, but it swings back harder. When I go to hit it again, it moves. I drop my arms and sigh. “Chase, I’m not in the mood for you to-”

Valerie appears, standing in front of the bag and wrapping her arms around it so she can rest against it. She looks me over as I bite the tape around my fists to undo it. “Hi, Dorogaya.”

“You’ve been down here for so long, Krolik. I figured a slow week would be a hot week,” she hints.

I roll my eyes at her, but she steps forward and rubs over my sweaty chest. She writes “I love you” there and stretches on her toes. I press a kiss to her soft lips. “Hit the bag, Valerie.”

She glances at it, punches it and faces me. “I’m off work. Why don’t we go on a date?”

I nod once. “Sure. That sounds good.”

She wraps her arms around me. “We can go make out in a movie theater, we can go on some crazy wild date where you can spoil me, or we can have a movie marathon so you can tell me everything wrong with mafia movies.”

Sighing, I press my forehead to hers. “You know me too well.”

“And not well enough at the same time,” she says in disagreement. “Chase is doing the mafia boss thing. Lief is doing ... Lief things. Let’s do something together, just us. It’s been a long time since we’ve done that.”

“Two weeks,” I say, tapping her temple. “How badly was your head rattled again?”

“That’s too long for us. Last time you bought out a whole movie theater,” she says.

“Because I’m the only one who gets to hear you come,” I answer.

She blushes at the memory. “That poor usher.”

“There was no permanent damage, and I warned them not to come in until after the credits. He didn’t listen.” I shrug.

“That doesn’t mean scaring the hell out of a teenager just for seeing me riding you. I still had ... most of my clothes on.” She blushes and bites her bottom lip.

I groan and lift her up. Valerie wraps her legs around me as I kiss her. “You keep making that face and we will not make it out of this room.”

“Maybe I want to take you ax throwing ... or see you beat up some people at a gym,” she pants against my lips. “Seeing you in action, knowing you can’t be killed ... it drives me wild.”

I groan. “Then I’m taking you to the best fucking restaurant in the entire city, and we’re going to my club.”

“The sexy one?” she asks.

I grin. “Yes. The sexy one. I’ll let you mingle, wait for some asshole to make his move and either get turned on watching you kick him in the balls and threaten him with a knife, or you’ll get turned on by watching me break a hand.”

She shudders. “Or we fuck in one of those private rooms.”

“You’re so damn ... perfect for me,” I growl against her mouth before kissing her hard.

“And tomorrow, we’re going to look at a venue,” she says before biting my bottom lip. “Where we can say ‘I do’.”

“Yeah, we’re not going to make it through dinner,” I say.

She squeals, tries to escape me, but we just end up having a quicky in the shower. We end up changed and I just stare at Valerie. I love watching her get dressed. Especially when ‘dressed’ means a skimpy little red dress that barely covers her ass and hugs her curves. I groan when she slides into heels.

“I’m going to have to blind so many people today,” I say in a low growl.

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