GEDEON lay on the bed in his favorite place, his head on Meiling’s belly while her fingers drifted through his hair. The sounds of the swamp played through their bedroom. Alligators bellowed at each other—two bulls bent on establishing dominion over territory and the females in it. A youngster had been foolish enough to challenge the resident male. Big Boy, as Meiling called him, wasn’t taking any nonsense from the upstart.
Insects droned in relentless pursuit of musical talent when they had none, although Gedeon had come to love the sounds. All the different whistles and hums. The louder piercings and softer brushings, all coming together to make a background that was a ceaseless cacophony of noise. Snakes plopped into the water from the overhanging branches occasionally, emphasizing the rasping of the bullfrogs. The small tree frogs had a lot to say as they called out in an effort to attract mates. Gedeon wasn’t impressed with their voices, and Meiling wanted to know where the Disney frogs were hiding so she could hear them sing.
There was the continual flurry of feet and fur pushing through the vegetation, the leaves and twigs that covered the floor of the swamp. Rats, voles, and numerous other rodents foraging for food and trying to stay under cover as they did so. To Gedeon, the sounds were loud and added to the symphony he heard playing.
“Love this, Lotus. Just lying in bed with you like this, listening to the swamp. Slayer’s never been happier. I’ve never been happier. We’re in a good place, aren’t we? Tell me you’re good.”
Because after what he’d gotten himself into—not himself. This was no longer about Gedeon. This was Gedeon and Meiling together.
There was silence. A long one. Ordinarily, he would have raised his gaze to meet hers to get the lay of the land, so to speak. She wasn’t the best at hiding her expressions from him. He thought it more prudent to just lie still and feel her fingers moving through his hair as long he could.
“Does that question have anything to do with the strange text I received from Evangeline a few minutes ago?”
His heart stuttered. He hadn’t given his answer. He hadn’t had time to broach the subject with Meiling. He didn’t know how he felt about the things Drake Donovan had spoken to him about.
“What strange text?”
“All of sudden you want to share?”
Her tone was mild. Sweet even. But he winced all the same. They weren’t prone to fighting. Meiling didn’t throw tantrums. She wasn’t moody unless Whisper was in heat. She was accommodating, usually following his lead or telling him what she’d like to do decisively. She wasn’t the kind of woman to pick a fight for no reason.
Her fingers were still moving in his hair. Gentle. The way she did when she was loving on him. “Do you have something you want to tell me, Gedeon?”
“If I wanted to tell you, Lotus, I would have shared already. I’m still working out in my head how to say it.” He blurted it out. Yeah. That was him being a dumbass. He kept telling himself he was evolving, but when push came to shove and he did something he knew she wasn’t going to like, he fell back on the old ways and acted like a complete idiot.
Her fingers stopped moving in his hair—a really bad sign. He turned over to lie on his side, propping up his head with his hand so he could look at her expression when they talked. He would need to know what she was thinking. She wasn’t good at hiding her emotions from him.
“We talked about getting out of the business numerous times,” he opened with. They had. Meiling often initiated the conversation.
Her eyelashes fluttered. That lower lip of hers drew his instant attention when she sucked it into the side of her mouth and bit down with her small white teeth. He couldn’t help cupping the side of her face. Looking at Meiling meant touching her. That was just the way it was. He ran his thumb over the full curve of her lower lip, gliding over the spot where she had bit down for that one little moment.
“You seemed opposed to the idea, Gedeon,” she reminded.
He had been opposed. She knew he wasn’t someone to sit around idle. He needed to be busy. He wasn’t the kind of man to take orders from someone else either.
“I’m not good at sitting around twiddling my thumbs, baby, you know that about me.” He watched her carefully. As he did, he thought about what Bolin Wang had said about once taking a path and then not being able to get off it. Was it time to get off what he’d started? He’d accomplished a lot of good working the jobs he’d done, but he’d seen a lot of really bad shit. “I’m not stuck specifically on continuing with what I’ve been doing.”
As for prepping her for the talk of what their future might hold, he didn’t think he was doing a very good job. She must not have either, not with the look on her face. He didn’t like that look. He’d never seen it before and couldn’t interpret it.
“I know Drake Donovan has dropped by several times and spoken to you privately. You always tell me what’s said in any private meeting, but you didn’t after he talked with you. That’s unusual. I waited. I was patient. Now I assume he was offering you a job with his company.”
Gedeon cursed under his breath. Meiling. Too damn smart for her own good. They’d promised to have open communication. Tell each other everything. He sighed.
“It’s a lot more complicated than that, Meiling, or I would have told you about it right away. I don’t know exactly how I even feel about it.” He sat up and ran both hands through his hair, the beginnings of a headache touching both temples.
“Maybe sharing, I could have helped you sort it out,” she pointed out. “This way, you’re carrying that burden alone. Since Donovan wanted to talk alone to you and you allowed that not just once, but twice, I would presume whatever job he’s offering you, I’m not a part of and I’m not needed.”
His chest constricted. Her tone was soft but there was an edge to it. Something different he hadn’t heard before, just like the expression on her face. He started to open his mouth, give an immediate rebuttal, but he needed to listen to her. This had cut deep. He could see that it had. He hadn’t meant it to hurt her. Damn it, when he didn’t know what to do, he fell back on old habits.
Meiling sat up and scooted away from him, up toward the headboard. She settled there, pulling the sheet up to her waist, taking that from him. In the moonlight spilling from the open porch, she looked almost ethereal. She also looked sad.
“Donovan is offering me a job. I don’t know if I even understand what he wants from me. It doesn’t make sense. Well.” He sat on the edge of the bed and then stood so he could pace, suddenly restless. “Maybe it does. I would never do the job without you. I just needed time to process what he was saying to me because, like I said, it didn’t make sense.”
“He’s offering you the job. Not us,” she qualified. Her gaze didn’t leave his face. “Did you think about that, Gedeon?”
He had. He’d thought about that and how she wouldn’t be in danger the way she was every damn time they took a job, although he wasn’t sure what Donovan was offering would make things better. “What I thought about was keeping you safe. Knowing you’d have the friends you’ve always wanted. I didn’t think in terms of who was doing the actual job because, like I said, I wasn’t certain what it actually entailed.”
“It sounded, from the text I received from Evangeline, like you had taken the job.”
“I said I’d think about it. I would never take a job without talking it over with you first.” He had told Donovan he was willing to learn more about the job.
Meiling remained silent and just looked at him. It was impossible to keep anything from her. She knew he wasn’t telling her the entire truth. He didn’t want to share. She wouldn’t like it. Why was he even considering it? Because he needed the adrenaline rush.
“Tell me, Gedeon. All of it.”
He turned back to her. “I’ve lived too long being a fixer, Lotus. I can’t just retire. I know myself. I need the rush. The physical and mental activity.” He made the admission reluctantly. With the admission came the reality of being who he was. What he was. Fixing problems didn’t just mean negotiating. Calling in favors or trading them. Sometimes—often—it meant killing someone.
She didn’t move or take her gaze from his face. She simply listened to him. He couldn’t find judgment in her expression or in her mind.
“Donovan came to me and said he had a proposition. He noticed the way we were able to move so fast. He has been slowly taking out the heads of crime families and replacing them with men who will keep the crime from spilling beyond a certain level. I’m not explaining this very well.” He pushed a hand through his hair. “There’s always going to be an underworld, with criminals exploiting good people. The goal is to minimize the damage to those people, by controlling the underworld.”
Her dark eyes stayed on his green ones. Focused. No blinking.
“They have people in place to stop human trafficking, but at the same time, they have to appear to be criminals. They work with other criminals. That way they always know what’s happening in that world.”
“What does Donovan want you to do?”
“He’s setting up another one of his men to take over a territory. It’s a particular brutal one that needs cleaning out. His man needs someone to head up his security detail. He’d like me to be that man. I thought if we liked the idea, we could take the job together. At least until you know if you’re pregnant or not.”
Her dark, feathery lashes fluttered. “Is that what this is all about? You’re worried I’m pregnant? You’re concerned I can’t back you up properly anymore?”
He sank down onto the side of the bed. Close. “No, I’m not afraid of you. Just for you. I can’t live without you, Meiling. As in I wouldn’t want to be alive. I know you think I’m strong and I can do anything, but I couldn’t do that. I wouldn’t want to. So best answer, find a profession where I keep you at a distance from it. I put babies in you and hope like hell you want to stay home and raise them.”
He blurted out the fucking truth. She could take it or leave it.
“I’ve loved you for so long, I don’t even know when it started. I don’t love anyone else. You’re it, Lotus. I know I make you crazy with the way I do things sometimes, but I do them because I can’t lose you. I won’t lose you. You can get angry with me. You can give me that stare down you like to think is going to burn me but I think is cute. It doesn’t matter. I’m keeping you alive any way I can. While we’re at it and I’m laying this shit out for you, we’re getting married too. No more stalling.”
He was losing it. He did lose it. He’d just blurted out everything that was in his mind, in his gut, pressed deep into his chest, and had unfurled all at once and burst out of him before he could censor it.
Meiling stared at him without moving. Without blinking. Just stared at him as if he’d grown two heads. Hell. Maybe he had. He felt as if he’d run a mile. He pressed his hand over his chest. She turned him inside out.
“You said you love me. Out loud.” Meiling whispered it, her dark eyes going liquid.
Gedeon forgot everything he was going to say. “Lotus, I tell you I love you. You have to know I do.” She had to know.
“I know. You show me all the time, but you don’t say it. This was the first time. It just caught me off guard is all.” She looked up at him again, her eyes filled with love. “So, do you think you’re going to take this job?”
“Only if Donovan offers us a good salary. By that I mean equal pay for you. I don’t anticipate you working long because I think you’re pregnant, so we’ll need to negotiate money immediately.”
“I’m not showing any symptoms.” Meiling was indignant.
“Honey, in the last four days, you’ve cried a total of sixteen times. Three of those times were over shoes and how cute you thought they were. Two were because we were out of your favorite berries. Once was because the bed wasn’t made properly, and you were too tired to make it. I pointed out that we were going to get in it, and that brought another flood of tears because you were so relieved. I’m just saying you aren’t a waterworks kind of girl as a rule.”
Meiling made a face at him. “Has it occurred to you that the raging hormones are leaving my body, and now I’m just trying to lead a normal life?”
“No, that didn’t occur to me.”
“It could be happening.” She glared at him and then burst out laughing. “At least I’m not puking everywhere. That’s a plus. If I were pregnant, I’d be puking. And I could be crying all the time, which I’m not, because I wanted to be pregnant and I’m not. Did you think about that? No, you didn’t.”
She wasn’t making the least bit of sense. Meiling always made sense. And they had veered far off topic. He studied his woman carefully, trying to hear what she actually meant, the underlying subtleties that he might be missing. The truth was he didn’t know shit about women or relationships. He only knew he loved her and he wanted her safe.
She looked especially beautiful to him, even with tears tracking down her face. Her skin had that glow to it that should have meant her leopard was coming close to a heat, but he knew she’d just gotten out of one.
Slayer, is it possible for Whisper to be going into another heat so soon?
Everything about Whisper’s heat had been different than what he’d been told by other shifters. She’d risen too fast, almost without warning, and when she did, the results were nearly uncontrollable. It was almost as if she had too many hormones spilling from her body. She was such a small thing, but Gedeon suddenly remembered that, like Meiling, Whisper would also carry the genetics for the special gifts. That might be the answer for the raging chemicals that had been dumped into Meiling’s body just as Slayer dumped them into his.
She cannot go into heat again for a long while.
There was smug satisfaction in Slayer’s tone, sending up all kinds of warning flags. Gedeon moved closer to Meiling, her shield now. Her dark knight. She blinked up at him with those feathery lashes that he always felt in his groin.
Gedeon framed her face with his hands, thumbs moving over her impossibly soft skin while he looked into her eyes. “I should have been telling you all this time how much I love you, Meiling. I showed you with my body, but I should have given you the words.”
Slayer, why do you say it like that? Is Whisper already pregnant? Is Meiling pregnant?
Of course, they are pregnant. We are very virile. We will have strong children. Again, there was that smug, almost arrogant tone.
He bent his head to brush kisses from her left eye to the corner of her mouth. “I was a coward, afraid if I said the words out loud, let them out into the universe, you would be taken from me.”
“I’m not going anywhere, Gedeon. I love you. We’ll work out this job thing. I know you need action. I need to be with you. We’ll work it out.”
“You’re pregnant.” He announced it without preamble, sitting back, but still holding her eyes. “I hope you meant it when you said you wanted my children. I asked Slayer and he confirmed it. You should confirm with Whisper. I want children with you, Meiling. I want a family.” Right then, he wanted the opportunity to have her again, drag her down on the bed and put his mouth between her legs, devour all the sweetness that was his Lotus Blossom.
More flutters of those eyelashes as she spoke with Whisper. A shocked look on her face. She flung out a hand toward him. He caught it. He would always be there for her. Her face lit up. The knots in his belly unraveled and he did exactly what he wanted to do. He caught the sheet and dragged it off her before catching her ankles and pulling her down to the center of the bed. She was Meiling, meaning she didn’t protest.
“Got to have you right now, Lotus. Celebration in order. Then we talk getting married immediately. Rene can arrange it if you don’t want to.”
He heard her murmur something, but he had already slid her legs over his shoulders and put his mouth exactly where he needed it, tongue and teeth busy and the roaring beginning in his ears. In other words, he couldn’t hear a thing. He could only feel his love for her welling up to mix with the desire and lust that rose at the same time. His Meiling. His woman. Bringing him to life.