Page 36 of Brat Baby (Sugar Life #1, #3)

Xavier

Emmy’s sleeping body barely rumples the blankets on our massive bed. She’s fucking tiny, fragile. Just like a little dove. The urge to crush her—to break her into a million tiny pieces so that I can fill all the dark and broken parts of me with her—is fucking with my brain.

Sleeping by her side every night is the only thing keeping me from burning everything down. She’s mine. Giving her up is not an option. But she is also theirs. I give even fewer fucks about my job at NU now than I did two weeks ago.

Darcy has finally figured it out.

There is no point in living if we can’t have her.

A quiet murmur of noise comes from the blankets as Emmy adjusts her position, rolling onto her back, one arm flung out across her pillow, those fuckable lips slightly parted.

The only downside to spending every night in her bed, and her completely unaware that I am there, is that I leave every morning with the worst case of blue balls.

All I want to do is sink into her wet heat, to feel her shocked little gasps against my lips, to wrap my hands around her throat just as she comes all over my cock.

But I don’t. I haven’t. I can’t. Not yet.

She doesn’t know.

Not until she knows that I am with her, always, will I take the privilege of having that wet cunt clamping down on my cock again. She needs to know it’s me in her bed. She needs to open her eyes and see me lying next to her.

And as desperate as I am to climb into bed with her right now, I have a little task I want to accomplish before she wakes up. As quietly as I entered, I leave the room and pull the door closed, managing the handle so that the latch doesn’t click.

Out of habit, I glance in the direction of the kitchen for the security camera, but I know it’s off. I unplugged it from the wall as soon as I entered the kitchen.

After arriving and waiting in my car for her to enter the bedroom, I entered the building, sent Aiden a nod on my way past the security desk, then went up to our hallway to wait. I watched the security feed on my phone until the light in the bedroom turned off.

So had Derek, his little icon displaying in the watcher’s panel. When the glow from beneath the door disappeared, I swapped over to the mirroring app that has its counterpart installed on her phone.

For over twenty minutes, I watched as she scrolled TikTok, pausing on funny animal videos, college acceptances, and dark romance BookTok recommendations.

The fact that she paused to scroll through quotes where the male lead is so deeply infatuated with the female that he stalks her, crossing all sorts of boundaries to be with her, amuses the fuck out of me.

If she only knew.

That bracelet she wears isn’t merely ornamental. The mirroring app isn’t the only one I use to keep tabs on her throughout the day.

Eventually, her phone went dark, so I waited another twenty minutes for her to fall asleep. Entering her space when I’m not one-hundred-percent certain she’s asleep is always the trickiest part. It’s a small piece of the cat-and-mouse game she doesn’t know we’re playing.

I’ve been leaving her hints that I’ve been in her space and slowly allowing myself to be louder as I leave. I’m sure she suspects by this point.

After making my way into the apartment, I went straight to the kitchen, throwing up a middle finger for Derek to see when he investigates why there is no feed in the morning, and then I pulled the camera’s power from the wall.

I’ll fix it before I leave; no need to let Emmy know about the camera.

It’s not like she knows about the ones in her dorm. A little bit of ignorance is bliss and all that shit.

Then I made my way to where she was sleeping, pausing to stare at the open box in Darcy’s section of our dungeon. Cardboard box, plastic, and a manual were scattered over his mats in a random sort of mess.

That’s my task for tonight—getting the entire thing set up for her before I crawl into bed beside her and steal her nighttime hours for myself.

It only takes me about twenty minutes to get the Sybian set up and installed, power connected and a test run of the attachment I think she’ll prefer the most.

As I stand, a fucking fantastic idea pops into my head. One that I know will bring Hudson to my side of the fence. The fucker is right on the edge. I could see it written all over his face at Derek’s on Thursday.

He wants to break.

But with all the rules he thinks he has to follow to make sure he is happy, he can’t bring himself to see that, by breaking this one rule, he’ll be happier than ever.

And that’s all I want for these men—for them to be happy. They may be pissed at me right now, but whether or not they like it, they are my family in this version of my life. Them and Emmy. I’ll do anything to make sure we end up together.

And if that means I need to give Emmy a loaded gun with the bullet that I know will make that happen, then I’m going to stand behind her, help her aim, and take that fucking shot. No questions asked.

She is mine. She is ours. Nothing is going to get in the way of that.

I find the tripod I’m looking for, set it up right in front of the Sybian, then I go to her backpack, tear off a blank sheet from her sketch pad, and quickly scribble out a note for her.

With that done, I finally, fucking finally, return to her room. She’s back to being curled up on her side. I remove everything until I’m down to my boxer briefs and crawl onto the mattress, making my way up from the foot of the bed.

With as much stealth as I can muster, I slip between the sheets on the side that she is facing, holding my breath that she won’t open her eyes. But I want to see those gorgeous fucking hazels staring back at me just as much.

When she remains asleep, I carefully slip my arm beneath her pillow, then wrap it around her, gently applying pressure until she is draped over my chest like a weighted blanket.

Instantly, the noise in my soul turns to a background hum. Sleep starts to pull me under just as lips brush over my pec, followed by five quiet words.

“I knew you would come.”

I raise my head enough to press a kiss to her hair. “Sleep, little dove.”

She snuggles into me, pressing her ear into my chest, and immediately goes pliant with sleep again.

She knows.

I close my eyes, images and plans flickering through my mind. Every single one with the same result—showing Emmy who she belongs to.