Page 41 of Executing Malice (Jefferson Rejects #4)

DANTE

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I’m not in the habit of unnecessary confrontation. I find a mindset like mine has an unpredictability that only ends in one of two ways.

Conflict gets resolved and everyone walks away on their own two feet.

Or conflict gets resolved, but the other guy gets carried away on a stretcher.

I’m not usually hot headed, but I do have a temper that manifests in a snake in the grass kind of way. It strikes before I can feel the approach.

I’ve tried therapy. I thought it would help once I found Leila. I could show her my progress and beg her to give me another chance. I thought if I could show her that what happened that night wouldn’t happen again, she’d take me back.

But therapy was a lot of talking about my past, my parents and siblings. Things that didn’t matter. And I wasn’t going to open up to a stranger who couldn’t possibly understand. I just needed her to tell me how to stop being angry. How not to kill again .

I exhale into Leila’s soft curls. She’s curled on her side with her back nestled down my front. She hadn’t protested when I wiggled my cock back inside her after hours of relentless fucking. Stopping only on the ride back from the drive-in.

But I had her on my cock before we even got fully up the porch steps. I fucked her right against the front door before carrying her inside, cock still buried deep, all the way to her bed where I started over again.

I lost count of how many times we came. My dick refused to go down, even after, it stayed rigid and determined to go again. It was as if it was making up for lost time.

One thing is for sure, I know I got her pregnant. I know it with the same visceral and unfaltering certainty as the fact that the sun will come up in the morning.

I definitely put a baby in her.

There is no way I didn’t with the amount of cum I pumped inside her. Gallons of it, over and over again, until it came out of her in puddles.

My hand drifts across the soft plains of her belly. I stroke her flesh. Cradle it like I will when it starts to swell. I even trace little circles over her navel with my thumb.

“I can almost hear what you’re thinking,” Leila grumbles, voice thick with sleep and amusement.

I grin into the tangled riot tickling my chin. “I want a little girl with your eyes. ”

Her snort is broken by a yawn. “I think you might have gotten your wish after last night ... and this morning.”

I tug her tighter against me. “Sore?”

She makes a soft humming sound. “Oddly enough, no. I do, however, need a shower. You messed up the one we took last night.”

I give a feigned sigh. “Fine. I won’t join you or help you wash your back.”

Her laugh is deeper. “Is that what you were trying to do when you fucked me against the tiles?”

“That was my helper fee.”

I’m a little disappointed when she pivots to face me, dislodging my cock from her pussy. But it fleets the moment I get trapped in her eyes.

“I’m going to take a shower. Alone,” she adds with a chuckle. “I can’t be late for work twice in one week and I know your hands won’t stay on my back.”

I purse my lips at her. “I can behave.”

Leila’s eyebrow quirks. “Liar.”

Okay, so she’s not wrong. I have zero control over my actions when she’s naked and wet.

“Fine, but I should taste your pussy before you go. ”

I’m pulling her onto her back and shoving her thighs wide before she can stop me. Even when she tries, when she shields her mound with her hands, I swat them aside.

“I’m leaking,” she protests like I give a shit.

“That’s how I want my little whore. Used and dripping.”

I plant my face in her slick heat, and I eat. I lap at her channel drenched with a mix of her and me. A delicious blend I would happily make a part of my diet for the rest of my life. I nip at her clit. I devour her cunt until she’s clutching fistfuls of my hair and riding my face.

But I make her cum on my cock. I pull her into my lap and let her bounce on my dick until she gets us both off.

She stays, afterwards, with me still deep inside her. Her arms around my neck. Her legs hugging my ribs. She doesn’t stop my hands from fondling her tits while she kisses me.

“Will you tell me about before?” she asks while I’m in the process of nibbling on her nipple.

I lift my head. “What do you want to know?”

Leila shrugs. “Everything? I don’t remember anything.”

Abandoning her chest, I frame her cheeks between my palms. “I’ll tell you anything you want.”

Except why you left.

And maybe that makes me an asshole, but I can’t risk her running again.

She kisses me long and slow. “Tonight? After dinner? ”

I nod. “Make a list.”

Our morning slips from there to her taking a shower and getting ready for work while I get some work done that I can’t with my phone alone.

The job is a simple one of breaking into a tech company mainframe for a guy I owed a favor.

It’s a mildly big enough job that he now owes me one, but I get him squared away by the time Leila emerges from the bathroom, swaddled in a towel and looking soft and pink.

“Don’t,” she warns when she catches me eyeing her.

I blink with all the innocence I can feign. “Just admiring your towel.”

She scoffs. “My towel?”

I fold my arms and give her a smirk. “Just thinking how much better it would look bunched up on the floor.”

Her laughter echoes through the house as she pads past me straight into the bedroom.

I don’t follow, but damn I’m tempted, which is why I don’t. The second that scrap of fabric comes off her, I’ll fuck her. I know it. What I need is my own shower to work down the boner now tenting the front of my sweats.

It does amuse me how much faster I get back up now that I have Leila. It’s not a matter of imagining the feel and taste of her but actually getting to sink my dick in her that gets my gears going without provocation. But at least I’ll be able to fill up her bodywash without feeling like an old man.

Leila is dressed and has breakfast on the table when I emerge. Her head lifts when I step into the kitchen. She’s holding a spoon and a container of blueberries.

“Breakfast?” she asks, gesturing with the spoon at the two bowls of oatmeal already steaming on the counter.

With a nod, I move to the fridge for the milk. I also grab the brown sugar from the cupboard and carry them both to the adjoining room where the dining table is set up. Leila joins me with the bowls now stabbed through with spoons and heaped with nuts, blueberries and cinnamon.

I pull her into my lap while we eat. She’s in one of her long skirts and loosely knitted sweaters that hangs just slightly. It’s the perfect looseness for my hand to slip easily up the hem and settle on her waist.

“I’ve been thinking,” she begins after several minutes of just the clink of our utensils on ceramic.

“Maybe you don’t keep your helmet on anymore.

I mean, you should while you’re driving, of course, but otherwise.

” She sets her spoon down and turns her head to face me.

“Maybe you could even talk to people a little?”

I study the apprehension in her eyes, the worried nibbling of her bottom lip.

The Leila from before never cared what anyone thought of her.

She didn’t care if she had no one in her life, except me.

But I suppose it makes sense that she considers those things important now.

She’s older, for one, but she’s no longer that cold, hard kid trying to survive the system.

She’s still tough and resilient, but she’s softer, and she has a home.

Something she’s been wanting since the day I met her.

She has people she cares about and who care for her.

She has a community that is important to her, and she wants me to be a part of that.

“I don’t want you to think there’s anything wrong with you,” she goes on quickly while I’m still processing. “It’s just that Jefferson is very unique and the people who live here follow a certain protocol and—”

I capture her chin. Smooth my thumb along the soft line of her jaw.

“This is important to you,” I say quietly. “This town and these people, they’re important to you.”

Her shoulders sag slightly as if defeated. “You’re important, too.”

I brush the curve of her bottom lip. “If Jefferson is where your heart is, your happiness, I will fit in for you. All I want is for you to be happy.”

Her hands capture my wrist, not to pull me away, but to hold my palm against her cheek. “Jefferson, for all the fucked up that it is, is ... home. Maybe it’s silly, but I feel safe here. ”

I give a slow nod of understanding. “Then I will make it my home, too.”

“You don’t have to—”

I kiss her and taste the sweet brown sugar and berries on her lips. “You are my home, Leila. Wherever you are. If this is what you want, I will make it happen.”

There’s a damp sheen to her eyes when she pulls back that contradicts the sweet smile curling her mouth. “Thank you.”

I lift her hand and brush my lips along her knuckles. “Anything for you.”

Face less clouded by her uncertainties, she turns to her bowl, only to stop and take my hand again.

“What is this?”

I follow her gaze to the plait and the ribbon tied next to it.

“Your hair.”

She blinks. Her hand flies to the riot she’s pulled into a neat ponytail at the top of her head.

“Where—?”

“It’s from before,” I assure her when she starts searching for uneven patches. “I wanted a part of you with me when you went to school. You braided it and tied it on.”

Relieved, she pulls my hand into her lap and examines the neatly woven braid. “And you’ve had it all this time? ”

“Never took it off,” I murmur, not adding that I couldn’t. Couldn’t risk losing it, wrecking it. “It was all I had left of you.”

Our porridge sits forgotten as she kisses me. Neither of us want to be the first to pull away as time slips around us and we stay tangled in the soft moment.

“What about me?” she asks after several minutes. “What of yours did I have?”