Page 35 of Oops Baby for the Mafia Boss
“Mine too.” He nods like this is obvious, and spears some deep-fried potato deliciousness with his fork. I’m momentarily distracted by his mouth as he eats.
My brain catches up with what he just said.
“Wait. Your first time…?” I search for something plausible. “Without a condom?” I whisper in an undertone, darting my gaze around to check there’s no one near enough to hear. “Or in the office?” That makes sense, because?—
“Either.”
I’m a browser with too many tabs open, stuck with a spinning wheel and never loading. I cannot understand.
Markov gazes levelly at me, as though he hasn’t casually mentioned that he—gorgeous, wealthy, powerful—was a virgin when he screwed a girl so low down in his organisation Iliterallyworked in the basement.
“Sorry, for a moment there I thought you said you were a virgin,” I give a little laugh to indicate how absurd I’m being.
Markov’s eyes narrow, but he picks up his burger and takes a casual bite.
And that’s when I get it. Or begin to. He’s serious.
“But you must have had women throwing themselves at you.”
“They weren’t you,” he says roughly.
My heart does a flip-flopping thing. When a man who talks so little does speak, it means something.
“You didn’t know me,” I protest, but I can’t deny I like the idea.
He puts down his burger and watches me, and his grey eyes are so steady.
“I wasn’t interested.” He shrugs. “I couldn’t risk assassination. Security. Time.” He gives a dry smile. “I was busy.”
I nod, because that makes sense.
“But really, I was waiting for my mate.”
My laugh is a forced sound. “Like you’re a fae?”
His gaze dips. “A tattoo.” He reaches over the table and sweeps the back of his fingers down my bare arm, leaving a trail of heat and goose pimples as I respond to him. My body fizzes when he’s near, just as it did before. “Showing you’re mine.”
“Not here?” I indicate my thigh, where the mate mark is on Solene in our audiobook, trying to sound cool.
His mouth hitches up as he takes in my bump. “I have a claim there already,” he drawls softly. “Somewhere visible. Always.”
It’s so entirely possessive and unsubtle.
I blush. Because, yes, for six more months, it’ll be very obvious that he and I did the horizontal tango. And after that… I wonder whether the baby will look like him?
I hope so.
“You’re mine, Emily. And I’m yours.”
That statement shimmers over my skin, but I’m having trouble believing this is real.
His home is downriver from the Mortlake offices I worked in, and is an enormous old building with the plain lines of a Georgian mansion. I gather all this at pace, because Markov drags me through the entrance hall, holding my hand like I’m a wild animal who will make a bolt for freedom instead of a very eager girl.
Down a hallway, there are wooden double doors, and he throws them open. And I gasp. My eyes pop out of my head, and I think I might faint.
It’s a huge, circular library, and as I stumble in, Markov vibrating with tension next to me, I see it’s three floors high. There’s a graceful staircase that sweeps down into the marble floor.
And the shelves are packed. Each one has books of all the same height and colour, perfectly matched. I drift towards the nearest, and realise that it has every book published by a fantasy author I’ve read. Have I mentioned them to Markov? And another shelf has all the books by an author we listened to one of their books together.