“How gracious of you to marry a man who went to a state school on a scholarship.”
“It’s not about the money. I don’t want to give up my career to have a family. Just because I want kids doesn’t mean I should have to give up my job, my goals, and ambitions.”
“You want kids?” I ask, finding myself wanting some brats too lately. Probably just because my cousins have settled down and impregnated their women, making me feel left out.
No, that’s not true.
I want to have babies with Kirsten, no one else. And that has nothing to do with my cousins and their wives.
Oh shit.
I want her to be my wife too.
I’ve never thought marriage was for me. I mean, it only seemed to make both of my parents unhappy before my mom was killed. After that, my dad was an even bigger miserable bastard. My uncles had similar luck, so my cousins and I all grew up without mothers, without seeing what love looked like.
While I may be clueless about the concept of loving someone more than I love myself, it doesn’t change the fact that I want a commitment with Kirsten, as unlikely as that may be.
For weeks, I doubted I’d be able to convince her to fuck me, and I was wrong about that. With enough time and patience, I made it happen. I got her in my bed. So, maybe convincing her to want that sort of future with someone like me, instead of some other asshole, might eventually work out too.
Smiling at her, I brush my lips over her pursed ones and nearly growl in satisfaction when she opens them for me. Her mouth and legs part to take me as if it’s an automatic function that doesn’t require a single thought, and zero hesitation.
“While I would love to stay in bed fucking you all day, I have shit to do,” I tell her.
Finding out who wants her dead could wait a day, right? If she’s here, safe in my bed…
No. My obsession with her is bad enough as it is. I’ll have her again later, once I’ve looked into the hit.
I reluctantly and slowly force myself to move off her.
“Don’t go anywhere,” I say with a grin as I head for the attached bathroom to shower.
“Tristan!” she shouts after me. “You can’ t leave me here!”
“Sure, I can! I just did!”
Echoes of Kirsten’s swears follow me downstairs from where she’s still naked and tied to my bed.
The first stop I make on the lower level is for a talk with the girls, who are, thankfully, all packing up or having breakfast. Their greetings are chillier than usual, and I know it’s not just because they have to move out.
“Your woman is a bitch,” Dana says from where she’s cooking breakfast in the kitchen.
“No, she’s not. And if you call her that again, I’ll let her claw your eyes out,” I warn her.
“She’s not even that pretty,” Summer goes over and whispers to Dana, making me roll my eyes.
“It was dark. You barely saw a glimpse of her. She’s fucking gorgeous, and you’re jealous,” I inform them. “Now enough about her. You all have seen some cops now and then, right?”
“Oh yeah,” Cassidy says from where she pushes her suitcase closed on the sofa to zip it. “All the time.”
“Really? Same ones or different.”
“Both,” Summer answers. “A few of them like to ‘arrest’ us for solicitation, then have us work off the arrest with them and their friends.”
“Jesus,” I mutter, hating that they’re put in that position where they can either fuck the cops or go to jail. “If you give me names, I’ll take care of them,” I tell them. “And I need you all to look at this photo and tell me if you’ve seen him around.”
I show a photo I found online of the dead cop to each woman who shakes her head..
“Alright, well, any names you recall of the others?”
