Chapter Nineteen
Dev
I feel helpless and I hate the feeling, something I swore to myself I would never feel after identifying my parents’ bodies and watching them lowered into the ground.
I’ve spent the last years raising three men and building myself and my business into something more than formidable but this, this is not something I know how to fix.
It’s been bloody weeks since the day imp told her father to screw off, well, not in so many words but that was the gist since she’s effectively chosen me and mine over her own kin and she still isn’t talking.
That’s why I feel so helpless and adrift. The bloody beautiful rascal had not only stood up to her father, a man she looked up to, but she’d claimed me and mine and drawn a definite line in the sand where her family is concerned.
I don’t quite know what to do with that since I feel as if the only thing to trump her declaration would be one of my own. One that I cannot honestly make right now because while I adore imp I don’t think I love her love her. Not yet.
I can’t risk my heart that way, not until she’s baring my name and my ring and is so tied to me she won’t be able to move. I’ve fast come to realize that a baby does not a guarantee make and that I have no hold on her past the deal we made two months ago.
What if I swear myself to her and she up and leaves because she wants more than a family filled with sweaty men with even dirtier mouths and a love of sports?
That’s a risk I cannot take. Cowardly but true, I need her to commit before I can let go of the uncertainty I feel and give her what she deserves.
“Bleeding hell! Oh bleeding fucking hell!” I hear from the kitchen table, looking up from the stew I’m making for dinner to see Davy spring back from the table, his face white with shock.
The laptop he’d been eyeballing is slammed shut with a resounding thump and he backs away from it with a look of terror that would be frightening if not for the comical horror I see lining his face.
“You watched that shite?”
“Yeah.”
I stir the stew and keep my grin in place though truth be told I feel a bit green myself just remembering. That’s why I’d downloaded it to all three laptops and ordered Davy, Ry and Garret to watch the thing ‘in case’ anything happened and we needed to be knowledgeable in an emergency.
It’s terrible but I refuse to be the only male in this house walking around with those images plaguing my mind. As they say, misery loves company.
The added bonus might be that maybe now Davy and the lads will learn to keep their dicks in their trousers and think twice about forgoing protection.
I know I feel that way just looking at my poor imp and I’ve already let that bloody ship sail and am currently navigating it out to the deep oceans.
“But, but how do they survive that shite? Did you see how big…” he retches once and swallows, going even paler. “And no human being should survive that much blood loss.”
I nod, stirring the stew rhythmically and steadfastly ignoring the memory of that bleeding video imp had forced on me. Bloody cruel female that one.
She hardly speaks to me but this she has no trouble with?
“Oh Christ. Oh bleeding fecking no! I am never-”
“Tupping a lass without a condom. Not ever. Never. Not-”
“We get the picture lad, believe you me, we get it.” I say, choking on a laugh when Ry and Garett both fall into a chair and eye me through pale faces and thin lips.
“You did that to our hun and now.”
“She’s going to have her lady parts ravaged because.”
“You’re a bleeding animal with no self-control!”
All three. Traitors.
Though to be fair they are right. In a little under four months my little imp is going to be subjected to child birth, the very same gory ordeal we’ve all seen in that birthing video she shoved my way with a snarled ‘get a good look at what your dick’s doing to me’.
I haven’t so much as touched her since she stomped out of the car until very recently when she’d started snuggling into me in front of the TV and falling asleep on my lap. No sex though, but I’ve come to realize that I’ll take a good snuggle with her any day over a quick tumble and-I have to stop thinking about rolling around with imp or I’ll embarrass myself and be walking around hard for the rest of the night.
“Where is imp anyway?” Davy asks, pushing his laptop away with a shudder.
“She wants to lunch with Lila and then they’re supposed to be shopping for…” I don’t repeat the vile things she’d said about maternity wear but shudder a little when I finish. “Jeans with elastic waist bands.”