Total pages in book: 118
Estimated words: 109674 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 548(@200wpm)___ 439(@250wpm)___ 366(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 109674 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 548(@200wpm)___ 439(@250wpm)___ 366(@300wpm)
Her eyes widened. “Oh. Wow. I never really thought about it. But you take care of me. You show me love, so… why not?”
Why not. Thinking of my dark thoughts, my need for blood and gore, my impatience, and my constant need for Amelia’s body, I found many reasons. “Do you want children?”
She bit her lower lip and peered down at the flowers in her hand. “Not now. I don’t feel…” She released a breath as if she couldn’t find the right words. “I don’t feel whole enough yet. I feel like you, and I still need to work through so much before we can consider taking care of someone else. It’s not something I want to fail at.”
I nodded, relieved that Amelia felt the same way I did. “What if we’re never whole enough?”
What if I never was?
Amelia touched my cheek with a soft smile. “You’re whole enough for me, and that’s enough. Maybe we’ll never feel at a point in our lives when we’re whole enough for children, and that’s okay. I have you. I have Flavia and Luciano. My heart is full. And once I start doing the flower arrangements at Camorra weddings in the region, I’ll be very busy. My life doesn’t have a void I need to fill.”
I kissed her. She smiled against my mouth. “But maybe there’s room for something else in our lives.”
I frowned.
“Rodolfo told me one of his cats had a litter with eight babies, and he wants to get rid of them. So far, he only has a home for three of them. We have so much space. We could give the other five a home.”
“Cats,” I murmured.
“I always wanted a cat or a dog, but my father hated animals unless he could use them to show his power. And you like the lions and tiger and cheetahs.”
I chuckled at the hopefulness on Amelia’s face. “They don’t live under the same roof as we do.”
Amelia simply smiled up at me. “Cats would look great in our mansion, and in old Scottish castles, they kept the rats out.”
“We don’t have rats,” I muttered, but Amelia merely smiled. “All right. But the cats probably will avoid me. They are difficult and can sense that I’m not quite trustworthy.”
Amelia shook her head with a laugh, stepped on her toes, and kissed my cheek. “I knew you’d say that. Rodolfo is already on his way to pick them up for us.”
I sighed then smirked. I closed my fingers around Amelia’s slender throat, forcing her higher up on her toes. “You know I’ll have to punish you for your insolence, dove. What if I’d said no?”
She shivered, her eyes glazing over with lust. “I expected you to punish me, but I knew you wouldn’t say no.”
Her breathless voice went straight to my dick. “Upstairs. Now.”
She rushed past me, casting a glance over her shoulder before she began to run, dropping the flowers in the process. I smiled to myself as I started the chase. When I reached the winding staircase to our turret, I was already rock hard. I couldn’t wait to bury myself in Amelia.
I found Amelia where I almost always did, since we’d installed the swing in one of the rose archways a couple of weeks after Rodolfo had dumped five unruly kittens in our garden.
Amelia perched sideways on the wooden board, one leg curled up, the other dangling down, while she swung gently back and forth, reading a big tome. Five cats sunbathed on the grass and pathway around her, but their heads lifted at my approach.
Amelia beamed when she spotted me.
But she wasn’t the first to greet me. The biggest of the five cats, a stubborn but gentle-minded ginger, raced toward me and began to purr and press itself against my legs. I bent down and gave its head the pet it demanded, before I walked over to my wife, where she sat on the swing.
I bent down and kissed her. “How was your day?” she asked.
“Brutal, but successful,” I said. Niccolo and I had killed two drug dealers who’d kept part of our money.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
I shook my head. “Not now.” I usually spilled the bloody details of my daily work to Amelia after I woke from a nightmare. They still came on occasion, but not as often as they used to.
Every cat except for the black male that favored Amelia sauntered up to me for a greeting. I had grown used to their furry presence and to my surprise, their warm purring body on my lap after a particularly rough day, and before I dared to go up to Amelia, always calmed me.
Amelia chuckled when the black beast rolled over on its back, presenting its belly. “He’s jealous. That’s why he doesn’t like you.”
“I’d be jealous too if I had to watch someone else do what I do with your beautiful body every day.”