I grab a napkin and cover my mouth, shaking my head.
“I’m so sorry,” I say, dabbing at my mouth. “I don’t know what’s come over me.”
I look up to find Dom smirking at me, his dark eyes gleaming with amusement, as though he doesn’t find me gross but captivating. I shiver under his gaze, returning his smile.
“Am I making you nervous, Dreamer?” He grins wolfishly as he cuts into his steak. “I promise that’s not my intention.”
“Liar,” I banter, keeping my voice fun and playful so he knows I’m joking. “I think you like making me nervous. I think you like feeling like a predator, with me being your prey.”
“Like a predator?” he growls passionately. “I am a predator, Daniella, and you are my prey.”
Lucky sits next to the table, head flitting between the two of us, licking his lips any time one of us glances in his direction.
I sigh, nodding at him. “I know, boy. But you can’t have any human food. You have to have your special doggy food. I’m sorry.”
I return to Dom’s gaze to find him staring at me, the corner of his lips twitching.
“What?” I whisper.
He chuckles. “What?”
“You’re looking at me funny. Have I got pasta on my face?”
I couldn’t refuse the pasta when the chef started to describe it to me, painting a word picture of how he was going to cook it. The only problem is it’s one of the messiest foods imaginable and I’m supposed to be presenting a civilized demeanor to him.
But he doesn’t seem to mind, not in the slightest.
As we banter and talk, I feel my self-consciousness dropping away from me, sliding from my body like a weighted blanket I don’t need to clutch onto anymore.
“You’re going to make an amazing mother,” he growls. “That’s why I was looking at you funny. If I was even doing that…”
“Oh, you definitely were.” I laugh, wrapping more pasta around my fork and forcing myself to eat slowly so I don’t seem like a greedy Gertrude. “Do you really think so? I’ve always thought about having kids, but sort of in a vague way, in a head-in-the-clouds way if that makes sense. I never thought it could actually happen.”
“Yes, I think so,” he growls, staring hard at me. “I know so. When I see how attentive and patient you are with Lucky, my mind goes into overdrive thinking about you as a mother, thinking about all the different ways you’re going to rise to the occasion. So, how many?”
“How many what?”
He smirks. “What do you think? How many children do you want?”
I shrug. “I guess I never really thought about a number. More than one, I know that. I’ve always imagined my children having siblings… human siblings and dog siblings. So, um, more than one and less than six, I guess.”
“Five, then,” he says passionately, his voice shivering through me as he stares harder, pinning me in place with his possessive gaze. “I want as many as your fertile young body can give me. So more than one and no more than six? Five sounds good to me.”
A shiver moves through me, the sense of unreality heightening as I feel like I’m floating out of my body and staring down at this impossible scene, at the curvy shy girl discussing children with the Bratva badass.
And yet it’s real. It’s happening. It’s time I stopped questioning that.
“Are you an only child?” Dom asks. “You said you wanted our children…”
Our children, the world sizzles through me, tempting me to throw the table aside and mount him right now, to grind my sex against his crotch until I can feel how solid he is through his pants, shifting my hips over and over until we’re both bursting with the need to explode with lust.
“To have siblings,” he goes on. “Is that why?”
I nod. “I never had a brother or a sister. My parents didn’t even want me. They were crackheads who OD’d within like two months of each other. I was a mistake and they gave me up the first chance they got. In the orphanage, I guess I was always the weird one, off by myself, either spending time with animals or reading about them… I’ve never felt like I belonged, and I don’t want that for our children.”
My voice catches as emotion threatens to choke me.
Lucky pads over and makes a whining noise, nuzzling his head against my leg, and at the same time, Dom reaches over and softly brushes a tear from my cheek.
“I’m so sorry that happened to you,” he says passionately. “But you’ve got a family now, Daniella. Me and you and Lucky… and our children when we bring them into the world. We’ll never let anything happen to you. We’ll never abandon you. We’re going to be here until you’re sick of us.”