Page 82 of Hunt Me, Daddy

The word filled my chest so completely that for a moment, I could not speak.

Her mouth against mine. Her body under my hands. Her trust, fought for and earned in teeth and fire. Her anger. Her brilliance. Her sleep, her food, her safety, her surrender when she chose it, and her defiance when she needed to test whether I was strong enough to handle it.

I wanted everything.

“I want you alive,” I said.

It was true, but it didn’t even begin to explain what I felt.

“I’m not stopping the Orlov investigation,” she said.

My jaw tightened.

There was the stubborn little girl I was going to spank until she learned that bravery and self-destruction were not the same thing.

“Yes,” I said. “You are.”

“No. I’m not.”

“For tonight, you are.”

“You don’t get to decide that.”

“For tonight, I do.”

Her laugh this time was soft, incredulous, and so heated beneath the anger that I had to look away from the monitor.

“You really believe that.”

“Yes.”

“Because you’re Bratva?”

“No.”

“Then why?”

Because you are mine and I am done pretending the word is not sitting in my mouth every time I say your name.

“Because I am the only person between you and Mikhail Orlov’s men tonight,” I said. “And because you are too intelligent to mistake pride for strategy when I put it that plainly.”

She went quiet.

I did not enjoy needing to wound her pride.

That was a lie. Part of me enjoyed it. Not the wound. The correction. The moment she was forced to stop and reassess because I had found the exact place her argument could not hold. Kit needed that. She needed someone who would not be dazzled by her intelligence into letting her hurt herself. Someone who could say no and survive the look she gave afterward.

She needed a daddy, my mind supplied again, dark and satisfied.

Yes.

That was it.

She needed a daddy with patience enough to wait her out and a hand firm enough to make waiting unnecessary when danger came too close.

I would be both.

“Twenty-four hours,” she said finally.