His Pretty Little Burden (Kids of The District, #4)

by Nicci Harris

Nothing fades to black. Side effects may include: excess discomfort and pressure between the thighs, a throbbing sensation that beckons any kind of relief so please avoid sharp objects, —also crying, shaking, drooling, growling, nightmares, daydreams, and, finally, divorce. I take no responsibility for any of the above mentioned. And think about the children before you leave your husbands. The Butcher Boys are fictional.

"Happiness is like a butterfly, the more you chase it, the more it will elude, but if you turn your attention to other things, it will come and sit softly on your shoulder." –Henry David Thoreau.

Despite the fact my brother and I executed him ourselves, it isn't problematic grieving with his admirers as we shared a kind of affection for this man. He was a second father to us. But that is the way it goes. His time was up the moment he betrayed the Cosa Nostra. Stole one of our own. Lied to another made-man. Spent money he had no right to spend. Greed and hubris were his biggest sins.

When we sit again, Aurora holds her hands in her lap, and I tear my eyes away from the priest at the altar to watch her worry her wedding band around her long, elegant finger. A piece of jewellery equal parts a platinum shackle and a crown. We do not have a traditional relationship—nor a sexual one—our union is based on business. Being my wife is the last claim she has to this empire now that her father has been overthrown.

Jimmy Storm was the heart and teeth of the District, enlightening and adoring his followers while gnashing and shredding those who challenged him. He and my father built this city from the ashes of poverty. They nourished it. Fed it. They cleaned the streets and secured previously unattainable tenders for employment. They saw our residents hold gold and green in their fists. Jimmy and my father are businessmen, and they sank their claws so far into the heart of the District that if anyone was to rip the Cosa Nostra from it, the entire city would bleed to death.

My mum told me that bad things come in threes.

She'd said he's a dangerous man. But I need a dangerous man.

I wish Mum had at least told my dad about me. Wish that she had asked for help, so she could have put food on the table more often. Maybe she wouldn’t have killed herself trying to be a mother when she clearly had no idea how to be one... maybe she wouldn’t have killed herself.

A sad sigh leaves me. This place is far removed from my foster mother’s little red brick house in Storm River, with her dry, dusty backyard littered with my foster brother’s bikes and broken-down vehicles.

Drumming my fingers on my leg, I try to redirect my mind while my stomach twists in hunger. The peanut butter sandwich I had back in the motel wasn't enough after the train, two buses, and two kilometre walk here. Fucksake. I don't want to ask for anything here, though. I hate owing people shit.

Now, I don’t believe in God, never have, but if God made man in his image, then I think the tall, dark, thirty-something-year-old in front of me was the prototype. Being beautifully tanned, handsome, with that perfect masculine jawline, and broad chest filling out his expensive black suit to perfection—he’s a damn work of art. Kudos, God. And while I have you, you're an a-hole. Amen.

“Fawn,” he says, and as though he has a direct line to my chin, my head rises to meet his stern gaze. “When I talk to you, you look me in the eye.”

Captivated by him, my breath catches when his forefinger touches my chin, lifting. And God, his smell moves around me, into me. He doesn't smell like Benji. His scent is like his aura: deep, rich, powerful, and just so very... masculine.

Not what I was expecting. I want to exhale with the utter relief I feel about having a free place to sleep for a few nights, for being that much closer to my dad and answers, but I'm also acutely aware that nothing in this life comes without certain expectations. And kindness usually has a cost.

Touching my lower stomach, I chuckle and shake my head. This kid could grow up in this world, and for the first time since the strip turned pink, I'm excited for the life inside me. Yeah, it won't know me, but it will be in sheets as soft as clouds, eating cake that tastes like the gods made it.

And now I'm kinda hopeful, for the first time since that day. This kid is going to have a great life. Belong.

A boy. A boy who might look like Benji... I thought that I would forever be looking for his smile, seeing it in crowds, seeing it behind me in the reflection of a store window. But now, I'm hoping I'll see it in the boy we made. It'll be nice knowing that a smile like his is still shared with the world even if I don't get to experience it firsthand.

A little deer. One grey eye. One green. I'll kill her if I must.

I once again wish my mother had instilled more scientific remedies for my afflictions. Nightmares: dreamcatcher. Not therapy or sleeping pills... No, a fucking dreamcatcher.

"Baby, the Native Americans used dreamcatchers well before we started using drugs for every problem." Thanks, Mum.

"It’s okay, Fawn. Just breathe." Those words further convince me that we had made love that night. I imagine him saying them right before he took my virginity. It was a sweet moment. And slow. I'm sure of it. I would have enjoyed it... my heart double taps. I just wish I remembered...

Sliding from the mattress, I decide to look at the moon and get some fresh air. Another ridiculous remedy my mother instilled in me from a young age. The moon and the stars can cure anything, even insomnia. Fucksake, Mum.

Still, ten years' worth of bohemian ideologies don't simply dissolve, and if the alternative is my foster mother's bitter words and obtuse insights, I'd rather embrace the former.

It's Clay Butcher standing in only jeans, seemingly just thrown on, hanging low around defined hips. Dark tattoos that I can't quite distinguish span his chest and dip low beneath his jeans. His perfectly virile physique is cut into trim, defined muscles coated in perspiration, the lingering scent of sweat and something musky surrounding him.

Fuck me. If my ovaries still operated, they'd be popping eggs out like a tennis ball machine.

In a suit, the man is a powerhouse of intimidation, a handsome mystery, but in very little, he's... overwhelming, alarmingly breathtaking, masculine, sexy as sin, and if my brain blood wasn't between my leg...

I've never wanted to lick a man before, but right now, I want more than anything to know what his sweat tastes like. Power probably; if power had a taste, that's what his sweat would taste like.

My eyes drop to the light dusting of hair on his abdominals, following the trail between the thick V-shaped muscles leading beneath his pants, where I am now staring at the dense bulge between his thighs, a shape hard to hide due to the size and girth. I can't look away. Stop looking at his cock, Fawn. But I don't. I press my thighs together.

"She doesn't eat. Hardly sleeps." He pauses, and my heart becomes an erratic drum between my ears. "If you were my property, I'd bend you over my knee."

I head towards my room, dashing around the hallways, hoping I find a direct path while the spindling shame reminds me how inappropriate my arousal is. I'm pregnant. Here for my dad. Here for Benji. But that man is brutally hot. Of course, I'm going to look, appreciate even.

I find my door, deciding I'll stay on the other side of it and forget all about the way his voice was outright erotic when he threatened to take me over his knee⁠— Yep, I'm going to forget all about that.

Staying in my room was good in theory. In practise, the idea lasted half a day before encountering a huge, always-hungry problem—Jasmine and her perpetual need to coax me into things she so desires.

The image of his torso, slick with sweat and carved with muscles, comes tumbling to mind. Front and centre, actually. It's been there all night, this morning, in the shower. Too often. That, and his words, "If you were my property, I'd bend you over my knee," seem far too eager to monopolise my brain space.

I scan the menu even with discomfort twisting up inside me. I never wanted this kind of treatment, and I don't trust free shows of generosity, but I also cringe at being seen as ungrateful. Basically, I have no stance to take that will ebb this feeling. So, I touch my stomach, imagining the kid growing inside me, reminding myself this is about him. It isn't about you, Fawn. I can deal with that.

We are an odd threesome. We'd make a good joke. A teen mum, a thirty-year-old butler on steroids, and a peppy maid walk into a bar⁠—

"The headline is calling him 'The District Daddy.'"

"Daddy Butcher has called for all citizens on the north side of Stormy River to evacuate, but the state government won't sanction such a drastic move, saying it's too early, and will affect the trade through the Stormy River docks."

"He wants to wrap us in cotton wool. I guess that's why they are calling him daddy."

No, Fawn. Not a crush. Admiration.

I gape at the closed door ahead. Is he a fucking X-Man or something? Can't one of them see through walls? I swallow down the knot in my throat as my bare feet guide me towards the rectangular beaming light.

"You are my responsibility. While you are under my roof, you will eat three meals a day. You will make yourself comfortable. If you don't like something, use your voice, say it. You will not apologise unless you have done something wrong. The word sorry carries no significance when it's used to hide a lack of confidence."

I swallow. Where I should feel shame or anger over being schooled, I actually feel ... noticed? My mother used to tell me I apologised too often, whereas my foster mother made the word my soundtrack.

A masterpiece of a figure, seamlessly feminine in a sweet girlish way. Not the kind you can create by visiting the gym and eating healthy, the kind that is soft skin moulded around a perfect frame—the kind that is genetic.

"I look like my mother," she said. No wonder Dustin had an affair with her mother. It would take a damn army to drag a body like that away from any man with a pulse. Away from her hair, near white, long, and thick, it drapes across her like a shield. Away from the lower curves of her arse in that bikini. Away from her long legs. Legs I should demand to fold, to kneel above me while she sits on my face...

"Love, baby, is feeling invincible."

Little deer. I scowl; his nickname for me is woven with condescension. He sees me as a weak animal, as merely a meal and bones to pick his teeth with.

"What could you possibly be afraid of?" That perfectly charming and practised smile settles on his face. "Failure, Fawn."

"I've never really had a chance to try anything," I admit. "I just... ya know... survived." "And yet, you're not dead,"

"So, you haven't failed, sweet girl." He smiles, softly. "You are resilient despite all odds. And you'll survive what's to come."

Watch me beg for the truth about that night. The crazy girl with no memory of how she got knocked-up. Improbable. Watch me beg for an autopsy. The stupid girl who challenges the words of her two foster brothers, only to have the police sneer at her. Watch the silly girl being coddled by a stranger twice her age who makes her warm and uncomfortable and all the while having another person's kid growing in her uterus and no memory of how it happened. Watch a lost cause.