Mr Handsome, Will You Procreate With Me?

10

I raise a brow at him. “I’m guessing I could’ve managed it.”

He just laughs and smacks my back again. “Did you see the kids yet?”

“Yeah, I got here the same time as Natalya.”

His eyebrow piercing glints in the sunlight when he raises it at me. “Did you notice she’s not at all the spoiled princess you told me she’d become?”

I think about his beautiful daughter, the principessa that I can’t seem to get out of my head and say, “Well, I didn’t spend that much time with her. She could be a complete ass for all I know.”

Danil barks out a laugh while Lev mutters something about Italians that I’m guessing isn’t all that complimentary.

“Hey, Danil. How have you been?”

He smiles and takes another drink before saying, “I’m great, man. Sorry to hear about your dad.”

“Thanks,” I tell him, “but we all knew it was coming.”

“So now you’re officially the don,” Roman says, coming to stand by us.

“I’m not kissing your f*****g ring,” Vitaly yells over his shoulder while he flips burgers on the grill.

I groan and look at Roman. “I keep telling him that’s not how it works.”

Roman shrugs. “He’s stubborn. You’ll never convince him.”

“Stubborn’s one way to put it.” I take another drink and watch Matvey walk out of the house and over to us. He gives me an easy grin, the kind he would’ve never been able to manage before they got Alina back. He looks happy, damn happy, and when he stands next to me and wraps his arm around my shoulder, giving me a side hug, I can’t mask the surprise. I’ve seen him many times over the years, but this is the first time he’s ever attempted physical contact.

“It’s good to see you, Dominic.” His voice is just as gravelly as ever, but that’s the only thing that’s the same. He’s even wearing a T-shirt, not caring that his scarred, tattooed arms are easily visible.

“You’re like a different man, Matvey.” I raise my glass to him. “I’m happy for you.”

He smiles even bigger and lifts his glass before taking a drink. At the sound of his daughter’s voice, he looks over and shouts something in Russian. Yelena’s walking with Valentin, both of them eating off the same pretzel while they walk towards the dirt bike that’s parked outside the large barn at the back of the property. She smiles and hollers back at him before shaking her head and laughing.

“She hates wearing a helmet,” Matvey explains, “but it’s the only way I’ll ever let her get on one of those damn things.”

“Mia really wants one,” I say, looking over at Lev.

Laughing he says, “Yeah, she only tells me that every damn day. She can get one when she’s sixteen as long as I think she can handle it.” He scrubs a hand over his jaw. “She also wants a motorcycle as soon as she gets her license, and we just compromised on piercings. She’s agreed to not pierce herself any more, and in return we’ll let her get her nose pierced when she’s seventeen.”

Vitaly laughs and points the spatula at Lev. “If she’s anything like her dad, then that’s not the only thing she’s going to want to get pierced.” To really emphasize his point, he lowers the spatula so it’s pointing right at Lev’s crotch.

“f**k, brother,” Lev groans. “Don’t even say s**t like that.”

Vitaly just laughs and goes back to grilling.

“I’m so happy I have sons,” Roman says while Danil laughs and raises his glass, clinking it against Roman’s.

“A-f*****g-men, brother.”

I don’t bother saying that I’m f*****g thrilled I don’t have either, because the men around me are obviously thrilled to be dads, and I don’t want to piss on their daddy parade.

“What about you?”

I look over at Roman. “What about me?”

“You came here alone?” he asks. “You didn’t bring anyone from Italy.”

“I did, actually,” I say, surprising them. “Two of my cousins. Dario and Alessandro will be staying with me in America.”

Vitaly walks over after putting more hamburgers on the grill and says, “Yeah, I think he meant did you bring anyone over who doesn’t have a dick.”

“Is that what he meant?” I ask. “I hadn’t picked up on that, Vitaly, thank you.”

Vitaly laughs. “We’ve missed having you around, Dominic. We need a grumpy bachelor around to even things out. We all noticed how you kept yourself scarce when all our kids were at the babysitting age.”

“f**k yeah I did.” I shake my head at the thought of dirty diapers and screaming babies. “That was absolutely on purpose.”

“Like we’d ever trust you to watch our kids,” Lev says, reaching for his phone and swiping his finger over the screen until he finds what he’s looking for. “You look scared to death. You remember this? This is not the face of a man who I would trust to take care of my daughter.”

I look at the photo. It’s from Matvey and Alina’s wedding. Lev had put his daughter in my arms, and I hadn’t known what in the f**k to do with her. In the picture, Natalya is dressed all in pink with her back pressed against my chest and my hands wrapped snuggly around her stomach and butt because I was terrified I was going to drop her. Lev’s wrong, though. I don’t look terrified in the photo. She’s gripping my finger and looking up at me, and I’m looking down at her. I look puzzled and slightly surprised, if anything. I’d expected Natalya to scream, but she’d just smiled up at me like there was nowhere else she’d rather be.

When I look away from the photo, the first thing I see is Natalya staring at me. The same blue eyes meet mine, but everything else has changed about her. She’s not a little girl anymore. She’s a woman, a beautiful woman, but she’s also completely and absolutely off-limits.

“Hey, princess,” Lev says, waving her closer. “We were just talking about you.”

She comes to stand by her dad, smiling when he shows her the picture of us. “Oh my god, I forgot all about that photo.”

“You’re the first baby he ever held,” Lev says. “Can you tell?”

Her blue eyes study the picture, a soft smile playing at her full lips, and I can’t help but notice that her top lip is slightly bigger than her bottom one, and f**k do I like that. She’s wearing some sort of pink, glossy lipstick that’s putting all kinds of inappropriate images in my head. The last thing I want to be thinking about while standing next to her dad is how goddamn beautiful those lips would look stretched around my c**k.

“I think he looks pretty relaxed,” Natalya says, giving me a quick smile. She swipes her finger over the screen, spending a few seconds doing something I can’t see before handing the phone back to her dad.

Lev takes it, slipping it into his back pocket while saying, “He thought you were going to end up spoiled rotten.” He wraps an arm around her shoulders and kisses the top of her head. He has to lean down quite a bit to do it, because even though she’s still wearing those f*****g amazing heels, she’s still a good foot shorter than all of us. “Jokes on him, princess, because you’re an absolute sweetheart.”

“There’s no way any of you would’ve let me grow up to be a brat.” She laughs and looks at her dad and uncles. “Besides, all any of you had to do was look at me like you were disappointed and I’d burst into tears.”

Vitaly gives a big smile. “Remember the time you and Yelena spent the night and my wicked daughter convinced you both to watch a scary movie that she knew she wasn’t allowed to see?”

Natalya groans at the memory. Her uncles laugh while Lev looks at me and takes over. “A jump scare made Natalya scream, scaring the hell out of Vitaly. He came running in the room to find three terrified girls and Val, who’d been trying to calm them down, but it obviously wasn’t working.”

“As soon as she saw my face,” Vitaly says, cutting in to finish the story, “Natalya started crying. She jumped in my arms, still shaking from that goddamn movie, telling me she was sorry. God, the three of them had to sleep with nightlights for like a month after that.”

“It was a really scary movie,” Natalya says in her own defense, “and we were ten.”

“Yeah, that’s why we said you couldn’t watch it,” Vitaly tells her. “Poor Val had his hands full trying to keep you girls out of trouble.”

“Yeah, my brother’s such a saint.”

We all turn to see Svetlana walking over, a coke in one hand and a cannolo in the other, looking every bit like Vitaly’s daughter.

Looking over at me, she smiles and raises the cannolo higher. “These are delicious. Maybe I should move to Italy.”

Vitaly points the spatula he’s still holding at her. “Don’t you dare. I will fly over there and personally drag your Russian ass back here.”

“I was born in America,” she reminds him.

“I’m Russian. Your mom is Russian. You, sweetheart, are Russian. I don’t give a damn what country you were born in.”

Svetlana laughs, clearly enjoying riling her dad up. She takes another bite right as the sound of revving motors grows louder and several dirt bikes emerge from the path in the woods. They’re all wearing dirt bike helmets, so I’m not sure who is who, but Yelena is clutched around, I’m assuming, Val, and there’s a much smaller body on the back of one of the other bikes, so Mia must’ve slipped out to join them at some point. When she pulls her helmet off, there’s a huge smile on her face. She’s an adrenaline junkie in the making, and I can only imagine the s**t she’s going to get up to when she’s older.

As if sensing my thoughts, Lev sighs from beside me. “I was kind of hoping she’d outgrow her love of danger, but it just keeps getting worse.”

I look over and laugh. “Just wait until she starts bringing guys home.”

The look he gives me makes me give another laugh. “My daughter is never going to bring guys home, not unless she wants me to shoot them.”

I smack his shoulder and finish my drink. “You can’t just go around shooting everyone who pisses you off. You have to learn to use your words, Lev.”