Chapter 363 A Child

    Chapter 363 A Child

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    “We don’t fit, Julius. I can’t give you unreserved trust,” Quinn replied, her voice cial. “And honestly–do you really believe this ind can hold me?”

    If she put her mind to it, she would find a way off the ind. It would simply take more time, nothing more.

    Julius let out a brittleugh. “Unreserved trust? Tell me, who on this can hand another person that kind of nk check?”

    “My father and mother can,” Quinn said, conviction ringing through every syble. “They’ve spent a lifetime side by side, sharing the same breath. I’ve told you. I want what they have.”

    After her first marriage had crumbled, she valued her parents‘ bond with fierce rity. That bond had be something she yearned for with every beat of her heart.

    “Julius, from day one, I’ve spelled out exactly what I want,” she said.

    “Yes, you did,” he shot back. “And I can give it–total transparency. I’lly out every scheme, every ambition I harbor. But must one mistake condemn me to a lifetime without you?”

    Quinn lowered hershes. “Julius, we’re finished. All I ask is that you keep your word–send me home in two days. Don’t shatter thest sliver of trust I have left.”

    With that, she turned and walked toward the bedroom, her footsteps steady, resolved.

    She had barely crossed the threshold when Julius followed, only a breath behind.

    “Quinn!” He caught her from behind and tumbled with her onto the mattress, arms locked around her.

    “Julius Whitethorn, what are you doing?” Quinn gasped, shock rippling through her.

    “We are nowhere near the end. Not in this lifetime,” he rasped, pressing frantic kisses along her cheek.

    Soft, desperate kisses rained over her skin, unrelenting. His hands roamed, seeking familiar curves, trying to coax a response he knew by heart. He had spent years learning the map of her body; every subtle shift betrayed that knowledge.

    iStop/i. iThis /iihas /iito /iiend /iihere/ii. /i

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    Chapter 363 A Child

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    Quinn shoved at his chest with her right hand, but he absorbed the force, pressing even closer, their breaths colliding in the dark.

    Quinn frowned, swung her leg upward, and aimed a sharp kick at Julius. He slipped aside, seized the moment, and lowered his knee, pinning her calf against the rumpled sheet.

    In the span of a heartbeat, the fight spilled fully onto the bed, sheets twisting beneath the two locked bodies like waves in a storm.

    Pain shed through Quinn’s left shoulder–still healing, still fragile–so she could rely only on her right hand to strike.

    Yet Julius fought as though his own safety were nothing but a rumor, absorbing every blow shended, choosing bruises over even a single step of retreat.

    His reckless closeness felt less likebat and more like a desperate vow to die tangled in her limbs.

    Gasping, Quinn stared up at the man straddling her; even amid the chaotic scuffle, he had kept every assault clear of her injured shoulder.

    “Quinn, just don’t walk away from me. Anything else–anything at all–I’ll do it Everyst thing, I swear.”

    “I’ve told you already. You and I”

    your way.

    The rest of her protest vanished as his mouth crashed onto hers, a fierce seal that swallowed every syble before it could escape.

    He kissed her like a man drowning in open sea, wing for the single mouthful of air that might keep him alive a moment longer.

    She broke free in a sudden surge of strength, shoved him off, and swung her hand in a hard, ringing arc across his face.

    The impact cracked through the bedroom–a sharp, echoing p that left the silence stunned.

    “Julius, stop–don’t make me hate you!” Panting, she red at him.

    Slowly, Julius lifted trembling fingers to the reddening print, his fox–bright eyes locked on her with a baffled, wounded steadiness.

    The sting burned hot, a child’s punishment revived on a grown man’s skin; not since his father’s blows had anyone dared strike him.

    Chapter 363 A Child

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    Yet she had. And the ache in his cheek was nothing beside the hollowedndslide her words had opened in his chest. D

    Every breath scraped him raw, spreading that hurt through bone and marrow until pain itself became the rhythm of living.

    He murmured, “Would you still despise me if we had a child? Would you give us another chance–stay with me–if there were a baby between us?”

    The idea struck him with sudden, blinding rity. iWhy /iididn’t /iiI /iisee /iiit /iisooner/ii? /i

    Quinn loved responsibility like oxygen; if a child existed, she would fight to forge a whole, unbroken home around it.

    “Quinn, family means everything to you. You’d never let our child grow up without aplete home, without a father–right?” he asked, as if grasping a lifeline, desperation surfacing in his

    eyes.

    Quinn stared at him, breath catching, disbelief widening her eyes until they shimmered like ss on the verge of shattering.

    “Do you even hear yourself?”

    “Yes. With a child, everything changes. You’ll stay. I can keep you–once we have our child.”

    Words still hanging in the air, Julius surged forward again, forcing her beneath him as his fingers ripped at the soft buttons of her nightdress. The need in his eyes was savage, a storm determined to im and cage her, to bind her so tightly she could never slip beyond his reach.

    A single reckless desire roared through Julius’s veins–to keep Quinn wholly, perfectly, irreversibly at his side, as though he could raise steel walls around her and trap her heartbeat next to his forever. iIf /iia /iichild /iiis /iithe /iionly /iichain /iistrong /iienough /iito /iianchor /iiher/ii, /iithen /iI willi… /i

    ip/i!

    Sep 4