Page 79 of The Marriage Auction 2: Part 3

We stayed that way for a long time, cooling down. I ran my fingers through his sweat-soaked hair.

He lifted his head, his eyes open and completely serene.

I cupped his cheeks and stared into the eyes I wanted to look into for the rest of my life.

“You belong to me too,” I whispered with conviction.

He smiled, and I dipped my head, kissing him while he lifted me up. I wrapped my legs around his waist as he walked us straight to the bathroom where he’d wash every inch of my body, caressing me mercilessly until I was a relaxed heap. Then he’d make sweet, slow love to me.

Yeah, I definitely didn’t mind belonging to Giovanni Falco.

Episode 81

A Simple Man

MEMPHIS

Once I walked my parents and granny outside of the restaurant and saw them off, explaining that we’d discuss what happened in greater detail later, I rushed back in to find Naomi sitting with her arms crossed, her body practically vibrating with anger. She had fiery daggers in her gaze pointed directly at her father when I took my seat next to her.

“I can’t believe you,” she seethed, hissing between clenched teeth.

“Me?” her father blustered. “You’re the one that set all of this into motion. If you’d just fall in line like the daughter I raised you to be, none of this would have happened.”

“You embarrassed me, Memphis, and yourselves, in front of three people I deeply want to impress,” Naomi continued.

My heart squeezed at her conviction. Naomi was the real deal, and she genuinely wanted my family to like her. She wasn’t the problem. Her stuck-up, high-handed parents, on the other hand, were not going to be easy to get past. Not to mention how upset I knew my family had to be. My father and mother worked hard to get where they are today and even with the tough times they’d had as of late, they were prideful people and didn’t deserve to be treated the way they had.

“Frankly Naomi, I don’t care what those people think of any of us. We are not like them.”

“I’m sorry to interject, Mr. Shaw, but what does, ‘like them’ mean exactly?” I ground down on my molars, trying to be steady and calm, but losing that battle with each new minute that passed.

“Middle class,” Abraham sneered as though the two words were poison on his tongue.

I jerked my head back. “Damn, brother, you go straight for the throat, don’t you?”

“I don’t mince words, if that’s what you’re getting at. And I am not, nor will I ever be, yourbrotherin anything,” Abraham snapped.

I chuckled lightheartedly, disbelieving how whacked in the head he was. I stretched my arm out across the back of Naomi’s chair and looked him dead in the face. “Maybe not my brother, but you will soon be my father-in-law, so we should probably try to find equal footing.”

Abraham scowled as he glared. “You and your kind will never be equal to the likes of me and my family. And you’ll never be good enough to marry my daughter.”

That’s when Naomi stood abruptly. “You know, that’s too bad, Dad,” she sneered as she shook her head. “I shouldn’t have even tried to share this part of my life with you. I was an idiot to think that there was some shred of decency hidden behind the pomp and circumstance. You’re a narcissistic, money hungry, lonely man whose own wife can barely stand to be in the same room with you. So much so she’s spent years drinking herself to near-death and ended up in the hospital with a heart attack from drowning her sorrows in booze.”

“Naomi, that’s not fair,” her mother interjected.

“Isn’t it? And you expect me to live that life. A lonely housewife that spends my days shopping and lunching with the ladies at the club?” She scoffed. “I want more for my life.”

“You can haveeverything,” Abraham blasted, his hand smacking the table like a gavel. “I’ve created this empire for you! For my future grandchildren. All I have can be yours.”

Naomi shook her head. “That’s what you don’t see and are not”—she pointed to her ear—"hearing. I don’t need or want your life’s work. I want my own. What I’ve been working toward and what I’ve created so far ismydream, Dad. Mine. And this man,”—she hooked my arm—“he’s what I want for me. For my future.”

Abraham looked me up and down and apparently found me lacking when he stated, “Unacceptable.”

“You know what’s unacceptable? Being rude to my fiancé’s family. Trying to force me into an unhappy marriage with a man I do not love. My mother killing herself slowly by drinking herself to death to avoid you. That’s what’s unacceptable.”

“I’ll not have you talk to me like this,” Abraham stood and tossed his napkin onto his uneaten plate. “You are my daughter, and you will speak to me with respect!”

“Respect is earned, not given, Dad.”

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