Page 24 of Forbidden Surrogate

“So… are you going to talk to your brother about your differences?” I ask Angela a few minutes into massaging the Italian spices into the ground beef. She has a glass of wine in her hand halfway finished, so it seems like the best time to ask.

“Luigi is a real asshole,” she says. “I’m negotiating more freedoms for us, that’s all you have to know.”

“So what? You did this to have company?” I ask her.

Angela gives me a sympathetic look. “I’m sorry, okay? I got caught up in the moment and you seemed like… someone who could change my brother.”

It’s hard to hold back a laugh. I’ve barely made a dent in Luigi’s gruff, cruel personality and considering he’s gone days without so much as a peep back here after cumming inside me,I’m not hopeful that I’ll make a difference in his cold, aloof attitude.

“I don’t think that’s me.”

Angela smirks at me beneath blue-green eyes that look a little like her brother’s, but a lot like a cat’s. “You never know.”

“He hasn’t been back here in days.”

“Don’t tell me you miss him,” Angela says with disgust before releasing a handful of her hand made flour pasta into boiling water. “He’ll be back and when he’s back… it’ll be nice for him to have someone to spend time with. Someone kind and funny.”

“Buttering me up won’t make me forget that you drugged me.”

“I know,” Angela sighs, surprising me by wrapping her arms around me from behind. “I’ve never been great at making friends.”

She lets go of me and empties the rest of the wine down her throat. Her comment surprises me. Angela has pretty eyes, and dark-red hair that’s eye-catching and alternative without being as scary as the more popular bright teal hair color for unconventional Western New York women.

Her loneliness and desperation feel real, maybe because I’ve been there myself and maybe because I just want to believe that if nothing else has been real, our friendship forged at the bar before all the drama with Luigi had something with it.

I lose myself in cooking with Angela, joking around with her about her formal white girl dancing compared to my less refined, but sexier ass shaking at the bar. No offense to Angela, but nobody asks for a ballet dance at the strip club. It’s scary that I have such a naturally easy friendship with this crazy ass woman enough to make me forget that she is just as criminal as herbrother. I feel a connection to her that’s so strong, only broken when I hear her brother outside the door.

His presence immediately causes my body to stiffen with discomfort and I quietly stir the meatballs in Angela’s red tomato sauce as Luigi enters the lake house. I don’t want to respond to him or show him that his presence has any effect on me, even if his presence chills me all over.

Luigi addresses Angela first.

“How long until lunch?”

Angela scoffs at her brother and quips back immediately. “Good afternoon, asshole.”

“You drugged someone, Angela,” her brother responds in a deep voice that sends a throbbing sensation from the top of my stomach straight between my legs. “I’m not happy about it.”

“You spent four days out of the house. That didn’t make you happy?”

“Pour me a glass of wine.”

I hear Luigi walking across the room and I hope he’s heading off to a suite for a shower, but I smell his cologne and then feel his warmth as he stands next to me stirring the red sauce and meatballs.

“Hello, Delphine,” he says softly. His deep voice stirs up my insides. I don’t want to give him the satisfaction of looking at him.

I should have expected that not to matter to him.

“Come to the bedroom. Now.”

Angela clears her throat.

“Ring the bell when it’s time for lunch,” Luigi commands his sister, then he takes the wooden spoon from my hand, setting it on the stainless steel spoon rest with the ‘T’ engraved on it beforehe takes my hand and drags me off to the bedroom that he left for me over the past four days.

Once we’re alone, Luigi uses my hand to force me to face him. I have to look up past my glasses into his deep blue eyes. I can’t help but feel deep fear when I finally look at him and see that he’s just as cold and heartless as when he left.

How could his sister have thought for a second I had a chance at softening this man’s heart? He scowls at me, as if he can read my mind and wants to prove my point about how cold he can be. I hold his gaze despite the tremors of fear slowly taking over my limbs and grimly reminding me of the last time we saw each other.

“I hope Angela hasn’t been filling your mind with poison.”

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