Page 97 of Saddled in Secrets
“Bianca, wait.”
My glare spits nails at him. “You must be joking.”
“I can’t have children.”
Bianca stares at me, her jaw hanging slack. “You can’t have children?”
“Well, I should probably rephrase that.” My grasp on her suddenly feels fleeting. “I made sure I can’t.”
She absently lowers herself to perch on my thighs. “What does that mean?”
“I’m snipped.”
A strangled noise squeaks out of her. “Holy shit, birth control. At least one of us is thinking about protection. Freaking dick-notized over here.” She thumps her forehead. “I’m so out of practice.”
Fury blazes in my chest and I make a decision right then to eliminate any other man she’s been with. For now, I yank her against me. She’s mine. Nobody else gets her like this ever again.
“I’ve got you covered, baby girl. That’s not why I told you, but it serves a purpose regardless.”
My cock is pissed—leaking from the tip and calling me a dick. I’ve been on edge for hours, which can push a man to his limit. The ache spreading from my balls tells me they’re fifty shades of blue. But confessing the truth is more important than relieving the pressure.
Honestly, getting this secret off my chest is a release of its own. A slow exhale whistles through my lips and I relax against the wall holding me upright. The baggage saddled to me is heavy.
Bianca is quiet, but her thoughts are loud. “You don’t want to have kids? Like never ever?”
“I didn’t until I met you.”
“But you’d already had the procedure,” she mumbles.
An urgency rises inside me, reaching for her with both arms. “I’m going to get it reversed, but that’s not a guarantee. If you decide we should try to have children, there’s a chance we might have trouble getting pregnant. You deserve to know before committing to forever with me.”
Her slow blinks confirm that this is a lot to process. “Why did you have a vasectomy?”
Darkness seeps into the corners of my vision. “It’s not a secret that my father is a bad man. He tried his best to turn me bad too. When people didn’t pay, he sent me to give them a warning. I was good at it too.”
She doesn’t take her eyes off me or look away. Bianca gazes at me with so much love and intensity that it’s like she can see right into my soul. And for the first time, I’m not hiding it.
“Daddy Dearest thought I’d be his loyal enforcer indefinitely. Little did he realize, my spirit never completely broke. That type of violence didn’t sit well with me. Once I’d saved enough money, I left and never looked back.”
“I’m really glad you did,” she whispers.
Which urges me to go on. “I didn’t have much of a childhood. No fun or games unless it served the crew. No warmth or affection either. My mom ran off when I was three, leaving me to become one of the men she hated. The world I was raised in trained me to be cold and detached. Those aren’t behavioral traits I wanted forced onto me, but that was out of my control. Once I had the freedom to choose my own fate, I decided to sever the possibility of continuing my father’s line.”
Her eyes are glassy when I’m done. “Gosh, I can’t imagine what you’ve been through.”
My palms drift along her sides, still clutching tight. “Please don’t try. It’ll give you nightmares.”
“And yet you’re the sweetest man.”
I grunt. “Don’t lie.”
“You’re very sweet to me,” she insists. “After I got past the stalking and abduction, I saw your true intentions. It’s quite special to be loved so loudly.”
That gives me pause. “Your dad said something similar to me.”
“That means you should probably listen.” Bianca recovers with a roll of her shoulders. “For the record, the thought of having kids isn’t even on my radar.”
“But it might be someday.”
