Page 40 of Forbidden Property
Can’t it be enough that I’m willing to give her my heart? Do I have to give her everything else too?
“You can’t hide down here forever. That’s not in the contract.”
“Fuck the contract.”
Her voice. Behind me. I turn around, but not fast enough to stop a wine bottle from coming at my head. I cry out as I duck, unfortunately moving too fast to stay in complete control and coming face first with Geralynn’s weapon. The bottle hurts like hell but doesn’t break against my face. I stumble backwards howling in pain and hear the bottle thud against the ground.
“WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?”
“Are you bleeding?”
Her voice sounds so infuriatingly calm that I want to wrap my hand around her throat and… hold her against the wall, fucking some sense into her until she realizes that fighting me with a wine bottle won’t stop the explosive chemistry between us. Does she genuinely think that I want to feel this way about her?
Does she think that I want to even consider toppling everything I’ve worked for my entire life because I got the most forbidden woman in my life pregnant? Both her skin color and relationship to my sister, not to mention Geralynn’s low social status overall make her completely unsuitable to be my wife or pregnant with my child.
Nicki should have never forced us together like this. The sick mental games I have to play with Geralynn and myself to understand this situation might ruin me. Iambleeding. But I stand up, ignoring the blood and ignoring everything except Geralynn, staring up at me with wide, terrified brown eyes.
I press my hand to the wine cellar walls and find the dimmer switch, illuminating the shelves and tunnels with a faint orange glow. She looks so scared. I want to take her pain away almost as badly as I want to hurt her for pushing me into this confused emotional state.
“You are bleeding,” she says softly.
She looks terrified and I move my hand to touch her face, but she flinches.
“I’m not going to hurt you.”
I touch her cheek, accidentally getting some of my blood on her. I lean forward and lick it off with my tongue. Geralynn flinches and shudders as my tongue touches her cheek. She tastes salty and the metallic taste of my blood sends a primal sense of desire straight through me as it mixes with Geralynn’s anxious sweat.
“Renzo…”
“Sh…” I whisper, wiping away the spot where I licked the blood away with one of my clean fingers. “I didn’t want to get blood on you.”
“Go away,” she whispers. “Please.”
“No. I won’t. I love you, Geralynn.”
“You don’t. You love a challenge. You love owning my body. You love how it feels to have my undivided attention. If you loved me, it wouldn’t have taken this situation for us to end up together.”
“It’s not that black and white.”
“Well, it’s simple for me. I’m not going to give up my heart to a man who called me disturbing insults and treated me like dirt just because we have chemistry in the bedroom. This baby is going to be a real person, Renzo. Not some mop girl you can bully and push around.”
What the hell does she want from me?
“Do you want me to change the terms of the contract?”
“What?” She asks, her panic genuine. “I don’t want any changes to the contract because I don’t want the contract in the first place.”
“I’ll give you more if you forgive me. We’ll write a new contract that has nothing to do with my sister.”
Her eyes widen with either pity or hope that this will somehow free her from the physical bondage and contract that essentially turns her into my forbidden property. The one woman I was never supposed to touch, let alone own with a deposit of my seed inside her.
“I don’t want you to change the contract due to some misguided sense of guilt,” Geralynn says with detachment in her tone that drives me absolutely mad. I don’t want her to talk to me as if she couldn’t care less about the outcome. I want her to know that I’m madly in love with her and questioning beliefs that I’ve held my entire life.
“I want to change the contract to prove to you that… I mean what I say. I–”
“Don’t say it again,” Geralynn pleads with me. I ignore her.
“I love you.”
