“Want is a big word. I decided to settle for you since the other woman is not on the brink of extinction.” Unbuttoning my pea coat, I crossed my legs and lit a cigar, stinking up the entire back seat. The hail pounding on the tinted windows meant she had to sit in the small, confined space and breathe in my poison.
A good exercise for our future.
If she refused me again, I was going to drive us across the Canadian border and pay someone to marry us just to spite her. Never in my life had a woman made me feel edgy, but this assertive little shi…female had somehow managed just that.
She folded her arms, smiling triumphantly. “She said no, didn’t she? Couldn’t stomach being your wife.”
I puffed a cloud of smoke directly in her face, not gracing her nonsense with an answer.
“Smart girl.” She ignored the screen of smoke skulking between us.
“Judging by the state of your face, turning me down is not a luxury you can afford.”
She stared at me with her California sky eyes. Her complexion was so smooth and dewy that the need to sink my teeth into the side of her throat just to tarnish its perfection made my fingers twitch.
“Can I try your cigar?” She tucked a stray hair behind her ear.
“I’m offering you a twenty-million-dollar condo, and you are asking me about a cigar?” I shot her a sidelong glance.
“Paxton never let me try them. He said cigars are manly.” She licked her lips, her eyes on the thick brown roll of tobacco.
Paxton was an idiot. For more reasons than I could count.
Reluctantly, I passed her the cigar. She clasped her pink lips around it, her heavy-lidded eyes blinking back at me. She inhaled, almost coughing out a lung, and passed it back to me, waving her hand around. I didn’t take it, still preoccupied by the way her lips wrapped around the thing. This was an entirely new side of me—a fourteen-year-old one, presumably—I wasn’t eager to explore.
“It tastes like burning feet.”
“You’re not supposed to inhale.” A wry blade of amusement colored my tone. “Nor are you supposed to lick burning feet. Now suck on it like it’s a dick, not a joint.”
She cocked her head sideways, squinting at me in amusement.
“Sounds like an audition.”
“Don’t flirt,” I warned. “It’s not your affection I’m after.”
My desire normally wasn’t directed at a specific woman or individual. Rather, it was a prickly sensation I needed to squash. The women I’d used were merely vessels.
I was not accustomed to gravitating toward a specific human being.
Frankly, I didn’t know if I was capable of desiring a woman. If I were, I had no doubt it came with side effects I wasn’t going to like.
Persephone tried again, puffing on the cigar gently, then handed it back to me. The tips of our fingers brushed. A zing of electricity shot up my spine in a sensation I could only describe as both horrible and pleasant.
I wanted to kiss her and throw her out of the car, preferably at the same time.
Fortunately for my legal department, I did neither.
“What else would our marriage entail?” She lowered her lashes, licking her lower lip.
“You will be available to me for social gatherings, volunteer at my charity of choice, and play your part as a dutiful wife.”
“Hmm.” She relaxed into the seat, cherishing the luxurious leather like a spoiled cat. “Anything more?”
“You will have to sign an airtight NDA and a draconic pre-nuptial agreement. But as long as you’re my wife, you’ll be provided for. Generously so.”
“What if you decide to divorce me for someone else?”
I can barely come to terms with one marriage. Two would be a stretch.
“I wouldn’t let that worry keep you up at night,” I said tersely. “I don’t have feelings, Flower Girl, which means I can’t give them to you nor can I take them from you. I will not develop any toward anyone else.”
“Other than our heirs,” she said the last word in a terrible English accent, peppering it with air quotes.
I suspected my neutrality toward people would extend to my future children. But telling her that seemed counterproductive to putting a baby in her.
“Naturally.” I moved on to the other topic on our agenda. “As previously mentioned, sex is not a part of the bargain. I will satisfy my sexual needs elsewhere. The encounters will be discreet and confidential, but they will happen, and I expect no fits of drama from your end.”
For all my faults—and hell knew there were many—increased sexual appetite wasn’t one of them. Twice a month was enough to keep me sated.
She scrunched her nose. “You mean you’ll still go to hookers?”
“They prefer to be called sex workers these days.”
“Why?”
“I imagine because hooker has a degrading connotation and implies both criminal and immortal activity. Though I do not engage in deep conversation with the women I hire to suck my cock.”
“No, why do you hire escorts? You can have any woman you want.”
“And I can have any woman I want because of my bank account. Which brings us to square one—why not pay for the service and skip the dinner and chitchat?”
“What’s wrong with dinner and chitchat?” she pressed.
“They require socializing, and I am firmly against the concept.”
“What made you the way you are?”
“The way I am?” I snarled.
“Cold. Ruthless. Jaded.” Her eyes roamed my face as though the answer was written plainly on it.
“A mixture of crushing expectations, a bad year, and lackluster upbringing.”
Everything about my life had been designed to keep me on the straight and narrow. That was the only way for me to run the empire I’d been born to lead. I came into this world with a certain disadvantage, knowing my family frowned upon weaknesses. I had to fight the way I was created to survive and took it day by day.
Her gaze clung to mine. “I don’t buy your story.”
“Lucky for me, I’m not James Patterson.”
“Will we be sharing joint custody of our poor children?”
“We could,” I answered evenly, “if you don’t mind them growing up with nannies half the time. I’ll be busy running Royal Pipelines and expanding the Fitzpatrick empire.”
Real estate. Commercial banking. Private equity. I wanted to take over the world.
“Let me get this straight.” She rubbed at her forehead, frowning. “You want to have kids, but you don’t want to take care of them or make them with your wife?”
“You seem to be figuring it out well all by yourself.” I puffed on my cigar. “That’s exactly what I’m saying.”
“Well, then I suggest you drop me off right here, go back to Minka, and pick up where you both left off.”
Right herewas the middle of the highway. Although throwing her out was tempting, it was a headline I was less than eager to explain.
“I can’t raise children,” I said evenly.
“You will not be a deadbeat dad. You will take care of them half the time. And I mean really spend time with them. Change diapers, take them to T-ball practices, and reenact their favorite Disney movies. With full-blown costumes.”
T-ball? Disney? Flower Girl was clearly planning on raising a state university educated dental hygienist, not the next CEO of Royal Pipelines. Luckily, I would be there to steer my spawns in the right direction.
“Sure,” I quipped. “I’ll do all of that nonsense.”
Twice a year since they’ll be in Evon and other European institutions year-round.
She munched on the tip of her hair, which I found surprisingly not disgusting. “I have other conditions, too. I’ll be able to keep my job and move around unrestricted. You will not be putting any surveillance or security on me. I want to live a normal life.”
“You won’t need to work a day in your life.”
The girl was slower than an airport Wi-Fi.
“So?” She looked at me strangely as though she wasn’t following the conversation. That was fine. Between my Mensa member IQ and her beauty, our kids wouldn’t be a complete waste of oxygen. “I don’t work because I have to.” She narrowed her eyes. “I work because I love what I do.”
That word again.
“Fine. Keep your job.”
“What about security?”
“No security.” That would be a waste of my precious resources.
“One more thing—as long as other men are off-limits, so are other women.” She raised a finger in the air.
“This is not how it works.” I put out my cigar, losing patience. I’d negotiated putting three hundred-foot deep holes in the belly of planet Earth in less time than it took me to close a deal with this woman. “You’re the one at my mercy. I make the rules.”
“Am I?” She blinked at me innocently. “Because, correct me if I’m wrong, but you seemed to have told me you have another wife lined up, and a nice, long list of potential candidates if she doesn’t work out. Yet here you are with me. For a reason I can’t fathom, we want each other. Let’s not pretend otherwise, Kill.”
Kill.
Only my friends called me that. All two of them.
“The only reason I prefer you to Minka is because if you die, the women in my life would be upset, and the one thing I dislike more than humans are distressed humans.”
“I don’t care what excuse you give yourself for marrying me,” she said plainly. “If we get married, we’ll be equal. At least, you’ll pretend we are.”
I popped my knuckles in succession.
She was pissing me off. That was a feeling, and I didn’t do those.
“Let me put this plainly.” I smiled politely. “I’m not going to stay celibate for months or even weeks.”
“You won’t have to. You’ll have a wife.”
She was so red at this point, I wondered if she was going to combust in my back seat. That would be a hassle to clean from the brand-new Escalade. Not to mention tricky to explain.
“No.” I felt my muscles tightening under my suit.
“No, what?”
“I won’t sleep with you.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t want to.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because you don’t attract me,” I deadpanned.
I was no longer pissed off. I was sweating now, too. Why couldn’t I stick to my Minka plan? Persephone was my idea of hell. I couldn’t treat her with the same brashness I handled Sailor and Emmabelle because she was an innocent little thing like my sister, yet I had to remind her who was calling all the shots.
“How, pray tell, do you mean to impregnate me, if you don’t want to have sex with me?” She scowled, looking frustratingly adorable while doing so. “You are familiar with how babies come to be, right? Because none of the versions include a cabbage.”
I began scrolling through my phone, answering emails.
“I know how babies are made, Persephone. That’s why I bought a stork,” I said gravely.
She looked shocked for a second, before letting out a giggle. It was a cute giggle, too. Soft and throaty. If I had a heart—it would squeeze.
“I didn’t know you had a sense of humor, Kill.”
“I didn’t know you were so hard-pressed to get laid,” I volleyed back, still typing an email to Keith, aka Lord of the Sleep. “To answer your question, we’ll use IVF. You’ll be knocked up in no time, and we won’t have to know each other biblically.”
“What’s wrong with the Bible?” She eyed me.
“False advertisement.” I smirked sardonically. “God doesn’t exist.”