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“I just think she’s going to freak,” I say quietly. “I don’t want to hurt her. Oh, God, this is just so hard. How can we tell her without hurting her?”
He takes my hands in his, moving his fingers over my knuckles just like he did when he wrapped and then unwrapped my hands.
“We’ll just have to explain that this isn’t some fling,” he says. “We’ll have to explain that we’re going to have children together. We’ll have to explain that I own you – you belong to me – and you want to be owned by me.”
I laugh shortly, shaking my head.
“And you think she’s just going to accept that?” I say.
“I don’t know,” Jamie says. “But we have to try.”
I sit in the passenger seat of Jamie’s sleek black sedan, the tinted windows giving the CEO billionaire the privacy he needs when traveling to and from business meetings. I stare out of the window and watch the city drift by, trying to fight the urge to open the door and run away like a madwoman every time we stop at a red light.
Jamie reaches across and places his hand on my leg, and when I look over at him I see that he’s doing his version of a smile, a shadowed smirk that tells me everything’s going to be okay.
I wish I could believe him, but all I can imagine is Yasmin’s face when we tell her, her features dropping and then twisting when the full force of the betrayal slams into her.
“My dad?” she’ll snap, all the love and devotion draining from her eyes. “My fucking dad?”
All the way up the private elevator to the penthouse, even with Jamie’s hand on the small of my back sending reassuring warmth through my body, I picture her face in my mind, my best friend’s face twisting and turning sour the moment we utter the words.
We walk together down the hallway, past the abstract art, and into the large loft style living room. It’s like I can sense the purpose wafting off of Jamie in waves, but the same purpose doesn’t blaze within me.
Part of me wants to run.
And yet I know if I do that, I’ll be abandoning Jamie and the sweet belonging that’s already working its way through my soul like a heavenly balm, and whatever happens, I can’t let him go.
My womb rails and screams at the idea that I could let this man go.
So it’s time to tell Yasmin, even if the very notion is sending my heart into a manic overdrive and my mind into a writer’s spinning nosedive of paranoia and doom.
“You were like a little sister to me,” I imagine her snapping, hate flooding her eyes. “How could you do this?”
Chapter Twelve
Jamie
“Yasmin?” I call, knocking on her bedroom door and listening for any sign of my daughter inside.
I walk to the end of the hallway and knock on the door to her recording studio, where she makes her YouTube and Instagram videos. I don’t know much about the online world my daughter inhabits, but I know it makes her happy and that’s what matters to me.
I bite back a frown when part of me wonders if I’m feeling guilty for what we’re about to tell her, and that’s why I’m trying to mentally highlight what a supportive father I am.
Look, Yasmin, I know I’ve taken your best friend from you … but here’s a fancy new camera.
I shake my head as I turn back down the hall, acid tension rising in my stomach.
It’s true, I wish I could make it so that Jade wasn’t Yasmin’s best friend, but there’s no way I can ignore this inferno blazing inside of me, spitting hot fire every time I so much as think about Jade, let alone look at her, touch her, taste her.
“Jamie?” Jade calls from the living room. “I think you should see this.”
Her voice is pitched high and a thread of anxiety runs through it. It makes me think of the man in black who’s been following her around the city, and liquid fire rushes into my body when I imagine him trying to get his hands on my woman.
I stalk into the room and find her at the sleek obsidian kitchen counter with a pink piece of paper clutched in her hand. My mind is soon flooded with thoughts of her sexy-as-fuck body as she stands there the pink of the paper reminding me of the sweet color of her pussy.
I grit my teeth and push the thought down, telling myself that if I’m going to turn feral every time I so much as glance at her, I’m going to spend the rest of my life as her beast and nothing else.
So, a voice laughs grimly within. What’s the problem with that?
“What is it?” I ask.
