“Missed me? Or missed how many girls I know who are willing to spread their legs for an ugly asshole like you?”
Cody laughs like I told a joke worthy of an hour long comedy special. He wraps me in another hug that I can’t avoid and tells me again that he missed me. When he pulls away from me, Cody reaches for his beer on the bar top behind him perfectly curling his fingers around the glass without looking back once.
“What the hell did you bring us all down here for?” he asks. “Zebulon was telling me a crazy story about how he slipped a couple pills in a drink for $5,000. Doesn’t exactly make you want to trust the guy, does it?”
“It wasn’t like it was my idea!” Zebulon says, completely unaware of why I called him here tonight but making my jobmucheasier with his foolish confession.
“That sounds like an interesting story.”
“Bet your ass it is,” Cody says. “Pull up. You still like that shitty ass Sam Adams?”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Magnum
She wants me dead. Damara calls me every name under the sun, but she can’t help the fact that I tied her up and won’t allow her to leave until she confesses that the bond that exists between the two of us goes much deeper than the contract. Her pink hair lies in a frazzled mess around her as she continues her failed efforts to struggle and fight.
I want to untie her, but I can’t. Not until I hear exactly what I want to hear from this wild cat.
“Stop calling me names and tell me what I want to hear.”
“Suck my farts.”
“That’s not the correct answer.”
She won’t get under my skin with such juvenile insults. I pace back and forth in front of Damara, giving her time to take in the view and readjust her opinion on the situation. She glares at me but says absolutely nothing. I need her to admit her love for me, that everything we’ve built together means something.
“Magnum, I need you to let me go,” she asks calmly.
“No.”
“MAGNUM!” she screams out angrily. “I’m not playing around. This is a violation of my freedom, my basic humanrights, and I’m pretty sure at this point, it’s a violation of the contract.”
“You love me, Damara.”
Her body trembles with rage and she looks like she’s experiencing every emotion except love right now. Doesn’t bother me. I don’t expect Damara to love me all the time. But who does she reach for in the middle of the night? Me. Just like I reach for her. We might not have come into each other’s lives in the most conventional ways, but we’re here.
We can’t fight the future. She’s having this baby and we’re bound to each other for life. We might as well get started with honesty.
“I don’t,” she says, her voice stony and cold as she struggles to hold back all her emotions from me. It won’t work this time. I have the strength to keep her tied to the bed and fight against her stubbornness until she lets me into her heart. I don’t care about the assholes who hurt Damara before. If she needs me to kill every last one of them to trust me, I’ll do that.
I just need to know that she loves me. I need to hear those words and to get the truth from her. We’re building something here – something real.
“So you expect me to believe you didn’t try to run away at least once because of some ridiculous contract? I know you, Damara. If you didn’t want to be here, you wouldn’t be here.”
She might love me, but right now Damara also wants to kill me.
“Why do you need some type of confession, you sicko? Isn’t it bad enough that I’ll be trapped having your kid the rest of my damn life?”
“And I’ll be trapped with a baby mama who runs around with pink hair and her ass hanging out the back of her shorts 24/7. We both have problems.”
“There’s nothing wrong with my hair or my ass.”
“That doesn’t stop either of those things from being a problem,” I tell her. “Now confess, or your punishment will just get worse.”
I fully intend to escalate things.
“How could it possibly get worse than this?” Damara pushes me. “I think I’ll keep doing what’s working for me.”
