Page 12 of Groom Gamble
“And if you don’t?” she asks warily.
“We’ll do it a different way. Either a sperm donor, and I’ll be the father, or we’ll divorce, and I’ll help you find someone else.” It’s a crazy impulse, but I’ll risk anything to be with her.
“You’d really help me find another husband?”
No.
“Absolutely. If that’s what you want.” But she won’t. I have a billion in the bank and a very enthusiastic tongue. She’ll be too busy either sitting on my face or using her credit card emblazoned with Mrs Sophia Streatham to consider leaving.
“Think of it like a money-back guarantee. If we divorced, you’d have half my fortune, too.” And my whole bloody heart in her hands, so what’s money in comparison.
Hopefully, she’ll have a child nine months from now, but I have no intention of letting her go either way.
“I guess,” she murmurs, sounding baffled.
“We’ll get married as soon as possible, and start trying for a baby in ten days.” If the price of having her forever is six months of frustration as I can only come when she’ll conceive, well,what’s the difference? I’ve been pining after my perfect little assistant for a long time already. At least now I’ll get more of her.
Doubt still clouds her face, and she nibbles her lip.
I’m a billionaire mafia boss. It should not be this difficult to persuade a woman to marry me.
I wait.
Seconds drag past. Iwillwin. She’s not leaving this building without agreeing. This morning, I had no idea this would happen, but the thought of Miss Berry belonging to anyone but me has made me willing to cross any line.
If I have to lock her up, so be it.
“But why?” she bursts out eventually. “Why are you offering to marry me?”
Obviously, because I’m in love with her, and want to spend the rest of my life making her happy and pregnant, not accepting cups of coffee from her and wondering if any man has touched her and therefore needs to die. That is the reason people usually get married.
“I need this, too.”
5
SOPHIA
“You need to get married?” I whisper, in shock.
I never thought I’d hear my gorgeous, severe boss casually talking about us having sex as though it were a work project, but marriage? That’s insane. He could have any woman he wanted, and he’s a billionaire mafia boss, what possible reason does he have to “need” to do anything?
He regards me for a moment, then rises from his chair and casually turns his back. Shoving his hands into his pockets, he stares out of the window onto the golden-yellow of the early afternoon sunshine.
He’s framed as a dark silhouette in a black suit compared to the light outside, that slightly wavy dark hair highlighted. His neck is in shadow, and I have this sudden impulse to trace it with my finger.
I’m hot and squirmy at the thought of himbreedingme. Such an animalistic term, I really shouldn’t be turned on by it. But my body hasn’t got the message that I’m not a creature made up of hormones, wet secret places waiting to be discovered, and stationery with doodles of hearts and Mrs Streatham written on it.
If the first time I had a man inside me was with the man I love, surely it would be worth it, especially if I was helping him?
But maybe it would only be once, just to give me a child?
That might break me.
“You know the London Maths Club?” he says eventually.
“You mean the London Mafia Syndicate,” I say, but I’m thinking what it would be like to have him naked on top of me. Inside me.
Since I took over as his assistant, the London Mafia Syndicate has been a constant fixture of his schedule, with a combination of highly-sensitive negotiations and also charity balls and that sort of thing.