Total pages in book: 83
Estimated words: 80121 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 401(@200wpm)___ 320(@250wpm)___ 267(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 80121 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 401(@200wpm)___ 320(@250wpm)___ 267(@300wpm)
But he didn’t reciprocate either.
My hands rested against his chest, and I felt my tits shake up and down. My eyes locked on to his, and I tried once more. “I love you so damn much.”
There was another flash of desire across the surface of his eyes, like we were making dirty talk and I’d said something particularly kinky. My whispers aroused him even more, made him thicker than he’d ever been.
But I got silence in response.
He went to sleep right when we were finished, but I stayed up most of the night. When the sun came up, Cato woke up and immediately got into the shower. He didn’t kiss me good morning or try to fuck me again.
Most mornings, he didn’t, so that wasn’t too unusual.
But I wondered if we would talk about last night.
Or pretend nothing happened.
Cato wasn’t the kind of man to shy away from anything, so I doubted he would ignore the tension between us indefinitely.
Or maybe he would. He’d looked me in the eye and listened to me say I loved him twice. And he said nothing at all.
When he was finished with the shower, he came back to the bed and kissed me. “Morning, baby.”
Whenever he called me baby, that was usually a good sign. “Morning.”
He opened his closet and pulled out a new suit to wear. “We are meeting my lawyer this morning.”
“What for?”
“To sign all the paperwork we talked about.” He grabbed my clothes that I’d brought with me and set them on the bed. “It shouldn’t take more than an hour.”
Everything seemed normal, except for the big elephant in the room. “Okay.” I grabbed my clothes and got ready before I headed into the bathroom to do my hair and makeup. Flashbacks of last night came to me, our sweat rubbing together and our breaths deep and powerful. Those words had rolled off my tongue so easily. I’d never told a man I loved him before, and when I did it for the first time, it felt so right. It felt like a burden had been lifted from my shoulders.
When I walked back into the bedroom, he was ready to leave. In a navy suit with a black tie, he looked like the corporate dictator he was. He owned every room he stood in, including the bar last night when he cornered the Skull Kings into giving in to his ridiculous interest rate. With one hand in his pocket, he scrolled through his phone.
“I’m ready.” I wore my black jeans, blue sweater, and my black jacket.
He looked me up and down appreciatively. “You look beautiful.” His arm circled my waist, and he kissed me.
Like everything was normal.
We went down to the car waiting for us and then drove to his lawyer’s office.
I couldn’t figure out why Cato was behaving this way. Would he continue to ignore it until I believed it never happened in the first place? It had happened, right? “Are all your business dealings like that?”
“Like what?” He looked out the window.
“Hostile. Aggressive. Kinda scary.”
He chuckled. “That’s how you have to be to survive in this world.”
“Not survive. Triumph.”
He nodded in agreement.
“I thought you were an asshole to me, but now I realize you can be much worse.”
He chuckled quietly. “Much worse.”
I stared at the side of his face for a while and wondered what he was thinking. I remembered how thick he felt inside me when I said those words. I felt how hard he came inside me when I whispered my feelings. He’d obviously enjoyed what I’d said even though he didn’t reciprocate.
When I looked back on everything he had done for me, I refused to believe he didn’t feel the same way. He rescued my father from an oil drum and buried him where he belonged. He protected me against his brother’s fists. And then he came to France and asked me to come home…because he missed me. He slept with me every night now, had been faithful to me during those two months we were apart. Would a man do that if he weren’t in love? No, I didn’t think so.
I knew Cato loved me.
But maybe he wasn’t ready to say it.
His lawyer presented all the paperwork to me, along with an intimidating pen to add my signatures. “According to these documents, in the event of Cato Marino’s unlikely passing, one-third of his personal assets would be divided between his brother and mother. The other two-thirds would be given to Martina Marino. She would inherit most of the holdings in Cato’s trust. But she will not receive this inheritance until she’s twenty-one years of age.”
“Alright.” I read through the paperwork and added my signature.
He pushed another paper toward me. “This states you have no legal rights to his company, even in the event of marriage. If Cato Marino passes away, all of his holdings in the company will pass to Bates Marino.”