Page 101 of The Genius
The sadness on Shelly’s face told me how much she cared about her family.
“I had to make her a promise.”
“Who, your mom?”
“Yes.”
“What promise?” I leaned closer, afraid to breathe. What if she had promised that she’d only stay for a minimum of time?
Shelly sighed. “I promised my mom that I wouldn’t marry an Nman.”
“You didwhat?” I exclaimed in a loud outburst. “Why the fuck would you promise her that?”
“Because she was devastated and you and I agreed that we weren’t going to marry anyway. It doesn’t matter, Marco, we can still raise our child together and be a family of sorts.”
“Of sorts?” Pushing my chair back, I moved around the table to stand in front of her. All my careful planning about wooing her was forgotten. “It might not matter to you if we’re married or not, but it fucking matters to me.”
Looking baffled by my strong reaction, Shelly asked, “Where is this coming from? We agreed that we didn’t need to copy other people and that we could find our own way of doing this. We’re living together, isn’t that what you wanted?” She took my hand. “Marco, we talked about it that day by the creek, remember?”
“I only agreed to that solution because it was a big fucking step up from you going to the Motherlands and leaving me here to never see our child.”
“What are you saying?”
“I want to marry you, make love to you, and have a ton of babies with you. I want you to be mine and I want the whole fucking world to know it.”
Shelly gaped, her eyes big and expressing what her words didn’t – she was shocked.
“I love you Shelly.” There, I’d said what I wanted to say for so long.
“It’s because of the sex, isn’t it?” she asked and began ranting. “I’m not opposed to it, and you don’t have to say that you love me to get me to sleep with you again. I figure that as long as I’m pregnant we don’t have to worry about you coming inside me or not.”
Cupping her face with both my hands I kissed her, deep and with insistence. “There’s something I should have told you from the beginning.”
“What is that?”
“I know that you’re like a unique specimen of mankind and way out of my league, but I love you and I loved you before I knew about the baby.”
“You mean humankind. To say mankind would imply we’re all men, and as you know women outweigh men in numbers, so to dismiss us in the description of…”
With a smile I tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear before I interrupted her by leaning in and kissing her again. “I fucking missed you, Brainy. This is so typical of you.”
“What is?”
I chuckled low, chewing softly on her lower lip. “To get hung up on the most insignificant details of an important message. Did you even hear what I just told you?” I whispered into her mouth. “I loved you before I knew about the baby.”
She gave a sweet sound of delight and met my gaze. The edges of her eyes crinkled as her smile lit up every corner of my soul. “I missed you too, Marco.”
Those words were all I needed and without waiting for more, I picked her up and carried her to my bedroom.
“You ripped it.”
My impatience to get her naked had me ripping her shirt to get it off her. “I’ll buy you a new one,” I muttered and kept undressing my woman. The need to merge with her was giving me tunnel vision. I could see only Shelly’s creamy skin and beautiful face.
“I want you so fucking bad.” Even my voice held a tremor from the state I was in.
“Slow down, Marco,” Shelly urged, but I couldn’t.
“I need you.”
