Page 41 of Forbidden Property
“Stop.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s ridiculous and it’s the type of thinking that will only get both of us hurt at the end of all this.”
“I can handle getting hurt.”
“Well I can’t!” she screams at me. Her voice echoes around the wine cellar and suddenly it feels like I’m trapped in the same emotional soup as Geralynn. Blood drips from the wound on my head she caused with that wine bottle, but I don’t even care about revenge as much as I care about securing her love for me.
If I have to fuck her with the same wine bottle she beat me with to get a confession of love out of this woman… that’s exactly what I’ll fucking do.
Chapter Twenty
Geralynn
“Why can’t you handle getting hurt?” Renzo sneers, because of course he considers my feelings so unimportant. “Do you think you’re the one woman in the world who can avoid pain?”
“That’s not what I mean.”
“Choosing to be with you would mean giving up everything Ieverworked for. It would mean keeping my children away from their legacy and ancestry… It would mean–”
“And what about my ancestry and legacy?” I snap at him. “You might think I’m just a janitor but Black people didn’t end up in Buffalo by accident. My skin color, my nose, my hair texture, the way I think are all attached to a history that some mixed kid with a millionaire father and a shit ton of privilege will never completely understand.”
Emotions that I didn’t know I felt rise to the surface as my entire body trembles with rage at Renzo’s entitlement and his inability to see my perspective at all while claiming that he loves me. If he wants me to feel this so-called love, I need him to see me outside of the bedroom and outside of the twisted scenes that play out between us when he draws my naked body or looms over me naked in our bed together.
“When you choose to be with someone different, you both stand to lose something. What I have to lose and what I have to change is not any less important than what you have to lose or change.”
“I don’t think you’re unimportant,” Renzo says, cracking and revealing something genuine that I would have never guessed in a million years about him. “I find it so fucking infuriating how you’re so confident that nothing I say to trigger you could ever in a million years bring you down. I’ve been studying your reactions for years to find the source of that disturbing strength.”
Does Renzo mean my survival instincts? There is nothing special about those. You have to believe in your own self-worth and build up your own confidence in a world designed to beat you down into submission whenever you dare to shine. My self-confidence was drilled into me from a very young age and sure, it comes with its benefits, but right now, I’m not sure if I’m as strong as Renzo thinks.
Even if he’s genuine about loving me and wanting to change his worldview for me, letting him into my heart feels like a threat to my independence. I would rather distract him in the bedroom than interrogate the disturbing truth about how he’s slowly unraveled my suspicions towards him by becoming protective, calm, and patient, right when Nicki’s evil plot threatened to unravel my sanity.
He’s been there for me in a way that she wasn’t – and I can’t pretend that it means absolutely nothing to me. I want him to mean nothing to me. I would vastly prefer it if Renzo kept himself at arms’ length and stayed away from me. I tried at every opportunity to push him away.
“Just go upstairs and I’ll stay here until I calm down and we can pretend this never happened.”
“I don’t want to pretend it never happened.”
And why not? Renzo makes me want to scream and tear my hair out. He closes the distance between the two of us, trapping me between his body and a shelf filled with wine bottles. How stupid was I to think that Renzo wouldn’t follow me into the darkness? He craves space like this – dark, damp space that constricts and closes around you.
“Renzo, go away.”
“No.”
His breath smells like cinnamon and mint. I throw my hands up against his chest instinctively to push him away and suspect very correctly that Renzo would be stupid and careless enough to try kissing me right now. He leans forward, defying my obvious effort to push him away and kisses me on the lips.
No.My body tenses as he grabs my cheeks and kisses me again. It’s so strong and possessive that I could forget my determination to resist him if I weren’t somehow more stubborn than Renzo Taviani.
“You’re mine,” he growls. “Every part of you is mine.”
His thumb traces the outline of my lips. Heat emanates from his gaze and my skin burns beneath the path of Renzo’s murky green predator’s eyes. He mesmerizes me in place with his touch and with the firmness of his grasp on my soft cheeks, dampened with tears which Renzo ignores as he sinks his thumb and forefinger into my jaw. One wrong move and he’ll unleash his desire and wrath on me. I’m not sure which is worse given the intensity of his stare.
The burning sensation spreads all over my skin and I watch Renzo’s soft lips as I fight my desperate craving to know what he’ll unleash on me next. He says that he loves me, but I can’t believe he feels anything more than a dark desire to possess what he knows he shouldn’t.
His thumb traces the outline of my lips again and I struggle to withhold a whimper as he touches me. My body tremblesagainst my will as Renzo speaks. This man has no right to make me feel this weak. I gasp as he sticks a finger into my mouth, clearly intending for me to suck on it.
“I fucked a baby into your womb,” Renzo continues with a chilling, low voice. His eyes flicker with barely concealed rage. This is what I get for not returning his love automatically – proof that I’ve done the right thing. My resolve heightens as Renzo pushes his finger into my mouth deeper.Suck.My body responds against my will with my lips clamping around his finger as he invades my mouth and continues speaking.
