Page 32 of Coerced Wife

The expression that comes over her beautiful face is so stunned I may as well have slapped her.

“You can’t be serious,” she says in a breathless voice.

“We’ll get married before the baby is born.”

She opens and closes her mouth, but no sound escapes from her lips. Her cheeks are the color of ash, the blood drained from her face.

When she finally finds her voice, it’s to say with a bitter accusation in her tone, “Do I get a choice inthis, or have you already decided?”

I lean down and brace my palms on the backrest, one on each side of her face. She cranes her neck to bravely hold my gaze even as fear and uneasiness dance in her eyes.

“Would you prefer that I go down on one knee?” I ask.

“No,” she says, all but spitting the word at me.

“I’ll be good to you,tesoro.” I caress the lines of her face with my gaze. “You know that from living with me already.”

Her pretty eyes spark with animosity and defiance. “Marriage will tie me to you forever.”

And isn’t that the sweetest thing I’ve heard?

Yeah, forever with her sits very right with me.

“When it comes to your life,my love, no price is too high to pay.”

“Why?” She studies me. “Why would you go to such lengths to keep me safe?”

She keeps on asking the same question, trying to understand my motives, but I can’t tell her my deepestsecrets and saddest regrets. All I can give her is the same answer as always. “You know why.”

“To save your own skin,” she concludes with a sad little smile. “What’s that saying about keeping your enemies close? I guess you only have one alibi. You can’t risk losing her or letting her shoot off her mouth.”

Smiling, I admit another truth she already knows. “I never lied about my intentions.”

She flattens her palms on my chest and pushes me away. I make space for her not because I have to but because I choose to.

When we’re standing toe to toe, she tilts her face up. “What happens if I say no?”

“You’ll do the books and marry me anyway.”

“I see,” she says, looking at me like my mother did when my father told her I’d stolen the money that had paid for the food she’d eaten.

Her dejection hits me right in the chest.

“In that case,” she says, “all I ask is that you give me time.”

“You’ll have time,tesoro, four months to be exact, but I’ll put a ring on your finger and give you my name before that time is up.”

Painful disillusionment distorts her expression.

I sweeten the blow with a soft kiss on her lips.

She doesn’t resist me. She accepts her fate like the brave girl she is, and the possessive beast inside me roars with satisfaction.

CHAPTER

NINE

Anya