“Sure,” I quipped. “I’ll do all of that nonsense.”
Twice a year since they’ll be in Evon and other European institutions year-round.
She munched on the tip of her hair, which I found surprisingly not disgusting. “I have other conditions, too. I’ll be able to keep my job and move around unrestricted. You will not be putting any surveillance or security on me. I want to live a normal life.”
“You won’t need to work a day in your life.”
The girl was slower than an airport Wi-Fi.
“So?” She looked at me strangely as though she wasn’t following the conversation. That was fine. Between my Mensa member IQ and her beauty, our kids wouldn’t be a complete waste of oxygen. “I don’t work because I have to.” She narrowed her eyes. “I work because I love what I do.”
That word again.
“Fine. Keep your job.”
“What about security?”
“No security.” That would be a waste of my precious resources.
“One more thing—as long as other men are off-limits, so are other women.” She raised a finger in the air.
“This is not how it works.” I put out my cigar, losing patience. I’d negotiated putting three hundred-foot deep holes in the belly of planet Earth in less time than it took me to close a deal with this woman. “You’re the one at my mercy. I make the rules.”
“Am I?” She blinked at me innocently. “Because, correct me if I’m wrong, but you seemed to have told me you have another wife lined up, and a nice, long list of potential candidates if she doesn’t work out. Yet here you are with me. For a reason I can’t fathom, we want each other. Let’s not pretend otherwise, Kill.”
Kill.
Only my friends called me that. All two of them.
“The only reason I prefer you to Minka is because if you die, the women in my life would be upset, and the one thing I dislike more than humans are distressed humans.”
“I don’t care what excuse you give yourself for marrying me,” she said plainly. “If we get married, we’ll be equal. At least, you’ll pretend we are.”
I popped my knuckles in succession.
She was pissing me off. That was a feeling, and I didn’t do those.
“Let me put this plainly.” I smiled politely. “I’m not going to stay celibate for months or even weeks.”
“You won’t have to. You’ll have a wife.”
She was so red at this point, I wondered if she was going to combust in my back seat. That would be a hassle to clean from the brand-new Escalade. Not to mention tricky to explain.
“No.” I felt my muscles tightening under my suit.
“No, what?”
“I won’t sleep with you.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t want to.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because you don’t attract me,” I deadpanned.
I was no longer pissed off. I was sweating now, too. Why couldn’t I stick to my Minka plan? Persephone was my idea of hell. I couldn’t treat her with the same brashness I handled Sailor and Emmabelle because she was an innocent little thing like my sister, yet I had to remind her who was calling all the shots.
“How, pray tell, do you mean to impregnate me, if you don’t want to have sex with me?” She scowled, looking frustratingly adorable while doing so. “You are familiar with how babies come to be, right? Because none of the versions include a cabbage.”
I began scrolling through my phone, answering emails.
“I know how babies are made, Persephone. That’s why I bought a stork,” I said gravely.
She looked shocked for a second, before letting out a giggle. It was a cute giggle, too. Soft and throaty. If I had a heart—it would squeeze.
“I didn’t know you had a sense of humor, Kill.”
“I didn’t know you were so hard-pressed to get laid,” I volleyed back, still typing an email to Keith, aka Lord of the Sleep. “To answer your question, we’ll use IVF. You’ll be knocked up in no time, and we won’t have to know each other biblically.”
“What’s wrong with the Bible?” She eyed me.
“False advertisement.” I smirked sardonically. “God doesn’t exist.”
Physically wounded from my last comment, Persephone coiled in her side of the back seat. Apparently, she drew the line at God.
“I really ought to hate you.”
“Don’t bother. Hate is just love with fear and jealousy thrown into the mix.”
“Why me? Why not my sister?” She squared her shoulders, clutching onto the remainder of her defiance with bleeding fingernails.
Because she’s probably seen more dick than a train station urinal.
I’d broken many people in my life to know what they looked like a second before submitting.
Persephone was fully bent and on the verge of snapping.
Once broken, she’d be easy to reassemble to fit my lifestyle and needs.
“Because she possesses virtually all of the traits I despise in a person—from being eccentric, entitled, bigmouthed, and opinionated to simply being alive.”
“Yet you always ogle her.” The quietness in her voice left no room for doubt. Persephone didn’t like it when I looked at her sister.