Total pages in book: 48
Estimated words: 45943 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 230(@200wpm)___ 184(@250wpm)___ 153(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 45943 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 230(@200wpm)___ 184(@250wpm)___ 153(@300wpm)
A shiver moves through me.
Is he saying this because he cheated on her?
The thought makes me want to run into my bedroom and slam the door, sit down in front of my laptop, and type until my fingers ache and pulse and the skin on them becomes raw and I don’t have to entertain such evil thoughts.
“What happened, Jamie?” I murmur, my voice strained as I force the question out.
Jamie sighs, a rumble beneath the noise like he’s a silverback gorilla getting ready to dominate his territory. Everything about him is taut and ready to explode.
Even his arm around my shoulder tightens, as though he wants to pull me into him and never let go.
“Yasmin’s mother didn’t want to live a traditional life,” he says. “It might be my fault because I never felt for her the way I feel for you. Shit, Jade, maybe I never felt for her at all. I didn’t think I was even capable of feeling this before I met you. But the point is that she came to me one day – this was about a year after Yasmin was born – and told me she wanted to try out a polyamorous relationship.”
“That means you share each other, right?” I say, voice low.
My body recoils at the thought of letting another woman touch Jamie or having any other man touch me.
“Exactly,” Jamie says.
We both become silent and look out upon the cityscape for a few moments. A light snow has started to fall again, and the clouds have drifted across the sun to make the world as gray and bleak as Jamie’s words.
“I told her I had no interest in being involved in anything like that,” Jamie says. “It wasn’t because I cared about her, as evil as that is to say. It was just the idea of it. A man should own his woman. A man should die before he lets another man touch his woman. I don’t give a damn if that makes me old-fashioned or prehistoric or anything.”
“I feel the same,” I murmur, resting my head on his shoulder. “Maybe we can be prehistoric together, huh?”
I can feel the shape of his smirk on top of my head when he kisses me, the pride beaming from him.
“That sounds perfect to me,” he growls. “But she didn’t feel the same. She called me sexist. She said I was stifling her spirit, whatever the fuck that means. Maybe I could’ve been more understanding. I don’t know. In the end, I just told her that if she wanted to pass herself around, she could go ahead and do it, but I didn’t want any part of it. We broke up and I told her that she could see Yasmin any time she wanted. I told her that a daughter needs her mother …”
Darkness creeps into his voice and his hand tightens on my shoulder.
“What did she say?” I ask quietly.
“She said that having a child was a mistake,” he growls. “She said that she had no interest in being a mother. She called Yasmin a mistake. She said she had no interest in seeing her and that she was moving to Europe to join this polyamorous commune, whatever the fuck they’re called. It sickened me, Jade, the way a woman could abandon her natural calling in life like that. To be lucky enough to be a mother to a daughter as wonderful as Yasmin and to throw it all away … It just made no sense to me.”
I cuddle closer to him, sensing the animal tension running through him. It’s easy to imagine him flying into a red hot rage and trashing this place, the way his body is tensing and throbbing like a meteor surging toward earth ready to explode.
“That’s horrible,” I whisper. “I can’t even imagine … Abandoning your daughter like that, Jesus, Jamie, it’s just evil.”
“It is,” he growls.
“I’d never do something like that,” I tell him. “Any of it. The polyamorous stuff or abandoning my child or …”
He turns and takes my face in his hands, cradling my cheeks so that the warmth and firmness of his touch travels through me with starlight.
“I know you wouldn’t,” he says, his azure eyes glinting with affection. “I knew the moment I saw you that you were going to be the perfect mother. I knew you were going to be the perfect partner.”
“How did you know all of that just from a look?” I murmur.
“It’s your eyes, Jade,” he says passionately, leaning down so that we are staring into each other’s eyes.
It’s like he can look past the face I wear for the rest of the world and see right through to the inner me, the person I wish I was, the person I’ve always wanted to me.
“My eyes?” I say.
“I look into your eyes and I see our future,” he murmurs, his breath making patterns of warmth on my skin. “I see everything that we’re going to be. I see our children and I see you reading them bedtime stories at night—maybe stories you write. I see those luscious curves of yours with an apron draped over them, steam rising around you in the kitchen, and all our children clamoring to be the first to taste whatever you’re baking. Maybe it makes me sexist, the way I look at you and see a woman, a mother, a partner. Maybe it makes me sexist that I know deep in my bones that you fucking belong to me. But I don’t care. Because—”