Chapter 21 – Damara
Chapter Twenty-One
Damara
This isn’t the trap I thought Magnum would set up for me, but it’s damn good, I’ll give him that.
I can’t move my feet and I can’t move my wrists either.
Magnum struts around his bedroom with self-satisfaction and a tiny white towel wrapped around his waist. None of my hardest kicks made a dent in this psychopath’s body.
He’s pure muscle. It shouldn’t turn me on as much as it scares me, but I’m only human and my body has the unfortunate response to Magnum’s first time sleeping with me that I feel a strange, primal bond with him.
I need to get much better about my taste in men if I find the man who knocked me up and tied me to the bed sexy as fuck.
Magnum doesn’t have any control over his emotions or his mental health if he’s willing to stoop this low to get what he wants from me.
When I scream as loudly as possible that I hate him, I assume my outrage will cause Magnum to see reason. I couldn’t have been more mistaken.
He stands in my line of sight and drops his towel, forcing me to get a face full of his bare, pierced dick.
That monster is even more terrifying when it’s soft, because he’s still huge.
The tip of his cock drops far past the midpoint of Magnum’s long femur.
He’s so enormous that the way I have to analyze and compare his body to mine feels downright creepy.
He could crush me with one hand. He might plan to.
Magnum’s baseball bat dick swings between his legs as he bares himself to me with a proud smile creeping across his villainous face.
My fight hasn’t disappeared just yet. I don’t know what “truth” Magnum wants me to admit, but I’m not going to let him tie me up and make me kiss his ass. No fucking way.
“I told you the truth, Magnum. I’ll fuck you, I’ll run our little business. I’ll do whatever the hell you want me to do, but there’s no point in forcing emotions.”
“You are such a fucking liar.”
His cock twitches as a pulse of rage shoots through him. I wouldn’t be surprised if I made him horny and angry at the same time, even if it’s a dangerous ass combination.
“What is your problem, Magnum?”
Magnum’s voice trembles with rage. “We love each other. We clearly love each other.”
The audacity of his emotional response just makes me want to slap him. I yank unconsciously against his stupid leather belts again. Magnum’s cock grows semi-erect in front of me, only increasing my absolute loathing for him.
“Have you ever been in love?”
“Yes,” he snarls at me, burning through my skin with that penetrating predator’s gaze of his. My desire to slap him only grows. I hate Magnum so much that my skin burns.
“So have I,” my voice trembles as I snap at him. “I’ve been wrong every damn time. This isn’t any different than the other fucked up situations I’ve ended up in.”
He hates the idea that he might be indistinguishable from the other white men who wanted to claim me. I don’t want to be bonded to Magnum for life out of some bizarre sense of obligation or worse, to fulfill a dark fetish that he has because women like me are taboo in his world.
“This isn’t different, pink hair?” Magnum sneers at me. He has an obsession with bringing up my pink hair. It just serves my point that he sees me as an exotic object. “You’re a mean, terrible woman. With no damn heart.”
“Why the hell should I have a heart for you?”
“Because this shit matters to me,” Magnum yells back at me. “You think I wanted to have a kid with a woman who hates my guts?”
He trembles with rage and grabs another belt from his top drawer.
My heart pounds out of control. I don’t hate Magnum.
What I feel for him might be complicated and I don’t know if I would call it love, but it’s not hate either.
He brings up much more complex emotions, which are difficult to define.
How can he expect me to understand an inner world that’s entirely new to me?
Letting men into your private inner world for anything other than your personal pleasure is downright naive and something we should save for the young folks.
I’m too old to give myself away to a man.
This pink-haired I-don’t-give-a-fuck era was supposed to be all mine.
Not Magnum’s. Not my Mormon ex-husband’s.
Not even my sister’s. I especially never thought I would bring another life into the world.
“I care about you,” Magnum continues, barely containing his rage and all the other intense emotions pressing up against that wall of anger.
“I could have had a kid any time I wanted. I have more money than anyone in the club and plenty of women who want it. I never entertained the idea of screwing around.”
I sense the weight of his past regrets hanging around Magnum’s neck.
The one part of our lives that both of us secretly share but never discuss is that we both thought our chances of having a kid had slipped by us.
Sure, biologically it might have still been possible but we weren’t ready for it to happen like this.
“What do you want me to say?” I ask him, heart pounding through my chest as my vulnerability expands into a new dimension.
I’ve never been in this position before either and that scares me almost as much as my future with Magnum.
I spent my teens and early twenties chasing after men who didn’t give a shit about me.
I don’t know how to look a man in the eye who cares – who wants to care.
Why should I believe this isn’t just another trap?
How can I allow myself to keep letting my guard down when I have the memory of those broken bones and bruises to remind me of just how bad men can get.
I want to leave Magnum tongue-tied but of course, I don’t.
He knows exactly what he wants, unlike all the other menaces from my past.
“I want you to say that you love me and I want you to mean it. If my belief wavers for even a second, I’m keeping your ass tied to the bed.”
He doesn’t sound at all like he’s joking or lenient. The leather scent and Magnum’s sweat wafts around the room. Even predators get nervous and you can smell it on them. I glare at him with stubborn refusal to give him what he wants or to face my feelings. Neither option appeals to me.
“You want me to lie?”
My heart does a backflip. It wouldn’t be a lie if I told Magnum I loved him, but the truth can be more dangerous. I can’t stomach the emotional vulnerability paired with the physical vulnerability. But I suspect Magnum will make it even more painful than this. He smirks.
“It’s not a lie. It’s a promise to me and to our child that we won’t bring a baby into a broken home.”
That little tug at my heartstrings happens again and my resentment for Magnum soars.
I didn’t expect him to work his way under my skin like this.
I really didn’t. Now, he has his mind set on us being together forever and a dangerous power over me that no other man has had before.
Why does he only want to make me dig my heels in? What’s wrong with me?
“I didn’t choose to bring this baby into a broken home. Whichever sick person drugged us did that. We have no reason to love each other, Magnum.”
If I stop staring him down, he’ll think he’s won something over me, but looking at Magnum doesn’t make it easy to keep up this rage.
We both were drugged. We should be in this situation together fucking up whoever did this to us.
Instead, we’re caught up in the complex side effects of the sex we can’t seem to stop having.
He knows how intense and emotional it feels to get in bed together because he’s there too.
Unfortunately, Magnum has to make a big scene.
He needs a romantic proclamation, the big words, the big commitment – the only shit in the world that genuinely scares the crap out of me anymore after all the shit I’ve been through.
“I don’t need a reason,” he says quietly. “I suppose you’re too heartless to understand, but the way I feel about you defies reason. If I had any sense at all, I would have taken you to the doctor and ended all of this.”
I can feel the pang of sadness at just the thought at the same time as I watch Magnum’s face fall.
He can’t bear the thought of us not having this baby either.
This accident tugged at our hidden sentimental sides, bringing them to the surface in an unexpected way.
I just don’t have the delusion that this hormonal mess of pleasure and excitement will last forever.
Magnum will be off on his motorcycle when he catches a whiff of this baby’s first diaper, and I shouldn’t delude myself into thinking he’s going to stick around once the reality of no sex, chapped nipples and a wailing baby with a poopy diaper catches up to him.
“Wanting to control me isn’t the same as loving me?”
Magnum’s scowl deepens. “If you were in any way controllable, I wouldn’t have to tie you to the bed with reinforcements to have a simple conversation with you.”
“How has it become my fault that you tied me to the bed?”
This man’s ability to flip the scripts and turn the tables must be downright legendary.
My anger flares in my chest, but instead of comforting me like my anger normally does, I feel this utter horror that Magnum can control my emotions so easily.
I should be strong enough to stop my internal reactions to him. But I can’t.
“I love you,” he says. “It’s not about control. I gave you all the resources you need to make your dream come true. I’m right here with you trying to make the best of this frustrating situation. We have chemistry, Damara. We must have.”
He says it with so much conviction that I’m almost tempted to give up my resistance to Magnum Sinclair.
But I can’t make it easy on him… not just yet.
“We don’t need to involve feelings in this.”
“I told you,” Magnum responds, gritting his teeth. “My child will not grow up in a broken home. If you don’t love me, you can use tonight as practice faking it. Because you will learn.”
“Is that how it works?”
“You are impossible.”
I know I’m working him up to a point of frustration that neither of us might be able to return from.
It’s dangerous to taunt this beast of a man, but I see no other way right now.
I’m not tired enough of fighting him and despite the pain I feel from being tied to the bed, it’s nowhere near the pain I felt the last time I gave my heart to another man.
“Say it,” Magnum repeats. “Say it, or I will go to even more extreme measures.”
“You won’t hurt your precious baby.”
And if he loves me, he won’t hurt me either. That makes it a little more cruel to play with Magnum’s emotions, but it’s not a game I’m entering lightly. It’s at least as serious as betting on the Warriors winning the NBA finals in a year when Steph Curry gets his knee injured in the playoffs.
“I might,” he says.
“You won’t.”
“Damara. Confess that you love me, or I will tie you to the bed and leave you there until your cold heart melts.”
I shouldn’t go toe to toe with Magnum, but I’ve never been the type to back away from a challenge. I stare him down – hawk meets eagle.
“You’re not about to do shit, white boy.”
I don’t know what possesses me to tack the ‘white boy’ onto the end, but those words clearly push Magnum over the edge.
The split second I have to react, I spend watching his nostrils flare with anger.
It’s too late by the time he lunges for me.
I slipped my hands out of binds just enough to get away And it works. For a second.
I get about two feet away before Magnum reasserts his domination. I can’t escape before his arm swoops around my waist and I screech at the top of my lungs as I start fighting his ass off like a wild hyena.
“I told you exactly what the fuck would happen!” Magnum yells as he carries me through the house.
I gain enough traction when I drag his hair and hurt him enough that he slams me against the wall, bracing my body with his arm so I’m only shaken up instead of hurt.
I sense an opportunity to wriggle away from Magnum and try to take it but the position against the wall only gives the giant beast more leverage over me.
“PUT ME DOWN!” I scream with the intentions of shattering Magnum’s eardrums, but if I hurt him at all, he doesn’t give a fuck and it doesn’t stop him from dragging me into the bedroom where he throws me back against the bed with a huff.
I screech loudly and try to scramble away, already lost in the mess of sheets and throw pillows that make it impossible to escape the king-sized bed.
While scrambling over a pillow that seems as big as a surfboard, I feel Magnum’s hand clamping around my ankle and he drags me back towards him across the length of the bed, eliminating any distance I had successfully put between the two of us.
I scream even louder than before, only heightening Magnum’s anger.
“You are done, you little brat,” he growls. “Fucking done.”