Chapter Eight
The first copy of the contract came through while Heather was in the middle of meeting with client to arrange her time away.
She wasn’t able to look at it until she was in a car headed back to her apartment.
By the time she was upstairs in her room she was fuming.
She forwarded the contract to her lawyer along with a screed of notes that she trusted her to turn into a coherent revision.
Then she called Romeo. A video call so that he could see the anger in her eyes, because why miss out on that opportunity?
But as ever, she wasn’t prepared for the impact of him. Why was he still beautiful to her? After everything.
You’re jumping headlong into a marriage with this man. What do you think that’s going to look like?
That was the scary thing. It was difficult to say what a marriage to that man would look like. Very difficult indeed. And yet she didn’t see another option.
“I assume that you got the paperwork?”
“This is patriarchal nonsense,” she said.
“What exactly?”
“Well, particularly the control that you’re asking to have over my sex life.”
“If you’re unfaithful to me I will take you for everything that you have,” he said.
Rage flashed through her. “And you?”
“You’re welcome to submit a return argument.”
“So I have to live like a nun or I have you as my only option?”
He was wearing a black suit. His black tie was slightly loose, and his hair was disheveled. It made her wonder if he had been with someone else. Even now.
Thinking of him that way… It made her so angry. It also sent a shiver of desire through her body.
“The question I have for you,” he said, his gaze meeting her directly through the camera lens, “is if you think we can live in close quarters without touching each other.”
“I am willing to try. Also, expect my response soon.” She hung up the call, and paced around her apartment before stripping off all her clothes and getting in the shower, turning it on cold.
The thing was, she had suggested marriage thinking about the baby, and really not about them.
In her head she had thought that maybe they could live separate lives, but have some kind of protection.
Not be in real relationships with anyone else, maybe, but…
Maybe she had thought they could live like they always had. Like stepsiblings raising a baby together while he independently conducted his affairs and she worked on figuring out who else she could possibly have an affair with.
He was trying to claim ownership of her. But did that mean that he wanted her? And why did that make her feel special? And not outraged?
She sent her lawyer four more emails of suggested addendums after she got out of the shower, and then waited for the response.
It went on like that for six weeks. While she wrapped everything up in New York, went to the doctor to judge the viability of the pregnancy—why go through all this if there was no baby?—threw up daily and arranged to have her mail forwarded.
They hadn’t spoken in that time. It was all lawyers, but he’d insisted they meet in person to go over the final draft.
He had asked that she meet him at his office in London, before they would go back to Italy together.
She hadn’t been to the office in years. Not since her stepfather was in charge.
Romeo had acquired the company to function beneath his own luxury travel conglomerate six years earlier, with the blessing of his father.
In preparation for the day when he would have ultimate ownership.
She could actually understand why he was angry that she had been given half of the control.
Romeo had used his connections, his education and his personal knowledge of the industry to begin his own company that didn’t work in direct competition with his father, but rather complemented it.
He had started an airline, and later a multitude of cruise lines.
From luxury yacht travel to large, affordable cruise ships.
Meanwhile his father owned one of the largest hotel chains in the world.
Now they were all under one umbrella, and Romeo was certainly more qualified to attend to any of that than she was.
She didn’t even want it. There was a reason that she had ended up ditching her degree in publicity. She had decided that she wasn’t going to pursue a place in the Accardi business empire.
She loved books. All kinds. When she’d been younger it had been escapism while she’d waited out long hours with her mother cleaning, and then when she’d been older it had made the situation with Romeo manageable, in a strange way.
She read all kinds of books—horror, thrillers, romance, mysteries.
It made her think of herself as a heroine and him as her antagonist; it made her feel brave.
Plus, she had her stepfather’s money to keep her from penury, which she’d found was a big asset in publishing. It was a passion job, more than it was a job for the money.
It was also funny now, because she and Romeo were enmeshed. Deeper than her owning part of the company could ever make her.
She took the high-speed elevator up to the top floor, and didn’t find Romeo in his office. She got a text directing her to the boardroom down the hall.
The room was completely private, no windows on the door. She swallowed hard, and then walked in.
There might not be any windows out into the office, but the entire exterior wall was glass, offering a view of the streets below. They were more than forty floors up, so she knew that while she had a view of the world, the world did not have a view of them.
Her heart felt like it was being squeeze by a giant fist.
He wasn’t in there yet. She had a feeling that was by design. She sat down at the head of the table. That would make him angry.
She despised herself with a little thrill of adrenaline that raced through her at the thought of making him angry. She got off on that. She was going to have to work on that, probably.
The door opened, and there he was. All in black, looking sharply pressed. His gaze flicked to where she sat, and then he walked down the length of the table, taking his seat completely opposite her.
He got out his briefcase, the sound of the locks being opened loud in the relatively quiet room. He took out a stack of papers and tapped the edges once on the edge of the table with a crack, and then slid them across toward her.
“This is where we’re at,” he said, indicating the contract.
He had left it deliberately out of her reach. She stood up and walked to the center of the table, suddenly aware that the V-neck on her shirt was quite low. When she bent down to grab the papers, she watched his gaze, noticed the way that he looked at her cleavage.
The power play aroused her, and she had not come here to be turned on.
But then, she supposed if she didn’t want to be turned on she shouldn’t consent to share the same air as Romeo.
She began to look down the prenuptial agreement.
If either of them broke the stipulations of the agreement, the other one would be given full custody, and a sizable share of the other’s assets.
They had both agreed to that. They had both agreed that the shackles needed to be tight, because what made sense now might become difficult for them to abide by in the future.
But when she reached the part about marital conduct, she stopped.
That had been the most contentious part.
Because what they had agreed was that either they had no control over each other’s sexual conduct, or all of it.
The current version of the contract said that all extramarital sexual encounters had to be consented to by those within the marriage.
And that there would be consequences if the affair ever became public.
She looked up at him. “I think that this covers everything.”
“I have added another page,” he said.
“Have you?”
“Yes. For you and I to go over and make adjustments to.” He took a pen out of his briefcase and clicked the top once.
She turned the page. There were addendums to what she had previously seen.
In the event that both parties decide to conduct a sexual relationship with each other then sex outside the marriage becomes unacceptable.
She looked up at him. “You think that’s going to happen?”
“Keep reading.”
Provided that the sexual relationship is satisfying to both parties. Wherein all kinks and desires should be catered to and orgasm shall be achieved by both.
Her face went hot. “All kinks?”
“Why take anything off the table before you’ve tried it?”
Was he trying to goad her? Make her run? Make her freak out?
Oh, please, asshole. We’ve been at this for too long.
Her heart was beating rapidly, her face hot, and she took her own pen out and made an amendment to kinks, and to the section about orgasms. She slid the paperwork across the table to him. His dark eyebrows raised high. “Two orgasms to every one of mine?”
She threw the pen down and leaned back in her chair. “Women are multi-orgasmic, Romeo. If you’re not up to overachieving, certainly I can find someone who is.”
“Oh, you misunderstand me. The only question is why stop at two?”
Her throat went tight. “I assume we’ll be busy sometimes.”
He looked back down. “I think you might want to leave some of these things on the table.”
“I don’t need you to spank me.”
“Don’t you? Sometimes it seems as if you’re asking for punishment.”
“Not interested,” she said, her heart beating faster, her pulse beating rapidly at the base of her throat, calling her a liar.
Oh no. She was lying. His eyes continued to meet hers as he pushed the contract back toward the center of the table.
She went and retrieved it. She crossed out the part she had added about spankings, bondage and other forms of submission.
But her pride wouldn’t let her leave it at that.
And so she took it upon herself to add a new section.