I nod and stride forward, taking her hand and feeling the warm belonging of it, her palm searing against me.
She whimpers when I squeeze onto her too hard. I relax my grip, even though I want to squeeze and keep squeezing until we’re fused together and she becomes a part of me and I become a part of her.
I lead her down a corridor of golden wallpaper, nodding casually to the host at the desk and striding into the restaurant.
Several people waiting for tables exchange looks, and I think one man might even mutter something. But he knows better than to challenge me directly.
Maybe I’m a jackass for cutting the line like this, but there’s no way I’m going to sit around wasting time when I could be having lunch with my woman.
I guide her through the restaurant, across the hardwood floor, and under the chandelier-lit ceiling. The tall windows show the Arc de Triomphe in all its glory. A few people whisper as we walk by, clearly recognizing me, but I don’t give a damn.
I only care about my queen.
I take her to the top of the restaurant and to a booth in the corner, cordoned off with a golden rope.
I unhook it and bow with a smirk on my face.
“Mademoiselle,” I say.
Fiona’s cheeks glow and she walks by me, brushing close enough that I can smell her skin, the tanginess of it, the promise of her heat, and her womanly odor.
The base of my cock twinges, my mind a rising tsunami of impossible-to-ignore images.
I remember the texture of her nipples in my mouth, how pert with want they were.
We both slide into the booth.
Fiona gazes around at the majesty of the restaurant, biting her lower lip as if she doesn’t know how feral that’s going to drive me.
“Did you see the way they were looking at us?” she whispers.
“Who?” I say.
“Everyone,” she sighs. “They were all thinking, What’s that fat girl doing with him?”
“What the fuck did you just say?” I snap, standing up and laying my fists on the table.
I glare down at her, my jaw pulsing.
She whimpers and stares up at me with her wide eyes. Her mouth falls open like she wants me to drive the thick length of my manhood deep into her throat and fuck her as she chokes and moans to prove how attractive I find her.
“What?” she whispers.
“Don’t talk about yourself like that,” I snarl. “Never put yourself down like that. Fiona, you’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever laid my eyes on.”
I’m doing it again.
I’m going too far.
But I can’t stop.
She brings out something primal inside of me.
“Your curves only add to your beauty,” I tell her. “Do you have any idea how fertile and gorgeous you look? Do you have any idea how sexy I find that? Why do you think I’m going to put babies in you, firecracker? Why do you think I’m going to claim you every day for the rest of our goddamned lives?”
She gasps and we hold each other’s gazes.
Her lips quiver.
Fuck.
It’s all out there now.
I’ve got no clue how she’s going to react.
I’ve been thinking about this moment for three months, ever since I first laid eyes on her.
It was never supposed to come out like this.
Chapter Seven
Fiona
I grip the edge of the table, the force of his words slamming into me.
I thought all the grandiosity of the restaurant was too much – the high ceilings, the chandeliers, and the women in their fancy dresses, with Paris seeming like a screensaver in the tall windows – but this is something else entirely.
This must be a trick.
Or is it a joke?
“What do you mean?” I murmur, my chest still light and airy from the compliments he paid me before he hit me with this revelation.
He said my curves make me more beautiful.
He said that’s part of the reason he’s attracted to me.
Nobody has ever paid me a compliment about my body before.
Despite the craziness simmering beneath every moment of this exchange, I can’t help but let my lips twitch into a smile, a smile that somehow gets wider despite how impossible this should all be.
He drops into his seat, running a hand through his hair. “I didn’t mean to tell you like that,” he sighs huskily.
“Forrest,” I murmur. “You said you want us to have babies together?”
He nods, meeting my gaze, holding it in that intense way of his.
The whole world could burn and he wouldn’t look away.
“Yes,” he growls. “That’s what I said. That’s what I feel. Yes, Fiona.”
“But … But …” I say fish-mouthing, trying to find the right words, but I’m not sure there are any for this situation.
Shock bounces through me.
The waiter approaches from the side, but Forrest turns and shakes his head in a slight movement, the way a man moves when he knows he’s going to be obeyed without question. I can imagine him shaking his head like that in boardrooms, with the same gleaming self-confidence.