Full of venom Charlie spat, “You don’t know what it’s like to be a bastard. Mocked and hated… beat for breathing. I won’t do it to an innocent kid.”
You could have knocked him over with a feather. “You expect me to toss you aside?”
Raising her chin, she looked at the far wall and said nothing.
His voice grew positively dangerous, Matthew yanking her boot off to throw clear across the room. “You have been taking precautions, thinking I would get you in trouble and leave you.”
Charlie met his glare. “Of course I have been taking precautions! I may be ignorant of a lot that goes on between a man and woman, but I know how babies are made, Matthew. We’ve done plenty to get me in trouble. Someday, you’re going to wake up and realize just who you have been fucking… and I am prepared for it.”
He was so angry he actually wanted to shake her, wanted to force some sense into her thick skull. “I told you I loved you.” Her lip began to quiver, and he stood, bellowing in irritation, “Don’t you dare cry!”
That was all it took for her to fall apart. Water fell from her eyes in messy wet rivers, Charlie curled over and sobbed.
Matthew fell to his knees, pale eyes instantly devoid of fury. “Hush now, darlin’. Don’t cry… don’t cry…”
“Just leave me be,” she wailed.
Shaking his head, he spoke real gentle, “No. I ain’t going. Whatever fool idea you’ve been cookin’ up in that head of yours is flat out wrong. I don’t care about who your parents were. I understand what you did to care for your mama. I love you—your temper and strange little ways. Even the fact you can’t paint your fingernails.”
Lifting her chin, Matthew wiped her tears with his thumb. “Don’t you see what’s clear to everyone who’s seen me with you? I intend to marry you, Charlotte. I already looked in to fixin’ up that white house you like so much, should be done by the end of autumn at the latest. You’ll have a proper home as my wife.”
Sitting on a shoddy bed in a lousy room, dressed like a boy with tears streaking her face, she looked at the man kneeling at her feet as if he were some mythological treasure, an impossible unattainable thing. “I am not good enough for you, Matthew. We both know you deserve better.”
He let out a deep breath and moved to sit beside her on the bed. He grunted once, nodding at his thoughts, before he turned to find her watching him with such love and longing, it gutted him.
Reaching up, Matthew’s expression was the softest he could make it; pale eyes shone down while his fingers tucked a piece of hair behind her ear. Tenderly he spoke, “Charlotte, sweet girl, you’ve had this comin’ for a while now.”
In two seconds flat, he yanked her over his knee, tugged her trousers around her thighs, and set the flat of his palm in a hard swat to her rear end. Scolding her something fierce, he barked, “There ain’t nothing wrong with you!”
Matthew smacked her good and hard again. “You are perfect as you are.”
Another stinging slap, Charlie struggled against the forearm he braced across her back. His tone grew angrier, louder. “Dedicating your life to taking care of your mama is nothing short of admirable!”
His palm whacked her again.
Yelpin
g with each spank, Charlie began to still, Matthew realized he was getting through her thick skull. “You will stop with all this damn nonsense of thinking you are less when you are wonderful!”
Her backside was on fire. Struggling, she yelled out, “Jesus, Matthew, I’ll marry you, stop spanking me already!”
He gave her one last resounding smack before bellowing, “Damn straight you’ll marry me!”
Charlie looked over her shoulder, shocked he’d actually had the gall to spank her. The stern set of his brow met her eyes, Matthew’s expression daring her to utter one wrong word.
Softly, she asked, “Are you going to let me up now?”
He grunted, considering her bright red bottom. “No. Something about this just seems right.”
Incredulous, she cocked a brow and shivered a little at the hand gently caressing her burning backside. “Matthew Emerson, did you just make a joke?”
He looked almost as if he was going to smile at her, his pale eyes liquid pools before he trailed his soothing palm over her rump and ever so lightly skimmed her folds. The flesh there was slippery, swollen, and all the invitation he needed. Matthew’s eyes grew dark, and he began tearing at the rest of her clothes.
In a frenzy, popping buttons, rending cloth, he stripped her bare. Standing, pressing her against the wall, he lifted her up and drove in deep and mean. Grunting, rutting away, his lips tasted hers, his tongue rough—claiming his woman as she gasped, moaned, and scratched his back in her heat.
“You’ll be my wife,” he demanded as he ground against her.
Something about the sting on her bottom, the fire between her legs, and the force of the man plunging deep into her belly set Charlie feral. “Anything, Matthew, anything you want.”