Chapter 21: Chapter 21
“Where are we going?” She asked with a nervous shake to her voice. Her anxiety had been ramping up all morning over this details and as she didn’t trust him at all she had worked herself up into a nervous wreck imagining the worst.
“A clinic. Sit back and enjoy the journey it’s a thirty-minute drive.” YuZhi didn’t even look at her.
“What kind of clinic and why? Haven’t I been examined, prodded, and poked enough? What else could you want to test me for?” TangShi was incensed that he was putting her through even more medical procedures after a week of this family massacring her body in so many ways. Between beauty treatments, hair salons, blood tests and even smear tests and fertility examinations, she had had enough. It didn’t feel like she had any say over her own body anymore.
“A fertility clinic. So we don’t have to have sex to have a baby.” YuZhi shrugged, lifting the iPad in his lap and going back to the documents he was reading on the way here. He wasn’t overly thrilled about this appointment either, but it was preferable to having to have sex with his bride when he didn’t want to. He had to think of the future and going back to Rhea when this was over and being unfaithful wasn’t in his nature.
“A what? I don’t understand. We haven’t even begun trying and you are taking us to a fertility clinic? Do you think I’m sterile or something?” TangShi gushed at him, her words slightly scrambled as she held back the frantic feelings overwhelming her. She couldn’t understand what he was thinking.
“No. It’s not that kind of procedure. He’s a good friend of mine, discreet, and willing to do this without a record or registering us. A simple five minutes of your time while he takes what I dump in a cup and inserts it in you where I don’t want to go. Simple…. Clean, and easy.” YuZhi couldn’t see a problem with this plan and had no idea why she gawped at him in horror as though he had just slain a puppy in front of her. He thought she would like the idea of no physical contact to produce an heir.
“No way!” She snapped “You want me to let some man insert and …. I can’t even.” She turned away jerkily. shaking her head, her anger spreading from zero to a hundred in a second and her whole body started to tremble in reaction. She really couldn’t fathom how no matter he did, he still never failed to shock her.
“Don’t really see the difference. I’m some man you would let insert…”
“Stop. Don’t even say it. What’s wrong with you?” TangShi flushed, cutting him off, her cheeks instantly hot and pink with embarrassment at his crudeness and yet YuZhi really didn’t seem bothered at all. He was way more experienced and worldly than her and felt like she was overreacting.
“Is the virgin Mary act because you’re disappointed I won’t bang you or is it because you really are a prude and some sweet untouched innocent? I really didn’t think you would be the pure type to be honest. Not at twenty-four with passable looks and a half decent figure.” YuZhi eyed her up with a smirk, a half compliment but also not. Making her skin crawl and she could only scowl back at him.
“What is that supposed to mean? Does your ego ever just stop inflating itself?” TangShi swung away from him again, to haul her bag into her lap and stare moodily out of the window. Hating that once again he reduced her to this.
“I mean who am I to judge if you’re not? We live in twenty, twenty-one. I’m not a traditionalist and I sure as hell am not a virgin either. I don’t care what you’ve done before this or what you do after, as long as only my DNA mingles with yours until we’re divorced.” He chuckled at his own euphemism, amused at his own humor.
“Eww.” TangShi screwed her face up at him, skin flaming and unwilling to admit she had never gone beyond kissing anyone in her life, and that anyone was him. She hadn’t really done any dating in the last eight years or before that night of the ball. It wasn’t something she actively pursued while trying to escape a life she hated and focusing on her scholarship. “Could you make this sound anymore icky?” She deflected.
“What’s ‘ickier’ than having to do this with you?” YuZhi retorted, quick as always and she silently cursed his smart-ass comebacks and deadpan expression when delivering them. She hated his sarcasm and that cold and cool persona that other women seemed to swoon over. She didn’t know if he was quick witted because of a high IQ or if spending your days with cutthroat businessmen made it a necessity.
“Whatever. You know, I really don’t see what it is Rhea likes about you. She’s pleasant, likeable, and actually warm. You’re…. well, not.” TangShi wasn’t in the mood for trying to be sarcastic and witty, but she was mad enough to want to wound him with words too.
“Is that supposed to be a burn? Nice try. Rhea likes cold, distant, and sexy…so I don’t really care if we are opposites. I also don’t care if you don’t understand the relationship as it doesn’t concern you.” YuZhi flicked the screen of his iPad and turned a page to make it clear he had work to do and didn’t want to keep talking to TangShi. She was an irritation in his day and already taking up his valuable time to do this.
“What if I say no?” TangShi dropped that question sweetly while still watching the passing scenery fly by, with a heavy weight in her stomach. The thought of a clinic doing something like this consuming her and making her feel wretched. She hated going to the doctors as it was, and this was going to be both embarrassing and evasive. She couldn’t imagine anything worse.
“Then I guess I have to get drunk and make a woman of you.” She felt his eyes on her as he turned her way and glanced just in time to catch his wink her way. A smooth, bad boy, and giving no cares kind of gesture before he smirked, showing off a hint of those shiny white teeth and going back to his device. TangShi inhaled heavily and gritted her teeth so as not to react and balled her fists instead.
“I’d rather go to a clinic” she ground out petulantly. Weighing up the two she didn’t really like either option, but the appointment was a lesser of two evils. She could bear it.
“Good. I can relax knowing we agree on something. We’ll come here twice this week, then again a month from now if your periods show up in two weeks. We’ll plan accordingly until you’re pregnant.” YuZhi spelled it out in an even disinterested tone and carried on reading while TangShi blanched at how easily those words came out of his mouth.
Most men in her life would never talk openly about anything like this with any females she had known growing up and yet he seemed unfazed and uncaring. He didn’t seem all that invested in the fact that all this was to make him a father at the end of it. He really didn’t show any kind of emotion about that at all.
“Anymore questions, or can I go back to what I was doing? I have a meeting this afternoon and several reports to read before then. I’d prefer if you just sit and be quiet and pretend, I’m not even here.” He dismissed her airily, eyes back on his screen and infuriated her.
TangShi didn’t respond but glared at him for a long moment wondering if there was any person ruder than him in this world, until he looked up, clocking a brow at her expression and smiled.
“Glad you agree.” He turned away, slid in his seat to adjust his position and lifted a leg to wedge his foot against the middle rest so he could use his knee to prop up his tablet in an easier position. Blanking her out and ignoring her presence.
TangShi turned way, so many emotions stirring up inside like a tidal wave looking for release, and she hated the fact that he made her feel like this anytime they interacted. A combination of anger, a sense of uptightness, and a deep wounded feeling in her soul. He always made her upset and annoyed. All muddled together to confuse her as to what she felt and left her in the worst kinds of moods.
YuZhi got to her for a million reason and now she could add this to the list of things he did that made her feel worthless. Using a clinic rather than physically touching her to get pregnant had to be about the worst way to tell a woman she repulsed you, and it left a scar on TangShi’s heart despite hating him with a passion.