Chapter 10
Regret rests heavily on my shoulders as I push open the door and step into the house. It’s a feeling I recognize and know well as a part of the curse I’ve carried for over half a lifetime, only this version of it is tied to someone living and breathing.
Silence greets me in the back hallway, but I know she’s awake, sitting down at the table, enjoying the meal I laid out for her, like she does every morning.
I can sense her just down the hall, feel her bright, vibrant energy radiating through the place that always felt so cold, dark, and lifeless before she arrived.
The rapid nature of the change has left me spinning, unable to find the right direction, especially in a house that suddenly feels like a home for the first time since Mom died giving birth to Wendy when I was merely a child.
So many years of cold.
Decades of gray, colorless survival under the iron fist of a man who controlled everything with violence and intimidation—even with his children.
It formed me into the man I am today and created The Beast.
But Callista has swept in, and within only a matter of weeks, managed to change this place—and me—without even trying. She infects everything she touches with a vibrancy and pureness she shouldn’t exude in a place like this, under the threat of aggression toward her father.
It isn’t right.
None of this is.
I nudge the door closed behind me and lean against it for a moment, letting my eyes drift closed as I inhale the air scented with the breakfast I recently cooked for her and her honey scent wafting down the hallway.
No amount of work this morning has been able to shake the sense of dread sitting squarely on my chest, threatening to steal my ability to breathe. My body isn’t on board with what I’m going to do, but I have to face her. I have to talk to her and ensure that what happened last night never happens again.
Ever.
We were lucky it occurred in the library, where the cameras can’t reach, where my lapse in judgment can remain a secret. It keeps her insulated. The fa?ade still in place where it must remain.
Sucking in a resolved breath that burns my lungs, I push off the door and make my way down the hall toward what will undoubtedly be an unpleasant conversation.
I pass through the living room and the low flames still burning in the fireplace after I started it this morning when I got up to cook for her, but that calming scent of charred wood can’t drown out that of the woman just on the other side of the stone monstrosity.
Not when I can still taste her on my tongue and in my throat each time I swallow.
Not when her moans and gasps still echo in my head.
I pause for a moment, listening to the soft clink of silverware against her plate before I force myself to step into the dining room and face her. Her eyes lift to meet mine expectantly, fork and knife paused above her food.
“Are you joining me this morning?” Her gaze darts to the head of the table, to the chair I never sit in and hasn’t been used by anyone in years, and she raises a pale brow. “Or are you going to run away like you did last night?”
Fuck, I deserve that.
As soon as we both came down from our high and I was sure she could stand on her own two feet again, I tugged up my pants and hightailed it out of that library faster than I ever have in my life.
Because I couldn’t bear to look at her, couldn’t stand to see what I had done to her and know what a huge fucking mistake I had made. One she will pay the price for when I’m the one who should suffer.
Ignoring her very valid jibe, I move over to the chair, pull it back from the table, and slowly lower myself into it. It feels foreign, the leather hard and unyielding rather than soft and comfortable as it appears.
Dad always sat here like it was a throne, lording over his minions and controlling the Barker kingdom from its regal seat. I always envied him, how powerful he looked here, how relaxed he appeared at the helm of such a massive ship. But I had no idea what it took to navigate those waters, to keep people in line when human nature demands they rebel.
Which is exactly what I expect Callista to do when she hears what I have to say.
I lean back and watch her, but she feigns disinterest in me, her focus on her meal as she cuts a piece of French toast and pops it into her mouth. She chews and raises her gaze to watch me, waiting for me to say something. Perfectly content to eat in silence like she does every morning rather than initiate a conversation that she might not want to have.
When I don’t speak, she offers a slight shrug, then digs back in again, taking several more bites before she points to it with the tip of her fork. “This French toast is outstanding, probably one of the best things you’ve cooked for me.”
The compliment tightens my chest even more, making me shift in my seat.
I shouldn’t care so much that it pleases her, that I found something she enjoys so much, that after scouring all the cookbooks I could find in the library and making new recipes every morning for her, it brings her the same joy as opening those third-floor doors for her did. But the soft little moan of contentment she issues when she takes the next bite into her mouth makes my cock stir to life again.
Fucking hell.
Not what I need right now.
I was right about these feelings for Callista leading me to a dangerous place. For so long, I already thought I was in it, but I had no idea what Hell really felt like until I’d experienced the Heaven of having my cock deep inside Callista Fox and her unraveling in my arms.
That moment changed everything.
And now, I need to fix it.
She finishes eating in silence, then slowly pushes away her plate, wiping her mouth with her napkin before she sets it beside the empty cloches that kept the breakfast warm when I went out to try to work myself senseless.
Leaning back slightly in her chair, she rests her hands on her lap. “So, that’s it?”
I guess the floor is mine, as it should be.
I’m the one who owes her an apology, who owes her a thousand of them. I should shoulder the blame and take the heat for what happened. “We need to talk about last night.”
“What about it?”
Her casual response makes me stiffen in all the wrong places. “I need to apologize to you for letting it—”
“Apologize?” Her blond brows wing up. “What could you possibly have to apologize for, aside from leaving me barely able to stand?”
How about slinking away like some thief in the night who just stole something priceless and precious?
“For letting it happen at all, Callista, for touching you, for kissing you, for—”
Fuck.
I can’t even bring myself to say the words because as soon as they leave my mouth, those images will further invade my head, overtaking any ability to concentrate on what I have to do, distracted by the feel of being buried inside her.
She crosses her arms over her chest. “For fucking me senseless against a bookcase?”
I cringe, closing my eyes and resting my forehead in my palm.
“I don’t know what it is you think happened last night, Weston.” There she goes, using my name again, sending that shiver through me. “But it seems you and I have a very different memory of it.”
I allow my lids to rise to meet her gaze again.
She waits until my focus is on her before she continues, still sitting back, looking so relaxed, though I don’t know how she can be after what happened. “I remember two consenting adults having incredible sex and getting each other off. You’re acting like it was some sort of assault.”
“It was.”
She snorts. “In what world?”
I snarl at her, the sound so guttural and vicious that she recoils slightly. “In the world where you aren’t here of your own free will, in a world you can’t possibly stay in, in a world where there is no future for us. In this fucking world.”
It doesn’t matter that she was a willing participant, that she practically begged me for it; I should not have allowed it to happen. Not last night. Not ever.
She pulls her bottom lip between her teeth as she watches me. The longer her heated gaze stays locked on mine, the more uncomfortable I become, waiting for her response, shifting restlessly in my chair.
Father always trained Wendy and me to keep our cool, to have a poker face, to never give anything away—a lesson I took to heart and that has served me well for most of my life. But it seems the many decades I’ve spent up here away from civilization have left me a bit unpracticed, or perhaps it’s simply the woman in front of me who makes it impossible for me not to squirm.
“You don’t have to keep reminding me why I’m here, Weston.” She releases a little sardonic laugh that doesn’t hold any humor. “Believe me, I remember the day I got here vividly, even if I want to forget it.”
I wince, the memory of chasing her through the woods, of her stumbling, of her fear, of her slicing her foot open and passing out in my arms, flooding back, only making what I’m already feeling a thousand times worse.
No one should suffer what she did that night.
And so much worse has happened on Barker Mountain.
At my hands.
She runs one of hers through her thick, blond hair, and it falls like a golden halo around her shoulders again, framing her heart-shaped face perfectly. Accentuating her high cheekbones. Her peachy skin. Those soft, pink lips she purses together.
That fucking mouth…
I had mine all over it last night.
My tongue inside it.
And her taste comes flooding back to me on a wave of need I have to force down so my cock doesn’t explode in my jeans as we sit here, staring each other down.
She considers me for a moment, her annoyance at my comment still twisting her lips. “I certainly came up here with the wrong impression of you, which wasn’t helped by your ‘friendly reception.’” The tiniest smirk vanishes as quickly as it appears. “I’ve spent enough time with you to understand there’s more going on behind the scenes, and I know you weren’t the one who made the request, or should I say demand, that I come at all. Someone else is pulling the strings, is making the decisions with you, maybe for you.”
I open my mouth to object to her suggestion, to argue against the dangerous supposition she’s making, but she holds up a hand to stop me.
Like some trained dog, my mouth snaps shut instantly.
She pushes her chair back and stands, then slowly approaches me around the table. The closer she gets, the faster my heart beats, until she’s standing directly beside me. “You’ve made it clear you’re not going to tell me anything, but I want to make something very clear to you, Weston Barker. People may be afraid of The Beast, but you are not him.”
My hands tighten on the armrests, fingers curling around the carved wood the same way Dad’s did when he sat here, trying to control his anger. “But I destroyed you last night, acted like a goddamn animal…”
She raises a brow. “Do you see me complaining?”
Before I can do anything to react, she slides between me and the table and straddles my hips, wedging her knees between them and the outsides of the chair.
Her arms loop around the back of my neck, and she stares down at me, completely oblivious that the move she just made may have ensured she never leaves Barker Mountain.
The flash of uncertainty in Weston’s gaze shifts quickly to something I never thought I would see in a man with a reputation like his, who has killed for little more than his family’s greed.
Fear.
His eyes dart away from mine for a second to somewhere in the room behind me that I can’t see from this position, but when I turn my head to follow his line of sight, he grips my chin, keeping my focus on him.
He opens his mouth to say something, likely to argue more about everything that has led up to what happened last night and to make more apologies he needn’t, but I lean closer, into his firm grip, ensuring he sees the truth of my words from earlier.
I am not afraid of moody, enigmatic Weston Barker.
He is so much more than the label people have placed on him as The Beast.
There’s no denying he’s done horrible things, acted violently in the Barker name, killed and maimed in ways I don’t even want to think about, but that isn’t all he is.
Over the past few weeks, he’s demonstrated his kindness, his ability to be gentle, his innate need to care for me, even if it means disrupting his routine and making himself uncomfortable by having to interact with me when he clearly didn’t want to.
He’s the kind of man who truly has two natures, but one seems natural, the other more learned, ingrained behavior he can’t control.
Most people see the one side.
I see both and choose to focus on the one who has made my stay here so far different from what I imagined it would be when I came. He erased my fear of The Beast and replaced it with a longing for Weston Barker.
Even if he can’t understand why or wants to ignore it happening…
“I may be a lot younger than you, Weston. I may spend most of my time holed up in the library or with my face buried in a book, but that doesn’t make me na?ve or stupid about the real world or what’s happening here. It doesn’t make me incapable of saying what I want and taking it.”
That fear in his hard gaze solidifies, darkening his eyes. I straddle the lap of the man everyone in Montana fears, who I did only two weeks ago, his hard cock pinned between us, but it’s actually him who is afraid of me. He’s petrified of what I’m doing to him and his inability to make it stop.
He slides his hand from my chin to cradle my cheek, brushing his calloused thumb across it reverently. “I’m terrified for you, Callista. You have no idea what you’re involved with.”
“You keep saying that—”
“Because it’s true. Because even if your father—”
He cuts himself off, like he realized he was about to slip and reveal something he shouldn’t.
Even if Dad what?
A huge part of me wants to keep digging, craves to ask him what the fuck is going on, who or what Rosewood is, what my father actually did to deserve the ire of the Barkers, the ire of this man, but I know pushing will only make him retreat farther and close himself off more completely.
The same way he did last night.
It broke through that heady afterglow.
Like a switch being flicked, the look in his half-hooded eyes shifted from content to panicked. Desire morphed into regret. Need to be that close became a rush to get away, to put as much distance between us as humanly possible, as fast as his feet could carry him.
I wanted to chase after him, to tell him he had absolutely nothing to regret or feel bad about. Far from it. I was a more than willing participant. The instigator of the very thing he fought against so hard. But my trembling legs wouldn’t let me leave the safety of the shelf behind me, my grip on it the only thing keeping me upright.
Even when I was steady enough to find my clothes and return the books to their places, I couldn’t bring myself to leave the house to search for him.
Not because I fear what he says lurks in the woods at night but because each time I push the man, he retreats from me more.
He needs to be the one in control of situations, and since I arrived, he’s been thrust into endless ones where he isn’t directing the course. Like me straddling his lap when he’s trying so damn hard to push me away with his words.
The slow drag of his rough fingers over my skin brings a shudder and memories of last night. How those rugged, coarse hands brought me endless pleasure.
Weston wraps his other arm around me, tugging me closer, even though his eyes scream to stay away. He’s a living, breathing, frustrating contradiction, and I’m already starting to wonder how I’ll walk away from him once Dad makes his amends. “It can’t happen again, Callista. I won’t let it.”
I shift on his lap, ensuring my core is aligned perfectly over his hard cock. “It doesn’t feel like that’s going to be a problem.”
His chest rumbles with a low warning growl. “What my body may want is completely different from what should happen, certainly the opposite of what’s wise.”
“And I suppose you’re going to say that because you’re so much older than me, you’re wiser and can understand things that I couldn’t possibly grasp at my young age.”
I lay the sarcasm on thick, annoyed with his insistence that I’m some kind of child who needs protecting from myself and this world when I’m already older than he was before he inherited the Barker Empire.
He shakes his head. “It has nothing to do with age, Beauty, and everything to do with the life I lead, with the things I’ve done and continue to have to do.” A little sigh falls from his lips, and he presses his thumb across mine gently. “I don’t want any of it to taint you.”
I chuckle and nip at him playfully, despite the seriousness of his tone. “Taint me?” The thought makes me tip my head back and give a true, real, deep laugh that sounds so foreign in this austere space that’s usually as silent as a tomb. “You’re still treating me like I’m some innocent virgin sent to be sacrificed to The Beast.”
The corner of his mouth quirks up slightly in the first true almost-smile I’ve seen from the man. “I think you proved you’re no virgin, but you were definitely sent as a sacrifice. And for that, no words are enough of an apology.” He brushes my hair back from my face, tucking it behind my ear. “But what I won’t do, what I refuse to do, is let you get hurt any more than you already have been. And that’s going to happen if I touch you again.” His thumb drifts across my lips again, and he presses the pad over the center. “No matter how much I might want to.”
I open my mouth, but the dark, hard look he gives me brooks no argument.
He’s made up his mind.
Firmly confirmed his decision.
No matter how ridiculous and stupid it may be.
His hard cock pressed between my legs may say one thing, but his words say another. He’s going to fight this pull and pulsating desire. He’s going to battle it tooth and nail until whatever the hell is going on with my father is resolved, and then he’s going to do whatever he can to get rid of me so he can go back to his life of misery and solitude on this mountain.
My frustration with him morphs into anger the longer I stare into his eyes, the feel of his strong, willing body beneath me. “Why don’t you just let me leave? My car is still parked out front. I’m sure you have the keys somewhere.”
His hand falls away from my face as if it burned him. He drops it onto the armrest and releases a sigh, resting his head against the leather chair back. “Because you leaving would cause even more trouble right now.”
“Because I’m your collateral.”
He considers my assessment for a moment, then nods slowly, though something flashes in his eyes that suggests he may not completely agree with the term. “Something like that. And if your father finds out that I touched you…”
There’s almost a question there.
A suggestion that I might somehow use what happened between us last night to further sow the seeds of discontent between Dad and the Barkers.
“You think I would tell my father? You think—Jesus…” I pull back slightly from him, shifting off his crotch. “You have some image of me, of the sweet daddy’s girl. Maybe because I work in a library, you think I’m some Goody Two-shoes.” I offer an annoyed sigh. “Yes, I’m a daddy’s girl because he’s all I have. My father has done everything for me my entire life, has sacrificed time, money, himself, to ensure I had everything he didn’t growing up. He’s a good father, and I did my best to follow his rules while I lived under his roof. But it doesn’t mean I follow everyone’s. Rules were meant to be broken, right?”
It’s meant to sound teasing, to lighten the dark, heavy mood that has settled over us, but Weston doesn’t give an inch. Not a smile. Not a grin. Not even a damn smirk.
“Not this one, Beauty.”
Exasperation finally takes over, all humor and hope of advancing my campaign vanishing.
I huff and cross my arms over my chest. “So, we’re going to go back to the way things were? You avoiding me. Eating here alone? Spending my days by myself in your library, having to imagine you pinning me against that bookcase and fucking me every single time I’m there?”
Maybe it was a low blow, and he does flinch in a way that brings a small bloom of pride to my chest.
He presses his lips together as he tilts his head to the side, squeezing his eyes shut. “Don’t talk like that.”
“Why not?”
It takes him a moment to react, and when he opens his eyes again, they blaze hotter than the fucking sun and his hard cock twitches.
Because I can get to him that way.
Because he knows he won’t be able to stay away if he has to think about being with me constantly.
I slide backward off his legs and stand. “If that’s really the way you want it…”
He scowls. “It’s the way it has to be.”
Nodding, I slip from between his legs and make my way back over to my plate. I snag a strawberry from the remaining tray of fruit and put it in my mouth, sucking on it slightly before I bite through the end to remove the stem.
He watches my every move, his eyes raking over me and zeroing in on my mouth as I chew and swallow.
“Your house, your rules. Right, Beasty?”
He flinches again at the use of his nickname.
I grab a few more berries and walk past him out to the living room and up the stairs, forcing myself not to look back.
Weston certainly knows where to find me if he changes his mind about how we’re going to pass our time. It isn’t as if I’m going anywhere.
I’m stuck in a never-ending limbo, one controlled by that man, at least partially. Someone else is involved, and something far greater is happening.
It might take time, but I’ll crack The Beast.
I’ll tame him and get him to reveal his secrets.