Chapter 24
This woman.
This stubborn, pig-headed, obstinate woman was going to be the death of me.
If anyone else, and I do mean anyone else, had given me the attitude she had, I would have left them here to freeze to death.
Her feet tangled in the bedding she had been wrapped in and she stumbled and fell against me, the blankets dropping away as she ended up pressed to my chest.
She was trembling in my arms, and I didn’t know if it was from rage or the cold.
“What do you think you’re doing?” she shrieked.
It’s both.
“Do you think you can just walk in here and take whatever the fuck you want? This place is mine. It’s not much, especially not compared to what you have, but it is mine, not yours. You don’t get to just barge in here and?—”
I cut off her yells with a brutal, almost barbaric kiss.
She tried to break it, but I wouldn’t let her.
I needed to feel her against me. I needed to warm her up and protect her from her own obstinance. Mostly, I needed an outlet for my rage.
She was going to obey.
I needed her to understand what I couldn’t say. I needed her to know that I had somehow grown attached.
I didn’t love people, not in an emotional way.
I loved my sisters in a way that came from the familial duty I felt toward them. I loved my father in the way that I was grateful for the lessons he taught me even though he didn’t have to once he found out that I was a bastard, not his heir. I even loved my mother in some convoluted way that ensured I put up with her meddling and antics time and time again.
Romantic love was something that I was not made for.
I had found women attractive before, and I wanted to fuck them. I had a few female friends whose company I enjoyed but had no interest in anything even resembling intimacy with them.
Until her, never had I found a woman that I wanted to possess so completely, mind and body. So, I was unpracticed in how to express the affection that had somehow grown so quickly between us.
Eddie was the first woman in the office whose physical appearance I had noticed, and yes, when I saw her in my bathroom, I wanted her.
I’d been willing to pay anything to have her before I knew she was a paralegal, but then when I found out that that beautiful body, that angelic face framed by those golden locks, also possessed the brain that had put together some of the most eloquently worded and poignant arguments that I had ever seen, I was fascinated. She had made connections between cases that most experienced lawyers wouldn’t have seen in a million years if they were staring directly at them.
The way her brain worked was enthralling.
I didn’t possess the words needed to convince her that I didn’t want the harpy that my mother had arranged for me to marry.
I wanted her not because of some savior complex but because, despite the differences in our backgrounds, careers, ages, and everything in her, I had found my equal.
I have had peers before, I’ve had colleagues and mentors I’ve admired, but I had never had someone in my life that I saw as my equal in every way that mattered.
Maybe this was all timing.
Maybe it was because she walked into my office bathroom at a time when I was feeling out of control, and I reached for something that was there.
Maybe this was just an infatuation that would burn out in time.
I didn’t know.
There was no way for me to know because this had never happened before.
But I needed to find out.
Every fiber of my being screamed to not let this woman walk out of my life. So no matter the danger and obstacles, I was willing to take a risk and claim her as my own.
That didn’t mean she was.
If she said no, then that was that. I would respect her decision.
I had no idea how I was going to, but I would at the very least try.
Because I truly respected her, I meant it when I said the apartment was hers to use, and it was not conditional. The references I was prepared to give her for law school or any job she wanted were not conditional either. It would be a crime to deprive the legal world of her mind. There was no way, no matter how this ended, that I would do less than everything in my power to help her career, not hinder it.
She took a small step back and looked up at me, her hair wild from sleep, her lips kiss-bruised and slightly open as her breath came out in tiny little pants. Her eyes shone a brilliant green as they stared back at me, her pupils blown wide. She might have more control than I did. She might have possessed a greater ability to keep her hormones in check than I did, but she was just as affected by me as I was by her.
I cupped her face. “You need to understand. I’m aware of the risks and I don’t give a damn. For the first time in my life, I’ve found something, someone, who is worth more to me than my career. You. And I?—”
This time, she was the one to cut off my words with a kiss.
She took one step toward me, reached out, laced her fingers in my hair, and yanked me down so my lips met hers.
My hands went to her hips and I pulled her up, her legs wrapping around my middle. I walked us to the wall, pressing her body against the drywall so she could brace herself against it while my hands ran down her body over her clothes, from her breasts to her waist.
I wanted to strip her bare, devour every inch of her body. I couldn’t, not in here. It was too cold, and the open doorway exposed us to anyone walking down the hallway. I wouldn’t make her uncomfortable just to satiate my own carnal desire.
“I need to hear you say it,” I said, running my mouth up the slender column of her neck.
“Say what,” she breathed.
I licked the outer shell of her ear before nipping her earlobe with my teeth. “I need to hear you say that you want this as much as I do.”
I was about to let her go when she slid her fingers through my hair again and pulled me closer. “Fuck the risks.”
I sealed my lips over hers again, and I knew I should have gotten her out of here. I knew I should have been a gentleman and waited, but I needed her more than I needed to breathe.
Waiting until we got to the other apartment, or even to the car, wasn’t an option I was willing to entertain.
I dropped her feet to the floor and turned her around, pushing her against the wall and pressing my body to hers.
She was still wearing the same clothes she’d had on at work, and I loved it. The cute pencil skirt, the professional-looking, white, fitted button-down, now a little wrinkled and disheveled from sleep.
It reminded me of what she was like when I took her in the office.
It was taboo and forbidden, and it made me want her more.
“Here’s what’s going to happen,” I whispered in her ear. “I’m going to lift this skirt, and I’m going to fuck you against this wall hard and fast. It won’t be sweet or gentle. I’m going to fuck you like the bad girl you are, and you are going to take it. When I fill you with my come, you’re going to pull this skirt down, straighten your top, and march that sweet ass downstairs and get in the car. Do you understand me?”
“Yes,” she breathed out.
“Yes, what?”
“Yes, sir,” she said with a gasp.
“Are you wet for me?” I asked.
She didn’t say anything. She just nodded, pressing her forehead into the wall.
I pulled her hair from her face on one side so I could see how red her cheeks were. Whether it was arousal or embarrassment, I really didn’t care.
She was going to take my cock like a good girl and do as she was told.
I reached down and roughly yanked up her skirt.
My cock had been rock hard since the second I had walked into this apartment.
The second she’d fought back, I was ready to take her against this wall.
She had tried to fight me.
Tried to fight the inevitability of us.
Eddie didn’t want to want me, but that wasn’t going to stop me. Nothing could stop me at this moment.
She had tried to fight our attraction, and I had won.
I grabbed her panties and yanked them to the side, not bothering to pet her little clit or to make sure that her cunt was ready for me.
I knew it was. I knew she was wet for me when I broke down her door.
It wouldn’t be the first time fighting me had made her wet. Or me hard.
She was made to be owned by me, so the last thing I needed to do was to check and see if she was ready. She would always be ready.
I grabbed her hips, tilting them back, and shoved my way in.
She was so wet, so hot, and still so tight, the slick of her velvet heat gripping my cock. She moaned at my first thrust and arched her back, urging me to go deeper.
I fucked her hard and fast with everything I had.
This was meant to be a punishment. I’d intended to rile her up and leave her wanting, but I just couldn’t do it. I reached around to her front, working my hand into her shirt so I could pinch her nipples while I fucked her.
“Do you like your punishment, my dirty little whore?”
“Yes,” she panted.
“If you like this so much, why do you fight me so hard? This could be so much better if you didn’t have to fucking fight me every time you wanted my cock,” I rumbled.
I wasn’t even sure I believed my own words.
The reason this was so intense and so carnal was because she didn’t just give in, she didn’t just drop to her knees, ready to serve me like every other woman had as soon as they heard my last name.
Eddie made me earn it with her. She didn’t want to want me the way she did.
Her desire for me was carnal, not financial.
Like mine for her, it was something more than just a quick release of tension.
She was my prize, and I was claiming her.
I had earned her. She was mine.
“Prove it,” I growled. “Come on my cock.”
I didn’t know if it was because I demanded it or if she needed it as much as I did, but my words were enough to push her over the edge.
Her tight body squeezed my cock, pulsing around it as she arched her back, biting her bottom lip to muffle a scream of pleasure.
The intensity made my vision white out for a moment as I filled her with stream after stream of my come.
It took me a moment to regain my bearings, but when I did, all I wanted to do was lie Eddie down somewhere safe and wrap my arms around her. I wanted her safe, warm, and with me, always.
“Fuck,” she gasped as I let her down and she straightened her skirt. “That was more intense than in the office.”
Her words brought me out of my anger- and lust-filled haze.
She brought me back down to earth as the volatile mix of emotions and desire receded.
Reality, far colder than her apartment, hit me.
Goddammit. Fuck.
She was willing, but that did not make this appropriate.
It did not make this okay. It didn’t even make this legal.
What was worse was what I had done after I had broken her door.
Any one of the crackheads who lived in this building could have walked by and seen us. They could have filmed us and used it to blackmail her or me, or they could have done something much worse.
I had broken the door of her apartment, putting her in danger.
I couldn’t be like this to her.
She deserved so much better. This wasn’t right.
It wasn’t fair to her.
My engagement may just be a business deal, but it was still binding, and it still meant that I could never give her what she deserved.
I could give her a quick fuck. I could even set her up in a penthouse apartment and pay for law school, but I could never give her a true home. I would always be demanding more from her than I could give of myself.
Even now, I was enough of a prick to deny her a date with someone else despite the fact that I was engaged. That would never change. I would never be okay seeing her with another man. Ever. And yet, she would have to live with the knowledge that each night I left her bed to return to the house I shared with another woman. She would have to live with seeing my photo in the newspapers with Catherine on my arm, not her.
She would have to accept the consequences of a baby if we continued to fuck without protection. I would of course financially support the child but even if I openly claimed them, they would still be a bastard.
I had just put this beautiful creature that I admired so much in a lose-lose situation.
I zipped up my pants while she straightened her shirt and skirt and grabbed her purse before I led her downstairs.
After sending one of the police officers upstairs to guard her apartment until I got her door fixed, we got into the car without saying a word.
Flipping through my contacts, I sent a quick text to my maintenance man and instructed him to replace the door immediately. When we arrived at the apartment I had set her up in, I made sure she went in and was safe.
And then I did the worst thing a man could do after sex.
Without a single word.
I left.