CHAPTER 33 Charlie
CHAPTER 33
Charlie
I t’s nearly midnight by the time I pull up to the gate of Rowan’s new home, which is, of course, a mansion. I need to change my world view—from Rowan, knife-wielding demon, to Rowan, rightful occupant of an enormous and very expensive estate.
I push the gate button and am immediately buzzed in. Rowan races out of the house and tackles me the moment I step out of my car, jumping up and wrapping his arms around my shoulders and his legs around my waist.
I hold him tightly to me. “Hey,” I say, kissing the top of his head.
What I want to say is I’m here. It will be okay. We’ll figure it out.
But I suspect Rowan showed more vulnerability than he was comfortable with when he phoned me, and he probably doesn’t want me to call him out on it. At least, if I were him, I wouldn’t want me doing that. Maybe I’m projecting, but whatever.
He’s all in his head, I can tell. That’s understandable. The change in his fortune is a lot to process .
Rowan’s allowed to not be his badass self around me. I’ll keep his secrets.
“You came,” he says into my shirt.
“You called. I’ll always come when you call.”
Lifting his head, he plants a kiss on my lips, and then it seems like he’s ready to be put back on his feet, so I set him down and look around.
I don’t know how many acres the house is on. Enough that you can’t see a neighbor. You can hear the Pacific Ocean, very close. There’s a large main house, then a number of smaller buildings off to the side, which I assume are garages, guest houses, caretaker houses. I have no idea what else. The grounds are formal and clipped in a way that indicates staff. I want to explore in the daylight. I mean, I have a thing for home improvement—but I’m not sure this could be improved.
While my parents aren’t poor, and I’m starting to make plenty of money at Weston& Ramirez, this is a level of generational wealth and history that I have no access to.
Taking Rowan’s hand, I give myself a quick talking-to. I need to get myself together and not be intimidated by all this. I can be his shoulder to cry on and his asshole protective boyfriend. I’m good with that.
“Want to see the house?” Rowan asks shyly. “I’ve been walking around it all night.”
“There’s no one up here but you?”
“There’s a family that are the main staff, but they’re in another building.”
“Then show me around, baby. Let me get my overnight bag.”
I fetch it, and Rowan takes me in through a side door that opens into the kitchen. I thought I’d be grateful to be spared from some huge entryway as big as my house, but I’m really not. This kitchen could eat my parents’ house and still have room for leftovers. It’s built to cook for hundreds, if not thousands.
They’ve probably done that here. There’s certainly enough room to entertain a thousand people. All the surfaces are clean to the point of gleaming, although they do seem used rather than brand-new. The appliances are all top-of-the-line, and I guess that fits: These people buy things that are meant to last.
Beyond the kitchen is a smaller room that appears to do nothing but hold dishes.
“Holy shit,” I whisper.
Rowan glances at me.
“Your dad’s really fucking rich,” I mutter.
A dark look passes over his face, and then he shrugs. “I can’t help that.”
I squeeze his hand. “I know. And it doesn’t mean anything bad. It’s just … maybe you’re not the only one reorienting yourself here.”
He goes up on his tiptoes to kiss me, and I wrap my arms around his middle. Every time I kiss Rowan, I feel this tug in my belly. Like we’re lashed together on a rolling ship, staying afloat while everything around us is in turmoil. I growl and intensify the kiss, and he kisses me back just as hard, giving me his tongue the way I like it. I pull away far enough to suck on his bottom lip, and then we’re kissing again, so deeply that it makes me breathless.
A door opens behind us, and while it startles me, I do my best not to react. I slowly stop kissing Rowan, then kiss his nose. Then we both turn around like a creaking lazy Susan.
A shorter, dark-haired woman in her midforties is in the room.
Rowan grins at her. “Charlie, this is Matilda. Matilda, her husband, and her son take care of this place for my father. Matilda, this is my boyfriend, Charlie.”
“Nice to meet you,” I say, holding out my hand.
She shakes it, giving me a big smile. “It’s very nice to meet you. We saw you drive up and wanted to check to see if you needed anything.” She seems very content. I think most people would be pretty content living in a place like this. The staff quarters could be miserable, of course, but I doubt it.
Rowan shakes his head. “No, we’re good until the morning.”
“Then we’ll give you privacy. What time would you like me to have breakfast ready?”
He looks at me. “Do you need to get to work early?”
“Nope.” The benefits of being in charge of my own schedule. I’m lucky I don’t have court tomorrow.
“Then not that early. Maybe seven thirty or eightish?” Rowan says, shifting his weight. He’s clearly not comfortable with being waited on.
“I will plan on that,” she says. “Any special requests or allergies? Foods you don’t like?” He shakes his head. “Then I’ll make a few things, and you can choose what you’d like.”
“Thank you. I’m just going to show Charlie around before bed. We’re sorry to wake you.”
“You didn’t. Come with me, and I will show you how to set the alarm when you want to close up for the night.”
Rowan goes with her. He returns a minute later and proceeds to give me a tour. This place is old, huge, and very, very fancy. And it’s been kept up, pristinely maintained in a way that is not usual for a place where people actually live. It’s on par with museums like the Getty Villa or Hearst Castle.
But while he’s showing me around, he’s gazing at me more than at the mansion, and he keeps giving me these flirty touches on my forearms and hips. I’m pretty sure he wants to get fucked. Hell, I spent the entire drive up here fantasizing about what I’d do to him tonight. I figured the least creative plan was I’d take him in his bed, but now I see how vast this place is. How overwhelming. How he needs to make it his own.
So when we get to the end of yet another hall, I grab him and throw him over my shoulder in a firefighter’s carry and head upstairs. “I want to bend you over the balcony and fuck you,” I murmur.
Is that enough, though? Does he need more? Did this change of fortune scramble his system so much that he needs me to take him down to his basest level—a place where he’s scratching and bleeding and I’m the one who makes him feel?
“Yes,” he whispers. “God, yes, please. Make me forget all the mess that’s running around my brain. Make it go away—family and money and who am I and what am I doing . Give me what I need.”
His desperation makes my dick hard. Rowan sticks his hands in my back pockets.
“So, princeling, what do you need?” I growl.
“You,” he gasps. That makes me feral. He needs me as much as I need him.
“Tell you what,” I say. “It’s dark. No one can see us, right?”
“What do you mean?”
“Are there security cameras?”
He nods. “Outside. Matilda told me the cameras face the street and the entrances to the house.”
“That’s it?” My heart is racing even more than it did carrying him up the stairs. My entire self is aroused. I need my baby boy. But I’m also in the mood to try something, if he’s up for it.
“Yeah.”
I lean down and look directly in his face, my nose mere inches from his. “Run. I’m going to fuck you wherever I find you.”
Rowan’s eyes light up. “Seriously?”
I raise an eyebrow. “Say ‘red’ if you want me to stop.”
A laugh bursts out of him. “A safeword? You’re kidding.”
“I’m not. I’m going to fuck you hard, but I don’t want this to get out of hand.”
“Does it have a chance of getting out of hand?”
I nod. “So if you stop me, I’ll stop immediately, no questions asked.”
His grin is breathtaking. Then he shivers. He must have caught the look in my eyes.
“Do you need a moment in the bathroom?” I ask .
“Nope. I had time to prepare for your hard cock while you were driving up here.”
“Good.”
Rowan’s posture perks up, and he sidesteps me, keeping just out of reach. “So we finally get to play?”
“Ten, nine, eight …”
Rowan sprints away.
I keep counting down. When I get to one, I stop and listen.
I hear a door shut somewhere downstairs. It could be an interior door. But I know, instinctively, that Rowan has gone outside.
Perfect .
Some small part of me knows this is nuts.
But the rest of me knows this is exactly what Rowan needs. He’s overwhelmed by all the changes in his life, and this will ground him. Literally. It will make it so he can’t do anything but feel me. Feel how much I want him.
He won’t be in his head, thinking about his current situation and all the things that could have been different in the past. He’s just going to feel what is . Now.
It’s also what I need—I’ve been wanting to do this since the moment I met him.
I jog, trying to be light on my feet so he won’t hear me coming. I find a door to the outside and step out into the night. The walk is paved, not gravel, and my steps are quiet.
My cock hardens further at the thought of what I’m going to do when I catch him.
I can’t hear any leaves crunching or branches breaking. A lone coyote howls a long ways away, following it up with a cacophony of yips.
Then.
Silence.
Something in me relaxes—then paradoxically tenses. Now’s the time. It’s like when I used to run track in high school, and I’m looking around at the beginning of the race, sizing up my opponents. Wondering if I can beat them.
It’s the day of the final exam, when the professor says “You may begin.”
It’s the moment when the clerk swears in the first witness, but I haven’t yet asked any questions.
All possibilities exist in this instant. And I intend to make them mine.
Make him mine.
I could be a gentleman and announce that I’m coming, but what’s the fun in that? Primal fucking has no rules.
I consider heading in the direction I think Rowan went, but if I know him—and I do—he’s doubled back.
In fact, I should probably be expecting Rowan to come up behind me with a knife at my throat. That thought makes my dick even harder. It’s going to be tough running with an erection, but I’ll manage.
Where are you, baby boy?
I take a step off the path, but my sneaker crunches on dry leaves that must have just fallen tonight, otherwise they’d surely have been raked away. In the silence, the sound is clear.
I’d better stick to the path for now.
A rustle catches my attention. Is it him? Or is he faking me out?
I decide he’s faking me out and head toward the area where I think he could have thrown a rock from.
Rosemary is strongly scented, even at night, and in the moonlight, everything takes on a different shape.
I stay away from the lights and move in the shadows. My senses are heightened, and my chest feels light. My pulse is racing. I’m so fucking alive right now. Hunting my prey with the cool breeze ruffling my hair. My pretty little violent baby boy who just wants someone to take over so he doesn’t have to think about anything. Who doesn’t want to cry about his past anymore. Who wants to be .
I don’t know the grounds, but neither does he. I’m trying to avoid the other buildings, as I expect he did. We don’t need Matilda getting an eyeful of us fucking.
With the intermittent waves crashing down, it’s hard but not impossible to hear low noises.
Where are you, princeling? I want to call. I stay quiet, though, searching. Finally, I see him crouching behind a manicured bush. I race toward him, sacrificing silence for speed. He runs, and I grab at him, my fingers catching his waist, but he slips out of my grasp and is off again.
“I’m gonna get you,” I whisper. And I start after him.