Chapter 9
9
Rowan
I sagged back against the vanity, my heartbeat so loud I could barely hear anything else. My knees were weak, my mouth dry as the desert.
It was as if I could feel every whorl of his fingerprints imprinted on my skin, feel every inch of his muscular thighs pressed to mine, and the hard length of his cock, getting harder the longer he stood there…
Getting hard for me.
My face felt like it was going to burst into flame so I turned around to the mirror once again, putting my hands on the edge of the basin and gripping it tight, as if I channel all the heat inside me into the white porcelain.
Oh God. What the hell had just happened?
He’d held me, pressed up against me, demanding I tell him the truth, that I wanted him. But he’d known that already, hadn’t he? I’d seen it in the burning gold of his eyes, and really, how could he not? He was a very experienced man after all. Then again, if he’d known, why had he been so insistent on me telling him?
You idiot. He wanted you to tell him because he found it hot.
I took another gasping breath and lowered my head, staring down into the sink as if I could see the future in it.
Yes, he’d wanted me. Somehow, I’d turned him on. But…why? It didn’t make any sense. Sure, I had looks, but so did a lot of women who gravitated to powerful men. I wasn’t anything special. So…it must be just physical then, nothing more. A passing chemistry.
I shut my eyes, but I could still see the carved lines of his beautiful face as he held my jaw in his large hand, turning it this way and that as he studied me, his eyes blazing.
He hadn’t seemed like the laid-back, chill, easy-going Atlas that I remembered then. It was as if a mask had dropped, revealing the feral and hungry beast beneath it. A predator. A wolf. A dragon.
He hadn’t looked that way with Tina that night in Arcadia.
I screwed my eyes shut tighter, trying to ignore the thought, because I couldn’t allow myself to think it. I couldn’t allow myself to imagine what would have happened if I’d told him the truth, if I’d said yes, I did want him. That I’d wanted him for years, even though I kept telling myself I didn’t.
What would he have done? Would he have held my jaw in an even firmer grip so I couldn’t break free? Would he have pressed that magnificent body of his harder against me, so I couldn’t move? Would he have kissed me, silencing any protest I might make? Would he have turned me around to face the mirror and bent me over the vanity, making me watch while he thrust into me?—
No . No, I couldn’t keep thinking things like that, not about him. I couldn’t get involved with anyone, let alone him. He’d slept with my mother, for God’s sake. What was wrong with me?
Oh come on, you got off on being forced. Of him giving you no choice.
Shit, no, I didn’t want that. Consent was important and by taking hold of me without asking, he’d basically taken that choice away from me.
Are you so sure? He told you to stay stop and you didn’t. He told you to let go of his T-shirt and you held on tighter.
A shiver swept through me. I hadn’t said stop and I hadn’t let go, because I…couldn’t. A part of me had been desperate to keep touching him, keep pushing him, keep fighting him too. God, throwing what he’d been doing to me back in his face had been…exhilarating. Watching how his eyes had flared and his mouth had hardened, and I’d braced myself, my heart racing with the anticipation of what he might do. But he hadn’t done…anything.
You’re disappointed.
I wasn’t. Him letting me go had been a good thing, a very good thing. Indulging my current physical obsession with him was wrong. Everything about it was wrong, even if he hadn’t been my ex-stepfather. Even if he hadn’t been twenty years older than me and about a thousand times more powerful.
Men were bad news in general and he in particular was the worst news of all, and the best thing now was to pretend that this little interlude had never happened.
After all, you wouldn’t want to end up just like your mother, would you?
I shoved that thought away as the door opened again and a woman came in, breaking the whirling of my frantic brain. As she disappeared into a stall, I pushed myself away from the basin, took yet another deep breath, and looked at myself in the mirror.
I was still flushed and the thought of having to go out and face Atlas again knowing what had happened between us, was almost impossible.
But I wasn’t a coward, so I took a deep breath and pulled myself together, walking out of the bathroom and heading back to Charlotte’s table. And I couldn’t deny the relief that washed through me when I saw that Atlas wasn’t there.
“What happened to Mr Blackwood?” I asked as I sat down.
“He had to leave on some urgent business.” Charlotte gazed at me shrewdly and I hoped like hell that the flush in my cheeks wasn’t as red as I feared it still was. “You need to be careful with him,” she went on. “He’s more dangerous than you think. They all are.”
Having had a taste of just how dangerous Atlas Blackwood was back in that bathroom, I couldn’t disagree. Though I wasn’t going to tell her that.
“Who are ‘they’?” I asked, keeping my tone as disingenuous as I could.
“Mr Blackwood and his friends Mr Cross and Mr Fox.” Charlotte’s green eyes glittered, a strange note in her voice that I couldn’t place.
I’d heard of Cross International and Fox Tech, of course, who hadn’t? But I’d had no idea that Atlas was friends with the CEOs of both of those companies.
I lifted a brow. “Dangerous in what way?”
“Difficult men,” Charlotte said and I had the impression that there was more to the word ‘difficult’, but she didn’t explain. “Atlas in particular, you need to watch,” she went on. “That easy-going charm is just a facade. He’s just like his father, a predator.”
A shiver whispered over my skin, her words mirroring what I’d thought in that bathroom, when the mask had dropped and I’d seen the beast behind his eyes.
“His father?” I echoed, my mouth dry.
“Charles Blackwood. Used to be head of Blackwood Bank before it collapsed. He liked young girls.” The distaste in Charlotte’s voice was obvious. “I don’t think Atlas inherited his proclivities but you never know.”
I picked up my water glass and took a sip, keeping my movements measured and hopefully hiding my shock, and the punch of disappointment that followed it.
That’s all you were to him. Just another young girl…
Good, I told the voice in my head. Because if that was the reason he’d pressed himself against me in the bathroom, then I’d make sure to avoid him completely. He could find himself another young woman to screw. It wasn’t about me. None of it was about me.
“Good thing I won’t be having anything more to do with him then,” I said. “And speaking of, you have my agreement to the marriage and the baby thing, but I want some of the money up front.” I didn’t need it, not with the fifty grand she’d already paid me, but I wanted to show her that I wasn’t a doormat. Maybe it was in reaction to the thing inside me that kept thinking about being Atlas’s slave, but I refused to acknowledge that.
I wasn’t a doormat and I wouldn’t let myself be treated like one, not by anyone.
Charlotte let me haggle over the money for a bit, then she informed me that her lawyers would be drawing up a formal surrogacy agreement as well as one detailing the marriage to Atlas, and that would be sent to me as soon as it was done.
Then, as we were finishing up the dessert, though I’d lost my appetite for food, she said, “Rowan, dear, I know your mother doesn’t want anything to do with me, and she made her views plain before she left. I’m not going to push myself on her, but I would very much like to have a relationship with you. You’re my granddaughter, after all, and I’d like to put the past where it belongs, behind us.”
I stared at her across the table, white hair and green eyes, looking nothing like me at all. And I thought about my mother, fragile and needy, and wondered what this woman had done to her to make her that way. She might have wanted a relationship with me, but did I want a relationship with her?
“I don’t know,” I said bluntly. “I’m going to have to think about it.”
She didn’t seem to find this surprising. “Fair enough. But know that you also have a cousin, about the same age as you. My Juliana’s daughter.”
Juliana. Mom’s sister and my aunt. The one who’d died years before.
Mom had told me once, after I’d asked about my grandparents one too many times, that I should forget all about them. That the less said about them the better and so I’d respected her wishes. I’d purposefully not thought about them or read anything about them online. They were famously rich and powerful, but since I didn’t care about them, they didn’t interest me.
Except now, I was conscious of the vaguest stirrings of curiosity despite myself. “A cousin?” I asked. “Why aren’t you asking her to be your surrogate?”
Charlotte smiled. “Because Isabel is with Atlas’s friend, Mr Cross. And he is very much a sleeping dog you want to let lie.”
Well, he sounded like a nightmare and if my cousin was with him then she was likely to be insane as well.
“Good for her,” I said. “But if you want the truth, I’m really not interested in your family.”
Charlotte gave me a long look then her mouth curved slightly. “You’re loyal to your mother. I like that.”
“Someone has to be.”
“Indeed.” Charlotte glanced wordlessly at one of the wait staff nearby, who then came over and presented the bill. She looked over it, nodded, and the waiter left. Then she gave me a dazzling smile. “Well, this has been lovely, my dear, but I have some errands to run. I will be in touch with the wedding details. It’ll be a small ceremony for legal purposes, but feel free to dress up if you’d like to.” Her smile turned a little wicked. “Mr Blackwood might appreciate it.”
Then she gathered her things, rose to her feet and made her way gracefully out of the restaurant leaving me sitting there staring after her.