Chapter 12
12
Atlas
I stood bent over Rowan on the couch, a fistful of her silky black hair in my grip, her eyes wide and dark as they stared into mine. She was looking at me as if I were the only sun in her sky, desperation and desire flaming in her gaze, red staining the pale skin of her cheeks.
Fuck, those words said aloud and her voice all husky and desperate…
This is what you wanted all along.
No, this was exactly what I didn’t want, and I should have pulled back the moment she’d kissed me, but… Fuck, her desperation and those sweet words about how she wanted me slid under my skin and stayed there, waking the beast inside me, hardening my cock and making my blood pump faster and faster.
One little kiss from a pretty, unspoiled girl shouldn’t have tossed twenty years of control into the garbage, twenty years of caging the beast my father had raised, yet somehow it had.
All week since I’d seen Ten, I’d been trying to find some way out for her from Charlotte’s plots. Some way that she’d accept that wouldn’t have some kind of blowback from Charlotte, but I hadn’t been able to find one. Or at least not one that wouldn’t involve Ten going to jail.
In the end I’d had to accept what Ten had said about her being an adult and making her own choices. But I’d already decided that since she was going to marry me, I’d protect her as much as I could from any other machinations Charlotte might undertake.
I’d also decided that since she’d likely white-knuckle her way through this wedding the way I suspected she white-knuckled her way through the rest of her life, it wouldn’t hurt to make things a little easier for her. So I’d bought her the dress and the flowers so she’d have something pretty to wear at the very least, because she used to love pretty things.
I’d see her eyes light up when Cait dressed up for a night on the town, often helping her mother with choosing her jewelry. But she never had pretty things of her own. I assumed it was because Cait didn’t have any money to buy Rowan anything nice, so I’d bought her a birthday gift once of a necklace that spelled her name. I never saw her wear it, though.
Whether she was refusing the dress and flowers out of some kind of penance or sheer bloody-mindedness, I didn’t know. But refuse them she did, even as I’d seen how that refusal had hurt her — there had been tears in her eyes when she’d looked at the gown, even though she’d done her best to hide it — and I was tired of her hurting. I was tired of her pretending she was fine when she wasn’t. And I was tired of her refusing my help, when it was obvious she needed it. All I ‘d wanted was for her to let me in, to be honest with me, but instead of fighting, she’d kissed me and in that moment the monster, the beast half-awake in its cage, woke up, and it was even hungrier than it had been last week in the restaurant bathroom.
I couldn’t fight it. It was too strong even for me. But I still had control of the reins so it wouldn’t get too out of control at least. Giving her a physical release was just like the gown and the veil and the flowers. It would be a gift. For this one day, her wedding day, she could have it all, and it would cost me nothing. The one thing my conscience demanded though, was that she had to say it. She had to tell me exactly what she wanted.
The pretty violet of her gaze had darkened, and she smelled of flowers and musky feminine heat, and I could feel the monster inside me tugging on the reins, wanting me to feed her desire, build it until I was the only thing she could think of. But I ignored it, keeping tight hold of the reins.
“Well?” I demanded. “Tell me what you want.”
Her pale throat moved as she swallowed, the deep flush in her cheeks making her eyes somehow look even darker and more vivid. She was such a pretty, pretty thing.
The blood pounded in my head, the press of my dick against my zipper insistent, but I ignored both sensations. She had to be honest about what she wanted and I was going to insist. I didn’t want there to be any misunderstandings between us, not about this and not with her.
What you really want is for her to beg.
No. Honesty, that’s all I required.
“I…I…” she whispered uncertainly. “I need to…to…”
“To what?” I kept my grip on her tight, kept my voice firm, and I didn’t look away. She had to say it. She had to tell me, unequivocally.
“A-Atlas…”
Hearing that slight stammer had desire sinking sharp claws into me, but again I dismissed it. This wasn’t about me. This was about her. “Say it,” I growled, pulling at her hair a little. “I want the words. Out loud.”
She gave a soft gasp, the cracks in her self-contained facade beginning to get wider, deeper. She liked being held this way, that was obvious and that made the beast roar louder.
She’ll look so pretty on her knees begging for your cock.
Yet again I shoved that thought away. “Rowan.” I used her name, sharp and hard as a whip crack. “Say it.”
She took a shuddering breath and the words came out in a rush. “I need to come.”
“Good girl,” I said, unable to keep the thread of intense satisfaction that wound through me from coloring my voice. “But that’s not all is it?
She stared up at me, all the fight gone out of her now and leaving her soft and pliant, and so fucking desperate it almost hurt. I’d only have to give her one touch and she’d go off like a firework, I could see it in her eyes.
“N-No,” she whispered. “I…I need you to…t-touch me. Please.”
Christ, the way she said ‘please’…
Keep going. You want to. You want her obsessed with you and no one but you.
I gritted my teeth. No, this wasn’t about what I wanted. This was for her, a one time thing. A wedding present, even.
“Lift your skirt,” I said.
Her hands were shaking as she gripped the hem and pulled it slowly up above her knees.
The flush in her cheeks had moved down her neck, beneath the white cotton of her shirt to where her pulse beat rapidly at the hollow of her throat. She was breathing very fast.
“Higher,” I ordered.
She shivered, but again there was no hesitation as she pulled her skirt up further, exposing the luscious curves of her pale thighs. I didn’t look, even though my cock was now harder than iron. I had myself in a grip as ruthless as the grip I had on her hair. It was her who was breaking, not me.
Her pupils had dilated hugely, making her eyes seems black, and her gaze clung to mine as if she was lost at sea and I was the lighthouse guiding her home.
Perfect.
“Spread your legs, beauty,” I said. “Show me what color your panties are.”
She did and this time I allowed myself a glance down between her parted thighs, catching a glimpse of white panties with a shadow of dark curls beneath the cotton.
The blood in my veins beat harder, the darkness roaring in my head.
Jesus Christ, why was I at the limits of my control already and I hadn’t even touched her? And why her? Out of all the many, many women I’d been with, why did it have to be her who’d gotten under my skin so badly?
Was it just the forbidden nature of it? Her youth and innocence? Was I really that much of a fucking cliche? The aging, jaded playboy hard for a girl half my age and who’d once been my stepdaughter. My father would be laughing in his fucking grave.
“Are you a virgin?” I asked, not that there was much point in asking a question I already knew the answer to, but I wanted her to say it. I wanted her to be clear.
“Yes,” she whispered, the color in her cheeks deepening into crimson.
Fuck. She’s all yours.
The beast growled in satisfaction, making every part of me tighten in response. That fucking monster was Neanderthal through and through, and it liked that she was a virgin. It was turned on by it.
‘You have to get them when they’re young. You don’t want another man’s leftovers.’
Charles Blackwood’s smug voice whispered in my head, taunting me, but I crushed it, just as I crushed that satisfaction. I was not going to indulge it, not one fucking bit of it.
I gave her hair a tug, watching the flames leapt in her eyes in response. Oh, she liked that. She liked it a lot. “I’m going to make you come now,” I murmured. “But I don’t want you to move, not one fucking inch.”
She trembled, her gaze still glued to mine as I reached down between her thighs. Then I lightly slid one finger over the damp fabric of her panties. She was hot and very wet, the cotton soaked through, and I wanted to close my hand in a fist and rip the material off of her. Bare that perfect little pussy of hers.
But I didn’t. Instead, I pressed down very gently and almost the second I did, her thighs squeezed together on my hand, her whole body gathering tight as the orgasm took her. She opened her mouth to cry out, but I covered it with mine even though I knew I shouldn’t, unable to resist tasting the sweetness of her release.
And it was sweet, so fucking sweet… But a taste was all I allowed myself. As her shivers stopped, I lifted my mouth and when her thighs relaxed, I removed my hand.
Her long silky lashes had fallen, veiling her, blue-violet eyes, and her full red lips had parted, her cheeks deeply flushed from the effects of the orgasm I’d given her. And no matter how hard I tried to ignore it this time, the satisfaction of the beast wound tighter and tighter. Was I the first man to touch her? The first make her come? The very first?
If so, that that makes her yours.
She looked dazed, as if my grip on her hair was the only thing keeping her grounded, and I found I couldn’t let her go. The raw, possessive beast in me kept my fingers curled tight in all those silky curls.
“You okay?” I asked after a moment. After an orgasm as intense as that one had clearly been for her, sometimes there was some emotional fallout.
She didn’t speak, still staring at me, dazed, so I gave her a little shake. “Answer me.”
She blinked and took a breath. “Yes. I…I’m okay.”
“Good.” With some reluctance I forced my fingers to uncurl and let her go, then I straightened, ignoring the press of my zipper against my aching cock. I could still taste her mouth and the softness of her lips under mine. My fingertips were damp from where they’d touched her, and she was looking at me she’d seen the face of God.
The darkness in me flexed in response, wanting more. Demanding it.
Lick your finger. Taste her.
No, fuck no. I’d told her I’d give her what she needed and I had. There was no need for more. For some inexplicable reason Rowan appealed to the darkness in me and that meant I couldn’t allow it any ground.
My father had always told me I was just like him, that I was a chip off the old block, and back when I was a boy, I’d loved it when he said shit like that. North, my older brother, had always seen through his lies and so he and Dad had always been locked in some battle or other. But not me. I ate up Dad’s attention like Oliver Twist with a bowl of gruel.
He was handsome, witty, charming, as well as being rich and powerful, and everyone loved him. So why wouldn’t I? Everything he said was gospel and I was impressionable. He’d manipulated me effortlessly. I had the same patronizing attitude to my mother that he did, and I too ignored the pill bottles slowly multiplying on her nightstand and the vodka bottles stacking up in the trash.
Dad told me she was too dramatic. Too hysterical. Too clingy. And I believed him. At least until the day I walked into the bathroom and found her dead in the tub, and I’d realized that North had been right all along. That my father wasn’t a hero. He was merely a manipulative narcissist and that if I was indeed a chip off the old block, then I’d have to guard myself. I’d have to keep a tight rein on my desires because they were as selfish and narcissistic as his, and if I wasn’t careful, I too could leave trail of broken people behind me.
I’d could never let that beast in me, that darkness, take charge, and yet looking down into Rowan’s wide violet eyes, I could feel it inside me, wanting out. For whatever reason, she called to it and I couldn’t seem to take control of it.
No, it was worse than that.
I didn’t want to take control of it.
I wanted to take control of her.
She was sitting there with her skirt hiked up to her waist, legs spread wantonly apart, and all I wanted to do was rip the rest of her clothes off and put her on her knees in front of me.
But I couldn’t and so there was nowhere for all my thwarted desire to go except into a sullen anger that burned like a hot coal.
“Cover yourself,” I said shortly, my temper getting the better of me. “Charlotte will be here any moment.”