Chapter 16
16
Atlas
I could barely think. Fuck, I was barely conscious. Orgasm number two had blown off the back of my head, which very rarely — if ever — happened. But I couldn’t stand there in a stupor, not with Rowan slowly collapsing in front of me.
I pulled out of her, tucking myself away, then before she could fall completely to her knees, I swept her up into my arms and held her as I moved around to the front of the sofa and sat down in it. She buried her head against my shoulder, giving little hiccuping sobs, her whole body trembling.
Jesus Christ. I’d thought after that goddamn blow job I wouldn’t have been so hard again so quickly, but seeing her on her knees with desperation in her eyes, her makeup running down her face, her hair a mess, so beautifully defiled by me…. The beast was out of its cage now and it had a stranglehold on me, and I hadn’t been able to think about anything else but being inside her.
All of this was wrong, so terribly wrong. Me calling her my fuck toy. Me pushing her down on her knees. Me putting my cock in her mouth and getting her to suck me off before bending her over the sofa and taking her virginity, rough and hard, no niceties.
Yet, despite all that, or probably because of all that, it had been the hottest sex I’d ever had.
I was a sick fuck, no doubt about it. But she hadn’t protested, hadn’t said no, or gotten up and left. I’d given her plenty of time to walk away and she hadn’t. She’d let me do all of it and yes, she’d let me. Rowan fucking James would have made it pretty damn obvious if she hadn’t wanted it.
But now that was over, reality was asserting itself and my conscience was waking back up again. Had I taken advantage of her innocence? Her naivety? Had I unconsciously used some of my father’s tricks on her and manipulated her into doing it? I’d made it clear what I wanted and I’d been blunt, hoping that she’d run. Yet…she hadn’t. She’d gone down on her knees when I’d put my hand on the back of her neck — I hadn’t had to exert any pressure — and she’d opened her mouth when I’d asked.
I should have stopped after that, when I’d put my finger beneath her chin and tilted her head back and seen the tears sliding down her cheeks. I should have dried her tears and sent her on her way. But I didn’t. The beast in me was now fully in charge and it loved her being so wrecked because of me, and it didn’t want to let her go. It wanted to claim her instead, and it had.
Rowan’s curvy figure was nestled against me, her head buried in my shirt and she was sobbing. I tightened my arms around her and stroked her hair, soothing her.
The beast in me felt calm now and so did I. The kind of calm that came from the surrender to something I’d been fighting for years, not even acknowledging it until Rowan had showed up. Until she’d made it impossible to ignore.
My own desires, my own fantasies of a woman who was mine and mine only. Who wanted nothing but to please me and only me. That woman shouldn’t be Rowan, nearly twenty years younger than me and so naive it hurt, but it was her. And maybe it couldn’t have been anyone else but her.
As the effects of my own orgasm ebbed, I held her as her sobs wound down and she quietened. She’d gone lax, all sweet and warm and pliant, fitting against me perfectly. It felt good to have her in my lap, as if she belonged there.
She was breathing more normally now, but she said nothing and neither did I. Soon we’d have to move and soon we’d have to have a discussion about what this meant, but that could wait. For the moment I was content to hold her.
“I’m sorry,” she said at last, her voice half muffled by my shirt. “I don’t know why I cried.”
“You don’t need to be sorry and you don’t need to explain.” I glanced down, seeing only one flushed, wet cheek, the rest of her face still pressed into my shoulder. “There’s always some emotional fallout after an orgasm that intense.”
She didn’t say anything else, little shivers still shaking her. I wanted to make her look at me to see what was going on in that beautiful head of hers, but my gut was telling me that now was the wrong time to push. She was still in pieces and what she needed now was to feel safe, so I let her hide.
“You okay?” I asked after a few more moments.
She didn’t answer immediately, her head still turned away. Then a sigh escaped her and she half turned her head to look up at me. Her mascara had run, leaving black trails over the flushed skin of her cheeks and she must have bitten her bottom lip at some point because it was swollen and red. She was a mess, a glorious, beautiful mess. I’d destroyed her, devastated her. I’d broken her and I wanted to do it again and again, make her a slave to the pleasure only I could give her.
Christ, this was not what I’d wanted. Yet I already knew that it was too late to send her away, because doing that would only hurt her. That would be like beginning the demolition process on a beautiful building only to abandon it halfway through, leaving it with its walls still standing, but the rest in ruins.
I couldn’t do that. I wouldn’t.
Keep her. You know you want to.
Fuck. The monster I’d warned her about was fully out of its cage, and now it had had a taste of her, it didn’t want to go back. I didn’t want to go back. I wanted to keep her as my toy to play with, see how obsessed I could make her, use her desperation for me to make her do whatever I wanted.
It’s for her own good, after all, right?
A chill wound through my post-orgasmic haze. That was the kind of thing my father often said to Claire, my mom. He would tell her that the way he treated was for her own good and he did it because he loved her. Love to him was a meaningless word, but he knew it meant something to her and so he’d used it to criticize and hurt her continually.
I’d never inflict love on Rowan, but what I was thinking was very reminiscent of Charles Blackwood the third. I’d sworn I’d never be like him and yet here I was, marrying a woman nearly half my age, using her like a possession for my own sexual gratification, before thinking of all the ways I could manipulate her into giving me exactly what I wanted.
“Yes,” she said huskily, lifting a hand to wipe at her eyes, smearing her mascara even more. “I’m okay.”
A feral satisfaction twisted inside me along with a fierce protectiveness that took me by surprise. I wanted to dry her eyes, wipe her face, wrap her up in cotton wool and lock her away so no one could ever hurt her again, me included.
Instead I said, “You don’t have to do that, you know. Not now, not with me.”
Her brow furrowed. “Do what?”
“Pretend. I know you’re not okay.”
“So why did you ask?”
“Because I wanted to see if I was going to get the truth or more bullshit. And it looks like I’m getting bullshit.”
She gave a snort. “I don’t have to tell you about every thought or feeling, Atlas.”
At the sharp note in her voice, the tension that still had me in its grip released at slightly. If she could still be mad at me after I’d wrecked her, that was a good sign. I didn’t want what we’d done to have her hurt her irreversibly.
“Yes, you do,” I said. “From now on, when I ask, you give me the truth.” I stroked a gently fingertip down her cheek. “Because I’ll know if you lie.”
She shivered at my touch, her lashes sweeping down to veil her gaze. “What do you mean from now on?”
I looked at those lashes, lying thick and soft on the pink skin of her cheek, the monster in me knowing exactly what I meant. I wasn’t going to be getting rid of her. I wasn’t going to be sending her away. I’d told her I’d keep her and so I would, my father be damned. The end.
I stroked my fingers down the side of her neck then went lower, closing them around her throat, gripping her gently. “I told you what would happen if you gave me an inch, beauty. I’m going to take that fucking mile, whether you want me to or not.”
She swallowed, her throat moving against my palm. “Let me go.”
I held her gaze. “Why? I’m not choking you. I’m not hurting you or threatening you, and you know I won’t. So what’s the problem?”
She glanced away. “I…don’t like it.”
Little liar.
“What did I say about the truth?” I tightened my grip enough to let her know I meant business. “You do like it, that’s the problem. You like it and you don’t want to admit it.”
“I’m not a possession.”
“Yes, you are,” I said softly, feeling the truth of it settle inside me. “You’re mine now, just like I told you. That was the consequence you accepted when you went down on your knees, when you took my cock in your mouth and when I fucked you over the couch just now. I told you I’d own you and now I do.”
Finally, she looked at me, the embers of her temper glittering in her eyes. “I don’t want to be owned. I don’t want?—”
“What are you afraid of?
Her gaze dropped yet again, settling on the cotton weave of my shirt instead. “I… don’t like the thought of being dependent on anyone. Especially not a man. I don’t want to end up being like…” She paused, then added, “It feels disloyal to say it.”
She didn’t need to say it though, I knew who she was talking about and I understood. She was talking about Cait.
Gently, I stroked the side of her neck with my thumb, trying to ease her tension and was gratified when she relaxed. “You’re not anything like your mother, Rowan. You must know that.”
The heat in her eyes faded and she shook her head. “Maybe not now, but who knows in the future? Mom only wanted someone to take care of her, yet every time she thought she’d found someone, she ended up disappointed. And in the end all she had was me, and I…. Well, I couldn’t give her what she wanted and I couldn’t make her better. I couldn’t seem to make her happy and?—”
Taking my hand from her throat, I laid a finger across her pretty mouth, silencing her. “That’s not your fault,” I said, because Rowan already had an over inflated sense of responsibility, and she really didn’t need to take on responsibility for Cait’s mental health as well. “You’re Cait’s daughter, not her doctor or her nurse. Her mental health was not your problem to fix.”
Rowan shook my finger away. “I know that,” she said, impatient. “But she ran through her money so fast and of course we had no insurance. All she had was me. Even when I was a kid, I was the one making sure she ate, making sure she slept, making sure she took her meds. I was the one making sure she stayed alive. And if I hadn’t…” She broke off.
“You blamed me,” I said and it wasn’t a question. “That’s why you screamed at me when I left.”
“I…thought you out of all of them would stay and you didn’t.”
I liked that finally she was being honest with me and so I gave her my own honesty in return. “I thought Cait would be okay. I genuinely did. We didn’t love each other, but we respected each other and she told me when I left that she’d be fine.”
“Well, she wasn’t fine,” Rowan said. “And neither was I.”
It was a big thing for her to admit that, I could see, and a sign of trust that she would say it aloud to me. But of course the beast inside me wanted more. It wanted everything.
“And are you fine now?” I asked.
Rowan opened her mouth then shut it again, her gaze flitting away once more.
“Don’t say yes, beauty,” I murmured. “Don’t spoil it. You can admit that you’re not fine. It’s okay. I won’t think any less of you and it doesn’t make you any less strong.” She shifted again, but didn’t say anything, toying with a button on my shirt instead. So I went on, “Allowing yourself to have what you want, to admit your own desires, doesn’t make you dependent. It doesn’t make you weak. You think I would have fucked you the way I just did if I thought you couldn’t handle it?”
“I didn’t handle it, though.” She looked up at me abruptly, her eyes dark. “You made me unable to think, unable to breathe, unable to….” She broke off again.
“You handled it.” I didn’t know where this urge to reassure her came from, but I obeyed it without question. “You were honest with yourself, perhaps for the first time in your fucking life, and you took what you wanted. You kissed me, remember?”
“But I?—”
“Yes, you wanted me, but do you understand that your desperation for me is the hottest fucking thing I’ve ever seen. I want you desperate for me. I want you to be unable to think of anything except me. I want you to be unable to breathe without me, because it gets me off, Rowan. It gets me hard. You gave me what no one else has ever given me, someone to cater to my fantasies. And that’s the sweetest fucking gift, beauty. Your desire and your trust is precious.”
Her eyes were wide, but she didn’t speak immediately, studying me as if trying to spot a lie. “But…you said you didn’t care what I wanted. You said only what you wanted mattered.”
“Yes, I did,” I slowly, thinking about it. “And what I want is you being completely and utterly obsessed with me. But if that’s not genuine, then it’s not sexy to me. And if it’s not sexy to me, it’s not what I want.”
“Oh.” Her gaze narrowed. “But what if?—”
Abruptly her phone went off. She shifted, but I’d already leaned down to grab the offending piece of technology out of the purse she’d put down beside the couch. The screen was lit up, ‘work’ calling her.
Yeah, no way ‘work’ was interrupting us.
I hit the answer button and said, “Rowan will not be in for the rest of the day. Direct any concerns to Blackwood Construction.” Then I ended the call.
Rowan gave me an outraged look. “Atlas, what the hell was that?”
“You’re in no condition to go back to work,” I said, the calm of my decision settling over me. “First, you’re going to have a nice hot bath, then you’re going to have something to eat. And then you and I are going to have a little conversation about what being owned by me means.” I lifted a brow. “Any further questions?”