27. To own is to… Deny
Chapter twenty-seven
To own is to… Deny
C hloe
My lips curl up at the bland slop in front of me. Oats . Because I’m still being punished for my disobedience last night. My entire body is wrecked, sore, and weak as the house seems to bustle around me. It’s more active than usual, but I can’t make myself pay attention to it. That gnawing sensation in my chest is firmly back in place, my eyes puffy and red from sobbing myself to sleep, in my own room for the first time in months. I saw it for a moment, I thought, that same wild, scathing love I feel for Sir reflected to me, but I’m afraid I’ve long crossed the line toward insanity. That I’m so far gone, my mind has become a sounding board for my desires and not reality.
Sage and oak fill my lungs, making my head snap around, my eyes finding thunderous hazel ones above me. “Master. Good morning.”
“Morning.” He looks away from me. “I’ll be leaving on a run; I likely won’t return until tomorrow night. You’re expected to finish your lines, all your meals, and behave yourself while I’m gone. Henrietta will check. Am I understood?”
I gape at him, words lost to me for a moment.
“Pup.”
“You’re leaving without me.”
He sighs, again avoiding my eyes. “I just explained that. Care to waste my time further?”
“Why can’t I stay on the plane like usual?” I ask, the words coming out louder than I meant them to, but fuck, I can’t breathe. “Why are you doing this to me?”
“Were my instructions clear?”
I stand, slamming my hands onto his suit jacket, gripping him as tears irritate already raw eyes. It’s fine. They might as well be just as raw as everything else inside me. My heart, my mind, my cunt. “What have I done wrong? Please!” I yell, and everything in the house becomes still, as if frozen in time. Shocked.
His gloved hands envelop my wrists, but I don’t let go, willing him to make this hole in my chest stop throbbing. It’s irrational, but I don’t care. I don’t fucking care.
The faint bad dog is still written on my chest, and I can feel it there like a fist wedged deep inside.
This is my fault, because I was bad.
Because I’m a bad girl.
“I’ll be good,” I plead, clinging to him.
He takes a tight breath, wrenching my wrists until I yelp, pain lancing through them as I’m forced to release him. He doesn’t let go, doesn’t stop the intense pressure until I’m forced back into my seat at the kitchen island. “Were. My. Instructions. Clear?”
“Yes,” I whisper, rubbing wrists I know will be bruised by morning as he leaves.
Warrick
It has been one of the longest twenty-four hours of my life. I stare, rapidly flipping through security camera footage as I track my little pet through the halls of my home. Ragnar is mollified. For the past week, they’ve met with other houses, calling for a war between us, one that, in other circumstances, would’ve been an easy win, but that kind of attention would throw a wrench in my current plans. All it took was a hefty shipment of weapons to make the man forget I killed two of his own, one being his son.
Fucking scum.
I narrow my eyes as she finally gets up the courage to try opening the doors of my office. Her head snaps around on a swivel as she awkwardly slips inside. This is possibly the worst attempt at stealth I’ve ever seen. Not that anyone would bat an eye at her being in there either way. Everyone but her is aware she was given unmitigated access to my estate months ago. They are never to intervene unless she is trying to leave or doing something that could harm herself. I flip the camera again, watching as she trails her fingers over everything, every priceless artifact and art piece she’s not supposed to touch. I don’t bother fighting the little smirk on my face. She spent the better part of yesterday failing to grill the staff, asking them if they knew when I would be back, crying and throwing the sweetest, most mild tantrum I’ve ever seen. She refused to obey even a single one of my instructions. I can’t blame her; I wouldn’t be keen to eat if all I was being fed were oats and protein smoothies.
She stops at my desk, hesitating for only a moment before glancing back at the doors. I chuckle as she jogs over to the doors, locking them before she rounds my desk, being an absolute nuisance as she disorganizes everything, no doubt planning to blame it on poor Henrietta. I have half a mind to let her continue, let her have this petty act of rebellion, but all she need do is open that laptop there to discover just how fucking far the depths of my obsession go with her. I called it an investment when I had her history picked apart with a fine-tooth comb, called it a newfound appreciation for the arts when I started listening to her piano recordings on repeat, called it being thorough when I started having what remains of the Tyson family trailed by PIs. No matter how I justify it, I’m obsessed. I push the talk button, remaining silent until her hand braces on the laptop.
Willing myself to stay quiet, to let her see it, to let her know that this distance is killing me. I want to tell her I’m not sleeping.
That I went back outside and gathered up those stupid fucking sheets.
“Neglecting your chores?” I ask, biting into my cheek to stifle my laughter when she screams, damn near falling over my office chair. She scrambles as I mute the mic, no longer able to hold it back as she scrambles from the room in a panic. The sound of her bedroom door slamming shut seconds later makes me swipe through the feeds quickly, only to find a pup-sized bundle under her sheets.
I close the app, placing my phone face down on the furthest point of the tray beside me, like it’ll stop me from grabbing it again as I sober.
I don’t think I can do this…
Let her touch him.
Let her fuck that man for information like some whore.
Like I didn’t claim her the night I took her out dressed in royal blue.
I swallow hard, glaring at the clouds passing by the window of my jet.
I can’t fucking do it…
God, I—
“Sir.”
My eyes cut toward Stuart as he rubs his hand down his face, having just woken. “Should we still plan to stop by the range before heading to the estate?”
I want to say no.
I want to go home and crush her to my chest, soak her in.
“Yes, thank you. ”
He nods.
She’s a tool.
Nothing else matters but this.
I’ll do what needs to be done because I always have, no matter how uncomfortable. I’ve killed too many, made too many plans. Too many cards are in play to back out now. I’ll do it because this is about more than me. It’s more than the man who helped my father raise me, the one who dedicated himself to my revenge. It’s more than the way my father shoved himself in front of me that night. I was fucking cocky, young, ready to prove myself. So, I took the information Tyet offered greedily. When my father and Stuart told me it didn’t feel right, that nothing was free, I didn’t listen. They trusted my gut.
They trusted me like he’s trusting me now.
To be a man of my word.
A man of my convictions.
An eye for an eye. That’s how our world works.
When it’s time for Pup to take back the eye my world owes her, I’ll be the first to jerk mine from its socket, nerves and all.
I fired every weapon in my arsenal before I relented and headed home. The destruction failed to offer the release it generally does. My shoes press on the hardwood, and I know without checking the camera she’s waiting for me. I can feel it in every fiber of my being. Somehow, overnight, she turned from something I bought to humor myself, from nothing more than a pretty hole to pleasure myself with, to someone I treasured. My body, in the blink of an eye, attuned itself to her. I became hyperaware, every fiber of my being calling, screaming out for her warmth .
I round the corner, finding her in her submissive position in front of my desk, dozing against it.
“It’s late isn’t it, pet?”
She leans up, rubbing her eyes. “Welcome home, Master.” Those pretty doe eyes turn on me, devastating in their impact. My jaw clenches, looking away from her as she crawls over to me, wishing for the first time in my life I could shut my cock off.
“Thank you. You should get to bed.”
“I thought you might find use of me…” She lifts her eyes from my shoes, looking up at me from under her pale lashes.
My cock jerks. “Bed. Now, Pup.”
She frowns, slamming her eyes back down as her breasts heave under her silky nightgown. Royal blue. Even unintentionally, she torments my self-control as I step around her. “Because you found use of someone else.”
I halt, her words stunning me for a moment. She’s jealous. That turns me on as much as it frustrates me. Again and again, I’ve thought of taking another to wipe her from me, only to find my cock entirely uninterested. “If I have, it would be no business of yours, would it, dog?” I seethe, stalking over to her wide, shocked eyes as I jerk her over my shoulder, landing two hard smacks on her ass before marching down the hall and depositing her on her bed.
“Sir! Please!” She screams, the sound digging into my gut like a blade. “I’m sorry—" I slam the door before she can reach it, locking it behind me. Then, like the masochist she’s turning me into, I stand there and listen to her beg me to come back, my back meeting the wall beside her door as I slide down it.
Stuart’s disproving glare meets mine as he halts in the hall, a stack of papers in his hand. He shakes his head, tossing the stack to my feet before taking a deep breath, no doubt editing whatever he was about to say. “Do what you need to do to sort this out.” He gestures to the door, to the crying woman inside it. “You have less than two weeks before we need her to do her part, for you to do yours.”
I look away from him for the twelfth time today, debating sucking off one of my shotguns .
“Have you even told her what’s expected of her?”
“Goodnight, Stuart.”
He takes two steps toward me, his finger lifted. For a moment, I think he might hit me. In all these years, I’ve never once came to blows with the man; never in all my life has he raised a hand to me, nor I to him, aside from him slapping me back to my senses back at that warehouse. “Fucking sort it. Your father didn’t take a bullet to the skull to watch you take the piss in his name,” he seethes before stalking down the hall. “You’re either serpent or prey, Warrick. You cannot be both,” he calls over his shoulder, and suddenly, the sobbing stops as she listens. I sit there long after she crawls away from the door, collapsing in her bed.