Page 112 of Wanted
Mandy batted her eyelashes, and I was momentarily distracted by the simplicity of the act. I continued, “You didn’t mean to cause this. I know you didn’t, but once I knew that there was somebody out there who needed me for more than this fucking charade… A switch flipped. I let you go, and I did it with ease because I didn’t want to deal with what your existence in my life meant.”
“I had a lot to digest,” Mandy commented, biting her lip. “Things have been changing too fast. It’s an active process. We don’t even know what tomorrow holds. Why are you telling me all of this?”
I let out a harsh breath. “I’m afraid that I’m next.”
She winced. “Don’t say that.”
“I want you to be my responsibility. I want to own you,” I confessed. A weight rolled off of my shoulders, providing me with a long-needed deep inhale of air. I had to get it off my chest. Just in case the possibility never presented itself again.
“We talked about this,” she reminded me, tucking a strain of her hair behind her ear. “I don’t want to be owned. It’s not your job to keep me safe. It’s my own.”
“You’re doing a terrible job,” I told her. She blushed. “What? You don’t have a clever response to that? The moment I heard about your health issues, I was ready to move heaven on earth. I’d do it all over again.”
“You didn’t have to,” she insisted.
“I did it anyway. That’s what people like me do.” Her fucking smile filled me with hope. If she could smile, there was nothing I couldn’t do. “In my head, you’re already mine. It took me a couple of months to act upon it, but now, I know for sure. This can work if you just let me show you what it’s like to be owned…”
“That word gives me shudders,” Mandy revealed, creasing her face. “I can’t be owned. I can’t even have sex for the foreseeable future. I can’t be what you need me to be.”
“I get the feeling that you don’t know what I need.”
“What I know is that we can’t go back to what we had,” she blurted out. Her watery eyes shook my empty heart. “I’m broken. You’re you. You could have any woman in the world. I’m broken. I’ll never…”
He interrupted me, “You’re not broken, my pretty little whore. You’re alive and well now. I’ll take care of you, and you won’t ever need for anything.”
♥♠♥
Watching the sun disappear, we sat on the veranda. Valentina had grabbed a bite with us, and then she’d stormed off to Aris’s room. Ever since I let her in there, she’d been shutting us off.
“I’m sorry that I can’t cook for us,” Mandy blurted out, placing her empty bowl of soup on the coffee table. Her spoon rattled against the porcelain bowl. “It’d be better if we had homemade food for Valentina and the baby…”
“It’s Euphoria. They’d never give us leftovers. You don’t have to worry about it. They know about V and the baby,” I reminded her. There wasn’t a place on Katantia that I trusted more with my food. My mom loved the place, and she’d take us there often. Salacious rumors had her cheating on Aram with Euphoria’s owner, but I didn’t believe them. I knew an honorable man when I saw him. There weren’t many on Katantia, and whenever we went to Euphoria, we were well taken care of. Years have passed since my mother’s death, almost two decades, and Euphoria still welcomed us with open arms.
I added, “Besides, once everything is settled, I’ll hire a cook and cleaning staff. We won’t have to bother with all of that. It’s not your job to look after me.”
“But it’s my job to fuck you?” she asked, and the grin on her face struck me.
“For starters, you don’t have a job, so simmer down,” I told her. I observed the girl next to me, and I saw strength in person. She could barely get out of bed in the morning. Instead of walking, she moved around the house at a slow pace, wincing and cursing at the pain she couldn’t get rid of. She refused my help when I asked to carry her. I didn’t mind, but I took away her control if I carried her, so she strode in slow motion.
“Don’t you want something easy and fun? I’m not going to be fun anytime soon, Weston. These past months have taken a toll on me.” The light mood had dissolved, replaced by a thick rope that twisted around our necks.
“I don’t want fun. I want you.” I’d repeat it until she grasped the concept. What if I was about to join Aris? What if my father was planning another grave next to my mom?
“You won’t be able to have me for some time,” she said sighing.
Couldn’t she see what she did to me? It felt good to be needed. I couldn’t describe what I saw when she was in the room. I insisted, “I don’t care.”
“It’s all fun and exciting now, but you’ll get bored eventually.”
“Nothing about this is fun and exciting. Everything’s going to shit, and I’m just trying to salvage whatever I can.” I didn’t want to break my mom’s fine china, so I placed it on the coffee table. “There are half a million people here. They don’t deserve to suffer because Aram and Spencer have decided to go to war. My brother’s out. My sister’s married. It’s up to me to take over.”
Her face fell, and pressure inside of me tied my stomach in knots. She didn’t want to stay here. Fuck. I knew that already. Why did it hurt so much to see her confirm the fact?
Mandy took a deep breath. “I want to make a couple of things clear.”
I nodded too soon, too eagerly. “Tell me what’s on your mind.”
“I can’t stay here.” After a moment of bewilderment at the obvious, I gave her a quick nod. “You’re Katantian. You need to have sex. However, I don’t see myself having sex anytime soon…”
