Page 25 of Owned

“Charlotte hasn’t manipulated me. I’m not the one pushing my ex-stepdaughter up against a bathroom vanity and forcing her into admitting something she doesn’t feel.”

That cold thread of reality tightened around my throat like razor wire, bringing with it an emotion I’d long since forgotten I could even experience.

Shame.

She was right. She wasn’t the only one caught in Charlotte’s little games. That bitch had snared me too, and now here I was, trying to force an admission from a twenty-four-year-old woman that she wanted me.

What the actual fuck was I doing?

I’d forgotten myself. I’d forgotten all those lesson I’d learned the day I’d walked into my mother’s bathroom and found her lying dead in the tub. The lesson that the games my father played, that ones he’d taught me, the ones that had seemed to be so exciting, that had made me feel so powerful, had consequences. Terrible, terrible consequences.

Jesus Christ. Was that all it took to break open the cage I kept my inner monster in? The machinations of one old woman and the desire in a young and beautiful girl’s eyes?

I was a stronger man than that. I was a better man than that. I wasn’t Charles Blackwood and the games he played. I wasn’t him.

I let Rowan go and stepped back.

Then I turned and walked out without another word.

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.

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