Page 27 of Owned

Mom had told me once, after I’d asked about my grandparents one too many times, that I should forget all about them. That the less said about them the better and so I’d respected her wishes. I’d purposefully not thought about them or read anything about them online. They were famously rich and powerful, but since I didn’t care about them, they didn’t interest me.

Except now, I was conscious of the vaguest stirrings of curiosity despite myself. “A cousin?” I asked. “Why aren’t you asking her to be your surrogate?”

Charlotte smiled. “Because Isabel is with Atlas’s friend, Mr Cross. And he is very much a sleeping dog you want to let lie.”

Well, he sounded like a nightmare and if my cousin was with him then she was likely to be insane as well.

“Good for her,” I said. “But if you want the truth, I’m really not interested in your family.”

Charlotte gave me a long look then her mouth curved slightly. “You’re loyal to your mother. I like that.”

“Someone has to be.”

“Indeed.” Charlotte glanced wordlessly at one of the wait staff nearby, who then came over and presented the bill. She looked over it, nodded, and the waiter left. Then she gave me a dazzling smile. “Well, this has been lovely, my dear, but I have some errands to run. I will be in touch with the wedding details. It’ll be a small ceremony for legal purposes, but feel free to dress up if you’d like to.” Her smile turned a little wicked. “Mr Blackwood might appreciate it.”

Then she gathered her things, rose to her feet and made her way gracefully out of the restaurant leaving me sitting there staring after her.

10

Atlas

Ten leapt for the ball I’d smashed into the wall, his racquet raised, but there had been too much momentum from my serve and it sailed right over the top of his head and hit the back wall of the racquetball court.

“That’s five,” I said, wiping the sweat from my forehead, blood pumping hard in my veins from two solid hours of hitting a fucking ball against a wall.

Five games and all to me.

Ten, who hated being beaten as much as I did, snorted. “You seem a touch…perturbed,” he noted, wiping his own face with a careless hand. “Wedding jitters?”

“Fuck no.” I went to retrieve the ball, ignoring the steady anger that simmered inside me, though who it was directed at, I had no idea.

That’s a fucking lie

Okay, sure. I knew. I was angry at myself.

A week since I’d walked out of the bathroom at La Chouette and I still couldn’t stop thinking about Rowan goddamn James.

It should have been easy to erase from my mind, the feel of her skin beneath my fingertips, the press of her hands against my chest, the warmth of her hips and thighs pressed to mine. The violet sparks in her eyes and the heat that burned along with them. She was just another pretty girl and certainly not one special enough to take up so much of my headspace.

Yet I couldn’t get rid of her. I kept thinking about how she’d flung my own behavior back in my face and how the echo of shame had whispered like the devil in my ear. How what she’d said had made me recognize that I’d allowed myself to fall prey to Charlotte’s manipulations and hadn’t even known until Rowan had pointed it out.

I’d let my anger at Charlotte blind me, I’d let it feed the darkness inside me, and then I’d pulled Rowan into that darkness too.

It was wrong and I should have known better, and what was even more wrong was how my goddamn cock kept getting hard every time I thought about how she’d held her ground against me, used her stubborn will to fight me, and how every part of me wanted to strip her of her iron self-control, let out the fire that burned behind her eyes. Make it blaze for me and only me. Make her my fucking slave?—

Jesus Christ. That was not going to happen. I couldn’t allow it. She was too innocent, too young, too much like the girls who used to flutter around my father, drawn by his looks and his power, and whom he used as tools to keep my mother in line. Girls that fed his narcissism and made me want to be like him, because the only way I could get any attention was to be like him.

“It’s something,” Ten said as I tossed the ball up before slamming it into the wall again.

He didn’t even bother taking the serve, ignoring the ball as he stood in his racquetball whites, staring at me intently the way he always did when he wanted an explanation for something.

Racquetball wasn’t my thing, but Ten liked a game. He was a competitive fuck and because he needed a partner who was as aggressive as he was, I played the odd game with him.

I was regretting that decision now, though, because I still hadn’t told either him or Caleb about my connection to Rowan, and I didn’t want to. Not considering what they knew about the narcissistic asshole I had for a dad.

“Site difficulties,” I said shortly. “You going to get that ball? Or are you done?”

He ignored the ball. “Is it the prospect of being a father? Is that the issue?”

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