Page 45 of Owned

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.”

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