Page 50 of Owned

I blinked. “But I thought?—”

“I know what you thought. You thought a punishment involved my cock, hmm? Well, that’s one way to punish you, but denial also works. I want you to think about that while you’re in your bath, so no touching yourself, okay? I’ll know.”

The ache between my legs was now sharp and persistent, not helped by my annoyance at myself and my disappointment that he wasn’t going to continue.

“Oh?” I asked recklessly. “And how will you know?”

He only smiled, a wealth of knowledge in that smile that stoked the fire inside me higher. “Into the bath, beauty. We can talk about that later.”

18

Atlas

I left Rowan in the bath and stalked downstairs, ignoring the hard-on in my pants and the salty-sweet taste of her on my tongue, the words she’d said ricocheting around in my skull.

‘You didn’t wear a condom.’

Her eyes had been wide, shock written all over her lovely face as she’d sat there on top of my black marble vanity, white silk cascading over the edge of it. And fuck, I’d felt a certain amount of shock myself, though I’d hidden it well.

I never forgot a condom. Never. Reflexively I’d told her I was clean, because I was. I took tests regularly. But it wasn’t until I’d said the words and saw her gaze flicker that I realized it wasn’t STDs she was talking about.

So. There were two things I had to contend with. Not only had I forgotten to wear a fucking condom, I’d also forgotten the other reason I always wore one. The risk of pregnancy.

I’d said some bullshit about her need to control everything, mainly to hide the way the beast in me had roared the moment those words were out of her mouth. The savage, primitive thing that had hit me square in the chest, dragging with it the image of her pregnant with my child.

My child.

Yours. Both of them are yours.

The thoughts had battered the inside of my head as I’d stripped the gown from her, unwrapping her like the delicious treat she was, black hair falling down her back, all silky pale skin, pink nipples and that gorgeous little nest of curls between her thighs.

Mine. Mine. Mine.

I’d wanted to gorge on her. Gorge on her so thoroughly that any resistance to the thought of being owned by me had been washed away by pleasure. So completely that all she thought about was me, that she couldn’t breathe for me, every single thought in her head about me and being close to me. Unable to stand being without me.

But with my own control in question and the need to think about what the fuck it was going to mean if she was pregnant, I’d needed some space, and so did she. Because one thing I’d conveniently forgotten about in all this drama with Rowan was Charlotte fucking Hamilton and her ridiculous demands for a child.

If Rowan was indeed pregnant, then that little life growing inside her would be given to Charlotte the moment it was born.

Your child.

A fist closed around my heart, a feral possessiveness squeezing me so tight I could barely breathe, and I had to stop on the stair halfway down just to get some air.

Fuck. Fuck.

Ten had said that giving up a kid wouldn’t be easy, he’d fucking warned me and I hadn’t listened. All I’d known was that I didn’t want kids and besides, how could you feel something about a kid that had been conceived in a lab? The idea of a child had been just that, an idea. A hypothesis. A concept. Not real in any way, and absolutely nothing to do with me.

But in the space of a couple of hours, everything had changed.

Rowan was mine and if she was indeed pregnant from how I’d fucked her over the couch, then the baby would be mine too, and that made it no longer a concept or a hypothesis. That made it real.

My baby. Mine.

My muscles tightened, the urge to lock Rowan up in my loft to make sure no one would ever get to her almost uncontrollable. I gritted my teeth, fighting it.

After my mother died and all the shit my father had put me through, I’d decided that kids would never be for me. There was too much of him in me, too much of his narcissism, his selfishness. I’d managed to remake myself after my mother’s death, but I knew deep down that he’d ruined me. I couldn’t trust myself to have any decent sort of relationship let alone have children, so the decision had been an easy one to make. I’d certainly never regretted it.

But that decision had been taken out of my hands, and now I needed to rethink my position, because regardless of how shit a father I would make, there was no way in hell I was giving any child of mine Charlotte Hamilton.

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