Page 66 of Owned

“Well, gentlemen, I have to go.” Ten rose to his feet, putting his phone back in his pocket. “Duty calls.”

“Dom duty, hmm?” I murmured, lounging back in my armchair.

“Naturally,” Ten said. “The little sub is impatient and I hate to keep her waiting.”

“Off you go,” Cal said. “We’ll reconvene about this subject later.”

After Ten had gone, I took another sip of scotch and finally broached the other topic I’d been meaning to talk to Cal about, my fantasy. I gave him a quick rundown on what I was thinking, and whether he could arrange it at Arcadia.

“You sure?” Cal asked when I’d finished. “I mean, I can organize it and you know it’s not the first time we’ve done something like that here. The real question is can your girl handle it.”

I thought about Rowan and the flicker of fear and uncertainty in her eyes as I’d told her what I wanted. Then of the fire that had replaced the uncertainty as I’d crushed her into the mattress afterwards. She thought her desperation for me was a weakness, but it wasn’t. She just had strong feelings, was fiery and passionate, and to be honest, it was when she truly embraced those feelings that she found her true strength. That’s when she set me on fire.

What would it be like for her to finally understand that? For her to truly know how strong she was? To let herself really feel all the emotions she was afraid of and to finally let go?

She would be astonishing.

“Yes,” I said, my groin tightening at the thought. “I think she can handle anything I throw at her.”

Caleb grunted. “I’ll leave you to manage that part of it then. Will give you call on the logistics once everything’s been arranged.”

23

Rowan

I closed the front door of the loft behind me, then leaned back against it, my heart beating fast, nerves coiling in the pit of my stomach. In my purse was the pregnancy test I’d just bought, which I’d told myself I was going to buy two days ago and yet had only managed to force myself into getting today.

I hadn’t told Atlas I was going to take one, because I’d wanted to be alone when I found out. I wanted to sit with the test and decide how I was going to feel, and I didn’t want him standing over me, waiting for an answer.

The past two weeks had been intense and while I could say that living in Atlas’s loft was both literally and figuratively streets away from the tiny, shitty apartment Mom and I had lived in, it was still his loft. And I was living in it as his kept woman — or at least, that’s how it felt.

He’d been as good as his word though, finding Mom a place in a facility that she liked, that let me visit her whenever I wanted, and where she could get the best help. Not to mention telling Charlotte that we would not be attending the fertility clinic appointments she’d made for us, since we would be handling the conception ourselves.

Maybe I should have protested that I could have found Mom a place, as well as inform Charlotte about the clinic visits, but a part of me had wanted to test him almost, to see if he really had told that truth that he would deal with it.

But he had. I didn’t even have to speak to Charlotte and as for Mom, I’d had seen her when we’d moved her into the facility, but I’d felt awkward and strange, and hadn’t known how to talk to her about the elephant in the room — my relationship with Atlas. She hadn’t said anything about it either, except as I’d left, she’d told me to be careful. That had made me want to question her, but by that stage she’d turned away and a staff member had ushered me out, so I’d been unable to.

It was nothing I didn’t know myself already though. I knew that I had to be careful, and not because I didn’t trust him, but more because I didn’t trust myself and my feelings for him. Feelings that were becoming more and more intense with every passing day.

It was so easy sitting around in the comfort of his loft while he was at work, building things and managing his company, or whatever it was that he did. I liked not having to worry about money or the difficulty of finding a new job because my current one sucked. I liked choosing a book from his considerable library and reading, or cooking up something delicious in his huge kitchen, or sitting with my laptop scrolling through college programs and trying to decide which ones to apply for, before moving onto which countries I wanted to visit and when and how.

But what I especially liked was him coming home and finding me immediately. Sometimes there would be no words, he’d just grab me and take my mouth and it would be fast and furious. Sometimes, he sit down next to me and we’d talk about what I’d been doing, what colleges I’d like to apply for, and then he’d tell me what current issues he was having at work. Then we’d have dinner together or sometimes we’d go straight to bed and have dinner later, but there would always come a time where he would hold me, stroking my hair and saying nothing, as if he was content with that and I needed to do nothing more.

As much as I’d feared it, even though he insisted on calling me his fuck toy since he was a dirty talker in bed, he didn’t treat me as if I was an object. He treated me as if I was a person and one who seemed to matter to him.

Yes, it was early days and every so often I’d wonder why he wanted this so badly with me when he could have had any woman, but I didn’t question it. Because as much as he infuriated and irritated me, he also intrigued me, fascinated me, and physically I’d fallen totally under his spell. So much so, it was sometimes hard to think about anything else but when he would touch me again.

Despite that, I purposefully hadn’t thought about how all the sex we’d been having would clearly have some consequences for me. Now, though, I couldn’t avoid thinking about those consequences and taking that damn test, not if I wanted to do this without Atlas finding out along with me.

I shut my eyes, gathering the courage I needed, then shoved myself away from the door. I dug the package out of my purse then went up to the bathroom with it.

Putting the test down on the vanity, I stared at the box, reading the instructions without taking anything in. I always knew I’d have to do this at some point, but now that point was here, I felt kind of sick.

Still, no amount of procrastinating and thinking was going to make it any easier, so I forced myself into action, taking the test out of the box and carrying it over to the toilet. I did what I needed to do with the stick, then, still feeling sick, set it on the vanity and started pacing, too nervous to look at the plastic window where the lines would appear.

My thoughts were in free fall, panic churning in my stomach. Now the reality of what I’d promised Charlotte was here, I didn’t know what to do. Did I actually want to give the child up, because I wasn’t ready to be a mother? Could I give the child up? And if I didn’t, what kind of mother would I be? Mom hadn’t exactly been the greatest role model so what did I know about it? Also, Atlas had said he wouldn’t abandon me or any child we might have, but there was a small kernel of doubt in me all the same. Would he feel differently when reality finally it us in the face?

Eventually I stopped pacing, knowing that all the thinking in the world wasn’t going to have any impact on what was on that stick, so I took a deep breath, strode over to the vanity and stared down at it.

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