Page 8 of Owned

“Still with that overinflated sense of responsibility, hmmm?”

Annoyance flashed in her eyes. “Still with that overinflated ego, hmmm?”

Sharp little thing, wasn’t she?

I smiled the way I used to years ago, when she was needling at me, letting her know there was nothing she could do to rile me. “Same Rowan, I see. Come on, I’ll walk you out.

She snorted, her gaze darting away once again. “No thank you, I can find my own way.”

I kept right on smiling. “It wasn’t a request, kid.”

“I’m twenty four,” she said impatiently. “It’s been eight years and I’m really not a kid anymore.”

I merely lifted a brow. “Do you want to stand here all night arguing or do you want to go home?”

She didn’t want to give in, I could see it in her eyes. She absolutely wanted to stay here all night arguing and there was a part of me that wanted that too.

But I ignored that part like I always did.

She needed to leave and the sooner the better.

3

Rowan

Atlas’s golden eyes were full of the same lazy amusement I’d always found so maddening, as if he was in on some joke that the rest of the world didn’t know.

It was as irritating now as it had been back then, and it didn’t help that looking at him, all I could see was his expression as the orgasm had taken him, his face drawn tight, the hiss of breath between his teeth.

I’d tried not to meet his gaze, tried to pull myself together, tried to pretend that I’d seen nothing at all. But, naturally, he didn’t believe me. He’d always been able to see right through me, even when I’d been a teenager.

I’d been desperately hoping that after their little interlude, he’d leave, but he hadn’t. Somehow he’d known I was there, though for how long I didn’t want to imagine. When he’d first entered the room? Or was it later? And how had I given myself away? How the hell had he known I was behind the curtain?

But I didn’t want to ask those questions, because the last thing I needed was to discuss my embarrassing lurking behavior, especially when I didn’t have a good enough reason to explain it.

Anyway, it was stupid not to have expected him to pull back the curtain after he’d finished with the blonde, yet I hadn’t. And I thought I’d prepared myself for his physical presence, that watching him from behind the heavy velvet would have been enough to brace myself for the physical impact of his presence.

But I was not prepared nor was I, in fact, braced. Not for him. Close up.

Because Atlas Blackwood was beautiful. Just. Fucking. Beautiful.

His strongly carved features were exactly as I remembered, but with a few more lines around his eyes and mouth that lent him a certain devastating rakishness. Dark, shaggy hair, with gleams of tawny, gold and toffee. Wide shoulders, the black cotton of his T-shirt pulled tight across his hard expanse of his muscular chest. Then there was the extraordinary color of his eyes. Bright gold. Wolf’s eyes. Leopard’s eyes.

Even years ago he’d had a great deal of charisma, but now it was a force of nature. A personal magnetism that held me fast, staring at him with my mouth open like a fish lying stunned in the bottom of a boat.

It was clear he hadn’t been thrilled to find me standing behind the curtain and, well, the feeling was absolutely mutual.

Arguing with him about the folder and him walking me out had been stupid, but I’d found myself falling back into the same old pattern of me needling him, trying to get a rise out of him. Wanting him to go, leave me and Mom alone, because he was just the same as all the rest of the men that Mom had relationships with. He wasn’t different and I would prove it.

I’d been right in the end, and he’d finally left as I knew he would, and I wanted him to leave now, but not for the same reasons I’d had at sixteen.

Now, with my heart beating far too fast and those images of him in my head, I needed to get away before I betrayed how badly watching him with the blonde had affected me. And I didn’t want to do that. Not at all.

He was standing in front of me now, arms folded over his muscular chest, the file I’d given him held in one large, long-fingered hand. There was a hard, unfamiliar glitter in his eyes, as if the years had given him an edge that I’d never been aware of before. Maybe he’d always had that edge. Maybe I’d just never seen it. What I did know was that it made me uncomfortable. Everything about him made me uncomfortable.

I wanted to leave and as quickly as possible, not spend more time in his company arguing about it.

“Fine.” I tried to find him a polite smile. “Let’s go then.”

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