A Debt Owed(34)

Her shoulders rise as she sucks in a deep breath, her eyes widening the moment I used that word … pussy. She knows I claimed it and made it mine. And it’s making her hot and bothered all over again from the looks of it.

She clears her throat and grabs her napkin, dabbing it against her lips as if to hide her obvious flush.

“I could’ve gone further, but I chose not to.” I know I left her high and dry last night, and she hates me for it—hates the mixed signals from her body—which is exactly where I want her.

“Why?” she asks. “Why not get it over with?”

Of course, she’d ask that … because she secretly wants me to. Her body desperately wanted to be touched and for me to suddenly take it away was cruel.

But I needed her to be on that pivotal moment, the edge of despair, where right and wrong blur, and she no longer knew which choice to make. The moment when she’d either scream for me to stop or for me to take her.

I pulled away right then because I want her to savor the feeling, to remember the moment … so she can make a clear and vivid choice and not one that’s made in the moment.

Her submission must be a distinct decision in both her heart and mind.

And I’ll wait as long as I have to until it sinks in with her.

“Because you’re still a virgin, and I’m going to push all your buttons until you beg me to take your pussy … like a real princess would.”

I don’t know if it’s the smug smile on my face or my words that make her throw her napkin on the table and scoot her chair back. I’m expecting a barrage of expletives, maybe even a knife thrown in for good measure.

But what I get is a girl standing up with her head held high as she walks out the door without saying a word.





Chapter 16





Charlotte



I can’t stay there. Not a minute longer.

I thought I could do this, but I can’t.

Not when he taunts me like this every single day, pushing me and shoving me in whatever direction he wants just for the fun of it. He doesn’t say those things because he means it. He doesn’t truly want me; he just enjoys angering me, torturing me, and pushing me beyond my limits.

And I’m letting it happen. I’m letting this powerful, arrogant billionaire take over my thoughts just because his fingers were all over my body last night, and I didn’t protest.

Not until it was too late—when he’d already gone—did I realize what happened. I should’ve stopped it, but I didn’t. He knows I regret that, but now he’s using it against me.

Fuck him.

Footsteps are audible behind me, and before I know it, someone’s grabbed my arm and pulled me toward him. “Where are you going?” Easton snaps.

“I’m leaving,” I hiss.

“Impossible,” he says, chuckling as if it’s funny.

“Fuck you!” I shout.

He raises a brow at me. “Is that all you can come up with?”

My lips part, but out of annoyance, I don’t know what to say, and it only pisses me off further. “Gah, why do you have to be such an asshole?” I reply, shaking him off. “Do you enjoy torturing me? Pushing me to the brink of insanity? Is that what you want? A wife who’s lost her mind?”

“No.” He steps closer, his hands in his pockets. “I want a wife who obeys my every wish, and I want that to be you.”

“Then you want something that doesn’t exist,” I reply, shaking my head.

“You underestimate yourself, princess.” He keeps stalking me when I walk off.

“I’m not a princess,” I say, and I gaze down at my bathrobe. “It doesn’t matter what clothes you put on me, what bed you make me sleep in, or how many times you make me dress up. I’m not a doll, and I never will be. You should’ve invested your money somewhere else.” I turn around again and walk around the rooms, jerking on every window I can find. There must be some way to get them to open, right? They have to air out this place.

“You’re wasting your time,” he says, leaning against the doorframe. “They’re all locked. We have vents for air.”

“I don’t care.” I won’t stop searching until I find a way out. I’ll never stop. Not even if he puts locks on all the doors and windows or chains me to my goddamn bed. I’ll never fucking stop. Because if I don’t, he’ll have been right all along about my inability to resist him.

He’s still following me around even as I go into his private study where he keeps all his books and memorabilia. “Why are you so obsessed with escaping?”

I spin on my heels, and yell, “Because I need to be free!”

Saying the word free causes tears to well up in my eyes. It’s the one word that defines all the things I lost the moment my father decided to sell my body to the devil himself and I came to this place.

Because that freedom out there is the only thing that’ll save me from falling for him. For that … monster. Easton Van Buren only cares about his own freedom and no one else’s. But somehow, someway, the perpetuating gaze on his face doesn’t strike me as that of a monster. In fact, it’s the first time since we met that he genuinely looks dispirited, his face marred with worry. And the air is thick with unspoken words and desires.