Falling for My Dirty Uncle

This is about me.

She can see how fucking pissed I am about this—and from the look on her face, she’s somehow decided that it’s all her fault.

Shit.

“Baby, no.” I look over at her solemnly, shaking my head. “This isn’t on you. It never was. You have to understand that.”

Even though I don’t want to, I try to relax my shoulders and unclench my jaw. There are all these little things that men do unknowingly in anger, and they make women feel naturally uneasy.

I would never hurt Mira. She might not know it yet…but she’s my fucking world.

But being around Carl—being around shitty, aggressive men who don’t know how to fucking handle themselves or their tempers for her whole life, probably—have undoubtedly established a baseline of experience for Mira that I’m not about to validate or justify.

“It’s all my fault, Owen.” Mira’s voice sounds mournful and distant, like she’s fading away right before my eyes. “You warned me that throwing myself at you would have consequences, and now—”

“That was never your choice to make, angel. I fucking wanted you. From the moment I first laid eyes on you, you were mine.”

“No, Owen! I threw myself at you, I—”

“Let’s get one thing straight, Mira,” I say, buttoning my slacks and moving to her. My tall, muscular frame dwarfs her as I stand over her tiny, trembling body. “I wanted you—I want you still—more than I’ve ever wanted anything in my entire goddamn life. And when I want something, neither heaven nor hell can stop me from taking it.”

“But I—”

“You just helped things along, angel,” I reassure her, taking her sweet little chin in my hand. She tries to turn her eyes downward to look away from me, but I turn her face up and force her to meet my gaze. “Whatever it is that we have between us—there was no stopping it. No matter how this played out, you were always going to end up naked in my bed with your legs wrapped around my waist, moaning my fucking name.”

For a second, I see the storm in Mira’s eyes break.

“You haven’t fucked me in your bed yet, Owen,” she says, the ghost of a smile playing on her pretty lips.

It’s fucking infectious. I can’t help it—I run my thumb along her lower lip and smile back.

“Let’s fix that, then. Later,” I add, and the second the words leave my mouth, I can fucking smell Mira’s pussy get wet. “When this is all over, Mira, I’m taking you to bed with me. Not just as some kinky little slut who I can’t get enough of…but as my wife.”

“Is that…a proposal, Owen?”

I laugh. “No, angel. But when I fix all of this and I have a big billion-dollar ring to slip onto your slender little finger, it might be.”

“I might say yes,” Mira counters.

I tilt my head over to my shirt where it was abandoned on the floor last night, and Mira hops up off the bed, prancing over to it and bringing it over to me.

I grab it from her and pull her against me as I do it. My lips capture hers in a hard, reassuring kiss that says a thousand things that I want to say to her without a single fucking word.

And from the way she moves against me—the way her back arches and her lips part, the way her tongue dances against mine like she was fucking made for me—I get the feeling that she understands every last sentiment perfectly.

She’s wild. She’s passionate. She’s precocious and witty and the most goddamn stubborn person I’ve ever fucking met…

And I’m in love with her.

I’m in love with my own fucking step-niece.

And before the day is done, I’m going to make this right.

“We know this bullshit isn’t true,” I say, nodding to the Lis Langley piece I still have pulled up on my phone. “At least, not the way Langley’s trying to spin it, anyway.”

“She said she had an informant.” Mira goes and fetches me my socks and shoes, then kneels at my feet to put them on for me. “But I don’t know who—”

“No?” I chuckle darkly, shaking my head. “You can’t imagine anyone close to us…someone who has stock in hurting us? Or at least, hurting you to get to me?”