Private Property (Rochester Trilogy 1)

“He couldn’t make you come?” he asks blandly.

“We never—” I glare at him. “Not that it’s any of your business, but we’ve never had sex.”

“There’s a report from your foster mother that said you two were close. She thought you were fucking on the regular. Put you on birth control to make sure there were no babies.”

My nostrils flare. “My last foster mother was crazy and borderline abusive. I put up with her to graduate high school, and then I got out of there.”

“Yeah.” He picks up a piece of paper and frowns. “She comments on that. Apparently you weren’t very grateful for all the work she did.”

“She did nothing. She fostered kids for the monthly check, and I took care of the little ones.”

“Sounds like a real bitch,” he says, his tone casual.

“I didn’t say that.”

“I don’t mind saying it. Would you like me to have her pulled from the foster system? Those kids can stay with other terrible legal guardians, instead.”

I let out a coarse laugh. “You can do that, right? Because you’re rich. Because you built a billion-dollar company before you turned thirty, so now you can rule the world, right?”

“Basically. Yes. That sounds about right. It’s nice.”

“The whole capitalist system relies on some people doing menial labor for shit wages,” I say, throwing Noah’s words at Mr. Rochester. “You’re only rich because some people are poor.”

He raises an eyebrow. “And you’re only mad about it because you’re one of the poor people.”

I stand up. I’m shaking, furious. I need this job but I can’t keep it. Not like this. “I may be a poor person, but I’m a person. I deserve respect. You don’t get to dig around in my medical records and in my personal life like you have a right to it.”

My feet move me toward the door before I even know what I’m doing. I’m leaving, and he’s following me. Then he’s standing there, his palm against the heavy wood, his expression fierce.

“I’m a bastard,” he breathes, and I close my eyes in reluctant surrender.

“I know.”

“She broke your wrist, didn’t she?” He picks up my hand. The palm has mostly healed from the tree. There are red streaks like lines through marble. On the outside of my wrist there’s a half-moon scar where the bone once poked through skin. “The bitch?”

“Yes,” I whisper.

“I already have the kids being moved out of her house. And I have an investigation started on the worker who placed you there and said nothing when you broke three bones under her care.”

“Why are you angry at me?”

“I’m not. I’m angry at the whole fucking world, Jane. You’re just close to me.”

“That’s not—”

A sympathetic smile. “Fair?”

I swallow. “I’m glad you got the kids out.”

“Don’t thank me. Fight me.” He shoves me up against the door, and I make a soft sound of surprise. “Hit me. Beat me. Mark me. Break my bones, one for every one you broke.”

“No,” I say, shaking my head back and forth against the wood. It’s so thick I can feel the striations in the wood as I move. “I won’t.”

“I’d do it, you know that, right? I’d break my own bones. I’d fight a goddamn dragon if it means I could go back and undo that hurt you felt.”

A wild laugh bursts out of me. Or maybe it’s a sob, because I do know that about him. He’s such a bastard to me, but I also see the good in him. The way he cares about me, even though he doesn’t want to. “I know.”

He presses his lips against mine, artless and heavy. “Go on.”

And I do—I bite him, I bite at his lips, not hard enough to draw blood, but hard enough to hurt him. He doesn’t flinch away. He takes my rage and my pain inside himself, and becomes what I need in this moment. My hands turn into fists and I bang them against his chest. He’s strong enough to take it. I’m the endless, frantic sea, and he’s the cliffside, stoic and strong.

He gentles, and I subside with a soft cry. It turns into a real kiss then, something loving. I let out a shaky breath, and he breathes it in. He takes everything I have to give—the anger and the hurt, but also the fear. I’ve lived with so much of it, and he doesn’t turn away.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Beau Rochester

I grew up with a healthy respect for the sea. It was tinged with fear. We all knew men who had gone out to fish and never come home. Every family had lost people, but we did not shrink from the waves. Instead we learned the proper way to ride them.

One weekend when I was out with my father, a storm came in quick.

It had been drilled to us early—never turn your back on the ocean. But the ocean was everywhere on this day. It came up on the sides in heavy waves. It knocked our boat around like it was a plastic toy. Rain came down so thick it felt like a curtain.