Rule's Seduction (The House of Rule 4)
His mouth clenched in lines of aggravated tension. “I don’t think you’re fully grasping your situation—or your future.” A dangerous aura lit his features as she felt his muscles tense before he continued, “Let me explain more fully. The wedding ceremony that you willingly took part in made you mine. You live where I live—you sleep in my bed.” His fingers tightened in her scalp. “You’ll follow my orders in all things—and this is the way it will be for the rest of your life. Do you understand?”
She ignored the warning voice that whispered in her head to stay quiet, but she managed to control her voice to project only a mildly aggrieved tone. “I don’t like that idea, Max—I’m not used to it. What if your orders are wrong?”
“Wrong?” He looked momentarily mystified. “I’m not known to make mistakes. Understand what I’m saying, Erin. You will take direction from me and you’ll be happy here. In fact, before this is over, you’ll be begging to stay with me. Anything less is unacceptable.”
Abruptly, Erin gulped down a quivering breath at the thought of giving her life up to a man intent on his own way. She needed to know the truth so damn bad it was killing her. She took a breath and said, “It’s not fair that you won’t tell me what you have on my brothers.”
“Life’s not always fair, even though you’ve probably never been introduced to that simple truth until now.”
He didn’t know everything about her. “No? My father died when I was eighteen. How’s that for not fair?”
“Yes. We all lose those we love eventually. Death is part of life and, unfortunately, you learned that early. But, otherwise, you’ve been sheltered your entire life. Your brothers took care of you. Everyone has always taken care of you. They put you through college—you didn’t even have to wait tables for spending money as so many young people do. Your family even devised a job for you after graduation so you wouldn’t be burdened looking for work.”
She lifted her chin in a combative gesture. Asshole. How the hell did he know everything about her? He would have to pick on the one thing that made her feel inferior. She’d never felt as if she were standing on her own two feet, and by the looks of it, she wasn’t going to get the chance any time soon. “And now you want to take care of me—you expect to make all my decisions for me.”
“I will take care of you—and we will start with this room. It is yours to do with, as you like. If you want to rearrange the furniture, get someone to help you. If you want to change anything else, all you have to do is speak up. It will be as you wish, Erin.”
“But only to a certain extent.”
“That is undoubtedly correct, but why let it be a point of contention between us?” As he surveyed her, a light of heat appeared in his eyes, as his touch seemed to become both gentle and threatening at the same time. “You need to come to understand the path you set yourself on when you married me. You will sleep in my bed until the day one of us slips away from this earth—and you will be happy with the arrangement. That is the way it will be—I demand it.”
How could he demand she be happy and expect it to be so? She exhaled a shallow pant at his description. “So I guess that’s it.”
“Yes, that’s it.”
His eyes dropped to her lips and Erin felt a moment of pure confusion—how could she want his lips on hers? That was just messed up, right? As she shook her head, trying to clear her scattered thoughts, his hand ran down her arm where his fingers twined with hers. “I need to get back to work—I have a conference call in about fifteen minutes. You can amuse yourself here for a while, yes?”
Amuse herself? “Sure,” she answered half-heartedly.
He studied her for a moment. “If you’re bored you can sit in my office and watch me work,” he said with a wicked smile. “Sit on my lap even, for a front-row view?” His eyes darkened with a teasing, sexual glint.
On his lap? Was he kidding? “N-no. I’ll be fine here.”
His eyes lingered on her, almost regretfully. “I’ll see you at supper, then.”
“Okay.” At her agreement, his eyes fell to her lips as if he were going to kiss her and Erin steeled herself for the hit she was about to take to her equilibrium. But all she felt was a brush of his mouth against her forehead before he turned and left the room.
****
The Rule Tower: The next day
Damian Rule paced across the carpeted expanse of his office while he waited for word from his secretary that his brothers had arrived. There was no fucking way they could figure this shit out over the phone. After his mother’s call the previous day, he’d been chomping at the bit over the delay—waiting almost a full twenty-four hours for his brothers to arrive back in St. Louis had been about twenty-three hours too long.