“Does it even matter to you what I think or feel?” she suddenly asks.
She still hasn’t touched her food.
I put my fork down. “Of course, it does,” I reply. “But you need to understand that you’re mine. And I take what I want, when I want it.”
“Even women … of course …” She rolls her eyes.
“No.” A lopsided grin forms on my lips. “Just you.”
She narrows her eyes at me. “Lucky me.”
“Yes. Lucky you. Now eat your breakfast before it gets cold.”
She grabs her fork and knife and starts cutting into her bacon as if she’s butchering a live animal, glaring at me with those charming eyes that are dead-set on imagining my head on her plate. But that’s okay. I can take the heat.
“Lucky?” she murmurs under her breath. “Lucky?”
“You’re lucky I didn’t go any further,” I reply.
Her nose twitches in that cute way it always does when she’s mere seconds away from screaming. But she won’t because she knows she can’t manipulate me, and that only seems to infuriate her more. But I don’t mind … I adore it when she gets all worked up over something she has no control over.
What she fails to understand is that it doesn’t matter whether I touched or kissed her. What matters is that I take what I want when I want it, and she needs to accept that.
But I’m willing to be patient with her because I’m her first, and her body still needs to get used to the feel of a man owning it and the pleasure that comes with that. I’ll keep tending to her, slowly pushing her like a flower yet to bloom.
Chewing a bite of my bacon, I take delight in the way she looks at me. Memories of last night resurface. “Last night, you seemed to be enjoying it thoroughly…”
“What?” she stammers, almost choking on her bacon. “Nonsense.”
“Right,” I mumble. Does she think I’ll believe that lie?
“You didn’t ask me if I wanted you to,” she says.
“I don’t need to, and you did … otherwise, you would’ve pushed me away, but you didn’t,” I say with a smile. She looks irritable as if she’s caught trying to lie her way out. “I could’ve gone further. I could’ve played with your pussy until you came,” I say while stirring my coffee, and her eyes follow my every move. “Would you have liked that?”
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.