AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I’ve been out on a job for the last sixteen hours. When I got back a little over an hour ago, I was expecting pictures from you, showing me you were following the rules I set for you, but you didn’t send me anything, did you? You disobeyed me, didn’t you?”
“I ate,” I pant, hating how turned on I am by the way he’s scolding me.
This shouldn’t be sexy. I don’t know why I’m reacting like this, but it’s like my body has a mind of its own that’s completely disconnected from my head.
“Good, but what else were you meant to do?”
“Send you pictures,” I whisper.
“So why didn’t you?”
“Because…” I trail off, unwilling to truthfully answer his question.
“Etta, I asked you why you didn’t follow the rules,” he growls, his voice so rough I can feel myself shivering just from the sound.
“Because you didn’t reply.”
“What?” He sounds genuinely confused.
“You didn’t reply to the one I sent at breakfast.” Even in the darkness of his bedroom, I can feel the way his expression shutters. “You thought because you got no response you didn’t need to keep sending them.”
He’s not asking me a question; he’s telling me what he’s surmised, and it’s mainly true. But the full truth is, a part of me thought he was playing with me, and I didn’t want to end up as the butt of his joke.
“I had a call out to a house fire in a homestead in the woods. When we got there, the husband was unconscious, and the wife and son were missing. Me and some of my team joined the search and rescue team to find them. I don’t take my cell out with me because it’s dangerous for me to be distracted, but I should have texted you to let you know.”
Shaking my head, I try to argue, but my voice comes out sad and a little pathetic. “I just thought you’d lost interest. I don’t need to be treated like a child who needs to be reminded to eat.” I force out a doleful laugh, trying to dilute some of the tension that’s crackling between us.
“I’ve thought of nothing but you since I left for work two days ago,” he growls, moving closer, so his body is half over mine, his eyes boring into me, demanding I listen to him.
“Oz.”
“Don’t lie to me now when you’ve been so beautifully honest. Have you been thinking about me?”
Unable to speak, I nod.
“Good girl, my dick gets so hard thinking about you thinking about me. Did you touch yourself, imagining it was my hands on you?”
Shaking my head, I tense up, wondering if he was expecting me to. “That’s good. Because no one but me touches you now. You’re mine, aren’t you, Little One?”
I want to say yes. God, how I want to say I’m his, but I can’t. This can’t happen. We have too much awful history, too much hurt between us to just wash it under the bridge. “No, I can’t…we can’t,” I murmur.
“Why?”
“Because—”
He cuts me off before I can speak. “Because we knew each other when we were kids?”
“You hated me so much. You still hated me when I got here.” I try to force as much strength as I can muster into my voice, needing him to hear me. “Nothing’s changed, and I can’t be your punching bag again. I wouldn’t survive it again.”
“I did hate you. So much,” he says, dipping his head and pressing a hot kiss to my jaw. “I hated you for even existing. I hated you for living with my dad. I hated your mom because my dad picked her over my mom. I hated every moment I was forced to spend in that house with you all. And I still hated you when my dad insisted you stay with me. I really wanted to hate you when you texted me to say you were going to stay at a hotel, and I planned to continue to hate you, right until I saw you step off that bus.” With each angry admission he gives, he presses a kiss to my cheek, chin, nose, neck, and throat until my skin is burning from his touch.
“Exactly—” I try to agree, but he talks over me again.
“But then I saw you, and everything changed. Now I don’t want to hate you. I want to look after you. I want to take care of you. I want you to do what I say. I want you to follow my rules. I want you to be my very, fucking good girl, and right now I want to kiss and lick and suck and fuck you until every inch of you belongs to me. I don’t want to hate you anymore, Etta, I want to fucking own you.”
My body thrums with fear and excitement in equal measure. I’ve never been wanted, let alone owned, but for it to be him who feels that way is terrifying. When he didn’t reply to my text this morning, I immediately assumed the worst, I thought it’d all been a game—an unkind joke at my expense. It took all of my self-control not to send him pictures of my lunch and dinner, but I refused to play into this cruelty.
But now he’s here, in the middle of the night, bringing me to his bed and telling me he doesn’t hate me anymore—that he wants me, and I don’t know what to do with that. It would be effortless to just let him take control, but I can’t run away when everything falls apart. This is a small town, I can try to avoid him, but if what he said is true and my boss is his friend, then there will be no way of hiding from him forever.
