Total pages in book: 86
Estimated words: 80919 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 405(@200wpm)___ 324(@250wpm)___ 270(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 80919 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 405(@200wpm)___ 324(@250wpm)___ 270(@300wpm)
Instead, I had taken her, bent her body to my will, and used her.
The fact that I’d made her come for me over and over didn’t help. I hadn’t done that to give her pleasure. I’d done it to make her cunt grip my cock tighter and to make sure she knew I was the only one who could make her feel that way. It was just another way to exert my power and control over her.
Fuck, no wonder she’d run. I hadn’t given her any other options.
I had thought I’d started to make up for that with the way we’d been in front of the fire. That had been a classic romantic moment not fueled by anger, rage, or even lust. That had been the only time we’d been together that was about more than my control.
It wasn’t enough. It didn’t matter that she’d matched me touch for touch. She’d still been following my lead, been the perfect little submissive girl. She deserved better.
My fists trembled as I tightened my grip on the steering wheel, heat flushing my face. More than once, I considered pulling over as my stomach rolled in disgust at my own actions.
There wasn’t time. I needed to reach her. I needed to make this right. Even the idea of having to live my life without her made a cold sweat break out over my skin as I screamed at the car in front of me for being stuck behind the same traffic accident.
“Fucking move!” I screamed again as we inched up another few feet and stopped. The driver in the car I yelled at flipped me off and the people in the car next to mine were staring.
“What the fuck are you looking at?” I snarled at them. It wasn’t their fault I was behaving like a monster. It wasn’t even the fault of the person in front of me. He was stuck in the same never-ending traffic jam I was.
This was my fault. All of it. Amelia leaving, my father still in control of my business and my empire. Everything was on me, and I was losing my fucking mind, banging on the steering wheel, yelling obscenities that would make even the vilest of sailors stand up and slow clap.
Self-control was something I thought I had, but apparently not when it came to her. Amelia Mae Astrid was my new favorite vice, the one thing that would make me lose my composure and my goddamned mind. Years spent perfecting the art of never letting my emotions show, never exposing my weakness to anyone, and here I was heading to New fucking Jersey in a panic. I was raging like a lunatic because I’d fucked up with the one person who didn’t deserve my wrath.
By the time I was speeding through East Brunswick, I realized it didn’t matter if I wanted her, not really, because I wasn’t good enough. I didn’t deserve her, and she certainly didn’t deserve to be shackled to me. She deserved someone who always treated her with love and respect.
When I went through Cranbury, I prayed it wasn’t too late, and by the time I merged onto the 195, I realized that if she would let me, I would spend the rest of my life making up for the mistakes I had made. All she had to do was give me a chance. I would prove that I could be a man worthy of her love.
I wanted to be a better man for her.
When I finally arrived, I alerted my security team and ran into the park.
“Where is she?” I asked when a man in dark glasses and a black suit approached me at the entrance. Inconspicuous he was not. Fuck it, it didn’t matter.
“I left her sitting by the lake. Looking at a sculpture of some people in the park. She has been there for the last hour, not speaking to anyone or doing anything, just sitting.”
He handed me the map, and when he pointed out the area she was in, I immediately knew which sculpture she had been sitting with. The way she had talked about that Manet painting at the Met, the different things seeing that naked woman in the park made her feel, there was no other choice. She had to be there.
She loved that painting, and if she was leaving me, leaving the life she was born into, it made sense that was the painting she would want to think on.
I sprinted all the way across the park in the blistering heat and suffocating humidity, dodging hanging purple flowers, insects, and aimlessly wandering tourists. This place was hellish, but if she liked it, then it was my new favorite place. I would bring her here every fucking weekend.
When I found the sculpture, she was gone. The only sign she had ever been there was a small dent in the grass where she must have sat.