Chapter 18: Empire of Desire: Chapter 17

A mistake.

That’s what it should be.

Every second from the moment she walked inside and I lost my fucking cool to when she detonated in my hold as if she’s waited her entire life for me to come along.

As if she’s been saving up for me, for the moment she’d explode all around me, strangle my fingers, and refuse to let them go.

And it all started with when I saw her hopping off the kid’s motorcycle. Her lips were red and her hair was blown by the wind and she was smiling. Wide.

I should’ve looked the other way and kept my distance, as usual—that’s what I’ve done ever since I moved in. I make sure she has everything she needs from afar. Like her stock of vanilla ice cream, her milkshakes—vanilla again—and her favorite fruit, bananas, just because there isn’t a version of vanilla fruit.

Martha has specific orders to let me know when those things run out so one of us can take care of getting more.

It’s all because of Kingsley, I told myself. If it were him, he would’ve made sure she had her comfort food if she was feeling down.

In my head, I used that excuse again when I stood there in the middle of the fucking darkness and watched her knee-length skirt barely covering her ass because she was on a not-some-normal bike, clinging to the kid.

The safe, boring kid that she said she didn’t fucking want but was with him anyway.

Then he had his hands on her, touching her hair, pulling her to him, and hugging her. And I was about to go out there, using King as an excuse again, since I know for a fact that he hates it when she rides on a motorcycle. He was anal about removing anything dangerous from her life.

But fuck that, it wasn’t because of King.

It was because of me.

A grown man thought about beating up a kid. It was as bad as that and I had to take a moment to not act out on the thought.

And that’s when she came inside. Everything after that was a chain of events. As illogical as they were, they just came together naturally.

I’ve never liked anything as illogical as when she was moaning the house down because her tight pussy could barely take in my fingers. The thought of my dick inside that narrow opening has been plaguing me since I left her room as she watched me with those droopy chameleon eyes that were mostly green.

That’s how they look when she’s aroused. When she’s talking about fingers and being full and fucking urges.

Sexual. Plural.

And now I’m having urges myself, but they’re not sexual. They’re violent, like when I saw her climbing off the bastard’s bike.

Because she’s with him right now.

The reason she left early this morning, without having breakfast, is because she was eager to get to the firm and meet with him.

He somehow got an internship. Somehow, as in, I didn’t even know he was applying at W&S. Though I should’ve seen it coming and offed him from the beginning.

Christoph is his name. And no, I don’t make it my mission to know the name of every intern, but I needed to get this Christoph’s file.

And yes, I might’ve wanted to find a loophole to kick him out of the program.

I study the files HR sent me while I stare at the intern area from my position around the corner.

Gwyneth and the not-some-normal bike kid are sitting together, bumping shoulders and laughing with one another.

I glare at the associate attorney who’s supposed to scold them for slacking off. Or Knox—who took Christoph in, no surprise there—to tell his intern to get back to work.

Neither of those happen, obviously.

I stare back at Christoph’s file and my jaw tightens with each piece of information I read. Grades, interview questions, and attendance are ticked high. Extremely promising is the note HR left about him.

Maybe I can send him to another branch and get rid of him, once and for all.

My conspiracies are put on a halt when my phone vibrates with a call, blocking my view of the email, and Mrs. Weaver flashes on the screen.

That’s how Sebastian and I refer to Mom behind her back. She’s the last person I want to talk to right now. Or ever.

As soon as I hit Ignore, she sends a text.

Mrs. Weaver: Did you just ignore me, Nathaniel?

Obviously.

Mrs. Weaver: You can play hard to get all you want, but I heard something alarming and I need confirmation before I break all hell loose. Call me back immediately.

Something alarming, as in, someone probably asked her if I’m gay. That’s what her socialite friends spout off about me when I refuse to meet their prim and proper daughters. That I’m gay.

I ignore Mom and her shallow entourage. The thought of her and Dad brings forward nausea I’ve been trying to get rid of for fucking decades.

But Gwyneth and the not-some-normal bike kid are still talking and laughing. They’re still trapped in their own world as if the rest of their surroundings don’t exist.

So I pick up my phone and call her.

Her smile drops when she sees my name on the screen, and she swallows a few times before she picks up.

“Hello?”

“Have you finished the report I sent you this morning?”

“I’m getting there.”

“Getting there doesn’t mean it’s done, Gwyneth.”

“I’ll be finished in a few.”

“My office. Now.” I hang up and take the elevator to the highest floor, then head to my office and sit behind my desk.

Soon after, there’s a knock on the door before Gwyneth comes inside.

There’s a slight blush on her face, probably from all the laughing with Christoph. The thought of him listening to the musical-like quality of her voice and the cheerfulness in it tightens my jaw and fills me with sudden yet potent rage.

She stops in the middle of the office and wipes her hand on her skirt. It’s shorter today and her shirt is tighter with the first two buttons undone. But her white sneakers are still the same, as if she can’t part with them.

And in a way, she can’t. Ever since she started having a defined taste, her obsession with things slowly began to take shape, too. I remember the first time she had a milkshake, when she was three or something.

King and I were studying for our college exams in his small apartment that he moved into after high school. At that time, he shot himself in the foot by firing the thousandth sitter because he didn’t trust them around her—not that he trusted anyone. As a result, he had to study, feed her, change her, and play with her.

Needless to say, I was dragged into it and had to indulge her so she’d stop fidgeting and being generally irritable. Not only was she especially demanding but she also refused to nap and give us a break.

“Stop whining and go to bed, Gwyneth,” I scolded when she kept hanging onto King’s leg.

Her chin trembled and she started crying so hard as if the world was ending. King gave me a dirty look, kicked me in the chin, then held his little princess and started comforting her.

She wouldn’t stop fucking crying, though. Because she needed to sleep but refused to. Whenever I glared at her, she hid her face in her father’s neck and clung to him as if he were a shield.

In search of a solution, I recalled that Sebastian liked stuffing his face with milk when he was younger, so I went to the kitchen to heat some but stopped. King did heat her a bottle, but it wasn’t doing any good.

So I improvised and made a milkshake instead, then added a random flavor available—vanilla.

When I gave her the baby cup, she clung to King, sniffling like the most wronged person on earth.

“It’s okay, Gwen, you can take it,” King said in the nice voice that he only used with his daughter. “If Uncle Nate yells at you, I’ll punch him in the face.”

“No, Daddy,” she whispered. “Don’t hurt him.”

I smiled at that and she returned it before carefully taking the cup. The moment she took her first sip, she froze, her eyes gleaming with all three colors before she grinned widely and finished it in record time.

Three minutes later, she was finally out and let us study properly.

It’s crazy to think she’s now a student herself, about our age back then.

Her gaze meets mine, still as bright and innocent as when she was a kid, though it’s a bit sadder now. “You asked for me?”

“Why do you think I did?”

“Because of the report?”

“Correct. Why isn’t it finished?”

“I’m still working on it.”

“Are you sure you’re doing that or are you flirting during work time?”

“I wasn’t flirting.”

I stand up and stride toward her. She visibly shudders, her cheeks turning a deep shade of red.

“What did I say yesterday?”

“W-what?”

“After you came all over my fingers, what did I say?” I extend a hand and she closes her eyes, her lips shaking before they press together, but I reach around her and click the door shut.

At that, she startles, her eyes opening and moving up to look at me. There’s an expectation etched on her delicate features mixed with polar opposite uncertainty. She’s always been a spectrum of wild, uncontained emotions.

“What did I say, Gwyneth?”

“That you will…take care of my sexual urges.”

“And do you know what that means?”

She shakes her head slowly.

“It means you’ll break up with that boyfriend, effective immediately. You’ll stop flirting with him or getting on his bike.”

Her lips tremble, but there’s a fire in her eyes, the blue trying to overthrow the green and smother the gray. “No.”

I grab her by the chin and use it to lift her head. “What the fuck did you just say to me?”

“I like the back of Chris’s Harley and you’re not going to take that away from me.”

“You will end it and that’s final.”

“No.”

“You don’t want me to fucking make you, Gwyneth.”

I can tell she’s equal part scared and excited by the way she flinches a little.

“Do you want me to make you? Is that it?” My voice lowers as I rake my gaze over her modest curves and those legs that have been over my shoulder not twenty-four hours ago.

She watches me intently but doesn’t say anything, so I continue, “Do you want me to pound my fingers into that tight pussy of yours again until you scream? Or maybe I will use my cock this time and fuck you so thoroughly, you won’t have the space of mind to think about any kid.”

Her lips part open and she sucks in a sharp breath before she says, “If you want me to stop, then you stop as well.”

“Stop what?”

“Picking up Aspen.” She clinks her nails hard, the sound escalating with every second. “Stop smiling at her, flirting with her, all of it.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“I saw you yesterday. You went out together for lunch and never came back.”

“Because we had meetings with judges.”

She scrunches her nose like she used to do whenever Martha made the mistake of not including her favorite drink with her meal. “I still don’t like it—her in your car, I mean. So if you don’t want me on the Harley, don’t let her in your Mercedes.”

I can’t resist smiling at how she negotiates. She’s all uptight and serious, too, making a mountain out of a molehill. All her assumptions about me and Aspen are unfounded, but I don’t correct her, because she looks weirdly adorable right now.

“And then what?”

That catches her off guard, causing a frown to crease her forehead. “Then?”

“What happens after Aspen isn’t in my car and you’re not on the back of the bike?”

“I…don’t know.”

“Are you going to behave?”

I hear the sound of gulping as she stares up at me with wild eyes. “Should I?”

“Good girls do.”

“But I’m not.”

“You’re not?”

“Yeah, I’m a bit crazy. You know, like when I kissed you that day. So I don’t think I can be a good girl.”

“No, you can’t.”

“I’m a bad girl, though.”

Fuck me, the way she talks in that aroused tone makes my dick so hard, it’s painful.

“You are?”

“Yeah.”

“We have to do something about that. I can’t have my wife and intern be a bad girl.”

“I agree. You should do something.”

I let go of her and her shoulders hunch, in disappointment, I believe, but she has no fucking idea what I have planned for her.

Because I crushed the last log of guilt I have and I’m going to swallow her, consume her until she realizes she shouldn’t have messed with me in the first fucking place.

Until she regrets not choosing safe and boring.

I stride back to behind my desk, not missing the way her eyes follow me, then sit down and beckon her over. “Come here.”

She approaches me slowly, like a scared kitten, but she isn’t. Scared, that is. Not in the least.

Her eyes have brightened and her clinking has stopped.

I open my legs and tip my chin at the space between them and she complies, her cheeks hollowing with how she sucks on their insides. “What are you going to do to me?”

“I’m going to teach you to behave.”