The Owner of His Heart

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN





NATHAN hadn’t been sure what he would do when he got to the Sinclair mansion. Wringing Layla’s neck came to mind, so did physically removing her from the state, so she would never be able to make him feel this way again. He was sick of waiting for the betrayal. He knew if his brother so much as saw Layla, who was and had always been the complete opposite of the woman he was now planning to divorce, he’d fall back in love with her. And once he found out Layla hadn’t had anything to do with her father’s blackmailing scheme, it would all be over. Layla, for her part, would only see Andrew as everything Nathan wasn’t—nice, ethical, and almost as considerate as she was. They’d be the “perfect couple” again, leaving Nathan to fester in a pool of jealousy and rage.

No, she needed to leave Pittsburgh before Andrew returned to initiate his divorce. She’d leave that very night if it were up to him. But when he walked in to the receiving room and found her standing there, not even in her scrubs, which she must have changed out of as soon as she cleared the apartment, his mind went red.

He stalked over to her. “What are you doing here?” he asked, grabbing her by her upper arms.

She yanked one arm free and used it slap him, so hard the resounding crack of her hand hitting his face split the air. “No, you don’t get to be mad,” she said to him. “You deliberately misled to me. You used me, and the only reason you’re angry is because I found out.”

The rage morphed into something else then, something as ugly as the accusations she was throwing at him. He grabbed the wrist she’d used to slap him, and when she tried to yank it away from him, he threw her over his shoulder, not caring how it must have looked to Diana.

“Put me down.” She banged her fists against his back as he carried her out of the house and back to the guest cottage, which Andrew and Diana still hadn’t updated from the days when he lived there.

It looked exactly the same as it had back then, down to the framed 70s movie posters on the living room walls. He didn’t put her down. He didn’t even break his stride as he fireman carried her through the house. He didn’t stop until he deposited her on the bed. Then he got on top of her before she could sit up, straddling her and pinning her wrists above her head with one hand.

“Say you belong to me,” he said.

“Let me go,” she said. “I can’t believe you did that! Diana probably thinks we’re both crazy right now!”

“I don’t care,” he growled. “Say it.”

“No, I don’t belong to you! I don’t belong to anyone but myself.” She struggled against his vice grip on her hands. “And maybe Andrew back in the day. But you forgot to mention that, didn’t you?”

Rage went off like a bomb in his head. “You are mine,” he said. “You were always mine.”

He reached underneath her leggings and curved two fingers into her hole, which despite her anger was already warm and dripping. “You didn’t get this wet for Andrew.”

She looked away, obviously frustrated her body was responding to him even when she didn’t want it to. “How would you know?” she asked him, through clenched teeth. “Maybe I did get wet like that for Andrew. Maybe I got even wetter. Maybe all of those sexy dreams I had were about him.”

“Don’t say that.” He kissed her roughly, his fingers still working inside of her. “Don’t ever f*cking say anything like that to me ever again.”

“I’ll say whatever I want,” Layla said. “I’m sick of being nice to you when all you do is lie to me. I can’t wait to leave this city and you behind.”

His soul screamed when she said that. “No, you belong to me. You’re not like this with anyone else. Prove it, come for me right now.”

Layla bit her lip and squeezed her eyes shut, obviously trying to fight of the coming orgasm. But it was too late. He could already feel herself clenching around his fingers. She moaned in embarrassed protest, but came anyway, underneath him, still dressed in all her clothes, with nothing but his hand inside of her.

Now he unfastened his own pants. “I shouldn’t have let you go three days without this.” He released his penis, which had been rock hard since he found her in his brother’s receiving room. “Look at how bad you want me now. You’re hot and begging for me.”

“F*ck you,” she whispered.

“No, I’m going to f*ck you until you say what I want to hear.” He pulled her tank top over her head, then used it to bind her wrists to one of the posts that made up the bed’s headboard. “Then maybe I’ll let you f*ck me, but not until you admit you’re mine. Not Andrew’s. Mine.”

***




When he said that, Layla could feel herself growing slick with want for him again. She couldn’t believe it. As much as she despised him right now, she still burned to have him inside of her. His fingers hadn’t been enough. Nothing but having him fully embedded in her folds would be enough to satisfy her aching need.

But she shook her head against the rough desire burning through her, making her breasts feel heavy inside her bra, which he then proceeded to strip off of her. It was gone before Layla could even think to protest its removal. He took one pebbled nipple in his mouth, swirling his tongue around her large aureole, and applied so much pressure with his clamped lips that it walked a thin line between pleasure and pain.

She arched underneath him and he responded by pushing a knee between her thighs, making her open wide for him before he slipped inside of her with a long, slow thrust that set her teeth edge it felt so good. He lifted one of her legs over his shoulder, angling himself so he hit her G-spot every time he rocked into her. Then he stared at her hard and angry, until she came a second time.

“How many times do I have to make you come before you admit it?” he asked.

She stared back at him then, eyes defiant. “You might be able to control my body, but you don’t control me. I had every right to come here and ask questions, especially if your brother and I used to date. I don’t know why you want to keep us apart, and I don’t care, but I’m not going to stop looking for him until I find out what happened ten years ago.”

She had thought he was angry before, but nothing compared to the look that came over his face when she said that.

Without warning, he pulled out and flipped her over. Her tank top stretched and twisted to accommodate her new position, and the next thing she knew, he’d pushed her butt into the air, entering her from behind, his passage ensured by the fact that she was dripping wet from the two times she’d already come for him.

“You want to know what happened?” he asked from behind her.

But when she tried to raise up to look back at him, he pressed her chest into the bed, pinning her there even as he stoked the fire inside of her with his merciless thrusts. “No, stay there.”

She wanted to fight him on this, but he felt so thick inside of her, filling her up again and again as he slid in and out of her wet tunnel. She had to use all of her concentration to resist coming a third time.

“You want to know what happened?” he asked again, from his now fully dominant position over her.

“Yes, I want to know,” she said, tearing up. He wasn’t just punishing her for going behind his back to find his brother, he was humiliating her, and she was letting him, because Nathan, more than anyone she’d ever met, made her feel powerless, like she couldn’t control her thoughts or body when he was in the room.

He bent over her, fingering one of her nipples as he stroked into her with slow, deep thrusts. “Here’s what happened. You dated Andrew, and pretended you were too good of a girl to let him touch you. But one night when he was out of town, you claimed to love me, let me f*ck you in that window seat you dreamt about, then we moved to this very bed, where I f*cked you two more times. Then when Andrew returned the next morning, you went right back to him like nothing had ever happened between us. Because you are a beautiful liar, who used to get off on having two brothers chase after you before you fell and conveniently forgot every duplicitous thing you had ever said or done to me. That’s what happened.”

Even without having her own memories of the events, she knew what he said to be true as soon as the words came out of his mouth. And she understood now the vague feeling of guilt that always cropped up when she tried to get him to talk about their past.

She again tried to look up at him, but he kept her pinned, breasts pressed to the cool covers, while he rutted her from behind, like an animal. Finally he yelled out and spilled into her, nearly overflowing her hot tunnel with his load. She came, too, then, unable to fight it any longer, and she tremored around his cock, all but drinking in his seed as he released wave after wave of it inside of her.

She thought that would be the end of it, but he remained hard inside of her. “Say you’re mine,” he whispered, his voice harsh and ragged.

***



Nathan knew he should have let her go after the third time. He had never taken any woman that roughly, and he realized he was out of control at this point. If he had any sense of self-preservation, he’d get up, zip his pants, leave the room, and put as much distance between him and this woman as possible, considering she drove him crazy with both lust and anger.

But the animal that was in control of him now wouldn’t let logic intercede. He wanted her. He wanted her on his terms, without fear of having his brother steal her away again. “Say you’re mine.”

“Nathan,” she said, gasping for air underneath him. “Please let me up.”

Coming back to himself a little bit, he released her, pulling out of her and sitting back. Then he waited to see if she would say the words he needed to hear or if he’d need to provide her with yet another example of how very much he owned her body.

But when she sat up and turned to face him, her wrists still bound to the bed post, he realized his mistake, because there were tears in her eyes. And just like that, she reversed the power between them.

“I hurt you,” he said. He released her hands from the tank-top handcuffs. “I’m sorry I did that. I’m sorry I hurt you.”

“No.” She folded her arms over her breasts and clasped her hands underneath her chin. “You didn’t hurt me.”

“You’re lying. I did hurt you.”

But she guided him down to the bed, and arranged it so they were facing each other with their heads on separate pillows. “I just want to look at you. Just lay here with me, okay? You didn’t hurt me, I promise you. I would have told you to stop if you were hurting me.”

“Then why are you crying?” he asked. On one hand he wanted to bury himself inside her and punish her some more for seeking out his brother behind his back—again. On the other hand, he felt like punching himself for causing her any pain. It was hard, he was discovering, to feel like someone’s victim and protector at the same time.

“I’m crying because I hurt you,” she said. “And I’m sorry.”

She scooted closer, and pressed her soft lips to his. “I’m sorry,” she said again.

And this time it was she who guided his him inside of her, stroking her hips against his in penance for something she couldn’t remember doing. “But I know myself well enough to know I didn’t lie to you. My father used to tell the women he dated that he loved them just to score more money off of them. He broke a lot of hearts, and I promised myself back when I was a little girl that I would never pretend to love someone. Love is a beautiful gift, and I don’t toss that word around lightly. I never have. So if I told you I loved you, I must have meant it.”

“Don’t say that.” He shook his head, fighting the ray of hope that lit up his heart before he could contain it.

But she shook her head, too. “No, I have to say this, because you need to understand. I love you now, and I’m sure I loved you then. I’m sorry if I wasn’t strong enough to leave Andrew for you.”


Compared to the angry, primal sex they’d just had, Layla’s soft velvet strokes against his dick shouldn’t have excited anything within him. But he felt his balls tightening as she conquered him with the one word he hadn’t been prepared for.

“You don’t have to love me back,” she said, her breath hitching as her own orgasm built inside of her. “I understand why you can’t love me the way I love you, but I need you to know how I feel. I do belong to you, but only because I love you now, and apparently, I loved you back then. I’ll always love you, Nathan.”

That declared, she kissed him, and his orgasm burst through him, touching every nerve in his body before he released into Layla, kissing her back with all the love he’d been trying to deny ever since she’d come back into his life.