“She didn’t do anything. I told you, it was Castle.”
“Well pull it together. You can’t allow her to distract you from your goal.”
I hang up, boiling with everything unsaid that I wanted to scream into the phone.
He’s the one who forced me to marry Aida, and now he’s pissed off because she’s not a little chess piece he can shuffle around the board, like he does to everybody else?
That’s what I admire about her. She’s wild and she’s fierce. It takes everything I’ve got just to get her to wear a damn dress. She’d never grovel in front of Henry Castle. And neither will I.
I head upstairs to our bedroom, expecting her to be brushing her teeth and getting ready for bed.
Instead, she pounces on me the minute I come inside the room. She kisses me deeply, pulling me toward the bed.
“Aren’t you tired?” I ask her.
“It’s not even midnight,” she laughs. “But if you’d rather go to sleep, old man . . .”
“Let’s see what it takes to tire you out, you fucking lunatic,” I say, throwing her down on the mattress.
Aida is still deep asleep when I have to get up for my meeting with Henry Castle the next morning. I pull the blankets up around her bare shoulders, though it seems a pity to cover up all that smooth, glowing skin.
She looks exhausted after the romping we had last night. We spent an hour doing something that was as close to wrestling as fucking. She was testing me, testing whether I’d let her take control, testing my energy and my stamina.
There was no fucking way I was tapping out first. Every time she tried to overpower me, I pinned her down again and fucked her ruthlessly, until we were both panting and dripping with sweat.
I could see how it excited her, feeling my strength against hers, knowing I wouldn’t give an inch to her. She likes to push me, to see how far she can go before I snap. She does it in and out of the bedroom.
Well, I’m a fucking mountain that can’t be pushed. She’ll learn that soon enough.
And so will Henry Castle. I know he thinks I’ve come to his office to grovel, but that’s not fucking happening.
In fact, when his receptionist tells me to sit and wait outside his door, I tell her, “Our meeting’s at eight,” and I sweep inside.
Just as I suspected, Henry is sitting behind his desk, doing bugger all at the moment.
He’s a big man, completely bald, well-muscled but also fat. He wears loose suits with wide shoulders, enhancing the impression of his bulk. His eyebrows look very black and rather out of place on his otherwise hairless head.
“Griffin,” he says with a stern nod.
He’s trying to set a commanding tone.
In fact, he gestures for me to sit down opposite his desk. The chair is low and narrow, deliberately inferior to the one that Henry himself sits in.
“No thanks,” I say, remaining standing and leaning casually against the side of his desk. Now I’m the one looking down on him. I can tell it annoys him. Almost immediately he stands up himself, on the pretext of looking at some of the photographs on his bookshelf.
“You know Oliver is my only son,” he says, picking up a framed photo of a boy on a beach. The boy is running down toward the water. There’s a house behind him—small, blue, almost more of a cottage. The sand comes right up to its steps.
“Mm,” I say, nodding noncommittally. “Where’s that?”
“Chesterton,” Henry says shortly. He wants to turn the conversation back on topic. I draw it out on the tangent instead, to increase his irritation.
“You go out there a lot?” I say.
“We used to. Every summer. I just sold it, though. Would have done it sooner, but Oliver made a fuss. He’s more sentimental than I am.”
Henry sets the picture firmly back down on the shelf, turning to face me again. His thick black brows hang low over his eyes.
“You assaulted my son last night,” he says.