Mastering Her Heart Read online

  I don’t worry about money, only because my mom still underwrites my life, and that makes me feel less than adult, I suppose. I have friends, such as they are but I love them.

  Family, okay, well that’s a fairly empty hole right there. Except for Maisy.

  But all in all, my life is charmed, so why do I feel like this? Like I’m clawing at the rock walls of a well, looking up at the world above. I’m a spoiled brat, that’s why. Stuck on the one person that I shouldn’t want and can never have.

  As much as I’ve tried to forget, it — I mean he — keeps coming back.

  In my dreams. In every other thought. I imagine him.

  What he would be thinking. Doing. Saying to me. All these years later, he’s still with me more than he should be and I need therapy.

  Or pharmaceuticals.

  “Excuse me.” A male voice from behind my left shoulder drenches me in ice. Followed immediately by flames that flicker around my feet then rise up and over me in a whoosh that nearly causes me to black out. “You shouldn’t be here.”

  C H A P T E R T H R E E

  WILLOW

  A vacuum of silence envelops me. I’m squirming in my chair and my eyes flutter in disbelief. The most stunning man I’ve ever seen is standing over me.

  An entire lifetime comes alive in this single moment. Sitting here in this wickedly beautiful room, surrounded by people who are confident in their own proclivities and lust. It sets an obscene backdrop for the rush of primal, animal desire that shakes me. Desire for the man that I called ‘Dad’ for a few years of my life. A moniker I gave him freely, even after he entered my life for such a short time.

  “Willow.” He says my name as though he doubts I’m real.

  “Pike.” His name feels unnatural slipping from my lips, but he is no longer who he once was to me and I’m not sure who he is now. Or what he’s doing here.

  For a moment, I forget how much I missed him, lost instead in the green pools of his familiar eyes. The lines around his mouth a set a bit deeper now. His face is pure masculinity. Imperfect and yet beyond stunning. His full lips look warm and inviting. His left eyebrow sits slightly higher and at a different angle than the right. The silver scar on his cheek still visible from the day he slipped on my stuffed hedgehog I left on the kitchen floor. He fell into the corner of the cabinet, slicing open his skin and gaining him six stitches.

  He never made me feel bad about that. He just said he would have a permanent reminder of me every time he looked in the mirror.

  One, two, three, four, five...the counting he taught me to do long ago starts immediately, instinctively.

  The dark arch of his eyebrows, set on a brow that juts out, square and proud and unashamed. The years have been good to him and I fight the thundering storm that is growing into a tempest down deep in my center.

  Ice. Think of ice. Glaciers. Siberia. Anything that’s colder than your lust right now.

  “Something you need?” My voice turns to granite.

  A flicker of gold dances in the green of his eyes before a sadness swoops down over his face. I feel the change in him. It’s palpable. And the thump in my chest gathers in my throat preventing any more words from forming.

  “You look more beautiful than ever, Caramia.”

  “Don’t call me that.” I bite back.

  I grip the sides of my chair and scoot myself backward. Pike is standing too close for me to think straight. But, just like he always did, he reads me before I even read myself.

  “Don’t retreat. Please.”

  I fight against the involuntary smile, hating my body for reacting the way it is. Only Pike would use such precision of language. Most people would say ‘don’t leave’, or ‘hey, wait’. But not him.

  His hand comes out to twist in a curl that is hanging in a spiral over my left eye. He used to do that before. Wrap one of his fingers in a curl of my hair and tell me I was the prettiest girl in the world even when I knew it wasn’t true.

  Intellectually, I understand I was too young for there to be any interest on his part for me. I was a child when we met and I know he is a man of honor. He would never have seen me as more than what I was: his stepdaughter.

  But that hasn’t prevented me from the heartbreak I’ve felt over the years whenever his face comes to mind. How I wished whatever it was between us could have been so very different. Even as my brain tells me it couldn’t be. Wrong or right. I wanted him to want me. And not just as a legal obligation.

  “I’m here with friends.” I see Adam towering over most of the crowd, heading back to the table. I grab my glass and empty the last of the water, trying to cool the flames that are melting me from the inside out.

  “Caramia, I’ve missed you. Come with me to my office. Give me a few minutes.”

  “Hi.” Murphy saunters straight to Pike and offers her hand. “I’m Murphy, remember me?”

  “Pleasure.” Pike replies in his signature elegant politeness, but he doesn’t take her hand, doesn’t even seem to notice it hanging there in the space between them. “Welcome to Club Tower. I’m Lord Tower.” He knows my friends, but he’s in some kind of character. It’s a bit odd and at the same time, this persona only makes him more wildly attractive.

  He nods toward Adam and Whitney, who are staring at him like he’s glowing bright orange or something. Earlier they had described the story of the owner of the club to me as though he was some sort of mythical God. At the time, I shrugged my shoulders and scoffed that someone would call themselves by such a pretentious moniker. They had any idea the owner was my former stepfather.

  Lord Tower.

  But now that I see Pike standing here, he is Lord Tower and it fits him as well as the tuxedo he wears.

  He’s that stunning. People stop and turn when he walks by. It’s been like that from the time I met him when I was eleven. The day my mom called me to her office, had the limo take me from school and meet her there. To introduce me to my new stepfather. After the deal was already done. Romance was not a part of their bargain.

  “Hello.” Adam laughs as he crosses his arms and doesn’t hide the way he takes in every inch, from head to toe, then back up to settle his eyes on Pike’s crotch.

  Suddenly, I’m eleven years old again. That same electric rush covers me that I felt even then, only now it’s zapping me in places that have my thighs tight and my mouth dry. I hate to say, my eyes drop with Adam’s to the fly of Pike’s pants.

  Only, I’m remembering the time I waltzed into the workout and sauna room just off our indoor pool area without knocking. The enormous bathroom in there had this shower with these pulsating jets I just loved. It was just weeks before Pike left. I was sure Mom and Pike had both left for work, but I found out quickly just how wrong my assumption was.

  Enter sixteen year old me into the bathroom, then there I am, standing face to face with my naked stepfather, my eyes stuck on the inches of length that hung down to his upper thigh. When those inches filled and stood tall in a matter of seconds, something inside me changed. I think something inside Pike changed as well, but even when he tried to talk to me about it, I would shut down and make excuses to get away.

  What he didn’t know, what he will never know, is how I hate to admit how many times I’ve pulled that memory back out of storage as I lay in bed at night, my own fingers dancing between my legs. Imagining the sound of his voice in my ear, telling me things a stepfather shouldn’t.

  Touching me in ways that always made me ashamed.

  They also made me cum.

  Daddy.

  “Willow.” Pike says my name and I turn six shades of crimson as my three friends look from Pike to me, then back realizing I’ve been lost in my own world for who knows how long.

  “Everyone,” I swoop my hand out in front of my friends before turning it palm up toward Pike’s chest. “You remember my stepfather Pike Richards. Adam, this is Pike.”

  I hear Whitney snort. They know him already and my faux pas makes it clear how flustered I
am.

  “Yes, we remember your stepfather.” Murphy juts out a hip and steps in front of Adam to position herself at Pike’s left shoulder.

  Adam’s hands come up to the sides of Murphy’s head and jerk her right back into place. Adam is doe eyed and giving up his point position next to Pike brings out his inner bitch.

  “Your stepfather?” Adam bites his lower lip as his eyebrows jut upward. He’s the only one of us that hasn’t had the pleasure of meeting Pike before. “Willow failed to mention her stepfather owned this club.”

  “Former stepfather actually.” Pike corrects with a soft smile my way then continues. “Willow did not know about this place.” Pike raises his chin and looks at me, while putting his hands down into the jet black pockets of his trousers.

  The last thing I notice before my panties soak through and my knees threaten to buckle, is the way Pike subtly shifts his hips and adjusts those inches of length I recall so very clearly.

  C H A P T E R F O U R

  PIKE

  “You shouldn’t be here.” I repeat unable to stay the fury of why she is here.

  I fight to hold back the anger in my voice even as I savor the sight of her. Her tank top swoops low enough for me to see the way she’s filled out. Rounded and tempting. My mouth waters thinking of drawing the peak of her nipple onto my tongue. Setting my teeth there tighter and tighter until she gasps and begs me to stop.

  I’ve garnered a private suite for her friends in order to get her alone. After settling her three companions, I set about the task of getting Willow to my office because I need her away from here and alone with me like I need my next breath.

  “Oh, I shouldn’t be here?” She huffs. “Is that right?”

  The way the right side of her face pinches together when she’s trying to be tough only sends more blood driving and pounding into my already full hard on.

  The moment she walked in here, the mixture of emotions sent me into a spin. Having the joy of seeing her beauty again, and at the same time battling the roaring, possessive beast inside me, has my head pounding.

  I don’t want her here. In my club. I don’t want anyone else looking at her. Wanting her. Thinking of the same things I wish to do to her. Only me. That’s the way it should be.

  “No, Willow. You shouldn’t.” The hypocrisy is not lost on me. I get that. It doesn’t make any difference right now.

  I think this lifestyle is a beautiful dance when done with respect and reverence, but that doesn’t stop the bubbling jealousy inside me. The thought that she would be with anyone else. That anyone else would even be thinking of her in that way. It is impossible for me to fathom.

  “Come with me princess.” She gives me a look of defiance but I know she wants to come. I can see it in her eyes.

  “Maybe I don’t want to come with you.” That little brat inside her only makes my heart beat more wildly.

  “Maybe you don’t. But you will.” I use the tone in my voice that she needs and it works.

  Stepping forward without another word, I swallow and soften my hand into the small of her back. Guiding her through the crowd, each patron steps aside to give us room. I don’t miss the whispers, or the looks. The club goers have never seen me escort a woman through the floor here before and many of them have known me for years.

  “You were over the top with my friends. Giving them a suite is unnecessary. They have money.” She turns to look up at me as we step into the private elevator, heading for my office. The elevator doors silently slip shut, leaving us encapsulated in the lush black velvet walls and low seductive symphony of Vivaldi, drifting down from the speaker above our heads.

  “It takes more than money here to garner a suite Willow. Everyone here has money. I will be sure they receive the VIP treatment. I wanted to do it. It would be rude to take you away from your friends without leaving them with some consolation prize.”

  “Well, like I said, just a few minutes. That’s all. Then I want to get back to my friends.” Her lips pull together as she shifts her eyes from me to the black granite under her canvas shoes.

  Her earthy style does nothing to hinder the seductive sway of her hips. Her ass is calling for my mark, and forgotten dreams of all the ways I’ve ever imagined putting it there flare up in my mind.

  She is an absolutely stunning mess as usual. Much to her mother’s disappointment, Willow’s own style was clean and fresh. Unassuming. Not made up and glamorized.. Her fascination with fashion was somewhat of an irony because she cared little as to how she looked. But her artistic clothing designs are a far cry from how she chooses to present herself.

  Tonight Willow is make-up free, her warm brown hair in waves looking windblown and perfect around her shoulders.

  “How was Paris?” I don’t want her protests to continue, so I change the subject.

  Her hazel eyes light up as they meet mine for a split second. Her hair is an inch or so shorter than the last pictures my private detective sent to me before she left for Europe.

  She’s been in the sun as well. Her nose is dotted with a few additional freckles and the highlights in her warm brown hair frame her face in gold.

  “It’s Paris. I hated it.” Her sarcastic reply hides what I think is pleasure regarding my interest. The music in the elevator spins around and seems to gathers her perfume sending my senses into overdrive.

  If she only knew. In the years between when her mother and I dissolved our partnership and she left for Paris, I’ve kept track of her every day outside of the first two months I was gone. I tried to stay away at first, of course, but I failed.

  I have files on my computer of all the information the men and women I hired to follow her reported to me. It wasn’t until she left for Paris that I stopped. My obsession consumed me and I knew it couldn’t go on. I sat in my limo at the airport after I followed her that morning, watching as she disappeared into the terminal.

  And again, I tried to let her just go. Hoping beyond hope that she would find her own happiness across the ocean, far away from me.

  The doors to the elevator open into my office. The walls are white, contrasting with the black of the rest of the club. Thick, cream colored rugs overlap on the wide planks of the wood floor.

  This is my sanctum. An original Picasso hangs behind my desk. The bright primary colors pull Willow’s eyes as I key in the lock code on the elevator before turning to the open door of my office. It shuts down any possibility of someone else with the clearance to come to my office. Lights up the red ‘do-not-disturb’ light outside my door. The one I’ve only ever used once before.

  The day I returned from the airport, after she left. I sat in my office for two days, unable to leave. Unable to come to terms that she was really gone. It took Sir James on the third day to talk me out of my stupor. From then on, I’ve lived but not well. Not with any emotion. Until today.

  “What would you like?” I step behind my desk, my fingers on the keyboard of my computer, pulling up my email.

  Her eyes widen and I realize the broad spectrum of my question.

  “To eat.” I add as I type into the IM program on my screen, ready to order her anything and everything my chef can produce.

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “When and what have you eaten today?” I clear my throat.

  I think of eating her. Feasting on the world’s most delicious treasure. The countless times I’ve dreamt of slipping my tongue slowly between her folds swim back into mind, and my cock loses control. I hold back the catch in my throat as the tightness gathering in my balls threatens to make me grunt with need.

  She’s being difficult on purpose, but that only drives my aching need to have her. Images of unwrapping her, of tasting her pink nipples, fly around in my brain. But it’s more. I need to know she’s cared for. And the flood of my obsession returns a thousand fold.

  “I haven’t seen you in...how many years? This is stupid. I’m going back to my friends.” She tosses her head back and forth then settles her angry h
azel eyes on me. “Why do you care what I’ve eaten today, Pike?”

  She says the words but doesn’t make a move to turn toward the elevator. Her mixed signals mimic my own distress about how much I’ve wanted my own stepdaughter for too long.

  “Is that your question, Willow? What do you really want to ask?”

  I quickly type in a request for a buffet of food to be delivered, as quickly as the staff will prepare it, then look back to see her settle on one hip. Her hands are gripping the strap of the purse she’s carrying. It’s not just a purse, it’s in the shape of a book.

  Not just any book, it’s ‘Jane Eyre’ and it’s all I need to know that tonight is not coincidence. It’s destiny. A destiny put into motion the first time I saw her sweet face.

  She lets go of the strap and one hand comes up to rub the corner of her left eye. She’s tired. I want to put her to bed. Tuck her in and let her sleep next to me until I know all her dreams, then only wake her when I can make them all come true.

  “I don’t want to ask anything.” She gives me a resigned smile. “There’s nothing I need to know. You seem to be happy. That’s good. I’m glad. Really.”

  Her words fall around my feet like shards of a mirror that once reflected back the shame of my feelings for her.

  “Willow, I never stopped caring for you. I never stopped...” Loving you.

  My heart breaks again as I let my voice trail off, but her eyes narrow. I step out from behind my desk, making my way toward her, dizzy with her scent. It’s pulling at my heart and driving the beast inside of me nearly out of his mind.

  “I know. It’s okay. Mom can be...Mom.” She shrugs.

  The day I left it was her mother who spoke for her. Letting me know in no uncertain terms our business deal was over—and that included any contact with Willow.

  At the time I was so lost in my own self-hatred I thought it was what was best for Willow. That I should just disappear and leave her to find a life without me. My shame as the growing longing for my own stepdaughter consumed me told me I was doing what was best for her. And in my life, that has been the only thing that ever made sense to me. What I clung onto.