I Can't Own You? (BOOK 1)

75 (NEW)

KAREN

I didn't dare to step foot out of the grand bedroom when he returned home. Like a prisoner in a castle, I had to endure abuse. At least I'm alone. Gladly, there were no more beatings. I hadn't seen James this violent since our fifth date, where a barman met an ass beaten...over something so simple to fix. His drink was made wrong.

I thought at that moment that he was a red flag...but then again he had money, looks, and was so spontaneously romantic and dominant, that I gave him another chance. It felt like love. Big mistake, lesson learned. Rich men have problems...but it's not like I can just walk away. We have Anna to think about. She loves him more than me...yet I spent more time with her, baking, reading bedtime stories. Still, I'm only her second choice.

Did she sense that I did something terrible? Anna had to pick up on our moods. Our tones.

I pour a glass of red wine from the room's bar. Sipping it, as I stare around the cream and brown accented room. At paintings that James had bought. Abstract art. That's when he was fun...before he took a spot with the mafia.

Before he became a shitty, busy husband.

Coming home late...smelling of beer and perfume. "Celebrating with the Dons," he had said. Cheating isn't celebrating. Then the worse followed, like a fucking mystery thriller. The slutty messages from sugar babies. The second phone...the barely interacting at home.

The lost connection.

Eating dinner in silence...faking a happy couple when Anna was around. At least we shielded her from the gloom.

I pace the room, wearing a lacy, silver nightgown, hoping my husband would come in and rekindle our attraction. It's long gone. No intimacy. We sleep in separate wings of the mansion because I had a single affair...while he had plenty.

He stopped paying attention to me.

I slept with a man named Bob. I met him on tinder and swiped without having dignity. He was an office manager of a steel company, very low on looks and unfit in body type. But the way he glorified my beauty, the way he texted sweet poems...his eyes marked me as an oddity...as a goddess.

I felt powerful and sexy while with the out of my league man. The sex was even more enthusiastic than what had become of James's. It wasn't a soulless gesture, a duty, or a quick hit and quit.

I had a baby...so down there was very different, my husband wanted it tighter while Bob didn't care. But of course, good things never last, especially with James. He tracked my phone.

A memory bubbles my mind:

Bob atop of me, rocking the bed into a squeak. Moaning rawly, whipping a thick cock into my loose lady hive. I sing along with him, finding his simple actions as magic, feeding off of attention and spoiling. He rides me like a bull. I reach climax, vibrating heatedly.

Then Bob is thrown off of me, and there stands a pumped up James. The devil present in him as slammed the naked guy against a wall repeatedly. I jump up, protesting with a scream, only to get slapped hard to the floor.

Whiteness flashes over my eyes, the room pulses with my head.

James pounds Bob's face, relentlessly, savagely...not seeming to stop any time soon.

He doesn't stop hammering his fists into Bob's head, even when he falls unconscious. Bob's body flops around like a puppet after a while, before dropping like a clump of clay.