She Used Me for a Dare… Now I Own Her Mother

Chapter 536: Between Us

Natalia watched the shock settle on Edward’s face and smiled, slow and mischievous, as if she had been waiting for exactly that look.

”Don’t you want to know what happened to me and where I have been these two days, Edward?” she asked.

The sweetness was still there, but it no longer hid the pleasure underneath. She was enjoying the way he stood frozen in front of her, caught between the wife he remembered and the woman who had just offered him another man.

Edward opened his mouth, but no voice came out.

”I was with him.” Natalia kept her eyes on Edward as she said it. She did not look away. She wanted him to see that she was not ashamed of the answer.

Edward stared at her, the shock on his face turning sharper.

”Who?” he asked. ”Who is this man?”

Natalia’s smile deepened, slow and almost fond, as if the question itself pleased her.

”That is a surprise I will keep for later, Edward. But I can tell you this. He is very young. Not older than our son. And still...”

She paused. A breath left her as if the memory had touched her body again. Her eyes half-closed, and for a second the sweet wife in front of him looked like a woman remembering a man she could not forget.

”Oh God, Edward.”

The words came out low, almost hungry.

”You should have been there. You should have seen how masterfully he seduced me. Before I even realized what I was doing, I was already in his bed.”

Her hand rose to her chest as she spoke, fingers resting over the silk as if she could still feel the other man there. Her eyes softened with the memory, and that only made the words worse.

”I played along at first, thinking it would be fun. I thought I was the one in control. But in no time I was so overwhelmed that my mind went blank. He fucked me so hard my voice turned harsh from begging him not to stop. I pleaded with him to let me go, and even then I did not want him to listen.

Natalia stopped. She looked at Edward as if the thought had only just come back to her, then stepped in close and reached up to adjust his collar. Her fingers moved slowly, almost tenderly, as if she were only putting her husband back in order.

”You have wanted a man like that for a long time, haven’t you?” she asked softly. ”A man who can break me the way he did. A man who can make me scream until my voice is gone, while you stand there and watch.”

She smoothed the fabric once more and smiled up at him.

”He is the man who can make that dream come true, Edward. I will arrange the meeting soon. You will see it with your own eyes.”

Edward stood there and listened to every word. His own wife was telling him, without any shame, how another man had fucked her too well. Not even a man her age, but a boy no older than their son.

His face could not settle on one expression. Anger, shock, shame and under all of them sat something worse, something he did not want her to see.

Excitement.

He should have been ashamed. A husband hearing this should have stopped her. Instead his heart was racing so hard it hurt. Not from rage but from the pictures she was putting in his head. He could already see her on that bed, hear the scream leave her throat, hear the moan break, hear her beg a younger man not to stop.

He wanted to be in that room. He wanted to stand there and watch every second of what she had gone through.

Edward shook his head and forced the pictures out of his mind. He would not embarrass himself any further in front of her. He drew a slow breath, straightened his shoulders, and put the hunger away before he spoke again.

”You still have not told me why you changed so much,” he said. His voice was flat now, stripped of everything he did not want her to hear. ”It cannot be because you had a good time with a boy.”

Natalia smiled at the question, bright and pleased, as if he had finally touched the truth.

”You really hit the bullseye, darling. He satisfied me so completely that the blockages inside me broke. I broke through. Not one realm, but two. I am at the Peak of the Apex Realm now, and the change you see in me may be because of that.”

She said it the way a Steele wife announced a victory for the house, not the way a woman confessed what a younger man had done to her body. The information was too large for shame. It belonged to the family now.

Edward stared at her in disbelief. The color drained from his face, and for a moment he looked less like the master of the Steele house and more like a man who had just heard something that should not be possible.

”What?” he asked. ”What did you say? You progressed not just one realm, but two? How can that be possible?”

Natalia did not argue with him. She lifted her hand instead.

A thin thread of light gathered at her fingertips, then spread along her palm like living gold. The air in the room tightened. Edward felt it at once, the weight of refined Vital Essence, denser and cleaner than anything he had ever felt from her before. There was no mistake in it. No trick. The woman standing in front of him had changed at the root.

Natalia watched his face and smiled, pleased and quietly victorious.

Edward believed her then. The shock broke into something raw and bright. He let out a breath that was almost a laugh and stared at her as if the Steele house had just been handed a future it had been starving for.

”Natalia... this is the best news you could have brought home,” he said. ”Do you understand what this means for us? I have not been this happy in years.”

She stepped closer and looked him directly in the eye.

”I know, Edward. I know how much pressure you have been under. I know how hard you have been working to push this family to the top, and how worried you are for this competition. You needed someone strong enough on our side. Someone who could stand as a deterrent and keep Richard’s men from taking total control of our family.”

Her voice softened, but it did not lose its certainty.

”Don’t worry. As long as I am here, you do not have to carry that alone. I will handle them. And it will not stop there.”

She held his gaze without blinking.

”I can feel it. If I stay in contact with that man... if I feel those emotions again and again... I can break through to the next realm.”

”Really... beyond the Apex Realm...” Edward whispered.

He knew what that level meant. If she could truly reach it, the Steele family would no longer stand beneath anyone. Richard’s men, the competition, the years of pressure... all of it would change.

Natalia watched the understanding settle on his face, then her voice hardened.

”Yes. And I want one promise from you, Edward. From now on, I do not want you touching me. Do not even try. Not if you want that breakthrough to happen.”

Edward became serious at the warning in her tone.

”What do you mean?”

”He is a prideful man,” she said. ”If he learns that any other man still puts his hands on me, he will not let me near him again. He will abandon me.”

Edward stared at her. The words landed strangely, sharp and cold after everything she had just given him. He wanted to hold her. She had never looked like this before, and the husband in him still wanted at least that much... her body in his bed for one night.

He could not risk it.

If keeping his hands off her was the price of the Steele house rising, he would pay it. He could sacrifice that much for the family.

If that young man had broken Natalia’s blockages through satisfaction that deep, then perhaps the same path was not closed to him. If he could have the satisfaction he had wanted for years... if he could watch her break the way she had described... maybe his own wall would move too.

The thought was greedy. It was filthy. It also felt possible, and that was enough to keep it in his head.

Natalia looked at Edward and smiled.

He was already agreeing. He was already calculating what the Steele house could become. Up until now her skills had barely worked on him. He had always been careful, always proud, always a little harder to bend than the others. Now he was not even questioning the absurdity of it.

It was working now.

”One more thing, Edward,” she said. The smile stayed, but her voice turned clean and final. ”This talk remains between us. No one else. Not the elders. And no one is to know about my breakthrough until I decide they should.”