The Summer King Bundle: 3 Stories by Jennifer L. Armentrout

by Jennifer L. Armentrout

  I swallowed a truckload of curses, and then round two of why Brighton should just stay safe at home with her nose stuck in a book began. At some point, I plopped back down into the chair, and just…stopped arguing against all the various reasons I shouldn’t be hunting in general and let it all sink in. I allowed it to really sink in that even with them knowing that I was capable of killing and defending myself, they didn’t believe I was capable enough.

  And that didn’t just make me mad.

  It also hurt.

  * * * *

  I didn’t go to the offices of the Order, nor did I go home. After I’d managed to extricate myself from Ivy and Ren—and Faye—I caught an Uber and headed to an apartment in the Warehouse District. I’d run into Kalen while looking for the person who’d not only thrown me under the bus but then backed up over me. Kalen had said he was here, and if he weren’t, I would find him.

  The King and I needed to have a little chat.

  I stalked down the hall of the tenth floor, growing more furious than I even knew was possible. Stopping at his door, I banged my fist on it like I was the police.

  Only a few seconds passed before I heard the click of the lock and the handle turning. The moment the door opened, I didn’t even give him a chance to shut me out. I barged right in, shouldering past the King as I clutched the strap of my purse.

  “Well, come on in,” he stated dryly. “And help yourself.”

  “Plan on it.” My gaze roamed over the exposed brick walls and rather bare space. Like the last time I was here, there was only the large sectional couch and the TV. It still didn’t look lived in. “Hope you don’t have company.” I spun, facing him. “If you do, I don’t…”

  I trailed off, thinking that I probably should’ve looked at him before I forced my way inside. He wasn’t exactly shirtless, but that white shirt of his was completely unbuttoned, giving me an eyeful of his toned chest and a tight, ripped lower stomach.

  God, he had the kind of body that wasn’t even human.

  Probably because he wasn’t human.

  The King arched a brow. “Do you see something you like, sunshine?”

  Cheeks heating, I snapped out of my stupor before I started drooling. “Did you forget how to button a shirt?”

  A faint grin appeared. “Actually, I was going to change it. However, I was interrupted by someone banging on my door like a madwoman.”

  “Oh, I am definitely a madwoman.” I glared up at him. “How could you do that?”

  “Do what?” he asked, leaning against the wall.

  “Don’t pretend like you have no idea why I’m here.”

  “Is it because I outed you?” He crossed his arms, which made his pecs do amazing, interesting—stop it! “For your own safety.”

  Dumbfounded, I was momentarily speechless. “My own safety?”

  “There seems to be an echo in here.”

  “There’s about to be an ass-kicking in here,” I shot back, hands balling into fists. “I don’t need you looking out for my safety.”

  He tilted his head, the grin increasing. “You need someone. Anyone. But a person who is responsible.”

  “Oh my God.” I took a breath. “Do you think this is amusing?”

  “How mad would you be if I said yes?”

  My nostrils flared.

  “Very mad, I see. I can’t help it.” A full smile appeared. “You’re…adorable when you’re mad.”

  “Adorable?” I stomped my foot.

  “See. Just there. It’s cute.”

  “I am going to physically harm you.”

  “Versus mentally?” he queried.

  The fact that he was teasing me, that he wasn’t taking this seriously at all, infuriated me even more. “You had no right to do what you did.” I took a step toward him. “Do you know I spent the last hour or so listening to Ivy and Ren and Faye talk to me as if I’ve never held an iron dagger before? Do you know that if this gets back to Miles, I could be removed from the Order?”

  His gaze sharpened. “Ivy nor Ren would inform on you.”

  He was right. Ivy would never do that. At least, I hoped not. “That doesn’t mean someone like Tanner or Kalen or Faye won’t say something to someone that eventually gets back to Miles,” I pointed out. “What you did was wrong.”

  The King pushed off the wall, unfolding his arms. The shirt parted, attempting to distract me. “You left me no choice. You would not stop. I thought maybe they could talk some sense into you.”

  “Guess what? They didn’t.” I smirked when his jaw tightened. “And I’m going to repeat this for, hopefully, the last time. You do not get to tell me what I can and cannot do. Even if you and I were a thing, which we’re not, you still would not get to tell me what to do. I don’t know who you think you are—”

  “The King?” he suggested.

  “—but you have no say over what I do. Stay out of my way and out of my life,” I told him. “I mean it. There is no reason for you to interfere.”

  The King looked away, a muscle thrumming in his temple.

  Having said my piece, I started toward the door.

  “Has it ever occurred to you that I am trying to protect you? That I’m trying to keep you safe?”

  Slowly, I turned to him. “No. It hasn’t. For a multitude of obvious reasons. And besides that, I don’t need you to keep me safe or to protect me.”

  “Everyone needs someone to protect them.” He tipped back his head, his eyes closing.

  “Even you?” I scoffed.

  “Even me.”

  My brow smoothed out. I’d seen what he was capable of, so the fact that he’d admitted that was rather shocking.

  “I do not want to see harm come to you.” His voice was quiet. “I do not have to be with you to want that.”

  I flushed to the roots of my hair. “I know that.”

  “Then why are you being so difficult about this?” he asked.

  “Because…” I toyed with the strap of my purse. “Because I need to do this. I can’t sit by, not when Aric is still alive. You have to understand that.”

  The King was quiet for several moments, and then he looked at me. “If you knew that someone you…you looked fondly upon was doing something that would surely lead to their demise, would you not try to stop them?”

  “Are you saying you look fondly upon me, King?”

  His head tilted, and then he looked away.

  I laughed, but the sound lacked any real humor. “Yeah, okay. But to answer your question, I wouldn’t stop you, even if I knew it was dangerous.”

  The King’s gaze cut back to mine. “But you’d still look fondly upon me.”

  I gave him a tight-lipped smile. “No. Because it would get you out of my hair.”

  “Now, Brighton, you and I both know that’s a lie.” His chin dipped. “If something were to happen to me, you’d be devastated.”

  I didn’t even want to think about that. I didn’t want to acknowledge how thinking about that made me feel and what it meant. “You value yourself a little too highly.”

  “And you don’t value your life enough.”

  My hand tightened around my purse strap. “I value my life. And I don’t think of myself poorly.” I took a step toward him. “Aric and those fae took more than just my mom that night.” Something in my chest cracked open as I spoke. “They took…”

  “What did they take?”

  I bit my lip. “They took my feeling of security, my belief that I could protect myself and my mom—that I was capable of taking care of her. They took my purpose.”

  “Your purpose?” He faced me fully.

  Swallowing the lump in my throat, I shook my head. I was not getting into this with him. “I’ve said what I needed to say. You don’t have to like that I’m out there, but you can’t stop me. If it ends with me getting myself killed, then so be it. And I don’t say that because I don’t value my life. I say that because at least I would die taking back what they stole from me.”

  “I
can… I can respect that,” he said, his gaze meeting mine. His eyes were pools of golden fire. “But I won’t.”

  For a second, I didn’t think I’d heard him right. “You won’t?”

  He shook his head as he approached me. “I will watch you. I will have others watching you. Every time you step foot on that street in some silly disguise or near any location where Neal has been sighted, I will intervene.”

  My lips parted as disbelief swirled through me.

  “I will become your shadow, always present. That is what I’ll do.”

  “You…you are…”

  “Determined to keep you alive? Yes.”

  “You are out of your mind!” I didn’t stop to think. I cocked back my arm and swung my fist—

  He caught my wrist with shocking speed. “See how easy that was? I didn’t even blink.”

  Fury erupted in me like a volcano. I swung my purse around like a bat toward his big, egotistical head—

  It never made contact.

  The purse flew off my arm and from my grip as if an invisible hand had grasped it.

  “And now?” he asked, his grip on my arm firm but not painful.

  I twisted, angling my body to his as I jerked up my knee, aiming for his groin.

  The King shifted, using his thigh to block my strike. The impact caused him to grunt. “And how about now? What else are you going to do?” He flipped me so my back was to his front. An arm clamped around my waist, yanking me back against him.

  The heat of his skin seeped through the thin material of my blouse, scorching my flesh as his other hand curved around the underside of my jaw. He forced my head back against his chest, causing my back to arch as I met his gaze. “Do you know how easy it would be for me to snap your neck? Just like that?” His thumb slipped over my thrumming pulse. I reached both arms up, one hand fisting the soft strands of his hair. “Are you going to pull my hair, sunshine? Is that your—?”

  The soft click of my blade sliding out of the cuff silenced him. His eyes widened slightly.

  I kept the edge of the blade a scant centimeter from pressing into his jugular as I smiled at him. “What are you going to do, King? I can’t decapitate you from this angle, but I can make a hell of a mess out of your throat.”

  His eyes flared with heat as he stared down at me. I felt his chest rise and fall against my back. I saw his gaze move to where my breasts were straining against the delicate strip of buttons along the front of my blouse.

  It happened so fast.

  One second, we were fighting. The next moment, it all changed. I didn’t protest as he lowered his mouth to mine, utterly unfazed by the iron at his throat. I didn’t say a word or pull away. Anger and frustration crashed into something far stronger, something rawer, and the moment his lips touched mine, I was lost.

  He was no longer the King.

  He was Caden.

  Chapter 5

  The kiss…

  Caden’s mouth moved against mine with lust-soaked intensity. He kissed—God, he kissed like a man starving. He kissed as if he were going to devour me, and I wanted that. I needed it. It was all I could think about. Or maybe I wasn’t thinking at all. Instead, I was feeling. I was just letting myself feel.

  “You drive me insane,” he growled, sliding his hand down my throat. “And even worse, I think I like it.”

  “There is something wrong with you.” I gasped as his hand cupped my breast. “There’s nothing wrong with this.” He squeezed gently, causing a hot shiver to curl its way down my spine. His arm loosened around my waist, and I felt his fingers at the buttons of my blouse. There was a light tugging motion, and then the sound of buttons hitting the floor. “I hope you didn’t like this shirt.”

  “I did.”

  “You’ll forget about it soon enough.”

  Caden was right. I did. He turned me in his arms, tugging the cups of my bra down, and the hem of my skirt up. Before I had a chance to think, his lips moved along the scar Aric had left behind, kissing the faintly pale, slightly raised skin.

  And then he drew my nipple into his hot mouth. I gasped as pleasure rolled through me. His free hand slipped between my thighs, his fingers brushing over my panties before making quick work of them. I had no idea if he tore them off or if they’d simply fallen to the floor.

  He lifted his head, nuzzling my neck under my ear. “I don’t think you have any idea how badly I want you.” His fingers brushed along the center of my core once more, this time with no barrier. “I can’t stop thinking about this.” One finger slipped inside, just a little. I moaned. “About how you felt around my fingers. How tight and wet. How you rode my hand.”

  My entire body clenched. Hot, tight shudders racked my body. Caden’s fingers were barely in me, and I already felt like I might tip over the edge. This was insane. I was mad at him, and he was beyond frustrated with me, but this… God, this felt right, and I was so full of raw, painful need that I didn’t care what came next.

  “Do you want this?” he murmured against my cheek, pressing his finger in just a little farther. “Just say the word, and I’ll make you forget everything.”

  I knew I should say no. I should stop this. But I didn’t. I said, “Yes.”

  Caden moved so fast, my breath got stuck. He lifted me up as if I weighed nothing, and then he was laying me down. It took a moment to realize that I was in his bedroom, on his bed, stripped bare. And then he was naked above me, his erection thick and hard.

  His mouth was on mine once more, his tongue dancing with mine, and then he trailed kisses down my throat, over my breasts, and…then he kissed each of the scars on my stomach with his tongue and his lips. The silent, small act was monumental and brought tears to my eyes.

  I was lost all over again, and it wasn’t just the pure seduction he wrought as his mouth made its way around my navel and then moved lower. It was him.

  Lightning burst through my veins as he grasped my hips, and I felt his breath brush over where I ached the most. There was no time to feel self-conscious, to think that I’d only done this twice before, and both times I’d been so caught up in my own head and the shocking intimacy of the act that I hadn’t enjoyed myself.

  There were no thoughts here.

  Caden captured my flesh with his mouth, slipping in with deep, firm strokes of his tongue. I cried out, trembling as raw sensation threatened to drown me. My fingers curled in his hair as my back arched. I couldn’t move, not with the way he held my hips down. There was no escaping the blissful torture. Not that I really wanted to, not with the way the tension was building and building. Finally, it shattered. My body liquefied as I climaxed, kicking my head back as I moaned his name.

  His head lifted at the sound, and through half-open eyes, I saw that his gaze was luminous. “Say it again. My name.”

  “Caden,” I whispered.

  Never breaking eye contact, he lowered his mouth once more, lapping at the slick moisture. I panted, my eyes widening as he lifted his head and licked his lips.

  Dear God.

  He climbed over me, his attention feral and possessive. Slipping an arm under my hips, he lifted me up. The fine hairs of his chest teased the sensitive peaks of my breasts. His lips claimed mine as I felt him reach between us, and then I felt his thick head pushing in. His skin felt like fire—his bare skin. Concern flared, but reality swept in. Fae couldn’t pass diseases to humans, and pregnancy was so rare that it wasn’t an issue.

  I clutched his shoulders, lifting my hips as he sank in an inch and then two. Caden groaned into my mouth.

  His hips flexed, and then he slid in all the way. The pressure and sudden fullness wrung a gasp from me. It had been a while, like years and years, but the bite of pain gave way to pleasure as he started to move, slowly at first, and then faster. He took me, and I didn’t realize until then how badly I wanted that from him. He pressed his lips to my temple the moment before his thrusts lost all rhythm as his hips plunged into mine. The sounds of our breathing and our wet bodies making c
ontact surrounded us until I couldn’t hold back. Moans I didn’t even know I was capable of left me, and his answering groan was like a match to kindling. I went up in flames all over again, breaking into a thousand tiny pieces. I cried out his name over and over as he drove into me, his arm tightening around me until there was no him or me, just us. He thrust deeply, stilling as he came, shouting my name, his large body trembling with the force of his release until he collapsed, his weight shifting to one arm beside me on the bed.

  His breath was ragged as he rested his forehead against my temple, and I had no idea how long we lay there. Could’ve been minutes, could’ve been hours. Finally, he slid out of me and fully onto his side. He didn’t pull away, though. With his arm around my waist, he tugged me against him so that my chest was pressed to his.

  I could feel his heart pounding just as fast as mine.

  The reality of what had just happened was slow to take hold as his hand slid up and down my thigh and hip. The only thing I could really focus on at first was how callused his palm felt, but then my brain finally pulled itself out of its multiple orgasm-induced stupor.

  We’d had sex.

  And not just normal, everyday sex, but sex that had started with us arguing and, somewhere in the middle had turned into me pulling a dagger on him, and then… He’d kissed me, and it was like a switch had been thrown for both of us. How all of that had come about, I really had no idea, but I…I didn’t regret it, even though the logical voice in the back of my mind told me that everything could change in a matter of moments. I just…I couldn’t find it in me to lambast myself for this at the moment.

  But I didn’t know what to say or do as my fingers rested on his side. Did I get up, thank him for the orgasm, and then remind him to stay out of my business? Or did I linger? I couldn’t do that. Tink was leaving this evening.

  “You okay?” Caden asked.

  I leaned my head back so I could see him. Those amber-colored eyes were only half open as they focused on me. “Yeah. Are you?”

  “Barely.” His full lips tipped up in a half-grin that did funny, crazy things to my heart. “You haven’t been with someone in a while, and I wasn’t…particularly gentle.”