by C C Monroe
“Yes! You said fucking yes! God damn it, baby! I feel like a little kid! I’m so fucking excited!”
“I thought you would never ask. I know we talk about it a lot, but I never thought you would balls up enough and ask me,” she says unaffected, calling my bluff.
“Oh, is that right sassy little shit?” I squeeze down on her knee, causing her to erupt in a fit of giggles.
“That tickles, I was joking!”
“Say mercy!” I squeeze harder this time leaning forward and adding my full bearded face in her neck.
“Mercy, baby. I’m sorry!”
“Tell me you love me and my dick is big,” I mumble biting her neck.
“No, that’s crude!” she giggles, half appalled but still amused.
“I’ll eat your pussy good tonight.” Lana’s a dirty woman and her favorite thing is a good oral fixation.
“Cheater! Okay! I love you and your dick is huge!”
“Damn, you dirty minx!”
“You’re a pervert, I think that makes you worse than me!” She squeezes my biceps as I drop my head to her shoulder and laugh. The overwhelming excitement calls to me, giving me a moment of solitude.
“You love it.”
“More like loathe it.”
“Yeah, sure, let me hear you say differently while I’m balls deep in you tonight.”
“Slut,” she calls me out.
“Minx,” I retort and just like that we laugh together. Lifting her carefully I carry her sweet little ass to the bedroom.
I’m sluggish going into work. Kingston worked and twerked my pregnant body into all new positions. I think he’s been reading some kind of ‘How to fuck a pregnant woman many different kinky ways.’ I feel like that’s something my horny alpha man would do, but I digress.
I also have a huge secret weighing heavy on me and I slept barely two hours last night, the secret eating at me. Every morning last week, I would wake up to go get my morning tea and go down to get the mail and there was some sort of “gift” from the one man who tormented me for years waiting at my door. The man who completely destroyed my ability to truly love or trust anyone.
Joel.
Flowers with notes about missing me. Pictures from when we were dating with crypt dark poems on the back. Pictures of my bruises, the ones he would take after he’d beat me and I’d fall asleep. He kept them as some sick token of our terrible relationship. I burned them all, destroying anything that I could so Kingston wouldn’t know.
He would snap, completely fall into a manic rage if he saw the things Joel was sending or worse, saying. Every time I blink I see little images in my head of the words he sent me.
You know I think about you and your fat thighs wrapped around me. Try to lose some weight before I come back to get you.
I blink, only to see another one.
I hate the way you’ve been acting lately, fucking that prick Kingston behind my back. What should your punishment be? You did behave for quite some time when I carved a nasty scar into your hideous skin.
I try blinking a few times and almost vomit when the image he took of me naked and bruised, a broken woman under the hands of an evil man, flashes in my mind.
“Lana, you okay? You look pale! Did you fall? Lana!” I open my eyes and assess my surroundings, I’m on the ground beside my car. In my array of flashbacks, I must have crumpled to the ground, crouching in fear.
Shayla is at my side, bending down slowly, the best she can for being seven months pregnant with twins.
“I’m fine, I just got a little dizzy that’s all. It’s nothing really.” I shake it off, attempting to stand. She keeps a steady hand on my arm and once I’m standing at full height, I lose my breakfast, puking all over the street next to my car.
“Okay, you are not fine. Come inside, let’s get you some water.” Guiding me on my shaky legs Shayla and I walk through the back entrance of the store. Stepping into our office, Shayla lays me on our gray button couch and heads to the fridge to get me a water bottle.
“I’m fine, Shay, just morning sickness,” I advise her. I know if I even whisper a word of his name, Shayla will have Kingston here in the blink of an eye. Have you seen that road runner cartoon? Yeah, faster than that thing.
“Lana, you were mumbling when I came out there. I heard you say it.” I face her my expression disoriented. Hers is sculpted into horror.
“Said what? What are you talking about?” I question, sitting up to take a sip of the water. The cool liquid feels good running down my dry throat. I make sure to take little sips and not huge gulps, last thing I need is to vomit on my pregnant best friend. She would probably lose her stomach and then it would look like a scene right out of the exorcist.
“You said his name.” She looks like a ghost, her face pale and her eyes distant.
“Whose?” She shakes her head, looking up at the ceiling, fighting back her tears.
“Joel’s. You said his name. My brother said the nightmares were getting better. Are they still bad? What did you see that brought you to the ground and made you sick? And please, Lana, don’t lie to me.” Her eyes search mine, big green irises, matching Kingston’s, looking at me for answers. Maybe I can tell her. If I beg her not to, she might not even tell Kings. I can hope, right?
“Listen. It’s been a rough week. I was getting better with my nightmares, but then..” I stop, my chest feeling heavy with anxiety, my palms growing damp from sweat, this is a lot harder than I thought it would be.
“Lana, please,” she pleads, her hands covering my fidgeting ones.
I continue, “Joel’s been sending me things, awful things. He found me, he’s not over me...” I say on one long breath, barely pausing between each thought.
“What?” Standing up I watch Shayla grow angry, her neck turning red—just like Kingston’s does. “Have you told Kings? And how can he contact you, he has a no contact order on him?” she rambles off questions, pacing our office.
“I haven’t told him and I’m not sure I’m going to. Plus, I think he has an outside party doing it, because he said things in that letter that only someone on the outside would know.”
“Excuse me?” She looks at me bewildered, stopping all her movement and towering over me, her big belly only a foot away from me.
“I know. I think I’m being followed,” I answer, just as shocked.
“Not that part. I meant the part where you just said you aren’t going to tell my brother!” she bellows out, her once worried exterior now overcome with anger. “You’re going to freaking tell my brother!” she hollers, reaching into her back pocket to retrieve her phone. Reaching out in a panic I go to grab the phone, but she’s faster, pulling it out of my reach. “Stop!” her yell echoes in the room, halting my movement. I’ve never seen her yell like that, especially at me.
“We’re not doing this again, I will not cover for that pig. For years I kept my mouth shut for you to keep you safe and it did the opposite. It nearly killed you! I promised myself I would never let anything hurt you again and this is me keeping my promise, so Lana, so help me God if you try and lie or stop me, I will handle this all with or without you.”
I take a hard, dry swallow, thick with trepidation. She’s right, I was wrong to hide this information from Kingston and honestly he deserves to know. He needs to know. The people I love were just as tortured as I was those years with Joel. I have no right to damage them more and drag them through hell again. I need to shut up and let the people who love me protect me and keep me safe. I can’t go back to living in the shadows, I can’t go back to being a prisoner of abuse.
I don’t know if it’s the rage in her voice or the sincerity in her eyes begging me to let someone help me, but every fiber in my being is telling me to let her call him. Call my King and have him protect his Queen.
I signal her with a nod telling her to do it. The room is silent, I can hear the faint sound of ringing in the background, hear that perfect voice after the third ring. The beacon calling to me i
n my time of need.
“Hey sissy, what’s up?” His deep voice booms into the phone, he sounds calm, not as cheery. That means he’s working hard, concentrating on something. I love the way his forehead creases when he’s working hard, the way his hands own whatever it is they are touching, writing, or doing. I get this feeling in my chest that he isn’t gonna be mad, maybe worried, but never mad. That knowledge brings me a peaceful calm.
Remember Lana James, not every man is gonna punish you for doing something they don’t agree with.
“I need you at the boutique now, Lana needs our help. It’s about Joel.” I hear his voice come barreling through the phone, work mode gone, panic in full fledge.
“Did he hurt her, did someone hurt her?”
“No, she’s safe, she just needs to tell you something. Hurry and get here.”
“On my fucking way.” He sounds livid and just as I’m about to second-guess my choice in letting her call him, he surprises me.
“Put L on the phone.” Handing the phone to me, I lift it to my ear slowly.
“Hello.”
“Hey, do me a favor. Tell me you’re okay.” He sounds lost, out if his mind worried. I instantly rush to tell him what he needs.
“I’m okay.”
“Call me baby.”
“I’m okay, baby.”
“Fuck, I love you, Lana. I’m gonna be there in a few minutes okay?” He can’t see me but I nod.
Click.
Pulling the phone from my ear, I look at her home screen. My palms are shaking even more than they were minutes ago, my leg fidgeting and my knee bouncing up and down in rapid motions. We’ve been sitting here in silence for ten minutes, me nervous, Shayla in her own frazzled world.
“I need to go get ready to open the store, I’ll be back in a minute.” Giving herself a brief moment, she looks me over one more time before she turns and leaves. I’m just about to get up and make an exit for it when the door to my office flies open, hitting the wall behind it. Kingston announces himself with a wild presence.
“Lana, baby what’s wrong?” He runs with urgency to me, dropping to his knees and placing his warm, strong hands on my thighs. I bring my hands to my quivering lips and sob, all my fear and guilt unleashing.
“Joel, he’s been sending me things, terrible things. Pictures, flowers, letters...I couldn’t tell you because I was scared you would do something rash,” I say into my palms, still crying, my tears cascading down my face and over the ridges of my fingers.
“Lana, you need to tell me these things, you can’t hide this shit from me.” He curses, but he’s not angry, the only mood emulating off him is concern.
“You almost killed him, Kings. The doctor said you nearly rattled his brain loose. I didn’t want you to do something stupid when he got out.” I move my hands and right when they’re clear from my face, he and I both start wiping away the mascara run tears forming down my cheeks.
“Lana, that’s my choice to make, protecting you is my first priority.”
“I can’t lose you Kings, I can’t. You’re my world, I need you, our little guy needs you—this family needs you.”
“Oh, baby, I’m not going anywhere. I have a detective on this.”
Wait what? I must have heard him wrong. “You have a detective on it? What am I missing here Kings? What aren’t you telling me?” I ask pulling my hands away from him. He didn’t like that, grabbing my hands back he squeezes them even tighter.
“Don’t do that shit, don’t pull away from me. I’m gonna tell you something and you’re gonna listen and not freak out.” The razor-sharp cut in his voice sends goosebumps down my skin, like they are lavishing me. The kind that makes you shut your mouth and listen.
“Before we went to Utah to tell your parents about the baby, Joel sent something to you and I got it before you did.” He doesn’t let our eye contact break except for the millisecond it takes him to blink. “I threw it away because you were finally living again. So I destroyed it and then decided I would see Joel when I was in Utah, tell him to back off. Then more images came and I was convinced, beyond determined, that I needed to protect you.”
I gulp, the image of Joel in an orange jumpsuit only a few feet away from Kingston. My savior, my hero—my King. Those two shouldn’t even be able to breathe the same air, Kingston is too perfect to share any space with that man.
“It didn’t work, he said he wasn’t going to give up on coming after you so I threatened him and then went to see Detective Henson.”
“And what did he say?” I ask anxiously, scooting to the edge of the couch.
“He said there is no proof since I destroyed the items and Joel hasn’t sent out packages from prison since he’s been there. Which tells me it’s an outside job.” I feel the familiar burn of acid building in my upper chest, my throat becoming tight and sensitive, the overwhelming knowledge that I’m about to vomit is strong.
I leap from the couch and dig my whole face in the wastebasket, emptying nothing but bile. I have thrown up so much today there’s nothing left. I’m dry heaving at this point.
“Lana, it’s okay. Take deep breaths.” The door creaks and I know Shayla’s back, which means our employee came in to cover. I look over my shoulder when I hear another male voice, one that isn’t Kings.
“Shit, is she okay?” Trey asks, his arm around Shay as they all watch me toss my cookies—how embarrassing.
“She’s fine. Lana, baby, you need to lie down and drink some water,” Kingston coos in my ear, holding my hair back with one hand while the other rubs tiny circles on my lower back.
Doing what he says, I grab the napkin from Trey and lie back on the couch. Looking up I see three beautiful people standing there looking over me like guardians. I can’t believe I have had such perfect people in my life as friends, as family—as supporters for so long.
“We can talk about this later if you want,” Kingston suggests, rubbing his hand up and down my arm from where he kneels on the floor next to the couch.
“No, better to get it out now rather than later.” I close my eyes and try to gain equilibrium again, opening them again when the dizziness finally subsides.
“You don’t have to L, not if you aren’t ready,” Trey’s voice is low and comforting and I smile at him, loving how protective he is over Shay and me. I never had a brother, being an only child and all, but Trey was close enough to me to be one.
“I know, I do. I just think it’s time to hear it, obviously this is more serious than I had thought,” I state looking back and forth to all three of them.
“Okay. After I told the detective and the Seattle PD they said they need substantial proof, part of that being if he sends anything else.” I nod, urging Kings to continue. “Well, when you destroyed everything that destroyed all evidence.” How could I be so stupid? Why did it not cross my mind to keep those things and turn them in? To stop covering for that monster?
I guess I’m still used to protecting him—to lying to myself and others.
“What do we do now? What did he send me? You know, whatever you gave the detective?” I pivot to Kingston.
“Don’t worry about it, baby,” he’s curt.
“Kingston, don’t hide things from me. I opened up to you, you need to open up to me. What did he send?” I see the absolute fear storming in his eyes, his face slowly losing its cool tone and gaining a deeper shade of red.
“Lana. Don’t,” he warns and I sit up.
“Do not push me out,” I push back.
“Give us some space.” He turns to Shay and Trey and they nod, giving no argument and standing. He keeps his head turned focusing on them while they leave, my eyes never leaving his profile, assessing the tick in his jaw.
“Kingston,” I remind him when they are no longer here.
“He sent pictures of you.”
“Okay, why is that something you’re scared to t..”
“Nude pictures, Lana. You were naked, beaten and defeated.” Bounding away from the c
ouch he gets up and I watch in horror, while processing the information, as he takes the gold lamp off my desk and throws it with force against the wall. It shatters into pieces and I choke up, losing any mobile skills to move, talk, even gesture to him. I know what pictures he’s talking about, I thought I destroyed them all. How did he still have copies?
“I had to stare at fucking pictures of you, beaten and helpless. Scared, vulnerable and fucking alone! You have no idea what it did to me seeing those Lana!” He roars, moving around the tiny office like a caged animal in captivity.
“Kingston. Please calm down,” I finally get some words out.
“No! Lana, I’m just as scared as you, because I feel helpless, like I can’t fucking do anything! If he weren’t behind bars, Lana, I would...I would fucking kill him.” I gulp, our eyes locked and the look he gives me is that of a man possessed.
I know I now need to calm him down and worry about him for a second, push my problems aside and calm down my beast.
“Hey, calm down. Okay, I know you’re angry...” He scoffs when I pause to stand on my weak legs. “But I need you to breathe. I need you to calm down and be there for me right now.”
“I am baby, me and my bleeding heart are here for you. I am ripping it out and confessing to you, that if I can’t protect you or if someone hurts you, I will never survive the nightmare. I feel out of control.” I wrap my arms around his waist the best I can with my belly pronounced and round.
“You are keeping me safe, I promise I have never felt safer than I do with you,” I tell him this truthfully, because I do. I may be terrified of this new development, but for the first time since Joel abused me, I feel a safeness with Kingston.
“I failed you,” his words are pained, just as much as my heart is.
“No, baby, you didn’t. I’m still here, I’m still safe.”
He shakes his head, then turns it away, focusing on the wall to the left of us. I think up a distraction.
“Hey, baby boy was kicking a lot today, I think he knows mommy and daddy are having a rough day. Can you talk to him? Calm him down a little.” I see a glint of hope spark in his eyes and I know I’m bringing him back in.
