Sleeping with the Beast: an Adult Paranormal Shifter Romance (The Conduit Series Book 2)

by Conner Kressley

  “But those sins still exist,” he said. “And they must be made right. I have so much to atone for, Charisse, and like it or not, Satina was channeling something when she told you that your story wasn’t finished. You obviously play an important role in something that’s bigger than either of us, and I think the reason I’m here is to help you do it.”

  “I thought you were here to love me,” I said softly, my eyes filling up.

  “Always and forever,” he said, brushing my cheek with his lips. “But we have work to do, you and I. And this is where it has to happen.”

  “Fine.” I sighed, half because I knew he was right and half because the sensation of his lips against my skin was enough to give me a pleasant shudder. “But after this, we’re going to Cozumel.”

  He smiled against my neck. “Yes, ma’am.”

  A trumpet—a literal trumpet—blared. Abram pulled away from me as the far door opened.

  Two dozen or more Guards funneled in. They made a pair of perfect lines leading up to our feet and, between them, a short stocky man who bore more than a passing resemblance to the wine-guzzling buffoon in the painting overhead strode toward us.

  A sickly grin split his pudgy face as he approached. When he reached us, he held his hand out and shook Abram’s hand. I held mine out, too, but he ignored me. I scoffed, but Abram’s glare told me now wasn’t the time to rip into the royal bastard.

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you,” the king said. “But unfortunately, there’s a bit of a problem.”

  “What might that be?” Abram asked evenly, but I could feel his energy shift from confident to concerned.

  The king tilted up his chin, but he would have a hard time looking down his nose at either of us. I had been a model for Christ’s sake, and Abram was even taller than me.

  “The problem,” the king cut out, glaring at the both of us, “is that I have an extremely low tolerance for liars.”

  Chapter 3

  Abram gave a small bow to the king. “It seems, then, that we already have something in common,” he said lightly. “I cannot tolerate lies myself.”

  The king sighed and signaled with his hand. One of the guards pulled up a throne-like chair behind him. It was large, golden, and as ostentatious as one would expect from a pint sized man who fancied himself a king.

  He sat and indicated the sofa for us to join him. “Well, then, why don’t you tell me what truths you have come here for.”

  “To be honest, Your Majesty, I was rather stunned by the reception. My family gave the impression you were expecting my arrival.” Abram’s tone remained even, and his fake accent never wavered. I was a bit unnerved by how gracefully he lied. “Did you not receive word from them?”

  If this formality kept up much longer, I was going to puke.

  The king rubbed the side of his face, frowning. “I received no such notice. And if I had, I would have written them back and told them not to bother sending you.”

  I placed my hand on Abram’s forearm and leveled my gaze at the pudgy royal person. “I’m sure if you would hear him out—”

  The king slapped the arm of his chair, and his eyes bulged as he looked from me to Abram. Abram glared at me, and I closed my mouth, too weirded out by everyone’s reaction to be angry.

  “I most certainly will not hear him out,” the king said, his face growing redder with each word. “Backus!” He shook his head. “The nerve!”

  Abram steeled his gaze, and I could feel the undercurrent of angry energy buzzing beneath his skin. He was growing more than a little irritated with the king’s tantrum. If this didn’t end quickly, I was afraid my monster man was going to start growling.

  “Backus,” Abram said with a forced calm, “is reinstating. And we were hoping,” he ground out, “to form an alliance with you.”

  The king laughed bitterly. Then he stopped suddenly and scowled at Abram. “Last I checked, your kingdom folded out of hope we wouldn’t take you out ourselves. Perhaps your family has hoped for enough.”

  Abram held steady. “I meant no disrespect, Your Highness. You have my deepest apologies. I shall inform my parents you are not interested in accepting our gift in exchange for alliance with your kingdom.”

  As he rose, he pulled me to my feet by my arm to stand beside him and started to guide me toward the exit. I wanted to ask him what he was doing, but no one had listened to a word I had to say since I got here. And I wouldn’t dare let them hear what I wanted to say to Abram right now anyway. Namely, “Why the hell did you waste my morning just to give up halfway through your glorious yarn of shit?”

  If being here was so important, how were we going to get back in once we left? Abram had already played the most outlandish card in his deck.

  He pulled hard, not even looking at me as we passed the guards and neared the exit.

  But before we made it to the door, the king stopped us. Or rather one of his guards stopped us, which I could only assume meant he made another wave of his arm or something, as that seemed to make up for about half the guy’s communication skills.

  “Prince Anton,” the king said in a sing-song voice. “Before you go—I would love to hear about this gift. Assuming you really did have something to offer.”

  Abram froze, his gaze sliding over to me and lingering for a long and almost worrisome moment before he turned around. He smiled brightly. “My parents have set aside a large sum of money as a peace offering, and in exchange for our welcome to keep a summer home on your island.”

  The king gestured to the great room around him. “Do I look as though I need your money, boy?”

  I held back a laugh. This “boy” was over a century old.

  “I’ll thank you not to call me ‘boy,’ your Majesty,” Abram said through clenched teeth. “Regardless of whether or not you’ve come to believe my statements, I am of royal blood. Just like you. And I’m afraid my father would have me strung up if I allowed anyone, the king of Grimoult included, to speak to me in such a manner.”

  They stared at each other like two men getting ready to pull pistols in one of those spaghetti Westerns. But which one would crack first?

  “The gift is meaningless. I have all the riches any man could need,” the king said finally, leaning forward in his throne.

  “I wasn’t finished,” Abram said quickly. Too quickly, though, because it made the pause that followed more noticeable. Finally, he continued with, “They would also like to offer you unadulterated access to the finest women of our land.”

  I choked on the air, but Abram squeezed my arm tighter, his sudden firm grasp a clear warning.

  The king rubbed his tongue along his teeth. His gaze shifted from Abram to me, then back again. “How about her?”

  Oh great. Now they decided to take notice of me.

  Abram gave a hearty laugh, as though the two had shared some fantastic joke with a punch line I wasn’t privy to. “Oh, come now, Your Majesty. She was a gift to me, and surely you would like to have your choice from a wider selection.”

  The king nodded slowly, and his fingertips tapped the arm of his chair. “You know, that was the only thing your Godforsaken kingdom was ever good for,” he said, though he sounded a little less hateful now than he had minutes ago. “Our island is small, and unfortunately, so are the women it births. This one,” he said, waving his hand toward me, “is full and vibrant. She’s got life in her bones, along with a titillating amount of meat. Besides, we aren’t the tourist trap we used to be, and in today’s age, it’s rare we get the gift of a human life.”

  There’s a reason for that, jackass. I had to bite my lip to keep that sentiment a thought instead of spoken reprimand.

  “But I still think I would like to sample the spoils of your country,” he said, his gaze crawling over my body like a thousand tiny spiders.

  I elbowed Abram, but all that earned me was another glare.

  Abram patted my arm as though he was pacifying a child, then addressed the king again. “Your Majesty, I insist you a
llow me to arrange for a proper selection for you. I would hate for you to judge the women of our country based on her. She was only gifted to me recently, and I’m afraid her manners are rather…unforgivable.”

  The king narrowed his eyes at Abram, then cleared his throat. “I see that.”

  Silence stretched between the two men for longer than I thought I could handle. I just wanted to get out of here. Away from that man. Away from this screwy situation.

  “Well,” the king continued, “I’m sure we can make some sort of arrangement while we sort out the details.”

  “Wonderful,” Abram said with a bow. “We’ll stop by again tomorrow morning, after you’ve had the evening to think about our offer.”

  The king pushed up out of his chair and shook his head. “No, no, that won’t do. We can’t have our royal guests shacked up in some tourist hotel on the island.”

  Oh, no. That was where I drew the line. We were not going to stay here with this creep!

  “That really won’t be necessary,” I said as sweetly as possible.

  The king’s face split with a grin that reminded me of the Cheshire Cat. “Oh, you delicious little trumpet, I insist.”

  “Thank you,” Abram said, before I could get another word out.

  I couldn’t be sure, but I think he was more agitated with me than with King Jerkface.

  A short few moments later, we were being escorted through a new set of doors and down another dungeon-like hallway. The guard who had greeted us at the door led the way, and two more guards followed behind, though thankfully they allowed us a little breathing room.

  “What the hell was that about?” I hissed.

  “I should ask you the same thing,” Abram muttered.

  “Me? You’re the one selling off women as barter for allegiance with another kingdom.”

  One of the guards cleared his throat. “Is there a problem?”

  “No,” Abram said quickly. “I’ll take care of it.”

  “Take care of what?” I demanded.

  “You,” he growled, and it didn’t sound like he meant it in a good way. “Just please, stop talking until we get to the room.”

  Leave it to Abram to find a nice way to tell me to shut up.

  Of course, that didn’t mean I was going to listen.

  “Sure, tell the woman to shut up. Who cares what she thinks?”

  “Charisse, please!” he whispered, and I decided to entertain his request for now, but only because the last thing I wanted to do was draw the king’s attention again.

  We reached the end of the hall, and the first guard swung open a large wooden door leading into a bedroom that was at least six times the size of our hotel room.

  “This will be your living quarters for the duration of your stay,” the guard said, ushering us inside. I was beginning to wonder if the other guards were mute. “Please ring if you need anything.”

  He tugged on a string that hung just inside in the doorway, and a bell near the top of the doorframe jingled.

  “I’ll return later to collect you for dinner,” he said, and with that, he closed the door.

  “Collect us?” I asked. Then I scoffed. “Yeah, that sounds about right for this place.”

  Abram grabbed me firmly by either shoulder. “You need to stop playing around, Charisse. This is not New Haven, and it’s certainly not New York. Their values are completely different from ours. Please follow my lead.”

  But I wasn’t following anything—not at the moment. Because as I looked past Abram to the room beyond, I noticed this bedroom was meant for a little more than just sleeping in. Opposite the bed, in place of where one might normally find a TV, was a dresser with…well, I wouldn’t even begin to know how to classify the things I saw on that dresser.

  There was a paddle, a strap, and a riding crop I sensed wasn’t for the horses out in their stables. On the other side of the dresser was rope, a glass object that a proper girl wouldn’t even take a guess at, and a few things I assumed must be torture devices of some kind.

  “Charisse?” Abram said, giving me a little shake. “I mean it. Everything I do is to protect you. I need you to trust me.”

  “Huh?” I said, shaking my head. I returned my attention to Abram and pointed to the table. “What the hell kind of room is this?”

  Abram spun slowly, and his shoulders sank. “I was hoping for more of a chance to explain.”

  “Well, here’s your chance,” I said, narrowing my eyes. “You told me we were coming to ask a few questions…not to spend the evening in a room full of torture devices!”

  Abram made a passing glance at the items on the table and shrugged. “You call them torture devices, but some may say they are more for pleasure.”

  I pointed at him. “Don’t even start.”

  He raised both of his hands. “Calm down. Being invited to stay here is a good thing. It will give the chance to—”

  The door behind us made a loud clicking sound, and my heart crashed in my chest.

  Please, no.

  I ran to the door, praying the sound didn’t mean what I thought it did and knowing my prayer would go unanswered.

  I grabbed the knob and tried to turn it, but it didn’t budge. We were locked in. I spun back toward Abram, a new fury lighting in my gut.

  “Abram, I don’t think we’re guests,” I said, gritting my teeth. “I think we’re prisoners.”

  Chapter 4

  When I woke the next morning, I found Abram sitting up in the bed next to me. He wasn’t under the covers, and he hadn’t even removed his shoes, much less anything else.

  “You’ve been up all night?” I asked, rubbing the sleep from my eyes.

  “The door is still locked,” he said, staring at it intently.

  We had tried half the night to open that stupid thing, but it was no use. It was obvious the king didn’t trust us and, judging from Abram’s insomnia, he hadn’t found much to trust about the king himself.

  My stomach growled, reminding me of the guard’s broken promise to collect for us dinner. Asshat.

  “You could just, you know, break it down,” I suggested, lying my head against his shoulder.

  My eyes were tired and sore and I didn’t feel rested, which had nothing to do with the mattress in this room, as that was absolutely the most comfortable thing I had ever slept on.

  Abram shook his head. “We don’t know what they’re up to. This could be more about their own safety than anything to do with us. Besides, in addition to outing ourselves as having something to be nervous about, breaking that door down would let them know how powerful we are. We don’t need to tip our hand like that, not yet.”

  “You’re using the term we loosely,” I said, stretching.

  I threw my blanket off and grabbed the shirt I came here in. As I threw it back on, I caught sight of those ridiculous contraptions on the nightstand, the stuff Abram suggested might not be for torture at all.

  Fighting the urge to roll my eyes, I turned back to Abram and said, “I could try every minute for a month and never even put a dent in that door. You’re the powerful one.”

  He ran a hand through his dark hair. “I don’t have even a hundredth of the potential that you do. The fact that we’re here—that Satina saw fit to send us to this place—is a testament to that.”

  “Really?” I asked, moving away from him. “So this is my fault? Is that what you’re saying?”

  He looked more than a little confused. His cheeks, dusted in a five o’clock shadow even though it was, at latest, ten in the morning, sunk in more than usual.

  “Of course that’s not what I’m saying. There is no fault in this. This is something that happened, that is happening.” He stood, as if to get a bit of distance before he made the next statement. “Don’t say it like this is a bad thing.”

  “We’re trapped in a strange man’s castle.”

  “Only because we choose to be,” he countered.

  His muscles, flexing in the mid-morning sun that streamed th
rough the open drapes, seemed to make his point for him. Abram could rip through those guards like a knife through butter. If he so chose, we could be out of here and back on the beach in ten minutes.

  “Great,” I said. “Then why don’t you do me a favor and go beast-mode on that door so we can get out of here?”

  “I can’t.”

  “Of course you can, Big Boy. Now hurry up before we miss all the good sunning hours.

  “No,” he said more slowly this time. “You don’t understand, Charisse. There is no ‘beast-mode’ right now.”

  “I’m in no mood for games, Abram. You just said we’re only here because we choose to be. Well, I choose not to be anymore, okay?”

  “I meant that we chose to get ourselves here,” he said, “but as it turns out, we can’t choose to leave.”

  “Yes, we can,” I said firmly, my heart-rate picking up in fear that Abram wasn’t kidding. “Abram, please tell me we can.”

  “I didn’t foresee this situation coming here, but it seems there is some sort of enchantment on the castle. One that blocks magic. I didn’t resist turning last night…I was unable to.”

  I rubbed my hands down the sides of my face. We’d been up half the night, but I thought he was just resisting his true nature. Then I’d fallen asleep. Was it really possible?

  “No. No, you have to be wrong,” I said, but deep down, I knew Abram, and that meant I knew this was neither a joke nor a lie. I dropped my hands to my sides. “This is terrible. What if they never let us leave?”

  He slipped over to where I was sitting and moved my hands from my face. “Don’t worry, my love. I don’t think the enchantment was meant for us. Just something general to protect their estate.”

  “Not helping,” I said, stepping away from him. “I really don’t care who it’s meant for. I don’t like that we’re stuck here!”

  “Don’t look at it that way,” he said, pulling on his shirt that had been strewn over an ornate chair beside the bed. “We wouldn’t be leaving now even if the door could open, right?”

  I raised my eyebrows at him.