King's Men

by Lana Sky

  Are you this desperate, Snowy? a part of me wonders. Desperate enough to sell your soul?

  For the family name? No. But to assuage the fearful pang in my heart?

  I’d do anything for closure once and for all.

  “Tell Mr. Lorenz that I want to make a deal.” I lower my voice deliberately, leaving a suggestive air that has my cheeks flaming.

  “Of course, Miss.” The butler’s stoic expression reveals no hint as to what he’s thinking. He merely nods. “I’ll relay that information—”

  “Let her in, Charles.” The newer voice comes from within, mere paces from the door. Deep. Haunting. His. If I were keeping a tally, the sound would be the first strike in the “not an apparition” column.

  My boy spoke softly, never like this.

  “Miss?” Charles stands aside and ushers me in with a wave of his gloved hand.

  I step inside a spacious entryway, illuminated by what daylight manages to seep through curtained windows. I can barely see my hand outstretched before me, and deciphering the rest of the interior requires vague guesses and my imagination. Dark. Everything is dark. The walls, the floors, and what little furniture there is. It’s all paneled wood, I suspect, containing none of the grandeur of Hollings Manor.

  An uncomfortable chill settles over the drab surroundings, thickening the farther inside I follow the stern Charles. Another set of footsteps betrays the brooding figure who allowed me inside, not that Charles appears in a hurry to follow him.

  “This way, Miss,” he says, his stroll steady.

  As my eyes adjust, I’m forced to rely on the sound of his voice more than anything. We turn a corner, entering an even darker part of the house: a small hallway. I nearly sigh with relief when we finally reach a room illuminated enough to see clearly. Then I spot the man seated behind a polished oak desk and regret my newfound clarity.

  Here, the heavy curtains have been pulled back from the three windows, revealing an endless expanse of green fields and emerald forests beyond. Waning daylight paints the room’s interior in a grayish glow, illuminating the plain leather furniture and wall-to-wall bookshelves lined with heavy tomes.

  My fingers twitch before I can help it. It’s the kind of study Brandt would have loved. Quiet, secluded, with a breathtaking view to spark his curiosity. His first act would have been to sketch the large willow growing in the center of the field. He would have shaded it carefully in grays and blacks, ensuring he captured every detail.

  And in the lighting, his resemblance to the seated stranger is so striking that I almost forget. He really could be my Brandt—bulkier, older, but still him. If only it weren’t for his eyes. They’re far too cold. Too bold. He strips me of my blouse and slices through my bra and my panties, peering at the bared woman underneath, all without moving a damn muscle.

  “Ms. Hollings,” he says by way of greeting.

  A sharp intake of air is my last-ditch effort to maintain my composure. I don’t flinch. I don’t even blink. I meet his gaze and try desperately not to react. Shadow drapes him menacingly, exaggerating his height, even while seated. Muscle strains against his too-small suit, ending comparisons to the lanky boy I knew with soft, wavy hair. This man’s wild mop of curls can be tamed only by the fingers he rakes through them.

  “Mr. Lorenz,” I reply when seconds have passed in silence, but my lips fail to form any other words.

  I interrupted something. A leather-bound notebook lies open before him, tilted the way someone who is left-handed might. Notes? No…

  Confusion flits across my brain before alarm replaces it. My heart thunders, sending blood roaring through my eardrums. Even in the semi-darkness, every line and stroke of an ink pen is startlingly clear: a rough sketch of a lone willow tree.

  “Can I help you, Ms. Hollings?” A heavy hand lands over the pages of the notebook, hiding the sketch from view. Deliberately, he closes it and leaves it on the desk. Then he levels that piercing gaze at me, heedless of the paralyzing effect. “You mentioned something about a deal…”

  The suggestive tone grates against my remaining shreds of resolve. Everything, from the haunting chill in his gaze to his statuesque expression, reminds me of a bear trap partially concealed in the underbrush. One wrong step and I’ll be wounded beyond repair.

  “I’d like to know what you would consider a fitting exchange for some of my family’s stock,” I say, fighting to remember why I sought him out in the first place. Not to recall an old love, but for survival. There’s no point in beating around the bush with him. “My brother would be willing to make any trade.”

  Anger. It flashes across his face so quickly that I almost miss it. His jaw clenches and relaxes, betraying him to be an expert player of verbal poker. Not for the first time, I sense I’m out of my league. Even Ronan, when sober, couldn’t compose himself so quickly. But therein lies the real question.

  He dislikes my unnamed brother. Why?

  “Hunter would be willing to negotiate,” I clarify only to flinch. There it is again: a second quick tensing of his jaw, which forces his lips into a thin line.

  Hunter has a knack for making enemies, but he also has an uncanny gift of making friends. Mainly because he treats friendship as a business and greases eager palms accordingly.

  “I’m not interested in making a deal with your brother,” Blake says with implied meaning. “In fact…I’m forced to wonder why you’re even here in the first place, and not one of your brothers, attempting to negotiate?”

  A damn good question. I turn to the window to disguise my unease. A faint outline of the crescent moon gleams over an ochre sky. The sun is already sinking below the horizon. Soon, it will be nightfall.

  And I’m alone with a stranger in his secluded home.

  “I-I was worried about my fiancé,” I say quickly. “If I can buy back some of our shares, perhaps that could help negate the damage he’s caused.”

  “Do not lie.” Amusement tinges his words rather than any harsh accusation. “You’re not here for your fiancé.”

  “Oh?” I look back at him, curious despite myself. The shadows minimize the resemblances to Brandt. Just enough for indignation to drown out any bitter memories. “And what makes you say that?” I ask, jutting my chin into the air.

  “I have eyes,” he says, shrugging his shoulder. “Otherwise, you wouldn’t be hiding your ring.”

  I swallow hard. He’s right. I have my hands folded, with the right cradling the left, shielding my ring from view. Deliberately, I unfurl them, allowing the gaudy diamond to catch the light. It sparkles, a pretty little reminder of all I stand to lose.

  Daniel.

  Our fortune.

  My sanity.

  “Maybe I was wrong to come here alone,” I admit to him. Whether I intend to or not, my unease is laid bare, clear in every involuntary hitch in my voice.

  “You were,” he counters, rising to his feet. “I took you for an honest woman over a coy one.”

  Heat sears through my cheeks. “I thought you didn’t know me?”

  His tight-lipped expression reveals nothing. “I know of you. And from what I’ve heard, you don’t approach most of your brother’s associates to offer business, Ms. Hollings.”

  The thinly veiled insult lands as only the best ones can: leveled at unguarded wounds.

  “Oh?” I’m genuinely curious. What rumors has he heard? Terrible ones. I’m assured as much by the way his gaze deliberately flicks up and down my front. Recent rumors.

  “That you will do anything to protect your family name.”

  I feel my chest expand before I register holding my breath. Once again, I envision a bear trap, its rusty, gaping maw so close to my tender limbs.

  He’s testing me. But why?

  His gaze is harder to read than ever. So much like Brandt… I never could tell what he was thinking.

  But I knew my moral boy better than anyone else. I knew what he expected of me. More importantly, I knew which lines to never cross with him.


  His voice chases me from the void. Don’t you ever do that again, Snow.

  “And what should I offer you, Mr. Lorenz?” I make my voice heavy on purpose. Husky. My fingers drift toward the collar of my blouse, and I watch him with every inch they gain, ignoring my frantically beating heart.

  This is wrong. Even Hunter wouldn’t have this level of seduction in mind.

  But neither does Blake Lorenz. Another twitch of his jaw has my limbs buzzing. With relief? Slowly, he steps from around the desk, his gaze on my trembling fingers. Then he slams his hand down over the polished wood. “Do it.”

  My heart trips inside my chest. “W-what?”

  “Your blouse.” He nods curtly to the topmost button. “If you’re offering what I think you are, then don’t beat around the fucking bush. Undo it.”

  The bear trap creaks in warning and slams shut. I’ve stepped on the spring. Whether I move now or later, I’m already caught.

  And I suspect with a trembling certainty that he won’t let me go.

  Five

  Words fight to escape my throat, wasting vital oxygen. “I-I don’t—”

  “Tsk tsk, Ms. Hollings.” He slams his fist against the desk a second time, which makes me jump in place. “Or do you merely dangle your body before men with no intention of offering it completely?” He’s angry again. Not indignant, like someone impatient with a cock tease, I suspect, but offended.

  Like someone who’d expect more from me would be…

  My chest aches. It’s a foolish thought—I know as much. But hope poisons my perception. Stern features meld and soften. He almost looks like Brandt again—a Brandt who hates what I’ve become, and God, I’d take his loathing over his absence. The only time my boy ever looked at me in disgust was the one moment I attempted to show him just how much I loved him.

  Rasping, my throat works to churn out words. “I…”

  “I suppose you do,” he says coldly. “Frankly, Ms. Hollings, I don’t appreciate having my time wasted.” He waves a dismissive hand toward me and nods to the door. “Now, I’ll ask you to leave—”

  A forced exhale renders him silent, but I’m terrified to know why.

  Not that I can avoid the truth for long; like the whore he insinuated I am, I’ve undone the second button of my blouse. My fingers still cling to it, quivering at the base of my throat and obscuring the same strip of flesh I’ve exposed.

  Daniel has seen me naked. I’ve allowed him that much.

  His heavy-lidded gaze never set my body alight the way one searing glare from Blake Lorenz does. He strips me bare, my outer layer singed to nothing. In his gaze, I don’t find the same lustful admiration most men direct toward me. I see hollow irises and pinprick pupils.

  I see hate.

  “Another,” he commands, tightening the screws on this figurative bear trap. “Is this meant to entice me?”

  But he’s a step closer now, his shoulders hunched, his hands flexing at his sides. In this moment, he can’t suppress all emotion. He’s furious, a fact that confounds me more than anything. I find myself leaning forward, hunting through his gaze for… I don’t even know.

  Ten years ago, I bared my soul to a younger man only for him to cringe back in horror. Stop, Snow!

  I don’t know how to respond to silence. My body moves on autopilot, unfastening another button. That muscle in his jaw lurches again, throbbing against his skin.

  “Another,” he commands.

  I stiffen as he grips the armrests of my chair, each knuckle whitening against the dark leather. The kiss of his heat raises goosebumps along my arms, rasping against the silk of my blouse and another exposed strip of flesh.

  “Another…”

  No. Every fiber of my being warns me not to. I should run. Concede this problem to Hunter like he asked and leave Blake Lorenz to a much more formidable opponent. But my brother isn’t the only Hollings to sacrifice: I’ve traded parts of myself in exchange for favors that make my skin crawl to recollect. I’ve done despicable, horrible things. None of them have made me feel like this.

  Like I’m dangling on a tightrope, one wrong move from plunging to my doom. There’s not even a clear, distinguishable reward for my troubles. Just this gnawing suspicion that something awaits me at the end of this torturous game—but only if I continue to inch along.

  My fingers twitch against the material of my blouse, but a harsher grip keeps them from undoing the next button. Helpless, I look up only to find myself paralyzed by a probing expanse of blue. He studies me. He stuns me, twisting his mouth into a menacing scowl.

  “You’d do it, wouldn’t you?” His voice is hoarse. With disgust. With…shame? I don’t miss how his eyes flicker down to my partially exposed breasts before meeting mine again. “You would.”

  Do what? He doesn’t say. Suddenly, he bats my fingers away and a newer force cinches the fourth button of my blouse, tugging on the already taut fabric. I gasp and he waits, still gripping tight. It’s like he gives me a second to protest. When I don’t, his thumb easily unhooks the next button.

  “Look up,” he commands before I realize I’m staring at the gaping neckline of silk, watching my skin flush pink against his slightly darker-toned fingers. “Up, Snow.” There’s a sharp noise, the fingers of his free hand snapping together, demanding my obedience as I flinch.

  That name…

  “I told you to look up.”

  When I comply, his eyes are on fire. Flames lick beneath the blue, reminiscent of an inferno viewed through a layer of ice.

  My breathing hitches as warning tendrils of heat brush my skin, and cool air tickles the flesh above my navel. Another button easily comes undone.

  But stripping me naked out of lust seems to be the furthest thing from Blake Lorenz’s mind. Irritation emanates from him, so potent that I can smell it. It’s smoke, invisible but no less dangerous. I can’t shake the feeling that he’s testing me. And I’m failing. Miserably.

  Something unreadable pierces his otherwise cold expression: a slight wrinkling of his mouth. A deliberate swallow. Suddenly, he withdraws his hands and nods toward my lower half. “Take it off.”

  His tone conveys not an ounce of desire. I’m a whore at his command, nothing more. Nothing less.

  And I should slap him to hell and back. Scream. Lurch from this chair and storm from this room.

  Anything but stare, haunted by fleeting remnants in his features that shouldn’t exist. He isn’t the ghost of Brandt Lloyd; the man is a demon—a tormented, twisted shell, mocking everything of the boy I knew. Their wry frowns of disgust are similar, but their reactions are night and day. Brandt never suppressed his anger. This man thrives on it.

  “Do you want my time or not?” he warns, his eyes narrowing. “Take off the fucking shirt.”

  I can’t move. I can’t even breathe. My entire being warns me that I’m delirious. Desperate. Delusional. I see what I want to—no, what I’m terrified to—see. But if my eyes fail me, then my ears must as well.

  “Why…why did you call me Snow before?”

  His brow furrows. “It’s your name.”

  “No one calls me that.”

  For the past ten years, I’ve insisted on being addressed by my full name. I can’t bear to have it shortened by anyone—not even my brothers.

  “No one calls me Snow—”

  “And what should I call you, then, Ms. Hollings?” he questions gruffly. “Or should I say the future Mrs. Ellingston? Why are you here?”

  He’s turned the tables again. I know what he wants me to say: I’m here to save my family from ruin. Maybe I am—or was.

  Tears stab their way out, coating my cheeks in wetness. I feel like I’m in a dream. A nightmare. One of those twisted, seemingly never-ending ones I can’t wake up from until I say the magic words. A name.

  All the king’s men, Snow.

  The knot in my throat won’t let any words come past it. Just frantic, shallow breaths.

  “Say it.” He cocks his head, staring down at me
from an aristocratic nose. “Say it out loud. Why you’re here.”

  To negotiate.

  To beg.

  None of those reasons leave my lips. Instead, I obey his earlier request. My fingers skim the edges of my blouse. Quickly, I make work of the last button and then start to slide my arms from the sleeves. The entire time, I watch his face, holding my breath.

  Shock makes itself known over his features, despite how he tries to disguise it. His mouth flattens into a hard line. A second later, those blue eyes creep along my bared shoulders, and more tears fall to drench my cheeks.

  It’s the same way I felt last year when I stumbled across an old box of trinkets I hadn’t remembered hiding. Those old smells and memories had struck at full force, all at once.

  Now, I remember Brandt the night I told him that Jeremy Caulings II had offered to date me if I sucked his cock under the bleachers. Unbeknownst to Brandt, I’d come close to doing just that. I wasn’t proud of myself, but neither did I think I could survive another day of being Humpty Dumpty Snowy, the social pariah. Acceptance was a tempting prize in those days, worthy of even the most demeaning tasks.

  Or so I’d told myself. Maybe I even believed it—until I saw Brandt’s face the following day when Jeremy approached my locker once he thought no one was looking. With one searching pass of his gaze, Brandt Lloyd had me sussed completely. He told me without words just what he thought: I was better than that. I was too good to debase myself. While he may not date me in exchange, I would never have to debase myself to earn his friendship.

  Within the frigid gaze of Blake Lorenz, I see nothing of that reassurance. All I find is dark, stormy blue. And…relief?

  “You don’t have the balls to go through with it,” he mutters.

  To himself or to me? I’m not sure. My head is too busy spinning to process anything more than the conflicting sensations assaulting my body. Shame. Guilt. Fear. Pain. Recognition.

  Memory is a faulty mirror, showing me hints of the boy I loved one minute and a monster wearing his face the next. It’s a resemblance even the cruelest God wouldn’t devise. Yet my Brandt could never be so cold.