King's Men

by Lana Sky

  “I had to…”

  He stiffens, drawing in ragged breaths. “Why?”

  “Because…”

  Either my imagination picks up where my vision fails or my eyes adjust to the dark. I see him clearly, my beautiful Brandt, all grown up. Ebony hair falls into his eyes, disturbed by raking fingers that tear at it still. I smooth my own along the back of his hand, and a painful lump obstructs my throat. He feels the same.

  And if he does hate me, I deserve it.

  “Please.” Endlessly blue eyes peer into mine, demanding an answer. “Tell me why.”

  “I…I had to save you.”

  He cringes at the confession, poised to withdraw—but I can’t let him just yet. Not now. My fingers find his shoulders and bite down over tailored cotton. Strange. My Brandt loved tee shirts and dingy, cast-off things fished from secondhand stores. He loved ratty jeans and leather jackets.

  But no one else could conform to my body like this, made for comforting when all else seems lost. A part of me aches in recognition. It’s been so damn long.

  “Stay.”

  He grunts. Stiffens. Before I can beg again, warm fingers capture my hips. The weight on top of me evens, and a groan trickles into my ear. Too deep—a man’s reluctant exhale, not my boy’s. Alarm nibbles at the outside of my skull, but I cringe from it, arching into him. Not yet. I can’t wake up yet.

  “I loved you,” I tell him before it’s too late. “Everything I did was for you.”

  “How?” he questions, his teeth gritted.

  But therein lies the true price of my soul: I can never tell him.

  But maybe I can show him, squeeze him so tight that my knuckles crack, praying I never wake up. I could die like this, holding him so close that it’s like he’s here. My body clings to him as my eyes strain through shadow, hunting down every little detail.

  God, he looks so old. So broken. So hateful.

  I blink and he’s vanished. But another man has claimed his place.

  “Tell me,” Blake Lorenz demands in a display of white teeth. “Tell me why you fucking did it. Tell me!”

  But I can’t.

  So he rages. Hard fingers dig into my hips, nails first. My cry scratches at the air, too breathless to be of any substance.

  “You love him,” he whispers coldly against my cheek. “But he hated you, up until the end. He died hating you.”

  Heat sears behind my eyes. I squeeze them shut, but he refuses to be ignored. Warmth licks my lips. His thumb. Slowly, he nudges them apart, seeking out my tongue, wanting me to taste…

  Blood. Mine. He scratched me that badly, coating his fingertips with coppery red.

  “God, you fucking little cunt.” Something thickens his voice in addition to the rage. The same instinct spurring his ragged breaths drives his pelvis against mine.

  Good, well-bred girls aren’t meant to notice such things: straining cocks and barely restrained lust. Blake Lorenz turns it on and off like flipping a switch. One minute, he’s cold. The next, he’s on fire, crushing me against my bed.

  Old fear puts up a futile battle, nowhere near as potent as it should be. He’s not Brandt, but my traitorous body doesn’t seem to know it. Or maybe my aching limbs just don’t care. They feed off the intentions wafting from his skin. A low sound builds in his throat, deepening every time I flinch. Move. Breathe.

  “Fuck, you’re doing this on purpose.” Tortured, broken syllables break from him, one after the other. So hateful. So tormented. “Goddamn it, you smell so good.” His nose skims the curve of my throat, inhaling me only to spit me back out. “Fuck, I can’t. I won’t…”

  Too late.

  My body registers the slow, deliberate movement before my brain acknowledges what’s happening: thick fingers ghosting over my belly, trailing down between my legs. They twitch, my knees fighting to come together, but he’s too quick, nudging his own knee between them.

  “Open up for me, Snow. I know you feel it too…”

  Fear ripples down my spine.

  I can’t.

  Deny him.

  Another low groan echoes against the valley between my breasts. Rasping sheets catch at the flesh of my side as he fists one of his hands in them, grappling for stability.

  “You’re so fucking beautiful,” he snarls. “How the fuck can you be beautiful?”

  It’s magical when he says it. Beautiful, hateful beauty.

  “Your breasts,” he tells me, crouched like a predator, lathing heat over exposed flesh. “I’ve dreamt about these fucking breasts. How sick is that?”

  I wince as he pinches flesh on my inner thigh, demanding an answer.

  A huff of air escapes my lungs. Yes. It’s goddamn sick. Almost as sick as wondering just how much like Brandt he really is. They smell the same. Feel the same. Taste the same?

  A part of me shudders from the thought, but then I doggedly chase it again. God, I still remember. Sweet like the spring rain we played in. Soft, so soft. I could drown in his flavor, though I only got a mere taste.

  And he banished me for it.

  But Blake Lorenz breathes himself between my parted lips, imbibing me with a teasing glimpse of him. So different. So raw. Masculine, deep, musky man. He’s a million things I could never decipher, smoldering on my tongue, demanding I swallow. With Brandt, I needed to savor, but Blake… His essence demands I choke on it, every fucking drop.

  “Open your mouth.”

  He doesn’t want to kiss me. I instinctively know his motives as my lips spread, breaths escaping in pitiful bursts. He wants to sample me before he rips me apart.

  One stroke of his tongue stops my breath, ripping every ounce of air from my lungs.

  “Fuck,” he mutters, drawing his tongue along his lips. Anger constricts his pupils into pinpricks.

  I taste too sweet.

  With renewed interest, he lowers his mouth to mine and every nerve in my body flickers in response. Hot. Suddenly, he pulls away, leaving me burning, his gaze heavy-lidded in disgust.

  “Tell me I’m not him.”

  Not who? Daniel?

  No…

  My devil wants separation from his angelic counterpart. My lips part to deliver as much, but words won’t come. Those eyes. That frowning, wry expression and the subtle tilt of his jaw conveying repressed anger. All of it is so familiar, pieces of a broken puzzle. Deep down, I know they won’t fit into the missing spaces left inside my soul. Nothing will ever fit.

  “Say it.”

  Biting my lip doesn’t lock the admission inside. “You’re not him,” I gasp.

  He nods, satisfied, and rears back, casting a searching glance along my body as if hunting down every bit of reluctance. “Again. Say his name.”

  “You’re not Brandt Lloyd.”

  Another nod. “I’m not,” he says, boring through me with a vicious stare, making sure I acknowledge it. Accept it. “I’m not him,” he repeats as he runs a grasping hand over my stomach. “I’m not him. So I don’t…”

  Have to love you. Be gentle. Be human. Be soft.

  He isn’t Brandt Lloyd—he’s something far worse.

  A cry spills from my lips as he rams his hand between my legs—not quite near my mound, but close. Close enough to awaken old, dirty memories.

  “Stupid little bitch. I’ll teach you the worth of a Hollings…”

  I cringe, avoiding the contact. At the same time…my hip jerks, arching against the tips of his fingers. I hate the reaction roiling through me. Memories try to descend but fade without making their impact, smothered beneath his heat.

  “Fucking slut,” he murmurs, coaxing his fingers along my inner thigh, ghosting up, up, up. More fingers, brushing, curling. Close. Closer. “Tell me to touch you.”

  My head twitches side to side. No, no, no.

  “Fucking tell me to touch you—”

  I have no choice. His gruff, hateful tone is the key, twisting through my jagged soul and forcing me to open up.

  “Touch me.” My legs drift apart
, giving him enough room to occupy. My chest tightens, allowing me to see down to where his wrist disappears between my legs.

  His eyes catch me watching, and he doesn’t approve, voicing his displeasure in a single grunted word. “Fuck.”

  He touches me like I’m a broken, dejected thing. He’ll never put me back together again—he doesn’t want to. I’m damaged goods, but he’ll take what’s left.

  “I could hurt you,” he tells me, making it even more confusing that he isn’t. Not now. His face portrays his torment as his thumb nudges me farther apart, making me fling my legs aside to let him in. I think he grunts that request so softly that I barely hear it. “Let me in, Snow.”

  Let me break you open as I promised.

  One testing brush along my core and everything tightens. Can’t think. Cotton bed sheets chafe my skin, making it even realer that he’s crouched on top of me. Watching me. Devouring me in tiny, nibbling glances.

  “I…I need to touch you,” he bites out as quivering fingers lower and spread. Fire. Ice. My eyelids flutter, chopping his image into distorted pieces. “Fuck, I need to feel you.”

  He arches forward, his arm flexing between us and the pressure feels unlike anything else. He has me spreading apart around liquid fingers, a gasping little plaything—but it’s not how he wants me.

  Anger rides his dissatisfied grunt. “How the fuck are you even wet?”

  Maybe because my body weeps for him. Against him. Memories swell in my skull, threatening to break loose, but he pushes them back, holding everything at bay but shuddering, shameful, aching sensations. They make me writhe against his hand, my hips jerking greedily. What I want, I don’t even know. Perhaps I don’t even want it at all. I’ll chase it down anyway like a moth to a flame.

  He’ll let me burn.

  “I could fuck you like this,” he breathes, rocking his hand with vigor, increasing the pressure.

  My eyelids flutter, refusing to close. I need to see him like this, even as tears streak my cheeks. So honest. He’s not my Brandt, but someone colder, a stranger who looks at me and groans that I’m beautiful, even as he despises me.

  Something breaks from the stroking mass of fingers, pushing more firmly inside. Penetrating.

  My head falls back, my mouth opening in shock. “D-don’t hurt me.”

  He chuckles, sounding so tired. A man in a war, fighting a losing battle he can’t afford to surrender. My eyes close against him as the invasion tightens, eliciting a deep, searing burn. Then they open again. He’s closer, his eyes drinking in every pained reaction I can’t hide.

  “Yes,” he grits out. More tightening. More aching pressure. More primal pain. “Take me even if it hurts. Look at me.” He groans when I do, resting his face against mine. “You take me even if it hurts.”

  But my body has other plans.

  Uncomfortable wetness pools where he touches me, easing the burn, making me malleable. Open. Ready. His.

  “Jesus Christ, it shouldn’t be like this,” he laments, rearing back on his knees to gaze down at me in despair.

  Pain renders his features more hollow than frozen. He’s a skeletal shadow of a man, haunted by the substance glistening on the fingertips he’s holding up for inspection. An ebony tongue slides from between his lips, stealing a drop for himself. He licks two fingers. Three at once, hissing as liquid meets his tongue.

  “It shouldn’t fucking be like this,” he mutters dejectedly. “It’s like you already fucking know. You know.” He lowers himself over me again, placing five wet fingertips against my mouth, forcing me to inhale this animalistic form of myself. “You know who you belong to.”

  Brandt Lloyd. I want to say it. I need to say it.

  But Blake Lorenz has me dangling from a string. With every flick of the sensual line, my spine twitches accordingly. I can fit almost the entire length of his finger now. God, it feels so strange. Like a part of me has been rented out for twenty-four fucking years but only now does the tenant decide to return home.

  Lo and behold he hates the building he left behind.

  “I’ll make you regret,” he promises, barely intelligible. “I’ll make you wish you could scream. I’ll make you pray you could grow to hate this.”

  What exactly?

  Noise first. A low, grating hum: a zipper coming undone. It teases the air, a prelude to this menacing symphony. Fluttering next. Fabric being wrenched up by grasping fists, dragged over a beautifully formed head with a devastating expression. He looks how a murderer does, palming his weapon of choice.

  My breath stutters when I spot it nudging apart the fabric of his fly.

  I’ve seen cocks before. I’ve seen Daniel’s, thin and wiry, striving to sink inside Sloane. I’ve seen larger, jutting menacingly.

  But never any like his. Blake Lorenz is a study unto himself. He’s large enough to terrify, straining, throbbing flesh rising from a thatch of dark curls. He’s beautiful enough to inspire all manner of twisted thoughts. Such as how he’ll feel inside me. Soft? Hard?

  He strokes his fingers along the swollen head, and his harsh intake of air gives me a clue—he’ll feel punishing. Every inch will force its way inside me, and there will be no escape. Gulping for air, I part my lips, my head lolling against the unyielding mattress. Hard fingers sink into my hair, forcing my gaze back to him.

  “You shouldn’t be wetter, Snow,” he tells me, cruelly feeling for himself. Moisture slicks an easy path for his thumb to travel, biting deep. “Fuck, you should be screaming.”

  But I’m not. Tiny sounds rip from me, too insubstantial to register as anything at all. Maybe broken sobs and shattered promises.

  “Were you saving yourself?” he asked me once. But I was. I was.

  “Tell me to fuck you.”

  I shake my head, gritting my teeth, even as he winds down the fabric of his trousers. Bare, hot flesh meets mine, rigid with muscle and coiled sinew. God, he’s more motion than man, rippling, tightening, breaking.

  “Tell me you want me inside you.” It’s not a request this time. He drills the command in with a hard nip to my earlobe, drawing a gasp from me. Again. I cry out louder. “Tell me you want this.”

  But I don’t. I don’t. I—

  He twists his fingers, shoving another in alongside the first. Too much. My spine stiffens, lifting my hips from the bed, driving him in farther. Too far.

  “Fuck, tell me to fuck you.”

  Gritted teeth lock back all sound. I say nothing. Even as he crushes me down, kneeing my legs apart. Even as his hand cups my throat to the point of danger, wrenching my head back so that I have no choice but to stare up at him and watch. Those searching fingers withdraw too quickly, making me wince. Something larger replaces it a heartbeat later, nudging alongside my entrance, demanding to be let it.

  “You feel… Shit.” His eyes close as his head rears back against his shoulders, baring his throat. Taut flesh reveals every inhale as he groans, grinding his teeth so loudly that the crunch resonates in my bones. “Hell,” he rasps after a jarring second of silence. “You feel like fucking hell.”

  His hips lurch. More pressure, fearfully intense. Can’t breathe. Can’t think.

  My lips fly apart, and terror spills out. “B-Brandt—”

  “Not him.” Glowering, the monster above me braces one hand beside my head, using it for leverage to drag his length along my folds.

  Sickening, searing friction. I see white for a split second, it feels so sharp, this violation. It feels so wrong. So real. So…good.

  “I’m not him,” he repeats in between guttural groans. “I’m not fucking him.”

  My heart swells, battered and swollen. The pain makes me reckless. I’ll do anything not to feel it.

  “Tell me you are.” It’s a pathetic, dying wish before he rips me open. “Tell me you are and I’ll say what you want. I’ll do what you want… Just tell me you’re—”

  The bed lurches with the sudden shift in his weight. Flesh tears. Spreads. Accepts.

 
“Not. Him.” He angles my face toward him, ensuring that I see every inch. Every flawed feature. Every twisted, beautiful pore and snarl. “Not…anymore.”

  The last part was imagined. I know it. Burning tears erupt anyway, coating my cheeks. My eyes shut against the tide of them, unable to keep a single drop at bay.

  He’s too deep. Without a damn given for my pain, he claws his way inside me, cramming every bit of himself he can. Deep. Deeper. It’s impossible to be filled so much. I’ll explode.

  But then he moves.

  And the world shatters into a million fucking pieces.

  Bodies aren’t meant to be molded like clay, splayed and kneaded into something new. Fingers tease my flesh in new directions as he forces his way inside me. Heavy hands pin my thighs flat on either side, rendering me immobile as he rocks his weight like a battering ram.

  “T-too big,” I squeak, squirming against the pressure of his touch. “Too big. Too big!”

  He stops moving, his breath scalding my throat. “Do you want me to stop? I will.” He groans as if it’s the only thing in the world he wants. My rejection. “Say it. I will. Say it…”

  My lips part… Nothing comes out.

  It’s futile. There’s no shutting him out. No salvation.

  All I can do is move against him, hastening my own destruction. Groaning, he rips me asunder, plundering everything I have. And, shuddering and gasping in the aftermath, I give it to him—every bloodied piece.

  “Look.” God knows how he’s even capable of speech as he wrenches himself from my cleft, drawing a whine from my lips. One of his hands slithers beneath my neck, forcing me to gaze down and watch him. Swollen flesh glistens in the dark. “I own you now,” he tells me, gnashing his teeth after every word. “I fucking own you. Say it.”

  Surrender rides conflicting waves of pleasure and pain. I’m no match. “You own me…”

  Hissing, he shoves himself back in, stretching my body around his invasion. It hurts. God, it hurts so, so much. But it’s that brutal kind of pain you get from flicking a hangnail or nudging a loose tooth.

  Sharp and addicting.

  My entire body becomes a wound he gleefully grinds salt into. One thrust. Another. Another.