Savage Mafia Prince: a Dangerous Royals romance

by Annika Martin

  My belly drops through my shoes. “Um, excuse me?”

  “You heard what I said. It’ll be best if you make yourself ready for me.”

  “What? That’s what you think will happen here?”

  The savage light in his gaze makes my skin heat more. “It’s what I know will happen.”

  “And I’m going to make myself ready for you. That’s how you think this will work.”

  His voice lowers. “You’re aroused already. I feel it in your throat. See it in your eyes. And your scent…”

  Shivers slide over me. “You’re dreaming.”

  He puts a hand to the center of my chest and backs me up to the tree. He takes my hand and guides it toward my crotch. I pull, trying to reroute us, but he’s too strong. He grabs two of my fingers and moves them for me. I hiss out a breath as everything between my legs comes alive.

  A few strokes, and I could totally get off.

  “Don’t resist me.”

  “I get the idea. Make myself ready. I don’t need your demo.”

  He keeps on, guiding my fingers between my legs. “Shit,” I breathe, closing my eyes.

  “Open your eyes. Open them.”

  I keep my eyes closed. There’s not much he can do about it, being that he doesn’t have a third arm and hand.

  He growls and bites my cheek. My eyes fly open. “Better.” He continues on, getting me off. Slowly, surely, I’m about to come.

  “Feel it,” he says. “This is how you’ll make yourself ready for me.”

  “For somebody who’s so sensitive about being as a savage,” I gasp, “you’re acting like one.”

  “I think you like it.” He presses me more firmly to the tree. Bark gouges into my back as the pleasure rises between my legs. “This is how I want you. Ready for me to take you when and where I choose.”

  I’m moving my hand on my own now, angling into all the best parts, because fuck it feels good. My breath heats up.

  His breath tickles my ear. “This is how I want you getting ready for me, for when I bend you over.”

  I’m angling to hit a certain spot, panting, mad with the buildup of pleasure. This is not me, turned on by a caveman like this. Mind and body taken over by a possessive brute.

  His breath is velvet on my cheek. “There’s nowhere you can hide from me. No part of you can hide from me.”

  Suddenly he’s off me. I’m 98 percent of the way to an orgasm, and he lowers me onto the forest floor, onto a bed of sticks and pine needles. I lie trembling at his feet like a piece of meat for the savage, a virgin sacrifice for the beast.

  He stalks away in a wake of power and glory and man.

  My face goes hot with shock. “What the hell?” I call after him. This was a power play—Kiro, showing how he can take over my body and mind. He’s going to feed me. Then he’ll bend me over and fuck me. And the worst thing is that I’ll like it. And then we’ll go deeper into this wilderness, into this insanity.

  Caveman and captive is a good role-play fantasy, but this role-play is moving into reality with alarming speed, and cavewoman is not my preferred lifestyle. Lying at his feet, I would’ve given him anything. Everything.

  It’s as if he’s predator and I’m prey on some deep soul level.

  I lost myself once already.

  I have to get away.

  He has his knife with him, but I realize he didn’t bring the lighter. I eye the pack, just out of my reach. The lighter’s in the pack.

  I don’t see him, but I hear the babbling water. I know he’s down there…catching fish with his bare hands—supposedly. Is he messing with me? People can’t do that.

  But I know he thinks I’m trapped. The leash under the boulder is effective—or would be if I were a four-legged pet.

  Luckily I’m a human woman with opposable thumbs.

  I rip a branch from a young tree and use it to snag the pack. Soon enough, I have the lighter. I hold the flame under the rope, grateful the breeze is flowing away from the stream where he’s down fishing, so that he can’t smell it so easily.

  Or maybe he can smell it. He basically has superpowers out here. Still, I have to try.

  He’s master of the forest, that’s for sure, but it’s his superpowers over me that really have me worried. The dark pull of belonging to him tugs at my belly. The sensation of being at his mercy is as intoxicating as any drug.

  The rope blackens and fries.

  I use my teeth to rip it the rest of the way, spitting out the charred, bitter threads.

  Freedom.

  I can do this. I’m resourceful. I’ve survived in all kinds of dangerous places. If an eight-year-old boy can handle this wilderness, I sure as hell can.

  I pocket the lighter and nab my phone, which is still in two parts in the baggies.

  Quiet as a mouse, I creep off the other way—the direction from which we came. We’ve been heading pretty steadily north and northwest. I’ll go south and southeast. I’ll keep going until I get a signal.

  Guilt twists my belly as I move through the trees. I’m surprised by how bad I feel, leaving the man who’s depriving me of my freedom.

  But then, beneath the captive thing we have going, there’s a friendship. Maybe even something deeper than that.

  I care about him. I don’t want him to be lonely.

  But taking a woman captive isn’t the answer.

  I move at a steady pace. I make good time. I’m not a complete idiot about moving with stealth; I’ve been in contested areas. Hot zones. I avoid sticks that might crack. Piles of leaves. I veer off the path and break random branches to fool him. Or at least try.

  I come to a fork and take the wrong direction, thinking to circle back. Hopefully he won’t expect it.

  I go for maybe twenty minutes. Up ahead, I see a thicket of pine trees. I’m thinking I could get into there and climb one. He won’t expect that, either. People don’t look up. I’m really doing it. Part of me wonders whether it’s a little foolish, but I have water, fire, and enough clothes to keep warm. A person can go two months without food. I grab a pine frond and rub the needles between my fingers, releasing the pungent juices. Like perfume to cover my scent. I rub it on my pulse points.

  I step it up. I crunch over some leaves, and then I crunch over something that gives weirdly. I think I’ve stepped into a hole. Until I feel the rush of tickles on my ankle.

  Up my pant leg.

  And then the stinging, like needles, jabbing bone-deep.

  My leg is covered with black wasps.

  I scream.

  Mud wasps are swarming my pants. I shake my leg, screaming, flailing, but keep stinging me through my pants, my jacket.

  With wild motions, I brush them from my face and hair, whirling, trying to get them off of me. Then I just start to run, waving my arms.

  My leg feels like it’s on fire. I feel pricks on my back, my arms.

  I run like crazy, batting them from my face. They’re in my hair, everywhere.

  I crash through the forest. I trip and fall. I bound up and keep going.

  I run for what seems like forever, hysterical. They don’t let up.

  Hands grip me, stilling me, batting off the bugs. I’m crying. Screaming. I’m lifted up off the ground. Something goes around me. A coat, a blanket.

  Kiro.

  He’s carrying me, running hard. I cling to him as the world jolts and shakes. His cheek is dotted with black bugs, all along the strong ridge of his cheekbone.

  He’s moving fast, not trying to be gentle. He himself is wriggling around. Fuck—the wasps must be stinging the hell out of him.

  “Don’t look at me,” he says through his teeth as he wipes them away by rubbing his cheek against the blanket around me. “Put your face to my chest. Take in a deep breath—through my shirt! Now!”

  The last thing I see is his beautiful face, dotted with a new round of black wasps, before I press mine to his shirt and suck in a breath.

  “Another breath,” he commands, speaking through his te
eth. “Hold it.”

  I’m barely able to comply before I feel us flying through the air.

  And then a rush of cold as we plunge into icy water.

  I cling more tightly to him. I wait for us to come up, but we don’t.

  I feel him pulsing us through the water—underwater—using his powerful legs to propel us. The ice cold feels good on my stings, but I need air. I pull my head away from his chest. I need air!

  He holds me tightly.

  I try to push away. Through the blur of the water I see light up above, but he’s moving us to the bottom. I panic, fighting him. He grabs a few rocks and suddenly we’re going up, up, up to the surface.

  He’s going too slowly! I need to breathe! I need to get up there!

  I struggle as I see the light above, pushing, pulling. I feel like I might pass out. Like my lungs might collapse. Or maybe explode.

  He squeezes my shoulder, as if to urge me to calm. I try—I really do. He grabs my hair and pushes my head down, keeps me down while he’s above the surface. Why won’t he let me breathe? Is he trying to kill me?

  I kick and fight. I can see him breaking the surface. He’s doing something up there—throwing rocks? Suddenly we’re heading down again.

  No! I need to get back up there! My lungs burn!

  He drags me down, down to the rocky lake floor again. I fight him as if my life depends on it. It feels like it does.

  He has me tight against him. Black spots crowd the edges of my vision.

  I’m no longer paying attention to what he’s doing. All I know is that I need to get away from him, to breathe. When I see the light above, I thrash more wildly.

  Air.

  He palms my head, keeping me under while he breaks the surface. Then, finally, he guides me up—slowly. He seems to be communicating something to me. What, I don’t know, don’t care. I need air.

  I break the surface and gulp in great mouthfuls of air, sputtering, coughing.

  “Quiet,” Kiro whispers. “Do not splash!”

  I can’t stop sucking in air—loudly. I push away from him and tread water. My boots are heavy, weighing me down. I try desperately to focus.

  “Shhh!” He points at a dark cloud at the far end of the lake not a hundred yards away.

  A chill comes over me when I realize it’s the wasps, swarming out there. “Oh my God,” I breathe.

  “Shhh. Stay still.”

  Quietly, and with balletic grace, Kiro somehow heaves the bulk of his body up out of the water, throwing a rock high into the sky. He sinks back down and pulls me next to him.

  We’re two heads, bobbing at the surface, watching the rock he threw sail up past the trees into the blue dome above us. It make its lazy arc down, plummeting down, down toward the dark swarm. It splashes.

  The swarm darkens, pulsing furiously near where the rock went in, seeming to attack the water itself.

  A chill comes over me. That would be us.

  They were waiting for us, searching for us.

  If we’d come up for air near where we went in, without being sneaky and smart, they would’ve killed us.

  Fuck.

  I turn to meet his golden gaze. Giant welts glow red on his cheekbone.

  And then he smiles. I can’t believe he’s smiling at a time like this. “They’re dangerous,” he whispers. “But so stupid.”

  And suddenly I smile back. We’re in this horribly freezing water hunted by angry wasps, and I just grin like a fool. I can’t stop smiling at him. I can’t believe how badass he is. How young. How beautiful.

  His beauty rips at me.

  “I’m going down again,” he says then. “Okay?”

  “We can’t stay in here,” I say. My limbs feel heavy, and it’s not just because I have hiking boots on—the water is freezing. My fingers feel numb. So do my lips. We’re at risk for hypothermia.

  “Keep moving,” he commands.

  “This cold is dangerous, too.”

  He says nothing. He knows it’s dangerous. “I’m happy to see that my mate can swim.”

  “I’m not your mate.”

  He smiles. He’s fucking with me. Keeping my mind off them. “They’re stupid, but they hunt well,” he breathes. “I’m going down again.”

  An unspoken question—Can I last?

  I nod, teeth chattering.

  He studies my eyes, and then he disappears below the surface.

  I tread water, keeping a watch on the swarm, ready for them. My bones feel brittle, like the cold is turning them to threads of steel. My breath comes in gasps, an effect of the cold. Everything constricts. It’s not good.

  After a ridiculously long time where I start to worry, Kiro breaks the surface soundlessly.

  My heart does this flip as our eyes meet. He hurls a series of rocks, one after another, seeming almost to defy gravity, the way he can get his body out of the water to make his throw.

  He’s directing the swarm away from us, moving them away.

  “I’m cold,” I whisper. “This isn’t good.” Does he understand how vulnerable we are to hypothermia right now?

  “Soon,” he says softly, watching the swarm. “Once we’re out, believe me, we won’t want to jump back in.”

  I try for a smile, unsure whether my lips actually form it. “Voice of…” My lips feel too cold to form the word “experience.”

  “Yes.” He dives under and comes back up with more rocks, throwing them farther away. He’s landing them in the forest at the far end of the lake now. He’s getting a lot of fucking distance. I think he could’ve been a baseball player. He could have been so many things.

  “They’re gone,” he says.

  We swim toward the rocky shore. He helps me out.

  I’m shaking like a leaf. I curl up on the ground, pulling my knees to my chest. It’s a cool day, maybe in the fifties, hazy sun sparkling in the treetops. “We have to get warm,” I say through violently chattering teeth.

  He wrings out the blanket I discarded—I can’t believe he had the presence of mind to grab our only blanket. He thinks of everything, knows everything that’s happening at any given time. He wrings the fuck out of it.

  “I’ll get you warm.” He picks me up and wraps us both tightly in the damp blanket. I don’t know how he’s walking; I don’t know that I could walk on my frozen limbs. I just cling to him, arms around his neck.

  He watches my eyes as he carries me, looking so fierce and strong. He’s like nobody I’ve ever known. Not even close.

  “Thank you, Kiro. I’m so sorry. If you hadn’t found me…” I can’t even finish the sentence. No words can capture the horror of death by stinging wasps.

  This softness moves over his features—more than softness; a kind of sweetness comes over him. “I’ll always come for you,” he says. “Always, as long as my heart beats, I’ll come for you. Protect you.”

  I know right then that it’s true. I hold on to him tightly as something inside me unwinds, unclenches. It’s something so deep, so hidden, that I wasn’t even aware of it.

  I’m so tired of fighting. I think I haven’t relaxed since the Fancher Institute. Or maybe before that. Kabul. The hospital collapse. When did I last relax?

  I’m thinking about that kitten. I’m remembering it on the street. The need to save it. The way saving it fucked everything up. The way my world crashed down. It’s a familiar treadmill of thoughts that always ends in me condemning myself and hating myself for grabbing it and fucking everything up.

  My life imploded the day I saved the kitten.

  But a new thought creeps in. Not everything imploded. The kitten’s world didn’t implode. It was scared and dying. I rescued it, and I made it safe.

  I hated myself for saving that kitten. Like it was the wrong thing to do. But was it so wrong? Something loosens inside me. Like maybe I forgive myself a little bit.

  I catch Kiro looking down at me. “Don’t worry, Ann. I will always protect you.”

  I stare up at him in a kind of shock. I’m like
the kitten. Somebody out there cared enough to come for me. Not just anybody—this guy.

  “Move your toes around.”

  I move my toes around.

  We trek forever. Every time I go still, he chastises me to move.

  Before I know it, I’m on the cold, hard ground surrounded by our stuff. He gets a fire going. He’s untying my boots, big fingers moving clumsily; he’s not unaffected by the cold, either. I don’t want my clothes off, but I know he’s right. I help him, wriggling out of my coat and stripping off my layers.

  “You should, too,” I say, lips still clumsy.

  “I’m fine,” he growls, undoing the snap of my jeans.

  “I got it.” I stand and wriggle out of them, stripping off my bra and panties. I sit near the fire, utterly naked, holding out my hands and feet, barely covering myself.

  He’s fussing with the tin cooking pot over on the other side of the fire. Is he going to make something warm to drink? It seems like a low priority. He’s stirring something with a stick.

  The day has become overcast, not that it matters under the thick forest canopy. “You need to get out of your clothes, too, dude.”

  He grunts. Well, some things are back to normal.

  After a bit, he rises and walks around to my side, holding the little tin pot. He gazes down at me. I don’t know what he’s thinking or if he’s angry or what. I suppose he should be.

  “Are you getting feeling back in your toes?”

  “Yeah,” I say. “I’m okay. What about you?”

  He crouches, stirring the pot with the stick. “I’m fine.” He puts the stirring stick aside, shoves two large fingers into the tin, and dabs something cold onto the large, angry welts that cover my calf.

  “Aagh!” I pull away my leg.

  He clamps a hand around my ankle. “Be still!”

  “What are you doing? What is that?”

  “Mud,” he says. “It’ll draw the poison out. Soothe the pain.”

  The mud feels cooling, and medically speaking, he’s probably right—it’s a form of poultice. Probably especially effective if there’s a lot of clay in there. “That’s smart.”

  His motions are slow, big fingers gentle. How did he learn to do this? Is this what animals do when wasps sting the fuck out of them? They go into the clay?