Dirty Halo

by Evie East

  He lifts his hands in a defensive gesture and settles back against his seat with a sigh as his eyes slip closed once more. “Suit yourself.”

  Angling my body away, I cross my arms over my chest and look resolutely out the window. I shouldn’t be wasting time talking to him anyway — no matter how gorgeous he is.

  You have bigger fish to fry than your sorely-neglected sex life, Emilia, I remind myself. Or have you forgotten that you’ve been taken against your will? That they cracked your best friend over the head with a gun and left him bleeding in a dark alley? That, as much as you’d like to deny it, you have a sinking suspicion you know exactly who ordered these men to extract you from your life in an SUV that costs more than your yearly tuition…

  We drive for a little while, only the sound of the road beneath the tires breaking the silence between us. It’s so quiet, I can hear each rhythmic breath he takes. He doesn’t seem particularly concerned about our situation. In fact, he seems downright relaxed. It’s an infuriating contrast to my own state of distress.

  “How are you so calm?” I snap after another minute has passed in total silence, glancing back at him despite my best efforts.

  His eyes don’t open.

  “Hello? Can you hear me? Or did you hit your head so hard you’ve slipped into a coma?”

  The only indication he’s listening is the slight curl of his lips, twisting up in a smirk.

  I sigh deeply. “We need to strategize. I think together we might have a shot at taking them down, when the door opens. If we—”

  He snorts — loudly — and finally opens his eyes. “Are you serious?”

  “Of course I’m serious!”

  “Love, it’s been a long night. A night which I intended to spend getting gloriously drunk to forget about all the shitty things that have happened today. Instead, I’m stuck with a delusional purple-haired pixie who’s either legitimately dumb or simply playing it, and, to top it off, my bourbon has run dry. Which means a hangover of massive proportions is soon to hit.” He closes his eyes once more. “So, no. I’m not going to strategize with you. I’m going to sleep and hopefully, when I wake up, this entire fucking day will have been a nightmare. You included.”

  Purple-haired pixie?!

  Nightmare?!

  What a prick.

  If he won’t fight back, I’ll just have to do it alone. With a snarl of disgust, I turn to the partition and begin to wail on it with both fists.

  “LET ME OUT OF HERE!”

  I bang and bang until my flesh is stinging and sore.

  A dozen hits.

  Fifty.

  One hundred.

  “LET! ME! OUT!”

  My raw screams are punctuated by skin-tearing strikes. My muscles are aching with the effort, but I don’t stop.

  “WHERE ARE YOU TAKING US?”

  An angry tear streaks down my cheek. I don’t pause to brush it aside.

  “YOU FUCKING BASTARDS!”

  He moves so fast, I don’t even see him coming. One minute I’m pounding the partition, the next I’m pressed tight against a broad chest, my wrists neatly manacled by two massive hands, my ass firmly planted on two unyielding thighs. I try to jerk myself free, but his arms are steel bands. It would take a brick of C4 to extract me from his hold.

  When his mouth hits my ear, I go absolutely motionless; I don’t even dare draw a breath, frozen like a helpless bird between the paws of a lion.

  One wrong move, he could tear me to pieces.

  “Enough,” he orders in a soft tone that somehow lacks all gentleness — like the whisper of a sharp blade sliding into the space between two ribs. I thrash, but he doesn’t release me. In fact, he only pulls me tighter against him, until I can feel every delicious indentation of his chest plastered against the planes of my back. From this proximity, his scent — secondhand smoke and top-shelf bourbon and something spicy I can’t quite put my finger on — is intoxicating enough to make my head spin.

  “Let go of me,” I hiss between clenched teeth.

  “I will, when you agree to stop hurting yourself.”

  “Hurting myself? I’m trying to get us out of this mess.”

  “Love, there’s no getting out.”

  “You haven’t even tried!”

  “Thing you should know about me…” His nose grazes the side of my throat and I try not to shiver. “I don’t expend effort on useless outcomes. I’d rather put my energy into more… viable… pursuits, where the endgame is guaranteed to be satisfying. For all parties involved.”

  My thighs clench of their own volition. I never thought the word viable could be so damn sexy.

  I was wrong.

  “Listen, buddy,” I bark. “You may be completely unbothered by the fact that we’re trapped in here, about to be sold into the sex trade. Or the internal organ trade. Or… some other kind of illegal back alley trade HBO will no doubt release a documentary about in the coming months…”

  He snorts.

  I ignore the sound. “But I haven’t resigned myself to dying before my twenty-first birthday. So let go of me. Now.”

  “Only twenty,” he murmurs, his breath warm on my skin. “So very young. So very naive.”

  “As opposed to you, hardened and wise in you old age?” I scoff bitterly. “What are you, twenty-five? Twenty-six?”

  “Too old for you, in any case.”

  “Perfect, since I’d never in a million years be interested,” I hiss scathingly. “Now let me go. I mean it.”

  “Or what?” The streak of humor in his tone tells me he’s enjoying this verbal sparring.

  I clench my jaw. “I’ll… I’ll…”

  “Scream at the top of your lungs? Bang your tiny little fists raw?” He chuckles again, and I fight the urge to head-butt him. “Because that plan has been working so well for you. “

  “You’re an asshole.”

  “You don’t even know me.”

  “Thank god for small miracles,” I snap. “Now let me go.”

  “In a minute. When you’re calm.”

  I thrash again, but it’s a halfhearted attempt. All I manage to do is land myself more firmly in his lap. Realizing there’s only one way out of this, I expel a sharp breath and strive to slow my rapid pulse.

  Breathe, Emilia. Just breathe.

  For the next few moments, we simply sit there — two strangers pressed together in the dark, his body cradling mine like a steel glove — as I attempt to calm myself. Instead, my heartbeat, which by all accounts should be slowing, begins to speed. The tempo of my breath increases, faster and faster, in time with each warm exhale I feel against my neck. Without any conscious effort at all, my spine bows slightly against his chest. I feel his thigh muscles flex beneath me and an unbidden bolt of arousal shoots straight between my legs.

  Fuck.

  The currents in the air change, one sort of tension fading into another so swiftly, I can’t quite define the moment I stop feeling like a captive in his hands. So subtly, I can’t pinpoint the second his hold alters from one of confinement to…

  Something entirely different.

  I hear a sharp intake of air from him, and I know he feels it too. His fingers flex against the thin bones in my wrists, as though he’s fighting for control. Not over me — I’ve long since stopped struggling. Over himself.

  “Tell me your name,” he mutters, shattering the silence. There’s a new edge of need in his voice that wasn’t there before. “Tell me who you are.”

  A reckless part of me wants to whisper something crazy — I’ll be whoever you want me to be — just to see how he’d react. To throw down a challenge and watch him rise to meet it.

  “I already told you,” I force myself to say instead. “I’m no one.”

  With a low sound of frustration rattling his throat, he shifts against me, in the process bringing my ass into full contact with the seam of his pants… and the undeniably swollen shaft that’s sprung to attention beneath. We both freeze at the impact.

 
; Holy.

  Fuck.

  He’s huge. And hard as a rock.

  It takes all my strength to hold my spine rigid, to keep my muscles tensed with indifference when every atom in my body is screaming that I should do the exact opposite. My heart is beating so hard, I’m sure he can hear it pounding at the pulse-point in my neck.

  Honestly, I hate that a man I’ve never met before is affecting me this much, this fast. I hate that he’s been nothing but a jerk to me and, still, there’s a sudden throb of desire in my veins that I can’t ignore.

  Hate it.

  Hate this.

  Hate him.

  So… what does it say about me that I’m more turned on than I’ve ever been in my life?

  “Please,” I murmur. I’m trying to say please let me go but I can’t seem to conjure the rest of the words. For some unfathomable reason… my plea comes out sounding like I’m pleading for a wholly different sort of release.

  “Please what, love?”

  I sink my teeth into my lip to contain the sound of pleasure that bubbles up from a dark, dangerous place inside me I don’t want to acknowledge. A place that would gladly let this stranger take anything he wanted from me in this dark backseat, while giving me what would probably be the most exciting sex of my boring, vanilla life.

  What the hell is the matter with you, Emilia?

  “You were right, you know.” His lips find my ear again and I practically moan at the sensation of his warm breath on the sensitive lobe. “I am an asshole. You’d be wise to remember that.”

  Before I have a chance to retort, he releases me. Face aflame with shame at my own weakness, I scramble off his lap, back to my side, as far from him as I can manage in this confined space. It’s no use — even pressed up against the hard plastic door panel, I can still feel his hands on my wrists, his breath on my neck, his heat pressing into my back, his cock pulsing between the cheeks of my ass. Every atom in my body is buzzing with supercharged sexual energy.

  And I don’t even know his name.

  Even without looking at him, I know he’s watching me. The weight of his stare rubs my nerve endings raw. I hope he can’t see the stained red skin of my cheeks in the dark: evidence of just how thoroughly he managed to work his way beneath my skin in a few brief moments.

  In theory, I’m smart enough to know that men like this are nothing but trouble — maybe served up with a side of a few screaming orgasms, but trouble all the same. Unfortunately, in reality, it’s a lot harder to ignore the ache spreading through my bloodstream like a lethal dose of heroin.

  “Stop looking at me like that,” I whisper, eyes dead ahead.

  There’s a heavy pause. “Like what?”

  “Like you’re trying to guess what color my underwear is.”

  “Love, I don’t need to guess. That skirt is so short, all I’d have to do was lean forward to find out.”

  My eyes roll so hard, I’m surprised they don’t get lodged in the back of my skull. “Of all the people I could’ve gotten abducted with, of course I end up with someone like you…”

  “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

  “You really shouldn’t.” I scoff, exasperated. “Apparently the horror of being grabbed by beefy men in bad suits and shoved into an SUV like a scene out of a bad James Bond movie wasn’t traumatizing enough. The true torture is an hour-long car ride in the company of an unbearable alpha male with a chip on his shoulder the size of the royal treasury.”

  “You know, that’s not the only thing the size of the royal treasury…”

  “You’re revolting.”

  “Funny, that’s not the vibe I was picking up from you while you were writhing in my lap.”

  “You mean when you sexually harassed me without consent?”

  The air goes so still, so tense, I almost cave and glance over at him. Clearly, I’ve struck some kind of nerve, because when he speaks again all teasing has been stripped from his voice. It’s almost a growl.

  “I only grabbed you because you were hurting yourself, like a child having a tantrum. What happened after that, the way you reacted to me — that was something else. If you want to twist it in your head, if you want to pretend you didn’t feel it, that’s your prerogative. But don’t cry assault when we both know your racing pulse and wet panties are evidence of something else.”

  I flush, chastised by his cold words.

  Great job, Emilia. Twenty minutes in his presence, he already hates you.

  I open my mouth to apologize, but promptly snap it back closed. What could I possibly say to fix this? And why would I even bother?

  He isn’t my friend. He isn’t my ally. He’s just a stranger in a bad situation.

  Probably safer to keep it that way.

  The SUV rolls on beneath us, a steady rumble over unknown road. And though nearly another hour passes, we don’t speak again. Not when we feel the car make a sharp left turn. Not when we slow to a stop. Not even when the suits yank open the back doors and haul us out into the night.

  We’re finally here.

  ….wherever that may be.

  Chapter Four

  I’m not sure what I was expecting.

  Some kind of secret Germanian government facility? A wartime bunker complete with semi-automatic weaponry and helicopters circling overhead?

  Instead, I find myself teetering in my chunky black heels on the uneven gravel lining the circular driveway of a stately manor-house in the middle of the countryside. It’s three stories of impressive baroque architecture with a mansard roof and a marble-arched front doorway. There must be twenty windows on each floor, inset at precise intervals along the thick stone facade, all illuminated brightly from within.

  It’s not a castle, but it’s damn impressive.

  I’m so awestruck, I don’t remember why I’m here until a crunch of gravel beside me pulls my attention back to earth. My dark-haired stranger stands a handful of feet away, his tone dripping with disdain as he surveys the scene.

  “Seriously? The Lockwood Estate?” he scoffs, eyeing the nearest guard. “The extraction protocols demand you bring me somewhere safe — not somewhere so far removed from anything remotely interesting, I’ll want to blow my own brains out after thirty minutes.”

  The suits, predictably, don’t react except to start walking toward the front door. It’s clear we’re expected to follow, but neither of us makes a move. I, for one, am in no rush to find out what awaits me across that threshold.

  Or… who awaits me.

  I let my eyes slide over to the man at my side. He’s taller than I thought in the car — well over six feet — and he seems determined not to meet my gaze, staring at the house like it’s the first ring of hell, rather than a stunningly beautiful mansion. Belatedly, it occurs to me that he himself might be royalty. His presence alone means he’s connected to the Lancasters. I just really hope I’m not expected to call him my liege or my lord or some other pretentious title… because that will not be happening.

  For the first time in my life, I curse myself for forcibly ignoring everything about the royal family. For avoiding news channels, looking away from tabloid magazine covers, tuning out idle chitchat about the dashing prince with the girls in my freshman year dormitory. I always told myself I had no interest in wasting brain cells on such frivolity, but the truth is… it was too painful to be an outsider pressed up the glass, peering in on a life that was almost mine.

  And, now…

  Here I am.

  I glance at my stranger again. My mouth opens to ask him a question, but I snap it closed before a single word escapes. After our intense tête-à-tête tete back in the car, I’m not sure we’re still on speaking terms.

  He expels a sharp breath. “For fuck’s sake, just ask.”

  I blink, startled. “What?”

  He looks down at me like I’m the most annoying person to ever dare breathe his air. His dark brows are pulled into a scowl that somehow only makes him more handsome. Or maybe that’s the moon’s d
oing. Out here, in the middle of nowhere, far removed from any source of light pollution, the starlight is so bright it bathes his every feature in pale, monochrome perfection.

  “Now or never, shrinking violet.”

  “Where are we?” I ask before he can change his mind.

  “The Lockwood Estate.”

  “Yes, but where is that?”

  “About a quarter league past bum-fuck nowhere.”

  I sigh. “Thanks. That’s immensely helpful.”

  He shrugs unapologetically, shoving his hands into the pockets of his perfectly tailored gray dress pants. “This place is about halfway between Lund and Vasgaard, if memory serves.”

  “Why are we here?”

  “I assume you saw the news earlier.”

  “The fire?”

  “Yes.” A bolt of grief flashes through his eyes, buried away so fast I’m sure I imagined it. “When there’s a threat to the crown, the whole royal family is put on lockdown, along with their closest relatives, friends, pertinent connections… You get the idea.”

  I nod.

  His eyes narrow on me. “Since you never told me who the hell you are, I’m assuming you’re connected to someone of importance. Someone who wanted to ensure your safety, in case this fire turns out to be…” He runs a hand through his hair, his jaw clenching with sudden strain. “Something more than an accidental candle left burning in Henry’s chambers.”

  The casualness with which he refers to the crown prince strikes me instantly.

  Henry.

  They’re close. Friends. Maybe even family.

  I suddenly remember his earlier words.

  It’s been a long night. A night which I intended to spend getting gloriously drunk to forget about all the shitty things that have happened today.

  I feel myself go pale. God, I’ve been so wrapped up in the chaos of my own night, I didn’t realize he might have his own fair share to deal with.

  “I’m so sorry,” I say quietly, tamping down the urge to reach out and take his hand in mine.

  He recoils as though I’ve slapped him. “Excuse me?”

  “The fire… the king and queen… Prince Henry…” My voice goes soft. “I’m sorry for your loss. For what you must be going through, right now.”