by Nina Levine
King’s Wrath
Nina Levine
Contents
King
I. The Early Years
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
II. Present Time
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Bonus Scene 1
Bonus Scene 2
Winter & Birdie Free Story
Also by Nina Levine
Acknowledgments
King’s Playlist
About the Author
Dear Reader,
* * *
Thank you for taking this journey with me. For letting King into your heart. He’s my most complex character to date and whether you love him or are just interested to see where his story goes, you will at least have a greater understanding of him by the end of this book.
* * *
King has been in my head since 2014. I thought I knew him well. It turns out I’d barely scratched the surface of this beautiful man. You may think beautiful is an odd word to describe King, but I see him as beautiful in so many ways.
* * *
This story really brings home how much the people in our lives influence our story. How they shape us, bend us, help define us, and how they help us to be either better or worse versions of ourselves.
* * *
May you always choose those people who make you love yourself better when you’re with them.
* * *
I hope you love King as much as I do.
* * *
Nina x
Our love wasn’t like everyone else’s.
There wasn’t a first date or flowers and gifts.
We didn’t have a song or cute nicknames for each other.
There were no calls during the day to check in with me, no coming home to cook me dinner, and no foot massages at the end of a long day.
That wasn’t how he loved.
But love me he did.
Madly, deeply, passionately, completely.
King loved with everything he had.
He just loved a little differently to most.
Part I
The Early Years
1
Zachary King
Thirty Years Ago
Aged 9
* * *
Her screams called me.
They woke me in the night. It had been months since the last time, so I’d expected them for weeks. Dad had been getting angrier every day, and I knew that meant screams would come soon. Either from me or from them. I didn’t know which type Dad preferred more.
I left my bed and crept down the hallway. It was a bad idea. I’d never done it before, but I wanted to know what was happening to make those girls scream and cry so bad.
If Mum or Dad caught me, I knew I’d be in for it. Dad would probably burn more cigarettes into my skin, or break my arm again, but I was getting good at zoning out when he did that. I’d found a way to ignore the pain. I’d found the voices in my head to talk to while he hurt me. They never let me down.
A loud scream came from the room at the bottom of the stairs—the room I wasn’t ever allowed in. I froze. My head felt really warm. Full. Like hot, thick liquid filled it. And my heart beat fast and hard. I worried that it might get too big for my chest. I wasn’t sure if that could happen, but it really felt like it could.
When the screams stopped, I carefully stepped onto the first step of the staircase. I made sure to be very quiet. I even held my breath. That wasn’t hard to do. Being scared often made me do that. I could hold my breath for longer than anyone I knew.
I’d almost made it to the bottom when another scream sounded. My father spoke then, causing me to freeze again. “You think you’re leaving here, bitch? No one fucking leaves here. I’m going to choke the fucking life out of you while I fuck you.”
My arms and legs turned to jelly, and my whole body felt hot. I knew what fucking was. My school friends talked about sex. Mikey had even shown me one of his dad’s videos. But somehow I knew this wasn’t what we talked about at school. Something in the way my dad said that she wasn’t leaving here made me think this was very bad. It was the same way he spoke to me when he hurt me.
“Lois!” my father barked. “Pass me that fucking knife.”
The sounds of my mother doing as he’d said came through the wall in between us.
And then the screams came again.
I heard a funny grunting noise after that, and I couldn’t stop myself—I took the last few steps so I could see what they were doing.
I stood completely still when I finally saw what my parents did in this room to make girls scream. Mum sat in a chair in the corner of the room watching my father having sex with a naked girl on a mattress on the floor. The girl’s hands were tied together above her head, and her body jerked all over the place. Dad’s hands squeezed her neck, and I knew he was making it really hard for her to breathe.
I wanted to yell at him to stop.
He was hurting her so bad.
I wanted to run back up the stairs and hide under my covers.
I wanted to leave this house and never come back again.
But I did nothing.
I watched my father.
And I hated myself.
I hated that I liked watching him hurt her.
I hated that I was glad he was hurting her rather than me.
2
King
Seventeen Years Ago
Aged 22
* * *
Rage was better than misery.
And blood was better than tears.
My president and I agreed upon that.
Jethro stood over Shark, who lay sprawled on the dirt out the back of the clubhouse, his angry red face glaring down at the club member who’d provoked his rage. “Did you really think you’d get away with peddling that shit on the side? You thought I’d never find out?”
Shark, the idiot, had been selling coke for the past month to a bunch of kids from the local high school. He’d skimmed some off the club supply and pocketed the cash for himself. At first, it had been such a small amount that it had gone undetected. But greed always won in life, and he’d taken enough last week for Jethro to notice. Our president’s ruthless way of dealing with betrayal like this meant it had only taken him a day to find out who was responsible.
And here we were, watching Shark’s punishment.
Or should I say, his torture, because Jethro was just getting started. By the time he was done, Shark wouldn’t be recognisable. He also wouldn’t be breathing.
Every cell in my body roared to life as I watched Jethro deliver the punishment. I hungered for this kind of violence, the kind inflicted as retribution, and although I wasn’t the one to deliver it, I could taste the sweet victory of it as I zeroed in on the blood dripping from his mouth.
When Shark didn’t answer him, Jethro smashed his heavy boot down onto Shark’s face, gri
nding it harder into the ground. “Answer me!”
My restraint stretched close to breaking point. It took everything to hold myself back. To not push Jethro out of the way and shove my boot in Shark’s face.
Shark writhed on the ground and tried like hell to push Jethro off him, but our president’s strength was unrivalled. When Shark wasn’t forthcoming with an answer, Jethro yanked him up off the ground and slammed him against the brick wall of the clubhouse.
He gripped the front of Shark’s shirt. “You wanna know what we do to members who betray the club?”
Struggling for breath, with his face swelling and cut to shit, Shark managed to get out, “I swear I’ll never do it again, Jethro. I swear!”
Jethro’s eyes turned wild. Frenzied. Like a fucking madman—something I recognised and related to. “I don’t fucking believe you!”
Without waiting for a response, he pummelled Shark’s face until it was a bloody pulp. Two other members had to move into place to hold Shark up as Jethro unleashed his fury. Almost unconscious, the only sounds coming from him were grunts of pain and cries that turned to whimpers and pleas for mercy.
Jethro scowled at him in disgust. “Have some fucking self-respect and stop your fucking crying.” He grabbed Shark’s chin and pulled his face up. “It’s time to settle in. We’ve got a long night ahead of us.”
I’d been told what happens when a member is disloyal to the club, but this was the first time I’d witnessed it. It was also my first week as a prospect, and I knew I’d never make the same mistake as Shark. Fuck, I knew that before witnessing his death. I may have only been a prospect for a short time, but I’d been a hangaround for a while, and I knew I’d live and breathe for this club. I’d fucking live and breathe for anyone who was as loyal to me as I was to them.
“How was your day?” Ivy asked when I joined her in the kitchen of our tiny home later that night.
She stood at the sink, back to me, washing dishes, and my gaze dropped to her ass. Five years of that ass being mine, and I still couldn’t get enough of it or of her. Getting engaged to her two years ago was one of the smartest things I’d ever done. The sooner I had a wedding ring on her finger, the better.
Keeping my eye trained on the short denim skirt she wore, I grabbed the tub of ice cream I’d picked up on my way home and a spoon from the rack where she was placing clean dishes to dry. I popped the lid and moved to where she stood, pressing myself to her back. Ivy had a thing for short skirts and loose tank tops that gave me perfect access to all my favourite places. Today she wore both, and my gaze dropped to her chest. She had on the pink lacy bra I loved, and my dick hardened while I thought about ripping it off her soon.
As I manoeuvred my arms around her, ice cream in one hand, spoon in the other, I answered her question. “Long.” And fucking satisfying. “Here,” I said as I brought a spoon of ice cream to her mouth. “It’s your favourite.” Ivy had an obsession with banana ice cream from Baskin Robbins, and I tried to feed it to her as often as I could. It made her happy, and I fucking loved seeing her happy.
“Mmm,” she murmured after her first spoonful.
She stopped washing dishes as I continued feeding her. Hands still in the sink, she rested her head against my chest and gazed up at me.
After her fourth spoonful, she said, “It’s been exactly three days since I’ve had ice cream.”
“I know,” I said around a smile as I scooped more from the tub for her. “Too long to go without something you love.”
I bent my face to her hair. Fuck, she smelt good. I dropped a kiss there before lifting my head and sliding the spoon into her mouth again.
It was moments like these with her that I lived for. Ivy’s moods shifted so fast some days that I couldn’t keep up. Add to that my moods, and we spent a lot of fucking time arguing over stupid shit. As much as we tried, we were both too damn stubborn and unable to control our tempers to stop the unnecessary arguments.
Placing the tub and spoon on the counter, I slipped my hand down the front of her skirt and dipped my head again so I could kiss the bare skin on her shoulder. Not only had it been three days since she’d had ice cream, it had also been that long since she’d had my cock. Not by my fucking choice, though. If I had my way, I’d be inside her morning and night. And in-between if I could swing it, too.
“King,” she grumbled, pulling my hands from her skirt, “I’ve got all these dishes to wash and then I’ve got study to do.”
I glanced at the huge pile of baking dishes she referred to. “Why the fuck are there so many dirty dishes?” I’d known Ivy for eleven years and lived with her for four; she didn’t love baking.
She turned in my arms, placing her hands on my chest. Bubbles from the sink soaked into my shirt and some floated in the air between us. But I wasn’t looking at those bubbles; my gaze was focused entirely on the happiness radiating from my woman.
Smiling, she caught me up. “Our mothers spent the day with me. The girls, too. We made shortbread, white Christmas, rum balls, Christmas pudding, and a gingerbread house. You should have seen Skylar. I don’t think I’ve seen her as excited for something as she was for that gingerbread house. Even Nik was happy to spend the whole day with us.” My sister, Annika, had just turned seventeen and tried to spend as much time as she could with her dickhead boyfriend. She argued a lot with me and our foster mum, so it surprised me she’d stayed all day. Skylar, on the other hand, was only seven and desperately craved family time and attention, so I could imagine her eating up every minute of the day with everyone.
Time slowed while I captured everything good about this moment. From the first day I met her, Ivy had drowned out some of the bad in my world. I was eleven, she was ten, and she’d looked at me like she knew what wounds were etched into my soul. All I’d said to her was “Don’t touch my shit, and I won’t touch yours. And anytime you want to whinge about your life, I’m not interested. I already know that life sucks.” That had been the day my foster mother’s sister, Ivy’s new foster mother, brought her over to our house and introduced everyone. She’d listened to what I said before replying, “Deal. And if you touch me, I’ll kick you so hard in the balls they’ll fall off.” The way she’d said it was as if she truly believed that would happen, and for one brief moment, she’d flooded my mind with bright light, dulling the darkness in there.
I gripped her waist and lifted her onto the kitchen counter next to the sink. A second later, my hands slid up her thighs and under her skirt, and before she managed to protest, I had a thumb on her clit and my lips to hers.
Pulling one of her legs around my waist, I groaned into her mouth, “Fuck, I will never get enough of you.”
She kissed me back, but her usual enthusiasm was missing. When the kiss ended, she said, “I don’t have time for this, King. I told you that.”
I rubbed her clit and slid a finger inside her. “You’re wet for me so I’d say you should make the time for this.”
Her lips flattened in the way that told me we were in for a fucker of an argument if I continued to push the point. Smacking her hands against my chest, she threw out, “Everything always revolves around what you want. What about what I want? Does that ever matter to you?”
Fuck, something had her worked up. Letting her go, I took a step back. “What’s going on here, Ivy? What’s pissed you off today?”
Her eyes widened. “Today? You make me sound like I’m a bitch who is always pissed off.”
I raked my fingers through my hair, not wanting to get into this with her. Not tonight. Not after the events of the day that had me wired for blood. I’d come home hoping that some time with her would trip that switch.
“I’m not doing this with you tonight.” I turned to leave the kitchen. To put some space between us.
I’d only made it two steps out of the room when she wrapped her hand around my bicep and yelled, “Don’t you walk away from me! I want to know what you meant!”
I clenched my jaw and counted to ten, wi
lling her to let this shit go. She didn’t, though, and I didn’t make it to ten before she’d convinced me to have it out with her.
Spinning back around, I glared at her, resentment and frustration choking the air around us. Why did we always—always—have to hurl our pain at each other like this? Why the fuck couldn’t we express ourselves without all this extra bullshit?
I slammed my hand down on the table next to us. “All right, let’s get this shit out then.”
She flinched before quickly recovering, every inch of her body tense and ready for battle. “I told you I have study and that I want to finish cleaning the kitchen, but no, you decide—and like always, it’s your decision—that we’re going to have sex. I’m sick of never getting a say, King. And I don’t like that you accused me of always being pissed off. I’ll admit I’m stressed with my study and work, but I’m not always going off at you about stuff.”
I wanted to tread carefully with her, but she’d worked me up so much that I didn’t have that in me anymore. “Almost every fucking day lately, I come home to a new fight with you, and the thing I’ve worked out is that whatever the fuck you’re arguing with me over isn’t actually the issue. So dig deep and figure out what it really is, and spit that shit out fast because I’m running out of patience for all of this.”
