Dirty Lovely Broken

by Emmy Chandler

  Jude tensed, fresh anger pulsing through him as he pried her away from his chest with a firm grip on both of her arms. Maari blinked up at him, several long strands of dark hair stuck to her tear-streaked face. “You are home,” he growled. “So stop all this nonsense before you earn yourself some pain that doesn’t come with an orgasm.”

  Maari shrugged out of his grip, and he let her go. “You think I care about pain?” she sobbed.

  “I think if you don’t, it’s because you’ve never experienced it in any significant amount.” He frowned down at her, studying her face. “Is this about Geneva? You were friends in school, right?”

  At an elite academy in Valemont where half the planet’s royal families sent their children to be educated and to socialize with each other, hopefully forming alliances and relationships that would come in handy, politically, for decades to come.

  Jude’s own sisters were there at that very moment.

  “Did you just destroy your room in a rage because your friend has what you want? Because Geneva got the wedding and the crown your brothers stole from you, when they sold you in exchange for peace?” His gaze narrowed on her, as sharp and cold as the cruel bite in his voice. “Did you think I was going to marry you? Did you think you could twist this to your advantage and exchange a king for the sniveling prince you were supposed to wed?”

  Would that have prevented the war? Jude wondered, startled by the sudden pointless possibility. If he’d demanded Maari’s hand, in recompense for his father’s murder five years ago, could the fighting have been averted? Could he even now be married to this wild, willful beauty, taming her temper and stoking the flames of her passion in bed every night, without sharing her with his brothers?

  Could she be the queen at his side and the mother of his children, if he’d sought a marital alliance for peace, rather than for military might, five long years ago?

  His snide expression betrayed none of his private doubts or longings. What-ifs were for fools. What mattered was that Maari was his, even if he had to share her with Orlann and Malac. Even if he had to split his time between the bitter wife who worshiped his crown but only tolerated his cock and the concubine who hated him, but grew wet every time he walked into her room.

  “Don’t flatter yourself.” Maari backed away to lean against the counter, swiping at her face, legs pressed firmly together. “I don’t want to marry you. I want to kill you.”

  Jude dismissed the ridiculous threat with a huff. “Why did you destroy your room?”

  “Why does it matter?” Her eyes filled with fresh tears, her shoulders stiff with an obvious effort to hold it all inside. “Let me go, Jude. Or else, just kill me and call my debt paid. My life for your father’s.”

  “Your brother’s life paid for my father’s. You are here to seal the peace treaty.” And he would never let her go. Not back to Bannon, and not into the next life. Maari and her lusty objections, her fiery rebellions, were an intoxication like nothing he’d ever experienced. Her brilliance cast shadows on the rest of his life, pushing his duties and obligations into the hazy margins of his existence, when he was with her. He was the moth drawn to her flame, risking a burn with every touch. “You agreed to this.”

  “I didn’t know you were married. I didn’t know I’d be the reason you’d be breaking your marital vows and—”

  “A king never vows fidelity.”

  “—I can’t live here.” She didn’t even seem to hear him. “Not like this. Let me go, or I swear I’ll find a way to end it—”

  “Stop!” Jude roared. “I will not listen to any more of this tearful drivel!”

  Maari’s eyes narrowed, her brows drawn low, and he could feel the change in her like a sudden shift in the weather. Like a storm breaking from clouds that had been threatening a deluge for days. Her hands curled into tiny fists at her sides, her spine straightening. She opened her mouth and screamed up at him, her face reddening with the effort. “Fucking kill me, or I’ll do it myself!”

  “Enough!” Jude grabbed her arm and hauled her into the bedroom, around a scattering of broken glass and past the teary-eyed handmaid.

  “Please don’t hurt her!” the maid cried.

  “She’s doing this to herself!” Jude snapped. “Get out.”

  “But you don’t under—”

  “Out!” he roared, and the little maid jumped, startled. Then she raced from the room.

  As the door clicked shut behind her, Jude dragged Maari to the side of the bed, where he sat. But before he could force her over his lap, bare ass in the air, she let out a heartrending sob that wracked her whole body, then she collapsed to the floor at his feet, face buried in both hands. “She’s going to kill my children!”

  “What?” Jude hauled her back up and shoved hair out of her face so he could see her red-rimmed eyes. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Geneva. I thought she had come to rescue me. I thought Jaarod had sent her. We both knew her in school, so when she just appeared in my room, I thought…” She dissolved into sobs again, and her words got lost in the torrent of tears.

  “You thought my wife was here to set you free?” Ludicrous. Although, he wouldn’t put it past Geneva, after how she’d been acting all day.

  “I didn’t know she was your wife, at first. But then she told me to stay away from her children. And she said that if I got pregnant, I’d have to get rid of it before you found out, because if I gave birth, she’d have my baby smothered in its cradle. Just in case it’s yours.”

  Having finally aired her trauma, Maari exhaled, silent tears trailing down her cheeks as she hiccupped softly. She looked defeated. Broken not by anything that Jude had demanded from her, not by any pleasure he had forced upon her, but by the most horrifying possibility a parent could conceive of.

  A threat directed at children he hadn’t even had a chance to sire yet, by the mother of his beloved daughters.

  Maari backed away from him, eyes wide, and distantly he realized that the rage-filled bellow rumbling up from his chest didn’t sound like something that could be produced by a human throat. “I’ll kill her,” he snarled, stomping toward the door, and Maari raced after him, veering around more broken glass. She grabbed his arms and dug her bare heels into the floor, trying to stop him, but she only got skinned feet for her efforts.

  “No!” She let go of Jude’s arm and threw herself between him and the door. “Don’t hurt her. She’s your wife, and she was just trying to protect her own children. The problem isn’t Geneva. It’s me.”

  Jude stared at her in utter bewilderment. “She threatened to kill your child in its crib, and you’re trying to protect her?”

  Maari shrugged. “Well, I’m not planning to have a child, so I’m not really sure why her threats upset me so badly.” She shoved hair back from her face and wiped tears from her cheeks with both hands, but Jude wasn’t fooled by her attempt to compose herself. To downplay her own trauma. Women who aren’t sure why they’re upset don’t throw chairs across the room and destroy everything that could possibly be flung at the wall. They don’t threaten to end their own lives.

  “Besides, if you kill her, and I kill you, your poor children will be left with only Orlann and Malac to raise them,” Maari continued. “And that isn’t something I’d do to my worst enemy. Which, of course, you are.”

  Jude blinked at her. “Maari, you are going to have children. And chances are good that at least one of them will be mine, even if we never know which ones or how many.” He cupped the side of her face in his palm. “But I swear on my life—on my whole fucking kingdom—that I will never let anyone hurt your children.”

  Maari blinked up at him. She exhaled slowly. “You’re not going to get what you want from me, Jude, and your wife hates me. So you may as well send me home, because I’m not going to be bred by you and your brothers.”

  “We’ll see about that.” He turned and truly studied the mess she’d made of her room for the first time. It was an impressive amount o
f damage. “Something will have to be done about this, you know.” He reached for her, and she flinched as she backed away from him, her bravado evaporating before his eyes.

  “Please.” The flicker of fear in her scent made his cock throb. “I’m sorry about the room. I’ll clean it up.” Her gaze snapped toward the bare mattress, then back to focus on his hands.

  It took him a second to follow her train of thought, and when he caught on, he couldn’t resist a small smile. “I thought you didn’t care about ‘a little pain.’”

  “Well, I don’t love it either,” she admitted.

  “Maari, I'm not going to spank you.” How could he, when she’d been provoked by a threat to her future children? A mother's protective instinct was a thing to be encouraged, not punished, and Maari’s was already strong, though she didn’t yet have children.

  Could she already be pregnant? He found himself surprisingly excited by the thought. A child would bind her to him forever, even if they never knew for certain that it was his.

  “Come with me.” He opened the door and hauled her out of her room for the first time in days. And to his utter bewilderment, though he was giving her what she’d been begging for since the moment she’d arrived, Maari literally dug in her heels and tried to pull free from his grip as she erupted into another burst of hysterics.

  13

  Maari

  “No!” Maari pulled on her arm and pried at his fingers, trying to free herself as Jude dragged her into a hallway she hadn’t seen in days. Since he’d marched her to her room, naked and filthy. Half-starved and dehydrated.

  Broken.

  “I’m not going back into the darkcell! Please! I can’t!” The hallway blurred beneath fresh tears as she began pounding on his arm with her free hand, curled into an ineffectual fist. Trying to free herself.

  “Maari!” Jude grabbed her other arm and held her trapped against him, pinning her flailing fists at her sides. “Stop it! I’m not taking you to the darkcell,” he growled into her ear, his nose buried in her tangled hair. “Just stop fighting me for one minute.”

  Yet she could feel how much her struggles aroused him. His cock was long and hard against her belly, even through the material of his pants.

  She sniffled, unable to wipe her face with her arms trapped. “Where are you taking me?”

  “Just be good for a few minutes, and you’ll see.” Jude let go of her right arm but kept a firm grip on her left as he led her into a stairwell and down the steps, then down another hall.

  Maari couldn’t remember much about her trip to and from the darkcell several days ago, other than paralyzing despair and humiliation from being paraded naked past the palace staff, but she didn’t think this was the way they’d come on her first day in Loborough. They’d been near the kitchen then, and today she couldn’t hear the clanging of pots and pans, nor could she smell food being prepared.

  Several turns later, Maari found herself in a large, high-ceilinged open sunroom dotted with clusters of furniture arranged around glass coffee tables and accented by tall plants in huge decorative pots. Through the windows, she could see a large formal garden where manicured boxwoods traced intricate geometric patterns accented by elaborate beds full of colorful blooms. Shrubbery had been trimmed into shapes ranging from formal globes and spirals to whimsical animal forms.

  But it wasn’t the stunning display of color or the elaborate web of stone walkways that made tears pool in Maari’s eyes yet again. The palace where she’d grown up had several similar gardens, as did the grounds of the academy where she’d been educated in Valemont.

  What struck Maari silent was the sunshine pouring through the tall windows, warming her skin. Feeding her soul.

  “May I?” she whispered.

  “Be good,” Jude warned. Then he released her.

  She stepped closer to the wall of windows and spread her arms, pulled toward the light like a flower turning to follow the suns in their path across the sky. Greedy for every single ray.

  Distantly, she was aware of Jude tapping on a device behind her, but she couldn’t have cared less what he was up to while she let sunlight dry her tears and warm her naked body. Both suns were still up, though the first had begun its descent, and there were at least four hours of daylight left. An entire afternoon.

  She wondered if he would let her spend those hours here, sitting on one of the couches, staring out into the garden. Reminding herself that the outside world still existed.

  He would probably say no. Or, he would make her pay for such a privilege, but in that moment, she didn’t care what he wanted in exchange. She would spread her legs or sink onto her knees right here in the formal sunroom, where anyone might walk by and see. As long as he let her stay awhile.

  “Sir,” a familiar soft voice said, and Maari reluctantly turned from the windows to see Annah hand Jude a folded bundle of white cloth. “Will this work?”

  “Yes, thank you. And the other arrangements?”

  “Already underway.”

  “Thank you. Dismissed.”

  Annah gave Maari a small smile as she scurried from the sunroom into a hallway that looked dark and cold in comparison. Before she could summon any concern over whatever these other arrangements were, Jude walked toward her, shaking out the thin bundle of cloth until she realized what he held.

  A robe. A beautiful white satin robe with a high collar and three-quarter sleeves made of a gorgeous, intricate lace. He held it out to her with a magnanimous smile, silently demanding her gratitude for the gorgeous scrap of material, and it took every ounce of restraint Maari had to keep ungrateful thoughts from showing in her eyes when she smiled up at him.

  “Arms,” Jude ordered, and she let him dress her in the soft garment. The white satin fell to just above her knees, and when he tied the sash around her waist, the material left a deep V of flesh exposed between her breasts, extending almost to her navel.

  As pretty as it was, the robe could not truly be considered clothing. In fact, it covered less than a bath towel would, and it seemed intended more for stoking a man’s appetite than shielding a woman’s body, considering that her nipples both poked through fabric too sheer to hide the pink tint of her flesh.

  Still…for the first time in days, she wasn’t nude.

  “Shall we?” Jude put one hand at her lower back and led her to the door without waiting for her reply. Because his question wasn’t really a question, any more than the robe was really clothing. They were both window dressing, designed to enhance the view from her cage just enough that Maari felt as if she’d been given a couple of gifts.

  Modesty. Choice.

  She understood the manipulation, but that didn’t make it any less effective.

  Her lips curved into a smile as Jude led her outside. As her bare feet landed on the sun-warmed stone path. As she took in the perfume of the spring flowers and the fresh scent of the shrubbery. As the cool breeze caressed her skin, lifting the hem of her robe with every soft gust.

  “Is this the garden you can see from my window?” She stared out across intricately laid out geometric patterns and bright bursts of blooms, looking for something familiar.

  “Yes.” Jude pointed into the distance. “See the peacock over there? And the swan and the hare? They’re on the right edge of the view from your room.”

  Maari followed his aim, but rather than squinting at the topiary figures, she turned toward the back of the palace, staring up at all the windows. “Which one is mine?”

  Jude hesitated, and she could feel him studying her, debating whether or not to answer. As if telling her where her room was in the palace might be dangerous. “That one,” he said at last. “Second floor, fifth from the right.” She followed the finger he pointed, but there was nothing distinctive about the window in question. She couldn’t see through it into her room—assuming that really was her room—because from outside, the glass appeared tinted, designed to preserve the royal family’s privacy.

  “Would you like to ta
ke a walk?” Jude offered her his arm, as if he were a normal man. As if she were a normal woman. As if this were a normal day, and a normal garden, and a normal choice.

  As if saying no wouldn’t result in her being locked up again, stripped naked and called ungrateful while she was fucked into a lust-filled haze in which the needs of her body outweighed the needs of her head and heart.

  “That would be lovely,” Maari lied, because this was Jude’s game, just like pain was Orlann’s. Like smiles and promises were Malac’s. She likely wouldn’t win Jude’s game, and losing would no doubt leave her drenched in his fluids, aching in at least one orifice. But she certainly couldn’t win if she refused to play.

  So she took the arm he offered and let him escort her down the sunlit stone path, relishing the bite of every twig she stepped on, because they were proof of the reality of this moment. The burn of sunlight on the top of her head, and the breeze on her skin, and the dirt beneath her feet were exotic luxuries in this new life as a prisoner, and they were to be savored, even if they were manipulations, because Maari had no idea when she’d be allowed to feel any of them again.

  “What’s through there?” She pointed to a gate in the stone wall bordering the huge garden, through which she could see a thick expanse of woods.

  “The royal hunting grounds.”

  “Really?” Her brows arched. “I didn’t think anyone still did that.” The old hunting grounds in Bannon had been turned into a public park long before she was born.

  Jude shrugged. “It’s an archaic custom, but I’ve found nothing that matches the exhilaration of tracking your prey and taking it down with your own hands. Well, almost nothing,” he amended with a heated glance into her eyes. “And, of course, we eat what we kill.”

  Jude led her down a branch in the path, toward the peacock he’d pointed out, and Maari was fascinated to realize, as the shapes grew closer, that they were much bigger than she’d thought, at first. The peacock’s tail must be taller than she was!