She looked up at me with a sassy smirk, twirling the stick in the palm of her hand. “To watch you beg? Absolutely.”
“Before I ever fuck you, I promise, you’ll be the one begging, little sheep.”
We played like that, back and forth, tiptoeing to the edge but never really going over. Every time she leaned across the table, I snuck up behind her and pressed my cock against her firm little ass. And every time I missed a shot, she laughed. I wanted to listen to her infectious laugh all day. I lived in the dark for so long, I didn’t even remember what the light looked like, but here it was in that adorable fucking laugh.
I was just about to sink the eight ball when she walked up to me and placed her hand on my chest. Then slid it down to my stomach and looked up at me with those eyes, eyes that I would burn this whole goddamn castle down for.
I narrowed my glare and steadied my breathing, maintaining the illusion of control when she was the one with all the power right now. “If you keep looking at me like that, I’m going to let my demons out to play.”
Her hand fell to my belt and her eyelashes fluttered, feigning innocence. “Then what?” she asked.
That was it. Two simple words, and I was done.
I dropped my pool cue on top of the pool table and gripped her hard by the hips. Her sweet, clean scent drove me insane. My hand slid around to her ass and I yanked her against me, letting my dick answer her before my words did. “Then, I’ll bend you over this pool table and fuck you until everyone in this castle knows exactly who you belong to.” My words were hoarse, ragged, driven by an all-consuming need to do just that.
Needless to say, we never finished our game, but I definitely came out a winner. Katie let out a tiny noise in her throat, and I swallowed it with a kiss.
Tongue. Teeth. Lips.
Dirty. Filthy. Raw.
I kissed the fuck out of her until we were both fighting for air, until she moaned in my mouth and rocked her sweet, soaked pussy against me. It took every ounce of willpower I owned not to throw her ass on the pool table and take what we both knew belonged to me. I swallowed a groan then cupped her face in both hands.
“Soon, little sheep. Soon.”
She pulled away from me, her expression a beautifully blushed combination of surprise, anticipation, and… adoration. Fucking hell. I would die a thousand deaths for that look. I let her go then I raked my fingers through my hair where hers had just been and led her back out into the hall. Not far from the Billiards Room, I stopped walking because we finally reached my father’s door. I never spent much time in Dad’s room growing up. There were no heart-to-heart talks about life or shaving lessons with a bladeless razor in front of the bathroom mirror. I’d come to know this room more now than ever before, and each time I reached for the handle on this heavy wooden door, it felt more and more like opening a tomb.
Katie’s chest heaved with heavy breaths, and her cheeks flushed with heat. Fuck, I loved when she was like this, chaos and beauty on the brink of madness. Not a single thing about her was easy. She challenged me and excited me and made me want to bury my dick deep inside her and watch her weep. I smirked at the way she glared at me. For a moment, I second-guessed bringing her here. I worried how finally knowing the truth would make her feel. She’d seeped under my skin and into my bloodstream. She was all over—in my thoughts and my plans. My fucking heart even beat for her, and for the first time in my life I looked at a woman and wondered what it would be like to have a queen.
Twenty-One
Sutton knocked twice then slowly opened the door to the king’s chambers. The scent was what hit me first—a sterile stillness in the air where bourbon and expensive cologne used to waft. Dad’s room had smelled the same way, only without the cologne and bourbon.
My eyes drifted from the doorway to a plush velvet sofa and two wingback chairs that sat in front of a massive fireplace, then to long custom window coverings that shielded the room from any outside light, and finally to a large four-poster bed where the king slept. Thin, clear tubes ran from the back of his hand to an IV pump next to his bed. Other than the hushed sound of his shoddy breathing, the room was hauntingly silent.
I stopped walking.
I stopped breathing.
I stopped everything.
I was frozen.
My heart plummeted to my stomach as painful memories slammed into my chest, taking hold and making it hard to breathe. I closed my eyes and tried to forget Mama’s tears and frantic prayers. I forced away the hurried sound of nurses’ footsteps as they clamored into the room the moment Dad’s lungs finally stopped working. Panic threatened to claw its way up my throat, ready to drag me back to a dark time when I wished my father didn’t have to die.
It was months ago, but I still grieved. I still hurt. I still woke up in the middle of the night wishing it would all go away.
Sutton gripped my elbow with his long fingers. “Hey, you okay?” His eyes flicked from me to his father then back. “We don’t have to do this.”
I blinked my thoughts away. “No. It’s okay. I’m fine. It was just…” I paused, my throat tight. “Unexpected.”
Why did you bring me here?
He followed me to the foot of the bed where I silently prayed for his father. Not for healing because in my experience, God didn’t work that way, but for peace. For him. For the queen. For Sutton. For me. There was no way I could stay angry at a dying man.
“How long…” My words trailed off.
“How long does he have left? Weeks. Days. Hours,” Sutton said. His voice cracked with a tortured mix of anger and exhaustion.
“I was going to say how long have you known.”
He took in a deep breath then exhaled a long sigh of… relief maybe? It was hard to tell. We both stared at the man in bed in front of us, acknowledging the reverence of this moment. I felt like an intruder on a very private and painful thing. The king’s chest rose and fell with each breath. His once impressive stature now nothing more than sunken cheeks and pale skin. My heart broke for a man I hardly knew, for a family I thought I hated.
“Since the accident. They found it somewhere in the midst of looking for concussions and stitching him up.”
Guilt twisted and coiled in my gut. All of my anger and resentment seemed so selfish now. In a way, Sutton lost his father when I lost mine. He was broken, and so was I. And together our broken pieces seemed to just… fit. We were the same. Interconnected. Two souls intertwined. Our losses were linked together by God’s Wrath and a fateful storm. He just had more time to say goodbye. Or to process the pain.
Except Sutton couldn’t waste time processing or saying goodbye because his obligation was to the Crown, not to grief. He lost a father but gained a kingdom. The very idea of that kind of responsibility made it hard to breathe, and I wasn’t the one about to wear a crown. I suddenly saw the overwhelming sadness in being royal. If people knew the only way to gain a kingdom was to lose your heart, there would be fewer people chasing a crown.
I looked over at the prince and saw the unspoken words in his eyes as he stared at his father, so many thoughts and no one to share them with because being royal meant there was no room for weakness. Bitterness and defiance disappeared, buried beneath my need to be the one to soothe him. “Sutton, I’m so sorry.”
He pulled me hard against his chest, stealing my balance and leaving me clinging to him. His eyes dropped to my lips and his mouth parted. “Say it again.”
My heart pounded, and all my dismal thoughts faded away. I’d barely come down from the high he gave me in the Billiards Room, and here he was seeping into my bloodstream all over again. “What?”
He moved close, so close that his mouth hovered over mine, his lips brushing my lips, a breath away from kissing me. His hardness pressed against my belly.
I wanted.
I ached.
I burned with the carnal need to reach between our bodies and touch him.
“My name. Say it again,” he demanded, turning my insi
des to hot liquid. My lips parted, desperate to taste him.
“Sutton.” I breathed out and he breathed in, his mouth still touching mine.
“It tastes every bit as sweet as it sounds.”
“What are you talking about?”
He bowed his head, bringing his forehead to mine. Hope blossomed in my chest at the rare, gentle look in his eyes. “My name on your lips.”
“Katarina Bellizzi.” King Phillipe’s familiar voice broke our connection.
Oh God. How much did he see?
I broke away from Sutton and dipped in a slight curtsey. “Your Majesty.”
The harsh lines around his eyes softened when he offered a weak smile. “Look at the two of you.” He breathed a laugh. “Matteo is probably rolling over in his grave.”
Sutton reached down and squeezed my hand at the mention of my father’s name. It was a comforting gesture, intimate and sweet. Dad never talked to me about the king, and since King Phillipe moved me into the castle, he never talked about my dad. Hearing the king speak of Dad in such a familiar way sat heavily on my chest.
The king shifted his gaze to Sutton. “The answer was right there all along. Your first act as king and you managed to do what I never could.”
Someone’s had too much pain medication…
“We can finally have peace. All of us.” King Phillipe’s eyes moved to mine. “You’re going to make a great queen, Katarina. I wish your father were here to see it.”
Definitely too much medication.
“Oh no. I’m not… We’re not—”
Sutton cleared his throat, interrupting me. The air in the room turned thick and stale, suffocating. “You should get some sleep, Dad. I’ll come check on you tomorrow.”
Did I step into an episode of the Twilight Zone? Sutton was already king? What peace was King Phillipe talking about? And why would he wish Dad were here? Why did Sutton seem like he knew exactly what the king was talking about?
We said our goodbyes, and as soon as we were out of the room and in the hallway, my legs felt weak and unsteady. I sucked in a breath and braced my hand on the wall for support. The hope that had blossomed in my chest wilted faster than flowers without the rain, quickly replaced with confusion and doubt.
“What in the name of all things holy was that? Why would he think I’m going to be queen? And what did he mean your first act as king?” I asked through shaky breaths, feeling as though I could crawl right out of my skin.
More secrets.
He stood in front of me, staring at me with a cold, stormy edge that darkened his eyes. “Fuck if I know.” His voice was calm and quiet, his face unreadable. “But it’s not a bad idea.”
I nearly choked on my spit. “I’m not marrying you just because someone gave your dad too much morphine this morning. Surely you know how crazy that sounds. What good could possibly come from a pretend marriage?”
The king had caught us in a moment. That was no reason to think we were getting married.
His laugh held a bitter edge. He traced the outline of my jaw then brushed his thumb over my bottom lip. His finger lit fiery trails over my skin. “You think this is pretend?” He leaned in, dusting his lips over my cheekbone then bringing his mouth to my ear. “Because it feels pretty fucking real to me.”
It made perfect fucking sense.
It made zero sense.
My father thought we were getting married, that I had made some grand gesture in order to appease a dead man. I knew what he meant about peace—that if Matteo’s followers thought his daughter loved the Crown, they suddenly would too. Fat fucking chance. This war was five years in the making. It was going to take more than that to silence them.
What the fuck was I thinking? Bringing Katie to see Dad was a mistake. I knew that now. I only worried about how she would react to knowing the man she once blamed for taking her father’s life was losing his own as well or if she would resent me for not telling her sooner. I never thought about what he might say if he woke up and found her there. If I was honest, I never thought she would stay long enough for him to wake up at all. I thought she would see him and realize that all the answers to her aggravating goddamn questions were locked up nice and tight inside the mind of a dying man. They would never see the light of day, so she could move on. We could move on.
She stepped away from my touch. “You’re talking about sex. Not marriage.”
Touché, little sheep. I guessed in most people’s worlds, “sex” and “marriage” weren’t synonymous. That didn’t mean they shouldn’t be. My queen would go to bed every night with the steel hard cock of her king buried deep inside her and wake up the same way.
Katie tipped up her chin and glared at me with those adorable fucking eyes. “Where I come from, marriage isn’t a business proposition. And I’m not a consolation prize for the war between my father and yours.”
I curled my fingers around the nape of her neck and squeezed, making her breath hitch. I would never hurt Katie, not in a violent way. But I wanted to ruin her body, to watch the delicious way her flesh bruised where my fingertips dug into her skin. “You think this is as simple as a war between two people?”
Her pulse fluttered under my fingertips. Her pupils dilated. She was turned on.
Fuck. Me.
“Isn’t it?” she challenged.
Again with the fucking questions. I loosened my grip on her throat before shit got out of hand like last time. We would never get anywhere if I kept letting my dick get in the way. This was it—the moment when she would stand and face the truth or run from me forever. It was time to tell her everything and let her decide for herself.
“Your dad was an asshole, Katie. He sent threats once a week for five years. He called my father a liar but never told him why. He said my dad was a thief but wouldn’t say what he took. He gathered people… thousands of them… to fight with him. Thousands of people refusing to pay taxes or support the military or even pay fucking parking tickets… anything to defy the king. Thousands of people writing letters to Parliament and spreading rumors. Spitting on his feet when he tried to feed the elderly. Sending death threats to my mother, for fuck’s sake. My father’s life has been hell for the past five years and your dad is the one who opened the gate.”
“My dad would never do those things.” Her eyes glossed over, letting her vulnerability shine through, but she blinked away the unshed tears before they fell. There was no running or cursing or calling me a liar. She just stood there, blinking away her pain. The air in the hall was hushed, solemn, until finally she spoke. “Why?” Her voice broke on the word.
Jesus, she was stronger than I thought. A fighter to the core. A motherfucking queen. My queen.
“I wish I knew.”
I did. I wished I knew every dark and fucked-up thing that ever went through Matteo Bellizzi’s mind so that I could calm this storm inside her soul. I wished it so hard my chest ached.
“And I wish you could just be Sutton and I could just be Katie. But we’re not, are we? There’s a war out there with my name on it, and a crown in here with yours.” She reached out to cradle my cheek, and my throat closed shut. “In the Piano Room, you asked me if this was a moment. I didn’t know the answer to that then, but I do now.” She dropped her hand, and all I wanted to do was grab her wrist and put it back. Her hands belonged on me. Only me. Always.
She swallowed. “A moment is all this can be. I never realized it until today, until you, but I want the fairy tale. I want to lie in bed and listen to church bells on a Sunday morning. I want to wake up next to the love of my life and watch as the sunlight breaks through the window and turns the dust motes into tiny dancers. I want to sip coffee outside of a café in a city where people don’t look at me and see war. I want you to stop looking at me and seeing the pain my father caused.”
I watched her mouth move. I heard the sounds. And with every word, another piece of me slowly died. What the fuck was I supposed to do with that? I held the power of a nation in my hands, and s
till there was no way I could give Katie what she wanted—peace. I couldn’t change the past. I could handle the threats, but Katie was consumed with them. My crown was secure, but her thoughts weren’t. Every single one of them was filled with whats and whys. I needed to give her peace, wanted it so bad my body burned with it, but peace was the one thing she had to give herself. She was wrong about one thing. When I looked at Katie, I only saw my future, not her father’s past. I did my part. I said I would give her the truth and let her decide, and she decided to run. Maybe I just needed to let her go, because letting her go would break me but keeping her would destroy us both.
Twenty-Two
The white walls with their ornate gold trim, the gray marble floors with white swirls, the heavy wooden doors that lined the hallway—it was all a blur. All that existed was Sutton. I drank in the way light brown hair covered the sculpted cut of his jaw, the way his copper-blond hair fell perfectly into place and the expensive fabric of his suit hugged every toned muscle. I memorized it because this felt final. I couldn’t change my last name any more than I could change his.
We stood in silence. I stared into his eyes and waited, praying for him to say something, to tell me there was no rebellion, to say I was wrong, that he didn’t see my dad when he looked at me, that all he saw was Katie. I wanted him to snap his royal fingers and make it all go away. He stared back, his gaze hard and jaw tight, like he wanted to speak but struggled with the words. Then he dropped his hand from my neck, sending an instant chill where his fingers were.
“I should go. I think we’ve both had enough moments for one day.” His voice was cold. His hard eyes held mine for a breath, then he walked away without another word.
I wanted to chase after him, to yell and scream and pound my fists on his chest and tell him he didn’t get to tear down my walls then walk away without a fight. Fight for me, dammit. Fight for us. After all, fighting was what we were good at. Fighting was the spark that lit our flame, and now—like with any fire I supposed—all we were left with was ash. I wanted to fight him. Fight myself. Fight fate. But I couldn’t. I was too busy trying to remember how to breathe. Instead I stood in the middle of the hallway with a stabbing pain in the pit of my stomach and watched him walk away.
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