King’s Captive

by Amber Bardan

  A vivid flash crosses my mind. Of his hand between my legs. I get warm. Really warm. It’s just a blush. That’s all. Nothing more.

  “Were you born in a tent, lass?” Pa shuffles into the room. “Close the door, you’re letting in bugs.”

  I leap forward, slide the door across the tracks until it clicks closed.

  Julius pushes up from his seat, then steps back from the dining table. Now it’s me taking in the sight of him. Black shoes, gray pants, white shirt. That tattoo springing from his collar. Bursting with color—almost alive.

  He pulls out the chair to his right. I sweep a hand over the back of my dress and lower myself onto the cushion. He scoots my chair toward the table, then moves to the coolers Dan and Leo set against the wall, and opens the larger one.

  The aroma reaches me before the contents emerge.

  I lean forward, watch him take out what I can’t believe he’s managed. He sets a wrapped burger in front of me. A Big Mac. Then fries.

  I pick up a fry. It’s actually warm. Julius goes to the other cooler. I touch the fry to my lips. It seems real. He returns and sets a large cup next to the burger, then one more thing. A clear container with swirls of white, and brown stuff dribbling down the sides. I drop the fry, pick up the container and flick off the lid.

  A chocolate sundae.

  Somehow unmelted. I catch a plastic spoon that slides across the table in my direction, and stick it into the sundae. It’s not until there’s gooey fudge and cool creaminess sliding down my throat that I realize he did really do this.

  Brought me McDonald’s.

  I shovel out another scoop, bring it to my lips.

  “Aren’t you going to say thank you?”

  I freeze. Ice cream sloshes from the spoon. I look up at him. Everyone else unwraps burgers. Except for him. Yet by the smirk on his lips you’d think he was the one about to feast.

  “Don’t know what’s gotten into you lately, baby.” He rotates a glass of ice on the table. Amber liquid swirls at the bottom. “You used to have such lovely manners.”

  My fingers go numb. I put down the ice cream. Catch sight of the brown mess ruining the front of my clothes. I take a napkin but don’t wipe the stain. Glance at him. Of all the things I hate about Julius this is what I hate most. He’s so inconsistently psychotic. Always changing the rules so I think I’m playing but never know what to expect.

  He takes a sip from the glass.

  The level of smug rolling off him makes my jaw ache. Screw it, I’m tired of games.

  “Can I ask you something?”

  Every set of eyes around the table fixes on me.

  “Were you dropped on the head as a child or are you just demented?” Silence penetrates the room. No one even chews. They don’t swallow. “Because I can’t for the life of me figure out what you get from messing with me.”

  The silence expands until it squeezes out the air in the room. Then his chin dips a little and a sound rumbles in his chest. A sound that starts as a chuckle, then turns into a boom.

  He laughs, long and loud, then runs his palm across his mouth, and he’s himself again. “Perhaps, if you’d ever attempted to know me, then you wouldn’t think everything is a game. You asked for something.” He gestures around the table at all the food. “I gave it to you. I can be very accommodating.”

  “If you give me what I want.” Like kisses. I hear the subtext loud and clear.

  My muscles contract from my fingers to where my shoulder blades pull together in my back. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

  I stare at him.

  His lips purse, but he doesn’t respond.

  Chairs scrape. Everyone gets up.

  “Are we really going to do this?” I push to my feet.

  The room empties. Like that, everyone is gone and Julius and I are alone, proving that there’s not one ally here for me. No one who’ll stand with me.

  “I want to leave this island. How the fuck’s that for a request?”

  I’m losing my mind, but he needs to lose his. I’d give anything for a reason. A moment of motivation to force me to grow some balls. Then maybe I can stop waiting.

  Maybe I can find another way out of this myself.

  But he doesn’t react. Not a twitch. Links his hands like he’s been waiting for this. As though he expected this all along. Saw it coming. Like I’m just a silly girl throwing a tantrum.

  “I want to never see your stupid face again.” I place both my palms on the table next to my food, and lean toward him. “You going to give me what I asked for now, asshole?”

  He takes his glass and drains whatever is left inside. The glass slams down with a crack. “This is home, baby.”

  I scream and pick up the burger, throw it in his direction. He ducks, then he’s on his feet and right up close to me.

  He’s never, not once since I’ve been here, ever said my name.

  Would that humanize me?

  Make holding me prisoner too difficult?

  “Say my name.”

  He frowns. At least I’m getting that much from him.

  “Say it.” I pick up the Coke. This time I don’t miss. Brown fluid spills down the front of his shirt.

  He growls and lunges for me. Grabs my wrist and hauls me against him.

  I look right into his face.

  “Sarah,” I say, and thrust my chin at him. “Sarah, Sarah, Sarah.”

  His eyes get wider and wider and wider with each repetition, and I’m hauled closer and closer and closer until my front is as soaked as his front.

  “Why won’t you say it?”

  He closes his eyes. His nostrils flare, then his eyelids part fraction by fraction and he looks back at me. “Go to your room, baby.”

  The fingers wrapped around my wrist twitch. His chest moves faster than mine.

  “Don’t you want to kiss me good-night?”

  My words strike him. He drops my wrist. For two brief heartbeats I’ve won. I’ve issued his own dare back at him and this time he’s the one who can’t. It’s all there in the strain of his frown.

  He can’t.

  Then he does anyway. Leans forward and his mouth brushes mine. Not like that first time, not brutalizing, he kisses me as though I am everything. Takes my face in both hands and his wide lips move against my lips. His tongue enters my mouth, sliding between my teeth like it’s delivering a gift.

  And for the devil, he tastes a lot like heaven.

  A sound leaks from my throat, I don’t know how. My tongue meets his tongue. Every nerve I have comes alive. My nipples harden against the damp fabric between us.

  Julius makes a sound too. Some kind of groan. Invitation—I’ve given it. His kiss deepens, roughens, becomes a frenzy.

  He lifts me up around my middle.

  My ass lands on the table.

  I fall back, breaking our kiss, arms slamming down on the surface either side of me. A chill nips my side. Liquid seeps against my waist.

  We’ve knocked things over, but he doesn’t care.

  My breath catches full in my lungs. The earth seems to stop its spin. Time rotates backward.

  Julius hovers above me. The sun illuminates the window behind him, lighting him up, obscures his features. I travel to the moment we met, where he stood with his back to the sun and I longed for him to ravage me against a wall.

  A wall of my father’s house, so much more forbidden.

  I live that wickedness again—drown in the urge to surrender to ruin.

  To have my sorrow bled out of me by something wild and capable of consuming all that pain.

  My broken heart sets to self-destruct.

  He grabs my rising knee.

  Breath blows out of me. I deflate like a billowing sheet that reaches its high
est peak and collapse into myself, melting on the tabletop.

  His touch travels my thigh, then he reaches between my legs. He grabs the crotch of my underwear in his fist, and that’s all he’s doing, but my hips jerk as though I’m impaled.

  A moan escapes me.

  His knuckles brush my folds, rubbing through the slick evidence of my arousal. Pleasure coils beneath that touch, bulldozing everything in its path.

  I writhe like an animal. Grind against his hand, and grab handfuls of tablecloth.

  Cups and bags of food spill over.

  His big knuckles bump me right there—the sweet spot, and I want to scream.

  “Say yes.” His voice breaks through the spell.

  “Say yes.” I blink, and my limbs are my own again, but his knuckles still work my clit.

  The tension bunches so tight.

  Uninvited. His vow blasts through my mind. He promised the day he took me that he wouldn’t touch me uninvited.

  “Say yes.”

  What the hell am I doing? My head clears. This is Julius.

  This is Julius and I am not the one in control. At all. I’m three-quarters of the way doomed.

  He grabs my left breast, and pinches my nipple through damp fabric. The pleasure gets sharper but it’s undercut by the seize of my mind.

  What have I done?

  Invited too much already. Dared too foolishly. One more slip and there’s nothing he won’t take. “No.”

  He releases my breast, but hovers above me.

  “Stop these lies.” His gaze homes in on mine and it’s more gripping than his touch. “You can’t pretend indifference.” His fist speeds up between my legs, faster and faster over my clit.

  Two halves of me collide. I don’t know who I am.

  The wanting and not wanting won’t stay apart but can’t come together.

  I’m trapped in the months, weeks, days, nights, of need. Of his face in my mind.

  My muscles clench one by one, up my thighs, in my cunt, in my abdomen. “I know who you are. I know what you like. I know what you want.”

  No. I tense every cell in my body, resisting the thrall. He doesn’t know me at all.

  But he proves it.

  He releases my breast and takes my throat. I grab his forearm and dig my nails in. My heart pounds. I should push him away.

  The grip on my throat makes the desperate breath I take labored.

  Coats me in danger. My life’s pulsing under his hand.

  I should push him away.

  Should scream—no.

  Except...

  He presses hard, so hard, between my legs, and it’s just his knuckles. He’s not even really trying, but it’s still too much.

  Everything is vibrant.

  My spine snaps, bowing my back, and I shatter.

  Turn inside out. An ecstatic suspended state where my eyes are so wide open, and I see everything.

  And it’s all him.

  Only him.

  His touch on me. His grip over my windpipe, giving and taking each frantic breath I take. Pleasure so deep it burns.

  He breaks the contact. Releases my throat. Drops my gaze, and buries his face in my chest. Then there’s only sensation. I grab his head. Bliss twitches my reflexes, washing through to my bones.

  His hand slows, brushing gently again, but he inhales from between my breasts like he’s about to asphyxiate. As though he were the one choked. “Fuck.”

  My ears ring.

  He turns his face and sucks my nipple into his mouth through my dress. I shudder again, a new wave of pleasure tugging on my splintering nerves.

  “Fuck you,” he groans.

  I’m not even sure if he’s talking to me, or himself, but the hazard in his voice is all the same. He’s pulsating. His fist trembles between my legs. His breath shudders on my puckered nipple.

  “Fuck you.” His lips drag, soft and decadent, to my cleavage and the bare inside of my breast. I feel the rush of the breath he draws in, then his mouth opens again on me.

  His teeth sink against my skin.

  I gasp, but there’s no time to scream because he pulls away, releasing me. My breast throbs, but I lie back, drawing my thighs together, looking at a man it feels like I’ve never seen.

  His hand passes over his mouth as before. Except when he’s done, he still doesn’t look like himself. I’ve never met this man.

  He backs away. Then he’s gone. Out the door like all the others.

  I catch sight of him before I hit the first step up to my bungalow.

  Please, not now. Go away.

  “Sarah,” Ash says as I brush past him.

  The sound of my name envelops me. But that warmth isn’t enough.

  I turn to him. “If Julius put you up to this, you can just run along and reassure him I’m his loyal little prisoner. I’m not up for whatever you’re playing at.”

  “I’m not playing.” In the moonlight with only voice to go off, nothing to distract from inflections, I could almost be fooled into believing him.

  I step toward his shadow. Squint at him and hope he really pays attention to my inflections. “I’m not alone? That’s really very funny because I noticed you cleared the room pretty quick when I could’ve used some company. So thanks, but you can get lost.”

  “Do you want to be here?”

  I freeze. Something about the way his voice sharpens, gets deeper than it usually sounds.

  “Do you want Julius?”

  I step back. Did he spy on us? My heart leaps to a faster beat. What is he trying to do?

  “Do you want Julius?” he repeats.

  I shake my head but the feeling is still there, a lingering tingle on my lips, a taste on my tongue, an ache in my chest. One more step back and I reach the door, fingers fumbling on the frame until I find and flick the switch.

  Yellow light washes over us.

  Ash strides toward me. Somehow bigger and less stupid looking than I’ve come to expect.

  “Tell me now, last chance.” His big brown, usually warm eyes punch holes right into my skull. “Do you want to be here?”

  “No,” I say and mean it. Whatever Stockholm syndrome has me panting over Julius doesn’t change the fact I want out of this place. Want as far away from Julius as I can get.

  “I’m here for you.” Ash takes my shoulders. The smooth surface of the door cools my back. “You are the reason I’m here. I came for you, Sarah Mercedes.”

  His thumbs squeeze just a little into the front of my shoulders. My heart goes from beating to pounding so hard it seems to be moving up my collarbone.

  “Oh my God,” I say, as sense finally emerges. “You’re—”

  He clamps a hand over my mouth, leans in until our eyes are level. “Don’t say it. Don’t ever speak it.” Ash moves his hand from my mouth. Not that I need it there. Too many things swimming in my head to find words. I study him as though I’ve never laid eyes on him.

  As clean-cut as he is—short hair combed and gelled, face shaved smooth, all his edges polished, teeth so white and straight—there’s a white dash on the bridge of his nose. A scar I’d not noticed until now.

  If I caught this man first thing in the morning, face unshaved, hair a mess, I might just take him for someone else. A different kind of guy.

  How could I have been so blind? All this time waiting, not noticing the person I prayed for right in front of me.

  “It took two and a half years to get onto this island, Sarah, and six more months to figure out how everything works.”

  I nod, watching his mouth move on every word.

  “We’re almost out of time. He has the wedding all planned.”

  Wedding. I shudder. How he plans to keep me in line. Take everything
I have.

  The thuds in my chest get tighter.

  “Then let’s get the fuck out of here.”

  Ash smiles, and his grip on my shoulder loosens. Then his gaze travels over me, and catches at my chest. “Jesus, are you okay?”

  I glance at the vibrant purple teeth marks exposed by the neckline of this dress. My hand flies to a sticky patch of curls on my head. Dammit. How must this look? My front stained brown with Coke, ice cream in my hair, swollen lips and a bite on my right boob.

  I swallow, and look up at Ash. His brows draw together. There’s concern written all over his face.

  How this must look—either like I’ve been attacked, or like I’m a terrible, terrible person.

  Shame fills me hot and thick. The truth be what it may, I still want to be saved.

  I draw my dress higher, and play the part I have to. “Please help me, Ash.”

  He nods, jaw clenching tighter. “I need to get back to the house before Julius notices.” He glances over his shoulder, then reaches behind me and flicks the light off. Darkness smothers us but I see him better than before. “Be waiting tonight. I’ll be back for you at three a.m.”

  “Okay,” I whisper, limbs feeling light. I grab his shirt before he can walk away. “Thank you.”

  Fingers brush over one side of my head, then trail the side of my face. Then the touch is gone, and his footsteps hammer down the stairs.

  My head swirls. The answers hit me a second time, more profoundly.

  Ash—Ash is Fury.

  An actual pirate.

  Criminal almost as ruthless as Julius. Except for one vital difference—Fury goes after only bad guys.

  Ash is good.

  Julius is not.

  I hold on to the railing, watching the flicker of shadow as he passes under the tree. I’ve won. Am so close to freedom. I stand on my toes. Try to see down the path to the main house.

  John Fury has come for me.

  Him

  How long?

  I step back into the scrub. Ash jogs past, leaves and twigs crunching carelessly under his shoes. My fingertips grind into my palms. I could so easily lunge, beat the fool to the ground. Destroy him with my fists before he saw it coming.

  I watch his shadow disappear. How long has he done this? Sneaked in darkness, and presumed to take what’s mine. I glance back at the bungalow. The lights turn on inside.