King’s Captive

by Amber Bardan

  “This is something I’ve never seen before.” Pa walks into the kitchen, leaning heavily on the bench all the way to the table.

  I slide the package across to where he lowers himself opposite me. He takes a cookie.

  “That’s because I don’t love being around Julius or in his house.”

  Pa’s hand drops midway to his mouth. He doesn’t respond. I’m not usually this cruel to him. Today I think he deserves to feel guilty.

  “But I guess things are changing, aren’t they, Pa?”

  He bites the cookie, chews thoroughly. “I guess they are.”

  I stand, and collect the glass. Everything in me wants to throw it.

  Pa knows. Maybe he’s even helped with the planning.

  A snort bursts out my nose, and I take the glass to the sink. Set it down, then glance back at the table. “Since I haven’t slept, I’m going to bed now. Don’t expect I’ll be gardening today. If you need help, I’m sure you could ask Richie.”

  Pa’s head slips forward.

  Again, for the thousandth time in the last week, there’s a tightness in my throat strangely like the one that comes before crying. I swallow it back. I won’t be crying. Not over other people’s remorse.

  And I’ve cried enough for my own.

  Chapter Fifteen

  I lied to Pa. No amount of fatigue, fuzzy vision or weary limbs can turn off my thoughts. I just keep hearing that cartridge click. In my room. In the garden. Right behind me.

  Inescapable.

  Click.

  What will Julius do with Ash?

  They’re still not back after a full twelve hours. I’m not sure if that’s good or bad.

  My mind burns. Burns with fragments of memory—all the things I know, thought I knew and all the things I don’t.

  The ride-on mower hums in the distance. Richie is working on the perfect lawns. I stand at the bathroom vanity. I’ve looked in every drawer and still nothing has appeared that can calm the racing. Not the racing in my blood or the racing in my head. I took a painkiller. Not sure why, this isn’t a headache and I can’t pop this feeling away with a tablet.

  Would if I could. I’d go back to the numbness and back to the hope.

  I stare at my reflection without seeing. Too many thoughts to see straight.

  Pa started his gardening late. That’s what forced me back to the bungalow. There’s almost no one here. I glance down at the basket of cosmetics on the counter and pick up an eyeshadow, drop it on the floor, then do the same with two more. They crunch beautifully under my shoe. I grind the powder into the grout with my foot.

  I don’t take the garden path to the main house, I go around the beach and up the concrete stairs. The vacuum blares from where I enter the poolroom. I knock on the side of the wall next to the door. Imelda’s back hunches as she slides the end of the vacuum underneath the card table.

  I knock louder.

  Imelda glances over her shoulder, then stands, and turns off the machine with her toe. I swallow. Haven’t spoken to Imelda in two years. Stopped bothering when I realized that she’d never be an ally, let alone a friend.

  She swipes a chunk of escaped black hair off her coloring face. “Yes?”

  “There’s a huge mess in my bathroom.”

  She doesn’t respond. Imelda cleans my bungalow once a week when I’m gardening. I’ve never asked for more. In fact, I didn’t ask for that much in the first place. “Would you mind cleaning it now, please?”

  “When I’m done in here.” She rests on the arm of the vacuum.

  Don’t know what I ever did to her but there’s a lot of get fucked in the look on her face.

  “Well, if the makeup stains the grout, I’ll have to tell Julius I warned you.” I smile, the kind of smile that pulls tight and sharp across my lips.

  Imelda mirrors the expression right back at me, then strides to the wall and unplugs the cord. I watch her leave, not just the room, I trail behind her to the kitchen and watch her exit the back door. Her stiff posture rounds the corner. Then I jog in the opposite direction, back down the hallway, and for the first time since the day I came here, the day Julius showed me around like this was some kind of holiday, I walk past the poolroom to the bedroom wing.

  I pause at the junction of doors. The three suites. I’ll never forget the master suite. It’s on the right. The side of the house with the best of the ocean views. The handle slides down easily.

  He hasn’t locked it. He’s never needed to.

  I shut the door behind me. My feet stick to the carpet. I’m in his room. The scent itself so dangerous. His cologne in the air like he marked the room in his essence before he left.

  I circle the massive bed. Other than the scent he left behind, the room is so orderly it’s difficult to see how someone actually lives in here. No decoration, high-gloss painted black bed made up as though it’s never been slept in. Only two picture frames on a matching tallboy, and a larger frame above them, punctuate the starkness. There’s a corner nook with a love seat and armchair tucked almost out of sight.

  I start with his wardrobe. Lift the lid on every shoe box only to find the dude owns many pairs of identical shoes. I don’t even find a hidden nudie mag to confirm to me that he is indeed human. I search his drawers next. Slide my hand around among handkerchiefs for anything I may have missed.

  Nothing.

  No scrap of clue. No hint of anything I might use against him. Nothing to give away the man who holds me captive. There’s only one odd thing about his room. Not in all the drawers, not in his wardrobe or in his tallboy is there a single pair of underwear.

  I lift the hair from the back of my neck and fan the damp curls at the base of my skull. It’s warm today, but his room is worse than everywhere else. I slide in the final drawer on the tallboy. My attention catches on the picture frames sitting on top. Catches and crashes. I thought they were ornamental.

  They aren’t. They’re functional. And horrifying.

  The pictures are of me. I pick up a frame and bring it in front of me. My shoulders prickle as though something trailed over them. It’s a picture he took on my last birthday.

  I take the other photo. It’s of the birthday before. My gaze skates between the two, then to the frame on the wall. The big frame on the wall.

  Me too.

  A photo I don’t recall. I’m looking over my shoulder—smiling—face to the sun. He’s been photographing me when I’m not looking?

  I pant and step back. It’s too hot in here to breathe. I drop the photos. The door creaks open. I hear him coming, could hide, instead I stand there trapped in his room. Rendered dumb and still.

  Julius enters the bedroom.

  Why didn’t I hear the helicopter land?

  He strides toward me. There’s a faint red tinge to his cheeks and brow. “If you don’t like the photos, we can simply choose different ones.”

  He bends and collects the fallen frames, and places them back where they were. Then he’s in front of me again.

  My fists rise to press between my breasts.

  “It’s okay. You’re allowed in here.”

  I stare at him. He’s sunburned...like from riding around in a speedboat too long. “You found your boat?”

  He touches a knuckle to his jaw. “No, I bought a new one.”

  So he didn’t find Ash?

  Relief washes through me, everything that’s kept me standing and conscious without sleep drifts away. I sink down to sit onto the foot of his bed, suddenly eye level with his big silver belt buckle. I get stuck at that buckle. The way his suit pants cling to him. I’ve learned something about Julius today I wish I didn’t know. There’s nothing underneath those pants. There’s nothing between those pants and the hard thing I felt through them earlier when he was pressed up between
my thighs. When he touched me.

  When I came on his fingers.

  “What do you want?”

  I tear my attention from his crotch. “What do you mean?”

  “Why are you waiting in my room?” His face, his always-knowing face, is confused again.

  I love that look on him. It’s my favorite of his expressions. I’ve seen him laugh, and wink, and smile. I’ve seen him scowl, and frown, and grimace. He wears the spectrum of expression so subtly yet so finely. But confused—that’s the one that gives me hope. There’s no suppressing my smile. That half squint of his, the furrows around his eyes, he’s not normally so accessible. This is the change that happened in my bungalow. He’s not so infallible now.

  “What if I say I’m here because I missed you?”

  Those furrows clench deeper.

  He’s close enough to hear the air that passes between my lips and the space between us is thinner than it’s ever been. The resistance between us has been breached. Rules never broken no longer exist. He shifts closer. His fingers twitch at his sides, as though he could reach out and touch me. Not the way he always has, the fingers on my cheek or the brush of my hair—touch me the way he’s wanted to and never dared.

  Now he has touched me, now he can.

  “You could say that—” His voice has a vibration unlike anyone I’ve ever known. The sound starts in his belly and radiates out. Words you don’t only hear, they reach for you. “—but you and I both know what you say and what is true are not always the same.”

  He squats down, bringing us face-to-face. “I have missed you.”

  I shiver and flinch at once. Even though those words are crazy they still make me feel things. For three years, I’ve given him my amiable doppelgänger, but he always baited the real-life, flesh-and-blood virago he can’t even name.

  What does he care if I’ve survived by hiding from the pain? Why does he care that I’ve hidden from him—from everything? Does it satisfy him to see how now it’s a battle to keep even a single word from oozing out of me?

  “What do you want?” he repeats.

  I break free of his searching gaze, and catch sight of the ink on his neck. My fingers reach on their own to brush down his shirt collar. I touch the snake right on its forked tongue. His stubble scrapes my fingertips, a delicate bite.

  My lips press together, salty yet dry.

  I look back to his face, to his mouth. Don’t you want to kiss me? Now I know what it’s like, this is no longer temptation, it’s a need. Something in the way he watches me sends me back to last night, to his face when he touched me. His lips softer, fuller. Eyes wide and seeing. Now I see why Julius—a man who takes—has resisted. The same reason he can’t say my name.

  This is how I defeat Julius King.

  There’s no fighting him in fair battle, he’s a warrior.

  I need to steal him.

  Steal his heart before he can obliterate mine. He has a weakness—there’s a chink in his armor, and it’s me. I’m going to break through it. Be the one to capture him.

  Be the one left holding the keys, and I’ll use them to set myself free.

  My lips rub together again. “I want to see the rest of this.”

  I pull his shirt collar harder.

  He catches my hand. “I really don’t think you do.”

  “Yes, in fact, I do.” My pulse thuds a little louder.

  He doesn’t look away from my face, but he lets go of my wrist, then flicks open the first button of his shirt. My hands can’t wait, they drag the cotton over his shoulder, brush over muscle. Such hot smooth skin. None of it looks like skin, though. Not through leaves and branches and blossoms, there’s not a patch of tan to be seen. He flicks the next button and the shirt tugs wider. My hand skims to his elbow, but his chest is where my gaze is pinned. The last button slides free and then his shirt is gone.

  I drop down to my knees in front of where he crouches. The tail of the snake winds a branch around his side. The rest is jungle and garden. A tight-knit matrix of plant and animal. His knees hit the carpet with a thud, and he’s kneeling too. There’s a dove on his rib cage, searing white in all of the color. It’s like he’s been skinned down his middle, one side tan and clear, the other a brilliant underlayer of magic. Only one image straddles the divide between his tattooed and his clean side. My attention fixes there. A wide-open rose in full bloom rests on his sternum, frilly peach petals crying crimson tears. Those bright red drops fleck his clear side.

  My fingers shake, but I touch him between his pecs. On the flower every sense tells me is me.

  This is my rose.

  Heat spreads up my throat to my face.

  I slide my hand from the image and my fingers scrape over changing texture. The muscles under my touch twitch. I blink and look again. See what color and pattern distorted. There’s a ripple to his skin, over his left side and around his ribs. I press my palm to his chest, trace the path with fingers and hand, finding patches of raised, and dips of smooth. Everything under the surface tenses tighter and harder as I discover him.

  Scars.

  Burns, these could only be burns. My breaths slow, but my senses tingle. These are wounds. Horrific wounds. Pain travels through my palm, up my arm into my armpit. Not tangible, a whispering ghost of pain.

  What the hell happened to him?

  It’s not his clothes that are the disguise. His skin is his camouflage. My lungs burn, I must’ve forgotten to breathe. I can’t absorb the magnitude of what he’s divulged. He showed me something real and true and so raw it’s like the knowledge has taken a chunk of flesh from my own side.

  Maybe he’s beginning to trust me?

  “Are you satisfied?” His words resonate dangerously in his chest.

  I stroke that rose again. “Not even slightly.”

  “What do you want?”

  He’s still asking me that, so maybe he doesn’t trust me after all.

  “I want what happened last night.” The words, shocking as they are, leave my lips smoothly. I raise my gaze from his chest to his face. “I want touching.”

  His chest rises—his naked, unwrapped chest beneath my hands.

  “If that’s not too sinful for you?” I lean in and issue the challenge an inch from his lips.

  He smiles, and he’s Julius King again, his hand plunging into my hair. “I’m sinning every time I look at you.” His chin juts forward and he snatches my bottom lip between his teeth, nipping it once. “You’re the one who should be concerned for your soul.”

  My fingers fly to my chest between us, as though some phantom hand takes a swipe at my spirit.

  His arm circles my waist, and he lifts me as he stands, lowering us onto his bed. Then he’s on me. He stares at me with those bright eyes of his. “Haven’t you heard when you invite lesser evils, greater ones slink in after them?”

  My ribs compress against my frantic heart. I feel those evils beating down my door. This is not like before. I’m not in control and I’m not baiting.

  He is.

  His chin scrapes my jaw, prickling my skin to life. He touches the backs of my thighs, and my whole body braces for his next move. I’m burning alive. He kisses my neck, dragging his mouth along the side of my throat. Hairs rise off my body. It doesn’t matter what I’m trying to win, because this close, his heat consuming me, his scent boring into my lungs, I can barely remember the game.

  He reaches between my legs, but this time there’s no gentle brush on my clit. He drives a finger inside me.

  Air whooshes into my lungs. There’s no resistance from my wet sex. He moves that finger, strokes someplace high inside me, and I can’t move. My limbs go stiff. A deep paralyzing pleasure builds. I stare at the ceiling, up at the quiet unmoving fan. His thumb slides up my slit, and finds my clit.

 
A moan gushes out of me. His kiss sears the side of my neck. He sucks me in. The panties I’m wearing pull and tug as he masters what’s underneath them. My body tightens with every exquisite rocking movement. I reach for something, grab on to the belt at his waist and grip the leather. The motion in my pussy plunges more intensely.

  So does his mouth on my skin. I pull my knees higher, and everything gets sharper, deeper. He circles my clit. Tension draws to a tight white peak. His hand makes magic in my flesh.

  All the while I’m locked in this trance, gaze fixed on the ceiling, I can’t help knowing this is Julius. His body weighing me down. Him, knuckle deep in my pussy, sucking my neck. That all this pleasure is a gift from him.

  And that I love every dirty moment of it.

  Nonsense groans from my vocal cords. His stubble drags across my jaw. I contract deep in my womb, clenching around his finger. Bliss slams through me, a wave of ecstasy through muscle and nerves. I clutch his belt. My teeth snap together. My knees jerk. The earth shakes. He jams his finger deeper, and my hips buck. Pleasure unfurls, out and out and out, burning all the way to my lungs.

  I drown on air, gasp and gasp until my body is mine again. My vision clears. Julius hovers above me, bright gaze flicking over my face, soaking me in. Watching me come. His top lip curls in animal satisfaction. He delivers a final stroke to my clitoris. My knees twitch. He withdraws his hand from my panties. Runs his palm over my mound like he owns it, then he kisses me.

  Deep and possessive.

  He thrusts his tongue between my teeth to claim my mouth. He fills me up, and breathes into me. The wild masculine taste of him bursts across my tongue and his crisp scent swells my chest like a drag from a cigarette, making my lungs itch for another hit. He releases my lips to look at me again. My eyelids droop, leaded and heavy. It’s hard to watch him back, but I’ll never rest my eyes around Julius.

  He brushes my mouth with his thumb. “Everything will be better this way.”