King’s Captive

by Amber Bardan

  A familiar skinny form clings to the branch, clutching a rifle. Benjamin straightens, sitting upright, then raises the rifle—not toward us, though—no, his aim is up at the roof at the sniper now attempting to shuffle into position on the peaked roof.

  My heart thuds, and suddenly it’s like my peripheral expands and I see everything. The sniper on the roof, the masked men dominating my father’s men with only a handgun one of them must’ve held on to when Benjamin collected the weapons minutes ago. Joel’s hands flex at his side, he’s recovered from his hit to the face and Pete’s gaze darts around the yard, waiting for a chance—any chance—to act.

  Jim’s come to, not as bright eyed as the others, but the way he scowls in our direction, I don’t doubt he’d fight.

  Ben lifts the rifle another notch, his face pressed to the barrel.

  He’s not the coward I’d thought he was. He knows what he’s doing. The sniper is what gives Julius the upper hand.

  Julius takes aim again. Benjamin won’t get the chance to take the shot. I leap from my chair, making it over the table in an instant, and launch myself against Julius. My shoulder crashes into the center of his chest, and we go down.

  His weapon booms.

  We land in a pile with me on top of him, my thighs on either side of his waist and my breasts squashed against a chest as hard as the limestone grazing my knees. My hair spills around both our faces like a curtain, closing us off from everything around us—so it’s only he and I—his every expression mine and I watch them morph. From lips parting, shocked, a flash of heat as his hands closed on my hips, then to eyes squinting fury. The places in his cheeks that once were dimples become hollows. Whatever advantage I’ve gained for my father’s boys will cost me dearly.

  I toss my head back and look up.

  The masked man who moments before held the handgun now lies on the floor. Julius shouts, and rolls me off him, leaping to his feet. I blink and see what’s happened. The bullet from Julius’s gun made it into his own man. My attention flicks to the roof. The sniper clings to the peak with one arm—wounded.

  Benjamin slides forward the bolt on his rifle, but this time turns to us. Julius reloads his own weapon and they both aim in unison. Not for the first time today, I see in slow motion. It might only be my insides rushing faster than I can process, but everything seems clear.

  This boom radiates over all the others, forcing my eyes closed like a sneeze. When I open them, Benjamin still sits in the tree. Julius’s handgun just doesn’t have the range. But even from a distance it’s plain his mouth hangs open—and I can’t see what’s gone wrong.

  I glance at Julius standing whole and unbroken.

  Everything explodes into a rush of movement. Benjamin swings down from the tree and runs for the driveway. Dad’s boys wrestle with the remaining thugs, and Julius sprints toward them.

  I turn to Dad, and pain sears my insides. Blood spurts from his chest; without the theater of Mrs. Carlisle’s wound, but gushing. I run to his side, and tug at the ropes binding him to the chair.

  We slide to the ground. I drag my father into my lap and press both hands over the hole on his chest as though I can hold his blood inside.

  “No, Dad,” I whisper, every living part of me breaking with hurt.

  A sound hums in the distance, and I glance up. A billow of dust pillows around a vehicle racing out of our long dirt driveway. It’s Benjamin Carlisle escaping this garden of death.

  Ben who I saved by tackling Julius.

  Benjamin Carlisle who missed—who shot Dad.

  Because of me.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  The memories fall over me like reflections in a shattering mirror—in pieces. Some bits so clear I could count the eyelashes on a flash of eye, but altogether fragmented. But the image isn’t the same as it was before.

  It wasn’t Julius who killed my father. The blame for that is on me. Grief sucks me into a pulsing vacuum. Tendrils of pain constrict and devour. My loss is unnameable.

  Grief for all the things I’ve done—for Dad—for Ash, who killed him, then tried so hard to redeem himself. Now I understand why he came and why he tried to save me.

  He was never Fury.

  I stare at Julius. There’s agony written all over him. The way his lips pull back and show his teeth. The way those blue eyes shimmer.

  Her name was Sarah—his dead wife.

  “The same way you lost your father.”

  He made the wrong move trying to save her. She was taken from him the way everything has been taken from me. I see that headline again in my mind. Tragic Accident.

  Julius lost everything just like I did. Another kind of grief squishes on top of the rest. This one is pure rib-crushing heartbreak. “Is she the reason you wanted me?”

  He closes his eyes, and breathes, “Baby.”

  “Because I remind you of her...” I choke, actually cough wet rasping coughs. I want to throw up.

  I believed he loved me.

  As crazy as that may be, with all the reasons why he shouldn’t, I thought he did. I clutch my arm, the throbbing pounds the skin where Pa stitched me up. Nothing between us ever made sense. I gave him nothing to warm to, yet warm he did. The way I warmed to him when hate and anger and pain weren’t enough to snuff out the part of me that opened to something greater.

  Does he see someone else when he looks at me?

  “Tell me it’s not true?” I grab him by the only place I can on his head—his ears.

  His head jerks back. “Baby,” he pleads and his voice is strange again.

  “That’s not my name,” I say and thrust his face away from me. There’s another woman between us. There’s someone else and I can’t escape her. The desperate way he’s touched me—as though he were trying to shed us of skin.

  Except it isn’t me he’s been trying to find.

  He runs a hand over his ear, then stands.

  Suddenly, it clicks—the way his voice has sounded a few times tonight. The inflections haven’t been right, and it’s been more than emotion.

  Julius has an accent.

  One like Pa’s. One like my mother’s. One he’s been disguising.

  Julius is Irish.

  He stumbles away and pulls out his phone. I stare at his back. He’s hidden it well. I’ve never picked up on this before. He speaks on his phone, and his voice is just right, just perfect. He’s always spoken with the smooth edges of someone well-traveled, now I know that, like the tattoos, even his voice is part of the disguise.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Pa, the evil old traitor, holds my elbow to walk me down the aisle. Music flows from the chapel doors. The tune is a strange yet familiar melody. Absolutely nothing that’s happened has been able to hold this moment at bay.

  Pa tugs me forward.

  Fabric itches around my neck. My fingers clench around a bouquet to stop from tearing at my collar. Italian lace scratches like polyester over my crawling skin. I’ve never prayed, but if I did, right now I’d pray for divine intervention.

  We move through the doors.

  I shut my eyes for a beat. Someone intervene. I open them again and see the empty church. Sweat trickles between my shoulder blades.

  My breaths puff. The netting shivers over my face. I thank God for the small mercy of a veil. Voices sing in chorus from speakers mounted on the wall. I’ve never listened to hymns, and all I make out now is amen.

  It sounds a lot like the end.

  We reach the man standing at the front of the church. I can’t turn to him. Can’t see him and keep going. He’s next to me, though. His scent invades me like his own sensory signature.

  I breathe him in.

  I breathe him out.

  Fingers take mine. My hand rests in his hand, but the grip
is on my heart. The world becomes a hum.

  A word slashes through the noise.

  “Sarah.”

  My head clears, and I’m slammed back in my body, standing beside Julius, his hands warm around mine, and he just said my name.

  I’m transfixed by the sound.

  That word, two simple syllables, seems so much more than just a name—Sarah. My cheeks burn.

  Pa doesn’t move, making no attempt to begin the thing he’s here for. He leaves us.

  Julius takes my face in his hands, his big thumbs wiping tears. “Sarah, I need you to be brave.”

  My chest is tight, my heart weighed down. There’s not enough left in me for bravery.

  “Everything will be okay, if you can just be brave.”

  He kisses my forehead, and for an instant it feels like the truth. As though there might be a world in which any of this might be all right.

  He leads me to a pew, and I sink into the wood seat.

  “I need to ask you something.”

  For the second time since I met him Julius is on his knees and my hands are in his.

  “Is being married to me truly the worst thing you can imagine?”

  The fog at the edge of my vision parts. Hope bursts like a firework inside me. It worked. He loves me. I stare at him, and see every pained line etched into his skin. He loves me and won’t make me do this. Won’t trap me here.

  He’s going to let me go.

  I squeeze his fingers. Maybe I’m a little in love with him too. Because whatever reason he has for needing my inheritance was big enough to take me. To wait three years for. Was big enough to warrant what happened that day.

  And he’d give it up to set me free.

  So I can’t lie. “No.”

  I don’t want to be forced. Don’t want my choices made for me. But being with Julius is now by far not the worst thing I can imagine.

  “Then I’m going to give you something.” He smiles and it’s the saddest look I’ve ever seen. “I hope one day you’ll understand why I had to do this.”

  He reaches into his beautiful tux and withdraws a yellow envelope. My memory shudders. It’s the envelope from that day.

  He’s giving it back to me.

  I take the envelope. “Thank you.”

  “Read it.”

  I hold it against me. “I already have.”

  “No you haven’t, baby.”

  I frown and glance down at the envelope, tear open the seal and remove the contents. Confusion settles a blinding haze over my eyes.

  It’s not a will.

  But my name is on it. “What is this?”

  He doesn’t answer, so I have to read even though my body does its best to shut my vision. Medical records. From my accident.

  “I don’t understand.” The paper twitches in my hand. “What’s so important about the records of my car accident with Mom?”

  I scan the pages, my heart falling into a desperate plunge. It’s all jargon, yet some things are clear, words like swelling, and brain.

  My fingers fly to the place above my ear. The scar seems to burn under my fingers.

  Julius takes me by the shoulders. “Baby, there was an accident, but it wasn’t with your mother.”

  My focus snaps to the quivering page, and my entire being focuses in on the one thing I missed.

  The date—it’s seven fucking months from today.

  “It was with me.”

  The pages fall to the church floor. Both hands clutch my skull. “What are you talking about?”

  The room wobbles. My eyes can’t stay still in my head. It’s like the entire ocean migrated between my ears, and there’s waves of pressure and roaring sound.

  He shakes my shoulders.

  “Baby, look at me.” His voice levels the pressure. “You can’t go backward again, it’s too dangerous.”

  I shake my head. “You’re lying.”

  But he’s never lied. Only concealed the truth.

  “You’re not twenty-one today.” His fingers bite into the tops of my shoulders, forcing my attention to him. “You’re twenty-nine.”

  “That’s not true.”

  My hands drop to his wrists, and I hold on.

  His pinning gaze grounds my warbling mind. “You are my wife.”

  It can’t be true.

  “There was an accident. You were hurt, and when you woke up, you didn’t remember anything.” Julius’s voice fills the chapel, the echo surrounding me from every direction. His words inescapable. “Not me. Not the life we had. Not everything we risked to be together.”

  His grip moves from my shoulders to the sides of my face. All I can do is keep holding on to him. “You thought you were fifteen.”

  My mind floats back. To scattered images of after the accident. Glimpses more like thought than memory of hospitals.

  Of everything that should be normal being hard. Simple things like holding a spoon. I squeeze his wrists, and proof burst to life in that one action—the weakness on one side.

  “Your family tried to keep us apart. When you couldn’t remember, they took you while I was helpless.” His voice is a heartbreak that should be mine. A heartbreak I can’t remember but feel in every single one of his harsh broken words. “They took you while I was burned and blistered and they expected me to die.”

  I can’t speak, only pant and stare at him.

  “They thought I’d never recover.” His fingertips make it into my hair, electric on my scalp. “But I did. I fought so I could come for you.”

  This can’t be real.

  My eyes shut. Everything under my eyelids is a red glow. I let that red wash over me. Let it saturate my dizzy mind.

  “No, baby.” His nose touches mine. “You’ve come so far. It’s time to know.”

  Breath rushes between my lips, jagged.

  My fingers slide on his wrists.

  He rubs his cheek against my wet one. “Open your eyes and look at me.”

  I open them and look into eyes I once thought cold that now shine bright, and full of an energy that is pure warmth.

  “That’s it, look at me.” He releases my face and one arm circles my waist, dragging me into his lap. He reaches inside his jacket again, and this time holds up a photo right by his face. “See.”

  My gaze snaps back and forth between him and the picture. The woman in that photo is me. I thought my pulse couldn’t skip any more beats yet it does. She is me. In the dress I’m wearing right now. I touch the lace at my throat. It’s really there, the same as in the photo.

  And the man—he could almost be Julius.

  Almost.

  Only in the eyes. I take the photo from his hand, and stare and stare and stare as though this bride and groom might morph into another image.

  They don’t.

  I glance back at Julius. Who the hell is this man? My husband? Really, the man who’s kept me on this island for three years?

  “Why wouldn’t you tell me?” I shove away from him and get to my feet. “How the hell could you not tell me?”

  “Sarah.” He follows me fluidly to standing. “I tried. When you first came here, but you were too traumatized, you regressed. Weren’t remembering things right.”

  My gaze flicks back to the photo, then to him.

  “You took something of mine and I’ve come to take it back.”

  “No, some things I do remember.” I drop the photo, and back down the aisle. “You took me from my home because you think I’m yours. Claimed me like a piece of property, then held me prisoner.”

  His shoulders roll back. His eyes flash. “You don’t understand.”

  “I understand enough.” My head shakes and I take one more step back. It’s there written on him, the
anger his pain has filled him with. The anger I’ve sensed. Just look at what he was prepared to do to get me here.

  “You need to listen to me, baby.”

  Maybe I’m brain damaged but he’s crazy. What happened made him crazy.

  This isn’t love.

  But maybe it’s something else, because for a moment I see us together. See us sweat drenched in ecstasy. See years of a life I don’t remember, in a flush of longing that fills me to the core. My face gets hot, blood rushing to my lips.

  He’s there in my mind.

  And I can’t keep him out.

  I hate him. I want him. I need him like air. I stumble back. His chin lowers and his nostrils flare as though he’s caught my scent. As though he sensed the memories crawling back to life. He’s going to drag them to the surface. The animal in him is out and I’m his prey.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  He starts toward me.

  I slide off my shoes and lay my feet flat on stone. I can’t do this. Can’t be near him. Can’t give in to this.

  He freezes midstep.

  “Don’t you run.” His voice is tight, so tight and so pained. “Don’t run from me.”

  I spin and run out the door, sprinting for the beach. Footsteps fade behind me. Adrenaline shoots into my muscles. I scoop up my dress and clutch it to my thighs. The soles of my feet hit the ground and the impact of each shuddering step rockets all the way into my hips. My airways screech, and for one gasp I imagine I hear him wheezing right behind me.

  But I don’t look back.

  I run across the white sand toward the back of the island. It doesn’t matter where I go or that there’s nowhere here to land. Soft thuds catch up to mine. I run harder, each breath singeing my chest raw. It’s the worst and best feeling, this running, this chasing, this thing we’ve been doing.

  I know the instant he has me, even before those strong hands clap over the tops of my arms. My entire body makes one last-ditch effort for escape. I flail with everything, shoulders turning, and elbows swinging.

  He tackles me to the ground.

  My cheek hits the sand. He’s on top of me but it’s not as crushing as it should be. He took the fall on his forearm. Whatever chemicals kept me running and breathing fade with my face pressed to the ground. I pant, lungs on fire with each agonizing breath. His harsh exhales fan the back of my neck. My ass rears hard up against his crotch—his cock ready and grinding. The chase has turned him on. Rattled his control. I’m no better. My hips rock back. I’m so wet, my pussy aches even more than my chest.