Cruel Crown: A Dark Romance (Sekten Book 2)

by C. Lymari

  “I’m—” I started to say, but Gideon cut me off when he began to choke me. He thrust in me three more times before I felt my body break out in hives from lack of oxygen. Then like a rubber band retracting, I went off.

  He let go of my neck the moment my orgasm hit me. My scream pierced the air as Gideon kept fucking me. It broke down the remainder of the walls I had guarded against everyone. And the only two people left standing were us .

  The piercing ringing in my ears was the only tether I had to remind me that I was still here and very much alive.

  When I opened my eyes, Gideon was breathing heavily. Sweat dripped down his forehead, and when our eyes met, a smile full of male satisfaction spread across his face.

  “You passed out on me, Petal,” he said victoriously before he bent and kissed me.

  It was at that moment that my chest finished breaking open, and my heart that was barely beating began to pump a new type of life force in me—one not built on hate, but something more.

  The moment I became conscious, I had to stop myself from jumping off my bed. Part of me felt the other part somewhat intrigued. This was what it felt like to wake up with a man?

  As I became more aware of my surroundings, I felt a presence in the room. My body stilled, my hand curled against Gideon’s chest. There was timing for everything, and killing someone in the art of revenge had to be planned to the very last detail, and I didn’t want to kill anyone—not yet.

  “Relax, it’s just Bas,” Gideon said in a sleepy voice.

  “You shouldn’t be here,” I said as I sat, bringing the sheet with me.

  Bastian was seated on the chair across the bed. He had an obsidian blade he kept throwing in the air and then catching it. “Relax, Damian is out hunting. I just wanted to tell you that Alexis is awake, and for G to get going before anyone sees him.”

  “Thank you.” I nodded in acknowledgment.

  Bas threw the knife in the air one more time before throwing it our way, and it landed by Gideon’s lap. He started to walk away, and he smirked at us—at me. “So it’s me, right? I have the bigger dick?”

  I groaned and fell down on my bed with my blankets covering my face, and at the same time, I heard something hit the door and then metal hitting the floor.

  “Did you just throw a knife at him?”

  “Why did you fuck him?”

  Gideon’s voice wasn’t playful nor post-orgasmic. Guess our honeymoon phase was over. I sat up, and as soon as I moved my legs, I winced.

  “You have no right to ask me that,” I told him as I turned to face him. He leaned against the headboard shirtless, his hair somewhat messy, those whiskey eyes I was so fond of warm and unguarded. This was not the first time he had mentioned this, and I had a feeling it had bothered him more than he cared to admit.

  I wasn’t sure what was going on, but I did know that if we didn’t address a few things, then everything we’d done to make it to this point would have been pointless.

  Gideon was silently staring at the chair Bas had sat on.

  Everything we had up until this point had been built on lies and pillars of deceptions, and structures like that tended to come tumbling down the moment the truth came out.

  “I was lonely,” I said, breaking the silence.

  He was still angry, but he was listening.

  “After Chicago, I started to realize the detachment I had with the world. The way I had desensitized myself to my surroundings—breaking and remaking Bastian, that took a toll on both of us. I felt nothing, and he felt everything. It poured out of him in waves.”

  I reached for his hand. This type of conversation might be fucked-up to civilians, but we were living in a different world.

  “I never expected to cross paths with you again. And I had felt safe enough with someone else to give myself to them in hopes of finding some comfort, something to take the pain away. It didn’t mean anything profound for either of us. We cared for each other, but that’s all there was to it. Bas, he needs to feel connected to someone. He needs that attachment because it’s the only thing that stops him from losing his mind. It’s why he has an open-room policy. But I can tell you that I have not been there for a long time, nor will I be there again.”

  He held my hand in a tight grip.

  “I hate that he had a piece of you. That he stills has a piece of you.”

  “I thought you liked him?”

  “Did he make you come?” he asked through gritted teeth and turned to look at me.

  “Why ask questions you don’t want the answer to?”

  Gideon glared at me. He moved so fast that he had me pinned down on the mattress in seconds.

  “Everything about you is my business. I want the good but especially the bad. I want nothing between us. If I’m asking it’s because I care, because I want—no, I need to know everything. “

  “I can tell you that there’s been no one but you since your safe house.”

  He started to breathe slowly again. When I saw him in his safe house, that had been more than a year ago.

  “I know you’re sore, but right now, I really don’t give a fuck,” he said as he kissed my neck.

  “I know the type of pain that cripples your soul.” I reached for his face. “And handsome, you’d never been that cruel to me.”

  He cursed at my confession, and then I kissed him.

  “I want to say I’m sorry…” Gideon said with a smug smile.

  Instead of answering him, I grabbed my bedsheet and pulled it off my bed and threw it on the ground.

  As I got dressed, I didn’t let him see my discomfort. He wanted to make sure I wouldn’t walk straight for a week, and he got his wish. I was glad for the cold temperatures; I looked like I had been beaten.

  “It’s sexy, Petal.” He gave me a smirk and referred to the small stains of blood that adorned the bedsheet.

  “You could have peed on me and made it easier,” I said as I started to walk away. I was about to get the door open when he came behind me and put out his hand to stop me.

  “I think I like this short hair,” he said to himself as his lips kissed behind my neck right below where my hair ended. Tingles spread down my back, and I felt the imprint of his smile against my neck.

  It felt so foreign, and like it was a dream…all the things I never thought could belong to someone like me.

  “Petal, we both know you loved every second of it. Your nails dug into my shoulder blades as you moaned, sometimes with pleasure, other times with pain, but you got off on it maybe more than I did. The way you came—fuck, so fucking wet and tight. That’s why no one will ever fit me like you do. You were made for me, love.”

  And because my babushka didn’t raise a weak woman, I didn’t give in.

  “Whatever. We aren’t fucking for a month.” I pushed him back, ignoring the way he chuckled, and I left my room, glad he had to let time pass before he went out.

  The cafeteria was emptier than usual. Not that people kept to a schedule, but people were always around. It was…nice. I was used to being on my own since I was eighteen. This past month had been an experience.

  Bastian sat next to me. I was getting used to the fucker, and I’d learned to sense his presence. He had a breakfast sandwich in one hand, and with his other, he sat a laptop on the table.

  “You shouldn’t be anywhere near me right now. I vividly thought about killing you earlier today.”

  He snorted and moved things on the computer, and a screen appeared.

  “You hurt her and I will kill you.”

  I was going to say he could try when I noticed what he was watching. She was a familiar face to me. I leaned forward when I saw the woman he was watching. She had grown since London.

  This was now a woman; the person I had carried in my arms was a girl. Her hair looked fuller, slim body, but she no longer looked anorexic. She was tall, with shoulder-length hair, and when she turned in profile, her face was like I remembered it. Soulless except now older. She picked up thre
e objects from a table, then faced a wall.

  She had throwing knives in one palm. One by one, she threw them. Bas changed the feed, and then I could see more clearly, and I winced.

  “She’s getting so good,” Bas said in awe.

  I looked at him and at the feed again. The psycho bitch had thrown the knives at a male practice dummy. A direct line from the head down to the crotch, not missing her intended targets.

  “Is she back in London?”

  Bas didn’t even acknowledge me. “Nope, she’s in Stockholm.”

  “Where’s everyone?” I asked, even though the only person I cared about was Daphne.

  “Hunting.”

  “Why didn’t you go?”

  “Fuck that. We’re all going camping soon. I don’t want to be in the cold more than I have to. Besides, hunting with Damian is a fucking nightmare.”

  I bet it was.

  All of a sudden, Bastian’s head snapped up.

  “Did you see that?”

  I sat a little straighter, wondering what the fuck he was talking about.

  “You’re going to have to explain yourself, mate. You fucking lost me.”

  He shut down the computer.

  “When we came in, Paco was here. Then while we talked, he got up and went to that table. Waited for a few minutes, then left. After he was gone, Sid got up and went over there.” He pointed to a table that was now vacant but hadn’t been when I walked in.

  “They got done eating?” I said skeptically, mostly because I was confused as fuck.

  “They’re conspiring.”

  Shit. Paco wasn’t happy about Daphne offing his cousin and now wanted retribution.

  “Where is she?”

  “With her grandfather.”

  “Repeat that?” I spat as I followed after him. She had a grandfather, and I didn’t know any of this shit? And I was back to wanting to murder Bastian for knowing something I didn’t.

  “Is her mother alive as well? I asked sardonically.

  “Nope, she blew up.” Bas did fireworks signals with his hands.

  We walked all the way up toward one of the towers. Bas said there were a lot of secret entrances in case there was ever an attack.

  We stopped by a door, and before he opened the door, he looked at me. “She’s going to be pissed. She never introduced me to her grandfather. I just followed her one day.”

  I pushed him to the side and walked through the door.

  The room wasn’t very big, but it was warm. Warmer than Daphne’s and my room. There was a small living room and a bed, with a door I assumed was for the bathroom. Lying on a bed that looked fancier than the ones in the hospitals was a man. He was still tall and broad despite having a wrinkled face. He still had a lot of hair; it was all white now, but he looked like he could still kick arse.

  Daphne was standing next to him, and on his bed was a laptop. Both of them turned to look at me, twin sets of wolf eyes glaring at me.

  He looked me up and down and started to talk to Daphne in Russian. She sounded sexy, but I was annoyed.

  “You do know I know you two are talking about me.”

  Bastian didn’t care; he went and grabbed the laptop that was on the bed and turned it around to see what they were talking about.

  “I’d say Sid and Erin are lost to us. I saw them with Paco—that hate has been brewing, and I think he’s going to do it this year.”

  “That explains why I never heard from Isabel,” Daphne said.

  “Are you sure?” Daphne’s grandfather asked Bas. His English was fluent, as was his Russian.

  “Can someone tell me what’s going on?”

  “Lesson number one, don’t speak unless spoken to,” Daphne’s grandfather said.

  I was about to reply when I noticed Daphne biting her lip, trying to suppress a smile.

  “Sorry, old man, I’m not very good with directions,” I said as I walked toward them to see what they were looking at.

  “It shows.”

  I ignored the comment and stared at the computer. It was a complex world map. It showed regions and was color-coded, and when they hovered the mouse over a dot, a headshot appeared, along with nationality and record.

  There were at least three hundred dots.

  “What is all of this?”

  “Sekten agents,” Daphne answered without looking at me.

  “Where are they?” I asked, referring to the fact that there wasn’t even half of that here.

  “He’s a bit slow, isn’t he?”

  “Quite the opposite actually.” I grinned. “I was Mensa qualified as a preteen.”

  Daphne snorted.

  “You two are adorable; you make me sick,” Bas said dryly.

  Daphne’s grandfather looked from her to me, and he started to spew off in Russian.

  “Can you two speak in another language? English, Spanish, French. German, something I can fucking understand.”

  Bas was moving something on the computer and replied, “They’re talking shit about you.”

  “I got that much,” I said, annoyed.

  “You think you’re special?” the grandfather said in English. “Pero no eres nada,” he went on. You are nothing. “Besondere.” Special. He finished in German.

  “My granddaughter is a prodigy, and so is Damian, and the American looks like a dipshit, but he has his uses.”

  Bastian turned to grin at me. “I speak Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, Latin, and American Sign Language. I’m also a black belt in various forms of martial arts and can fly anything smaller than a jet.”

  “Sign language?” I raised my eyebrows at him.

  He shrugged. “Seven-year-old me thought it was cool as fuck to talk with your hands.”

  “What they’re trying to say,” Daphne said, glaring at all of us, “is that you’re not that special. Everyone who becomes Sekten is gifted or can offer us a gift.” She ignored me and tapped the screen at all the dots I was looking at before.

  “These are field agents. They are the ones who hide in the shadows that have less-intensive training. They start out here but get accommodated and lead a more…peaceful lifestyle. Still cunning and deadly but more…civil.”

  “And the ones here?”

  “We’re the elite. Crème de la crème,” Bas answered for her.

  “Usually, you have to prove your worth before Damian allows you into the sanctum sanctorum.”

  “Told you I’m special.” I winked at the old man to piss him off. He rolled his eyes at me.

  My grin came back.

  “You think he brought me here to hurt you?” I said more seriously, reaching for Daphne. She seemed to hold her breath as I reached for her hair and tucked it behind her ear. Such a simple action, but it conveyed so much more.

  “Yes…”

  “Not happening,” I swore.

  Before anyone could reply, there were three taps on the door. I reached behind my back out of habit more than anything until I realized I didn’t have a weapon with me. None of us did.

  “Coast is clear…I’ll be back.” She started to walk out. I was about to go after her when her grandfather spoke.

  “Don’t just stand there with your dick in your hands, and go watch her six.”

  I rolled my eyes at him but ran after Daphne.

  She was walking rapidly when I touched her arm.

  “What’s going on, Petal?”

  She looked at me and where my hand was holding her. “You shouldn’t touch me.”

  I sighed tiredly. We were back to this shit.

  “There are more cameras on this floor,” she finished softly.

  “I’m okay. I like touching you, Petal,” I said as I scanned the corridor at where the cameras were located. I pushed her to walk a bit, then when we were in a safe zone, I pushed her against the wall. My hand came to her waist, pinning her there, and I rested my forearm on top of her head.

  Before she could say anything, I kissed her. It was surreal to do this so freely without an
y fighting. Maybe I did have an obsession that went from her to her body, her lips, the way she said my name.

  Her lips opened for me, timidly giving in to our kiss. I liked it a fucking lot. When I pulled back, there was a dazed look in her silver eyes. I liked that a lot more.

  “What was that for?” she asked, her tone loud, trying to hide the fact that she was breathless.

  “Because I can,” I said, kissing her right cheek. “Because I wanted to,” I said, kissing her left. “Because you’re mine,” I said against her lips before I gave her another kiss. As I pulled back, I groaned when she held my lower lip between her lips, gently biting it and pulling it. The action went straight to my dick.

  “Let’s go. We’re wasting time.”

  She watched with amusement as I adjusted my dick and then followed after her. She looked around when we came to a dead end and pulled a chandelier, and a hall opened up.

  “There are tunnels everywhere, but not everyone knows about them,” she explained as we went into one of them. It was chilly, dark, with no light inside. Daphne pulled out a small flashlight that illuminated the way. It looked old and like they kept more secrets I ought to know.

  I saw a set of stairs up ahead. Before we could move, I took off my jacket and draped it over Daphne’s shoulders.

  She looked at the jacket like it was going to set her on fire.

  “Come on,” I said so she wouldn’t say shit.

  She took a moment but followed after me.

  “You don’t know where we’re going,” she said.

  “Tell me what’s going on?” I asked, hoping it didn’t sound demanding. For every ten questions, I’d only gotten one answered. I wanted it to come freely from her before I made her because that shit would only piss me off.

  I asked something simpler. “Who tapped the door?”

  “One of my spies,” she said.

  We made it to the top of the stairs as she took a turn.

  “No offense, Petal, but I didn’t think you had many friends.”

  “To take Damian’s throne, I need to start a war,” she said, and I nodded because I knew this. “You can’t win a war without allies. Most of the elites are Damian’s and won’t be swayed. I have maybe one-third of them.”