Lawless Kingdom: A Dark Romance (Reign & Ruin Book 1)

by Natalie Bennett

  I wrapped my arms around his neck, reflecting on the first night I saw him. If I had never followed him from the party, none of this would be happening. From the moment we got entangled, I’d set a precursor for my future.

  Him.

  The wicked blueblood who’d bashed a man’s head in with a rock. I hadn’t even asked questions. I’d just helped him dig a hole and bury the guy. His bones were out here with us right now, the flesh having rotted off for the earthworms and maggots to feast on.

  I never regretted it.

  Never thought to go to the police.

  I let him have every part of me when we were done. It had been the perfect ending to a night shrouded in death and violence.

  Raising on my tiptoes, I pressed my lips to his. He immediately reciprocated.

  It didn’t take long before I was ready for more; I’d been wanting more since I saw him leaning over that damn balcony.

  His hand delved into my underwear, a deep breath of air leaving his lungs. “You’re always so wet for me, bambina.”

  I spread my legs to encourage him, and he eased two fingers inside me, rocking in and out of my pussy at a slow, steady tempo. A soft moan passed from my lips into his mouth.

  He pulled away and brought his lips to my ear. “Admit you want me, and I’ll give you what you’re so badly craving. Every solid inch of it.”

  I nodded against him, withholding a, “Hell yes!”

  “Say the words, Rhiannon,” he demanded, shoving his digits in knuckle-deep.

  I whimpered, rising onto my toes to fight against the tension. “I want you. You know I do. I always have.”

  His fingers immediately withdrew. He pulled open the rear door of the car and shoved me inside so only my legs hung off the seat.

  There was nothing soft or sweet about what happened next.

  He wrenched my underwear down my legs and replaced them with his mouth, eating me like his life depended on it. His tongue plunged so deep inside me I could clench it with my walls.

  “I knew you were meant for me the night you spread these legs and offered up this sweet pussy while we were covered in blood.”

  He ran his nose up my slit, teasing my clit with the tip of his tongue, flicking it back and forth and then flattening against it completely.

  “Judas,” I whimpered, dragging my hands through his hair.

  He reached up and used two fingers to shove back my hood, fully exposing my swollen clit. The tip of his tongue pressed against it and he began to circulate, creating a mind-blowing friction.

  His fingers went lower, to a place only he had been before. A thumb pressed against the puckered hole, easing into it. I cried out, feeling wetness gathering on the seat as it trickled from my pussy and between the crevice of my ass.

  Everything stopped abruptly, and then he was hovering over me. The sound of his zipper going down seemed to echo in the air around us. I glanced down at his cock, seeing it practically throb from how hard it was, a bead of precum already on his tip. He was long and wide. Absolutely. Perfect.

  When he guided himself to my entrance, I released a shaky breath to prepare myself.

  He took my legs and pulled me closer to the edge of the seat, hooking them over his shoulders. “Look at me,” he commanded gruffly.

  My eyes flew to his, becoming trapped in their steel prison. He flexed his hips and sunk himself inside me, not stopping to allow me any time to adjust. “This pussy was made for my cock,” he groaned.

  I felt myself stretching, a pleasurable burn growing stronger when he withdrew, slamming back inside me on my next breath.

  He was quick to readjust, giving me the ability to lock my hands around the back of his neck. His hips rolled and I gasped, causing a smile to spread across his face.

  He began to pump in and out of me, my pussy flooding for him as he picked up his tempo, fucking me harder the louder I screamed for him.

  My mind could only focus on the pleasure he gave me.

  When his hand wrapped around my throat, pinning me to the seat so he could reach even deeper inside me, I felt myself begin to clench. His hold tightened until the car was rocking and spots were dancing across my vision.

  No other sound filled the woods but what we did in the backseat of his car. I came on a strangled cry, forcing him to follow as I contracted around him.

  He didn’t move away from me right away. His body lowered without crushing me, and he pressed his lips to my forehead.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Rhiannon

  Mom would’ve called.

  I’m not sure why that was my first thought upon waking in Judas’ bed, but it was. A quick glance at my cellphone screen showed that it was ten past midnight.

  She had come back with the pizza hours ago. Technically, at eighteen—almost nineteen, since I had a late birthday—she didn’t need to track my every move.

  But still, she did. The six missed calls and eight text messages were probably all her freaking out. I wasn’t going to open them yet, not until I knew how to explain…this

  Speaking of this, where the hell was Judas? After what we did in his bed most of the night, it seemed rather rude to leave me to wake up without him. I sat up and listened but heard no other sounds in the house.

  Shoving his cloud-like comforter off me, I slipped from the bed and headed for the door, ignoring the ache between my legs.

  I snagged one of his T-shirts from a dresser along the way to cover up my nakedness. The hallway looked like a gaping hole of darkness. Creepy as hell. I wasn’t sure I’d ever get used to living in a giant ass house, but if I stayed with Judas…

  Okay. I was getting way ahead of myself. Good dick and orgasms that had my soul leaving my body had obviously evaporated some of my brain cells. I stepped out into the hall on my tiptoes, feeling the need to be silent.

  Did he live here alone? I should’ve asked that hours ago. I certainly hoped his parents were away or something. I’d hate to meet his mom and dad dressed like this, and there was no way they tuned out our performance.

  Thinking I heard something, I paused, listening for it again. Was that a groan?

  Trepidation had my spine tingling. Moving down the stairs, I noticed a glow of light cascading into the dining room.

  It had to be coming from the kitchen.

  I went towards it, ignoring every horror movie no-no there was. There wasn’t anyone around, but I picked up on voices—multiple, and Judas’ was one of them.

  I moved towards an open door with carefully placed steps. Closing my eyes and swallowing, I was just summoning the lady balls to peek around the doorframe when a familiar voice spoke up.

  “You can stop playing a shitty game of hide and seek and come in here. You don’t exactly blend in with the shadows,” Gavin said.

  “You…you can see me?”

  “No, kitten. We can hear you,” Owen replied.

  “You did good up until you started to panic,” Brianna chimed in.

  What the hell?

  “I didn’t panic,” I replied, moving away from the counter.

  I found myself staring into a garage. I think. The walls and floor were lined with plastic, and there was a smell coming from deeper within. Something revolting that had been covered by something decent.

  My Rooks and my Knight were all together, so where was the Barron?

  A sheet was covering something in the middle of the room. They had one lamp on to illuminate their surroundings, so I couldn’t really tell what it was they had covered up.

  “Do you wanna see him?” came from behind me, spoken softly in my ear. I jumped out of my skin, heart flying to my throat.

  I stepped into the garage and turned to face him. “Where did you come from?”

  “I’ve been behind you almost the whole time.”

  That creeped me out on a massive level. And he was all the way dressed. How long had he been out of bed?

  “We’re going to have to work on your perception skills.” He placed a gentle hand on
my waist, and I realized he was wearing leather gloves.

  “Is there a reason you’re dressed like you’re about to commit robbery? All of you?” I asked, taking in each of them.

  “We don’t wear anything that shows bloodstains, just in case,” Bri answered happily.

  I couldn’t feign shock at her explanation. I knew something was off about all of them. I met Judas under unorthodox circumstances. My gaze traveled the length of the garage again, noting a tool bench, a large metal tub, and lots of boxes. I found myself pausing on the mass beneath the sheet, finally understanding what it was.

  “Who did you want me to see?”

  “Go ahead, Bri,” Judas said, taking a step closer to me.

  She stepped forward with the grace of a ballerina and plucked the blanket from the mass. It took me a moment to recognize the person I was staring at.

  “What have you done?” I shrilled.

  “He deserved this,” Gavin stated in a bored tone.

  I rushed over to the chair, reaching out but then thinking better of it at the last second. “Dax.” I said his name firmly.

  His eyes were shut. At least I assumed they were. They’d swollen so much I wasn’t entirely sure. The revolting smell was definitely coming from him. It was urine and feces, and old blood covered by some type of chemical sheen they’d sprayed on him.

  Taking him in entirely, I was disgusted.

  He’d always been skinny but not like this. His skin was missing in places, burned in others.

  An area of his ribs was an ugly yellow-ish color.

  “How long has he been here?”

  “Since the night of the party,” Judas replied.

  “But he’s been online. His car was at the—”

  “All us, kitten,” Owen cut in.

  I looked right at Judas and asked, “Why?”

  “Well…one, he was never supposed to put his hands on you, hence the broken fingers. Two, he works for your father when he’s supposed to work for mine.”

  “And he knew where Maisie was,” Gavin added.

  I didn’t know what to do with what they were saying or how to process it. The rug had just been swept out from beneath my feet, and my ass had definitely hit the ground.

  I attempted to undo his binds, but they were expertly done up.

  “His dad died a few years ago,” Judas said, walking across the room.

  That couldn’t be right. Dax told me he was driving to see his dad every few weeks.

  “He was going to get girls,” Judas kept going, giving explanation to my private thought. “That’s what his job was. He lured them in, and your parents did the rest. You thought he was going to see his dad when he disappeared.”

  I shook my head back and forth. “I don’t believe you.” Even as I said that, I moved away from Dax, leaving his emaciated body the same way I’d found it.

  The thought of him going to do something like that, and then texting me that he was back in town…It sickened me to the core. All those times he claimed he was at that lake...

  If this was true, then the other part of what Judas said would be true too, but it didn’t make any sense.

  “What do you mean he works for my dad? My dad’s a roofer.”

  “Even as you said that, some part of you has to know that’s not true. And think about it. Your parents pushed this relationship so hard to keep you away from me.”

  I stared at Dax, who had yet to wake up. I waited to feel something other than fading pity for the boy in front of me, but I couldn’t force what wouldn’t come. This was all a little surreal but not so much so that it didn’t add up. They’d always had an odd relationship with Dax, liked him seemingly more than I did.

  “I hear what you’re saying…” I managed to get out, my thoughts scrambling to find some sense in all of this. Dad was Dad. He couldn’t be…whatever kind of person who needed girls rounded up.

  “Dax was playing both sides of the field. Keep Judas happy, keep the Clermonts happy, and get the girl,” Owen explained.

  The room went silent, all eyes trained on me. I didn’t have words for them, though. I just needed to go…go and process. This was like a scene out of a shitty B grade horror movie, only no one had given me a script. Swallowing thickly, I gestured to Dax.

  “What’s going to happen to him?”

  “What do you think?” Brianna retorted softly.

  “He’s going to die,” I stated factually.

  “Naturally. It was always going to come to this, so don’t blame yourself. He’s not worth your guilt. We’ve got a lot of shit people in our world, but he ranks higher in my book,” Brianna soothed, placing a hand on my shoulder.

  I stepped out of her reach, capping my emotions before they could erupt.

  I walked away, leaving them to do whatever it was they were gonna do. I couldn’t save Dax even if I wanted to, and my self-preservation demanded I remove myself from the room before I did something I couldn’t undo.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  JUDAS

  Emotional responses weren’t common for us.

  We didn’t break down when we had every reason to, and we didn’t react to feelings. If we did that, we wouldn’t last long where we came from. People like us sniffed out weakness like sharks could blood in water. All emotion needed to be concealed until you were alone.

  That’s when you broke. If you needed to break. I did that a few times when I realized my sister had been sold off into an industry very few returned from.

  I’d expected more from Rhiannon. She was new to all this, but then I’d only ever seen her close to tears once, and they hadn’t fallen.

  Maybe she was doing what so many of us snuck off to do right then. I would give her a moment but that was all.

  “Grab me a towel,” I directed Owen.

  “You still using the knife?” Bri asked, smoothing out the plastic in front of Dax.

  “That’s my insurance policy. Once we leave Crudele, if Rhiannon ever changes her mind, that’s my ace of spades.”

  Bri frowned but kept her mouth shut.

  “You shooting or holding?” Gavin asked.

  “You can shoot.” I caught the thick white towel Owen tossed through the air. I walked up to Dax and studied his stiff frame. I felt nothing for him but anger for allowing him to be close to us.

  He was a betrayer in the end. He’d been the only person who knew where Maisie was and never spoke up. The fucking Clermonts took her away and killed the whole operation two and a half years ago.

  They went damn near bankrupt in the process. Or so we thought.

  Gavin approached with a silenced pistol in one hand and put a point-blank shot in the back of Dax’s head. I carefully wrapped a towel around the bullet wound to prevent too much of his insides from spilling.

  As quickly as possible, Bri used the knife Rhiannon had grabbed to stab him in the heart to minimize excessive bleeding.

  Owen came in next, moving the body from the chair and depositing it in a bathtub where it could bleed out as much as it was going to near a drain. He was our trained butcher and would be the one to quickly and efficiently dismember the body.

  After that it was simple logistics. Dax’s parts would be packed in plastic and stuffed in cardboard boxes. The boxes would be discarded by the same mules that cleaned up Erin Moore’s limbs and the burnt cadaver Marcus had dumped on our property.

  “We got the rest,” Bri said, dropping the bloody knife into a plastic bag. “I’ll get this locked up for safe keeping.”

  I nodded and left them to it, going to find Rhiannon exactly where I expected her to be.

  She was back in my room, lying across my bed on her stomach, ankles crossed. Her perfect ass was slightly exposed, hanging out the bottom of my T-shirt. She wasn’t crying—thank fuck. She was staring at the wall with varying emotions written across her face.

  “Is he gone?” she asked, her voice soft.

  “He is,” I confirmed, lifting my shirt over my head.

  “
Good.”

  I was a little taken aback by the relief in her voice. “You sound okay with that.”

  “Because I am,” she replied, a thousand different meanings in those three words. I wouldn’t force her to talk or try and play therapist. That wasn’t my thing.

  I’d be here to distract her from it. Make it all better for her until the next time I had to break another piece of her reality. And the next.

  She rolled over, the shirt rising in the process, exposing every fucking thing below her waist. I lifted a brow and waited for her to tell me what she wanted.

  I shouldn’t have been thinking about being balls deep inside her pussy after a traumatic experience. I knew she was thinking the same thing. It’s what made us fit. Not the fucking, though she was the best goddamn thing to ever be wrapped around my dick. We were anomalies, atypical sick fucks who didn’t fit in with societal norms.

  Our relationship wouldn’t ever fit in a perfect box. I suspected it would always be a level of love-hate between us, me pushing and pushing, her trying not to bend. We hadn’t even truly begun yet. I had big plans for Rhia and her family.

  “What happens now, Jude?”

  Jude. She was the only person I could tolerate calling me that. Unable to disclose my true intentions, I gave her a roundabout answer.

  “You be what I told you to be.”

  She laughed bitterly. “A twisted slut that dabbles in depravity.”

  “That’s who you are regardless. You know what I want from you.”

  “To be yours.”

  “Entirely mine,” I confirmed, unzipping my jeans.

  She stared up at me in silence, waging an internal battle right before my eyes. I wished I could crawl inside her head and know every little thing she thought. Without a word, she shifted to the edge of my bed and stood up, making her way towards me.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  RHIANNON

  I rose from the bed, pulling his shirt over my head.

  I didn’t stop to ponder what was wrong with me. I didn’t want to think right then. I wasn’t ready for the thoughts threatening to sink me. I watched Judas take off all his clothes until he was back the way he’d been a few hours ago, and all I wanted was his body pressed against mine.