by K. I. Lynn
The agony cleared my mind, and I shook my head. I sat up, grimacing as I moved, my eyes beseeching her. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what came over me.”
She glared at me. “You were thinking with your dick. Don’t try that shit again.”
“I won’t.”
Bad move, old boy.
What do you do when you have unlimited funds available to you in New York?
You sit at the top of your tower and never do anything.
I’d been bombarded with so much during my first few weeks with Atticus. The life I led was flipped upside down, turned inside out, and shaken like a snow globe. Trapped in a confusing place. If I didn’t have to work, what did I do with myself?
Cooking and cleaning were out—someone else took care of that.
The one upside was that I’d gotten into a great exercise routine due to sheer boredom combined with the incredible private gym that sat twenty-two floors below my eight-thousand-square-foot prison. Though, I had run into Genevieve a few times. It was almost becoming a pattern. We ran in silence next to each other on the treadmills. Even while running, she was picture perfect. I assumed all the exercise was to work off the booze from her partying.
I also spent three days a week in swim lessons. Of course, Atticus de Loughrey couldn’t just find me a swim instructor or coach to improve my swimming ability. No, he hired Olympic gold medalist Rana Smith.
An Olympic gold medalist.
There was something about his insistence that I become a strong swimmer that kept me from fighting him on it, even if I did think Rana was overkill.
All the free time to myself made self-introspection a startling discovery—I was boring as fuck.
Shopping? Nope. If I needed anything, all I had to do was ask Jack or one-click it online or call Melanie. I wasn’t much of a shopper anyway.
Hobbies? Once upon a time I liked crafts, but I wasn’t so sure about that now. Awesome centerpieces made from things from a store where everything was a dollar would not be an appreciated item in the de Loughrey family.
I wasn’t good at art or music. Maybe I could get back into video games, but that was just a brainless time suck. It would give me something to do, but it wasn’t enriching in any way. Not that I needed something enriching. More that I felt like I needed something like that to keep up.
I had to look up what the other de Loughrey women did. Genevieve, well, was Genevieve. She said it best when she touted she kept the economy running. Penelope had a decent following for her music. Elizabeth was a mother as well as an entrepreneur. Georgiana was the picture of high society—grace, sophistication, and charity work.
I could probably get into charity work, but where to start with that? What kind of charity? What was I even passionate about?
All I knew was that I needed to figure out what I was going to do with my life. Until then, I would continue my studies on how to be part of the one percent of the one percent.
That was a staggering thought, but the more I researched the de Loughrey family, the deeper the money well went. They had at least forty properties around the world, including a private Caribbean island with its own landing strip and customs.
I’d resorted to using Google to learn about the de Loughreys because I couldn’t take the soul-sucking monotony of the Binder of Doom any longer. The internet was a much easier place to learn about the family then that damn binder. It was the bane of my existence, and I had fantasies of setting it on fire. I’d be damned if Atticus thought that I was going to learn about my future husband from a fucking book with bullet points.
The amount of Wikipedia articles was insane, and nearly as knot tying as the binder. Births, deaths, names repeating—it was all a blur. I tried to soak up as much as I could, but if it wasn’t a name I’d heard before, it didn’t stick. And I didn’t know that many names. Basically whomever lived in the Tower, which was Atticus’s family and Rhys’s.
Finally, I took a walk to the nearest bookstore, much to Michael’s horror, and perused the shelves, settling on a biography of the family—The de Loughreys: America’s royalty.
The amount of books about the family on the shelves was insane. The amount online was astronomical, and once again had me wondering what the hell I’d gotten myself into. I knew he was rich, I knew the de Loughreys were huge, but I never comprehended just how enormous the numbers were or how extensively the family was integrated into people’s daily lives. Every American owned a de Loughrey product, whether they knew it or not.
Private yachts, private planes, and access to anything they desired.
A few weeks ago, all I desired was to have enough money that I wasn’t constantly pinching pennies. All the what-ifs when I’d thought in the past about winning the lottery paled in comparison to the life I was now living. My dreams were trivial compared to the wealth I was surrounded by.
And again, I was stuck in the same position—what was I going to do with my life?
Being the wife of Atticus de Loughrey was going to be a job in itself, but outside of that, what would I do to pass the hours?
Once we had a baby, things would be different and filled with someone to take care of.
That thought stopped me.
In as little as a year and a half, I could be a mother. How could I forget that? That it wasn’t just five years, but also having a baby? My only guess was the fact that I’d been so consumed with my whole life switch.
Maybe making a baby together could be fun instead of clinical.
Really, Ophelia? After what he attempted in his family’s home I shouldn’t have been thinking things like that, but I also couldn’t deny that even as mad as I was that he was trying to have sex with me, I was also incredibly turned on.
The weight of his body pressing into mine. The warm, wet pressure of his tongue was divine against my skin. His touch.
Why did I have to want it all so much? It took everything in me to raise my knee into his groin. I hated doing it, but I also knew it was the only way to stop what would soon become the inevitable.
We continued to struggle with interaction, but I knew that would fade with time.
He had a softer side. I’d seen it. I just had a feeling he didn’t know how to handle me. I wasn’t like the other women he’d known in his life. I actually expected things of him that weren’t monetary, and that threw him off.
I had a lot of time to ponder Atticus as a person, since the amount of time I spent alone while he worked was staggering and the days passed in an endless cycle of boredom and more boredom.
As my birthday crept closer, I pondered what to do. One of my favorite activities was going to the casino in Queens, but I had a feeling Atticus wouldn’t like me doing that. I was sure that he would be working, but the thought of another day spent alone didn’t sound the least bit appealing and yet, I had no one in my life except him.
If I’d learned anything in my study of the de Loughreys, it was that being a de Loughrey may seem glamorous from the outside, but the price was freedom, trust, and love.
I was marrying into a large family, but I’d never felt so lonely. Did they all feel the same?
I woke up like it was any other day of my never-ending cycle of boredom, but it wasn’t exactly the same. At least not for me.
It was my twenty-seventh birthday and the official one-year marker since I’d met Atticus.
After having a small bit of breakfast, I headed down for a workout. Because, why not?
When I walked into the gym, Genevieve was already there on one of the ellipticals looking as cover-model ready as ever. Had the woman ever had a pimple in her life? A rogue hair growing out of some strange spot? Something, anything, about her that wasn’t flawless?
“Morning,” I said as I climbed onto the treadmill.
The high-energy music that thumped through the speakers lowered in volume. She then did something that shocked me.
“Happy birthday,” she said between panting breaths, surprising me more than the fact that she spok
e to me.
I turned to look at her and smiled. “Thank you.” My brow scrunched. “How did you know?”
She held up her phone. “Family calendar. All important dates and events are programmed in. Your phone should have it too.”
My phone.
I let out a little laugh. “I kinda forget I have that half the time.”
“Forget you have what?”
“A phone.” Nobody ever calls me, and I used my laptop for internet surfing. Sometimes I used the phone, but most of the time it sat in my bedroom.
Gen’s eyes widened, and her pace slowed as she stared at me like I was some strange creature.
“Forget?”
“Yeah.” I felt uneasy under her scrutiny. I hadn’t noticed it before, but despite her reputation, Genevieve had just as calculating of a gaze as Atticus did. “I mean, I don’t really have many friends, and I talk to my mom as little as possible.”
She shook her head and sighed. “Maybe you two are perfect for each other. How old did you turn today?”
“Perfect for each other? What do you mean?”
“I mean Atticus has few friends, and even fewer people he trusts. Not surprising, really, but I think that kind of loneliness attracts loneliness. Maybe it’s a good thing. God knows we need something to release that stick from his ass.”
I couldn’t help but laugh at that, and she laughed right along with me. It felt good to talk to her in a normal conversational fashion.
“I turned twenty-seven today.”
“Plenty of time to pop out five kids.”
I tripped, but caught myself, lowering my speed as I stared at her, wide-eyed. “Five kids?”
She nodded. “De Loughreys are prolific in the child area. Father is one of five. Well, technically six, but one died as a baby. There are five of us, five from Uncle Henry, five from Uncle Hugh—Aunt Katherine only has three, though, and Uncle James died shortly before he was to be married.”
See, was it really that hard? In mere seconds, Genevieve had relayed to me much of the de Loughrey family tree—at least two generations’ worth—in an understandable way that wasn’t a graph on a piece of paper. She gave life to names I’d read. Made them real instead of just a jumble of letters inked onto processed tree pulp.
“Thanks.”
She quirked a brow at me. “For?”
“Explaining something to me like I’m a human being.”
She scoffed. “Atticus isn’t the most personable.”
“No, he is not. It makes me wonder how he’s so good at what he does.”
“You don’t have to necessarily be good at something to excel at it.”
“What do you mean?”
“He’s not the most cutthroat, but he has other qualities that make up for it.”
“What is it about him, then?”
“He’s the most driven. Doing whatever it takes to get what he wants, what he needs.”
Her words sliced at me, though she didn’t mean to. I wasn’t the subject she was thinking of, but it still struck a chord. He knew my weaknesses and exploited them to get me to agree. Offered me financial freedom and even acquiesced to my no-sex demands.
Did he even care about me as a person in the least?
“The wicked king.”
I snapped my head toward her. “What did you say?”
“That’s what people call him. The wicked king. No one dares to defy him for fear of awakening the wicked king. He can topple empires in hours.”
The conversation I’d overheard weeks ago immediately came to mind, confirming what she said. He used the brute strength of the de Loughrey power.
Genevieve slowed down before stepping down and patting her face with a towel.
“Same time tomorrow?” she asked with a friendly smile.
My lips parted before turning up into a smile. “I’d like that.”
“Have a good rest of your birthday!” she called with a wave.
A smile crept onto my face as I sped the treadmill up. It was the first time any of the de Loughreys had talked to me like I was a person and not the trash beneath their shoe. Gen had been aloof, but less abrasive than the others. Our conversation really opened a door between us. The more I thought about her, the more I began to wonder why Atticus had such a low opinion of his sister.
The wicked king. A fitting title for such an imposing man.
The slam of a door startled me awake. I wasn’t sure when I’d fallen asleep, but by the angle of the sun and the time on my clock, I’d taken a decent-sized siesta after lunch.
The clack of hard soles against the wood floors grew closer, and I sat up in time to watch Atticus step through my doorway. My brow scrunched as I looked to the clock—it wasn’t even five.
“Hi,” he said, then pulled a beautiful bouquet of calla lilies from behind him.
I gasped and stood, closing in on the soft white petals that held a violet center and were surrounded by sprigs of lavender.
“Happy birthday,” he said.
I looked up, our eyes meeting. “Thank you.”
I was floored. The bouquet in my hand was so simple, yet so elegantly beautiful. How did he know I loved calla lilies?
He held out his hand. “Come, let’s go find a vase to put those in.”
“Did you pick these out yourself?” I asked as I slipped my hand in his and attempted to ignore the way my skin lit up. While mentally we were still walled off from each other, or rather he was walled off from me, physically, we’d become more relaxed.
“I did.”
When we entered the kitchen, Loreno and Amara were bustling around.
“Happy birthday!” Amara shouted, a huge smile on her face as she skipped over to me and wrapped me in her arms.
“Thank you,” I said, surprised, but it still warmed my heart.
When she pulled back, she took note of the flowers in my hand and jumped into action, pulling a vase down from one of the cabinets.
“Come, come,” she called, waving me over to one of the sinks. She filled the vase up, then took the flowers from me, snipping the ends before setting them inside.
As she set them on the table, I couldn’t help but smile as I thought about how they warmed the space up, giving life to a beautiful but cold room.
When I turned back toward the kitchen, my mouth opened, but I was silenced by a smiling Loreno pushing a cake forward across the island.
“For me?” I stared down at the layered cake. The colors were just like my flowers, with purple at the bottom transitioning to white at the top. The hue of the purple lightened with each little ruffle of frosting that circled the cake. “It’s beautiful.”
Amara smiled. “Atticus picked the flavors. Chocolate with a hint of lavender, and Swiss meringue buttercream frosting. On top, there are candied violet petals.”
I turned back to him. “Really?”
He gave a nod, his expression soft, making my heart speed up.
Amara began singing, Loreno jumping in, and near the end I could hear the deep timbre of Atticus beside me.
I couldn’t remember the last time anyone had sung to me, and I smiled at the warmth that filled me.
Once they were done, Loreno cut into the cake and handed me a slice.
A moan left me at the first bite. The cake was moist and rich, and the hint of lavender in the frosting was a wonderful hit of fragrance. In no time I had devoured the whole piece.
“That was so good. Thank you.”
“Our pleasure,” Loreno said before turning back to his task of preparing dinner.
“I’m going to go change,” Atticus said. “Why don’t you sit on the balcony and I’ll be there in a few minutes?”
I nodded. “All right.”
Grabbing a glass of wine, I moved out to the balcony and took in the skyline and the peek of the Hudson River. It was the most relaxing space in the entire condo, and I would miss it when the weather cooled.
Atticus came out with the wine bottle and a glass of his own befo
re sitting in the chair beside me. “I didn’t know what to get you as a gift.”
“You’ve given me so much lately, there is no need. Besides, you’ve also given me access to buy just about anything I could want.”
“True, but those were necessities for your new life. Though there is one thing I could give you that money can’t buy.”
I blinked at him and watched his lips pull up into a smirk, his eyebrows rising.
A groan left me, and my head fell back. “I can buy a little friend to help me with that.”
“But skin on skin is so much more enjoyable. Plus, you have the ability to have it now and not wait for delivery.”
“Did that kick to the balls not get through that ego of yours?” I asked. That was the problem with all the touching—it created the desire for more touching.
He shrugged. “I’m just offering a solution to your problem.”
“Aren’t you helpful.”
“Quite.”
“What’s for dinner?” I asked, pulling the subject away from sex.
He took a sip of his drink before responding. “You didn’t want to go out, so I had Chef prepare your favorite.”
My favorite? Did I even have one? I did love salmon. Really just about anything Loreno made was incredible.
Also, I didn’t exactly say I didn’t want to go out. Days before, he asked if I wanted a repeat of last year, and I said no. Then he was offering up again tonight.
My body begged me to say yes. A craving that grew deeper every day. It made me regret kissing him when we were at his family home. I was only doing it to get that bitch away, but it set something off and containing it was getting even more difficult.
When I declined, he dropped the subject entirely. Did I want to go out? It was a toss-up. On one hand, it was my birthday and I was engaged to the hottest bachelor in the country. On the other, it was my birthday and I was engaged to the hottest bachelor in the country.
Party and have fun, versus lots of people all clamoring for my date. A conundrum to be sure.
What did I want to do for my birthday? Even I didn’t know the answer to that. All of my needs were met, desire for anything I wanted fulfilled, and none of the stuff I used to do in my old life was acceptable in my new life.
