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The way the king laughed as he walked out of the bedroom.
The lord’s splintering skull when I slammed a heavy lamp against his temple. The way his blood scattered like ants when I landed blow after blow.
“I promise I’ll leave,” I whispered to Leo.
“Good.” I turned to him and reached for his cheek, but he flinched away from my touch. “Don’t make me push you away, Christine. You won’t like my methods.”
Chapter Four
AUGUST
There was a lot of alcohol sloshing around in my empty stomach. Christine did not grace us with her presence at the dinner prepared by the royal chef. I couldn’t force myself to choke it down.
Queen Isabelle wanted me to indulge in a bloody, undercooked steak and loaded baked potato to commemorate my father’s passing. I simply stared at my plate and willed the meat to develop a pulse before excusing myself and drinking an entire bottle of champagne. It was after I had drunk enough to ignore the queen’s disapproval and the anger I felt, that I came here.
There was a warm welcome for me at the club.
The owners liked me here. Those at the bar appreciated the careless way I bought drinks. My arrival brought a great deal of publicity to Electric, and they welcomed the flood of hopefuls standing in long lines at their doors. Although there was no stage, the VIP room was like an exhibit at the zoo, with people watching me closely as I performed.
The twisted king lived his life under a magnifying glass.
The moment Christine walked through the door, my cock twitched. I saw her in the same ridiculous outfit she wore at my father’s funeral, a costume of grief that fit her totally wrong. Her narrow shoulders were covered by the offending black material, and the bodice tied around her torso looked royal enough—everyone loved it when we wore traditional garb—but it looked like a prison on her. I hated the way the long fabric covered her legs.
Legs I wanted to pry apart.
Legs I imagined wrapping around my hips as I drove into her.
Leo followed in her shadow. I knew the sorry bastard would find her sooner or later. He was always drawn to Christine—as much as I was. All of us were. I saw beyond his scowl. After Christine left like a thief in the night, Leo was reassigned to another position. I knew in my gut that her disappearance had something to do with him. Which made him number one on my shit list.
He’d looked like a kicked puppy dog ever since she’d left, his eyes swimming with the same disappointment and anger I felt.
He missed her just as much as I did, and I didn’t like it one bit.
I was sitting in the VIP area with some blonde on my lap. Even though the music wasn’t as loud here as it was on the dance floor, we still had to yell to be heard over the noise. My date was slathering sticky gloss on her plump pout. Smacking her lips repeatedly in front of her compact mirror, she looked ridiculous. This was a woman obsessed with her appearance, not that I cared or faulted her for it. I supported self-love, but I hated when a woman couldn’t drag her eyes away from her own reflection for long enough to have a conversation. Normally, I would have shoved her off my lap, but there was a part of me that wanted Christine to see that I had moved on. I was no longer the sad baby duckling following her around the pond anymore.
At least, not publicly.
Inside, oh, I was fucked. My eyes were glued to her shapely body. She’d grown in the last three years. Her hips were like perfect shelves for my hands. She was softer. Her hair was longer. Her eyes, more burdened. The moment I saw her at the funeral, I was a fucking goner. She was everything I remembered and more.
And I fucking hated how much I ached for her.
Why come back now? Why come back at all?
I vividly remembered the first time I wanted to touch her. Kiss her. It was a stormy fall night, and we were exploring the castle gardens. I imagined wet, scorching kisses like the torrential rain that soaked our bodies. Her laughter was lost to the rumble of thunder—lost to the sound of my heart about to beat out of my chest. She had lifted her skirt up to jump over a fallen log, flashing me her stark red panties. I always associated the color with her.
“There’s our girl,” Atticus said to my right, yanking me out of my memories. He had just rolled a joint and pressed it to his lips, eyeing Christine with barely contained hunger. He looked refined and calm, stoic on the velvet couch and at ease in her presence. Even though he paid plenty for the appearance of royalty, his parents couldn’t get him a title or a crown. Not one that was real, anyway. His parents managed to buy him an empire of his own, one soaked in the blood of their enemies and tainted by drugs, sex, and corruption. The brutal criminal heir ruled over the lowlifes of our kingdom, and buying my friendship gave them access to the elite. Our parents gathered us together in playrooms with our nannies for as long as I could remember. It was a friendship of convenience.
We grew to like one another because it was all we knew. He looked more like royalty than I did. He always wore perfectly tailored royal clothes. His parents trained him to have proper manners and to know all the elites of society. The only part of him that wasn’t royal was the tattoos covering his body beneath his suit and crawling up his neck, peeking just above his collar.
There weren’t lines of warped skin on his back from where his father beat him with a ten-thousand-dollar belt. In contrast to my sunburned, scarred skin, his was pale and smooth. Atticus’s eyes were a deep shade of brown and focused on Christine. He was always focused on Christine. Atticus stopped bothering to hide it from me around the same time I realized she was the girl I loved.
Against the debauchery of the club, Christine stood out as an innocent. Her hair was pulled up in a bun. Her scuffed heels glided across the floor, dodging drunks and people high off Molly and the night air.
“She isn’t ours at all,” I replied to his earlier statement.
Ours? No. Mine? Abso-fucking-lutely. Even if I dreaded falling for her again. Trusting her again.
“Whatever you say,” Atticus said before shifting in his seat. “Don’t fuck this up.”
