My mother has always been the master of putting on a show. When she was turning tricks, it was all about being whatever her John wanted. For the parent-teacher conferences, it was all about being a supportive, concerned mother. I’m not sure what show she put on for Daniel, but I admit to being curious. Was it complete subservience? Was it something just awful? I know it was enough to land that fat diamond on her finger, a six-thousand square foot house, and all the security she longed for.
I can’t help but think about this as she holds up her glass of wine with one hand, while arranging the centerpiece with the other—all with a serene smile on her face. The scent of roasted turkey fills the air, along with a variety of other delicious-smelling foods. We set the table with expensive china, and the shiny silverware sits on crisp cloth napkins. They’re dishes she’s probably never cleaned herself. Daniel hires out for that kind of thing. All of this—the cooking, the hosting—it’s purely a performance for her. They could have had dinner catered, but my mom wanted to play the part, and in some ways, I understand why.
A flash of an earlier Thanksgiving pops into my head. It’s the memory of the two of us eating at a diner out by the highway. The waitress gave me an extra piece of pie when my mom vanished after dinner into the cab of a truck in the parking lot.
This show has all the trappings—everything she could never give me.
“Your hair looks so pretty today,” she gushes, fingering a tendril as she passes me. “Did you spend all morning pinning that up? You look so tired.”
I glance at my reflection in the large gold-framed mirror over the sideboard. The truth doesn’t seem as humble as it’s meant to be, which is that I threw it up on the way out of my room to avoid doing anything elaborate. “Yes,” I say instead. “It took a little while.”
She lifts an eyebrow. “Keep it long while you can. Men like it. It makes you look more youthful.” The glance she gives me is pointed. “Much like getting enough sleep.”
“I am youthful,” I reply, following her back to the kitchen. “And I don’t care what men think.”
“Is that why you told Daniel you didn’t want him covering your tuition?” she asks, her harried expression adopting an undercurrent of tension that takes me off guard. The Lords and Daniel are in the living room, standing rigidly around the big screen and acting as if they’re talking about football. Killian’s game isn’t until Saturday, and although he isn’t playing because of his injury, he’ll travel with the team for the game this weekend. “Is it?” mom repeats, giving a cucumber a pointed chop. “You’re too good for our money all of a sudden?”
I work my way through a series of fast blinks, uncertain what to say. Uncertain of what he’s told her. Stammering, I lie, “I-I just didn’t want to bother him anymore.”
“That’s what family is for, Story.” The way her mouth pinches into an unhappy moue makes her feelings on the matter clear. As far as she’s concerned, everything is normal. I should be happy—no, grateful—to take my stepfather’s money to pay for college and anything else he wants to give me. Even if his plan is to exploit me like every other woman that crosses his path.
“Mom,” I start, shifting uncomfortably. It’s a risk to bring this out in the open, but it seems like more of a risk not to. “Do you know anything about…er, the Velvet Hideaway?”
The knife hits the counter with a sharp clatter. “Honestly, Story.” She levels with me a fiery gaze. “Who do you think you’re talking to? Do I know about the Velvet Hideaway?” She scoffs, swiping her hands against her crisp, new apron. “I know everything about the Hideaway. I’m the one who named it!”
My head snaps back in shock. “What?”
She props a hand against the counter, looking deceptively casual. “You’re old enough that I don’t need to tiptoe around these matters anymore. You know what I used to do.”
“Yeah, but…” Staggered, I struggle to regain my footing. “You’re not…I mean, not anymore. Right?”
Perhaps it’s the wariness in my voice that makes her spine snap straight. “Of course not! Don’t be absurd!” She reaches for the knife, eyes focused on its blade as she chops. “I’m a wife now, entirely faithful to my husband. I don’t need to do those things anymore. But I also have experience and wisdom. If I were buying property, don’t you think I’d ask Daniel for advice? I know you probably don’t understand this yet,” she says, sliding me a significant look, “but a marriage is a partnership. I took one look at that rotten hovel down on the Avenue and told him in no uncertain terms that he could do better. That he should do better—by his girls, and by the clients. I don’t know how this may seem to you, but I make my contributions, missy.”
My face screws up in distaste. “So you…helped him open that place?”
Her gaze sharpens. “Don’t give me that look. I saw an opportunity to better the situation of other women who were struggling. Women whose positions I used to be in. Women who might raise children like you. Don’t you dare turn your nose up at that.” Beneath the anger, I can see it. The flash of hurt.
It makes my stomach sink. “Mom, I didn’t mean—”
With a clipped voice, she cuts me off. “Especially considering it was good enough for you.”
My blood turns to ice, pulse stampeding in my ears. It takes me three tries to eke out a response. “What are you talking about?”
She shakes her head. “It’s like I said. I know everything about the Hideaway. Everything.” She gathers the carrots and distractedly dumps them into the bowl, not meeting my gaze. “I don’t want you to think I’m judging you. God knows I’d be a hypocrite. But when Daniel told me you and Dimitri came in, begging for a way to earn fast cash…” She pauses, bracing her palms against the counter, and takes a long breath. “I suppose I’m not blameless. Clearly, I set a terrible example, but Story…” Finally, she looks at me, and all the anger and defensiveness falls away. What’s left is just her. My mother. The woman who used to sing me to sleep. The woman who’d brush my hair and call me her little storybook. The woman who’d come into a hotel bathroom bruised and watery-eyed, and plaster on a fake smile, so I didn’t get scared. There’s a plea in her eyes that makes the lump in my throat swell. “Baby, I don’t want that life for you. I’ve worked too hard, come too far, to watch my daughter walk down the same crooked path. It’s not a good life. It’s not a safe life. Look at Daniel!” She flings a hand toward the living room. “Shot protecting one of his girls. You have a chance to get away from all that, don’t you see? Even if it means swallowing a little pride.”
How stupid I must have been to believe I’d cried out all my tears that night in the funhouse. They threaten to well up now, and somewhere inside of my chest, something grows. It’s too turbulent a thing to be so simple as anger. I think it might be some agonizing howl of rage and violence and grief. Because Daniel told her I wanted it. That I did it for the money. That I’m the whore he always wanted me to be.
And my mom believed it.
“I just thought it was time for me to make my own way.” I force the rest over the lump in my throat. “He’s done so much for me already.”
Her chin tilts. “Did you really do it to make more money for yourself, or was it something else?”
“What do you mean?”
She opens a pot and stirs the contents with a large spoon. “Dimitri doesn’t come from the best family, and after his humiliation at the alumni performance, I can imagine his opportunities are drying up.”
“This has nothing to do with Dimitri,” I grind out, angry that she thinks the man who saved me was responsible for putting me in that position to begin with. “I’m ready to be an adult. I don’t want to rely on Daniel.”
“Then you really must not understand how marriage, or at least mine, works. We’re partners, Story. His money is my money, and we help you because we care. You’re just as much his child as Killian is mine.”
The thought of being Daniel’s child makes me recoil. Probably, the thought of being her child would make Killian feel similarly. No wonder my stepbrother and I are both fucked up and drawn to one another like acid-covered magnets.
“And anyway, men like to feel needed,” she continues while pulling serving utensils out of the drawer, “especially a powerful man like Daniel. It’s important for him to take care of his family. Walking away from his generosity looks unappreciative, Story. And it’s not just about him. A prospective husband will notice the slight as well. The right kind of suitor doesn’t want a woman who can take care of herself.”
“I do appreciate Daniel’s…generosity,” I bite the word like it’s gristle. “But you raised me to be independent, didn’t you? To handle things myself?”
She jerks her head toward the living room. “You think Tristian Mercer wants a ‘strong, independent woman’?” She laughs, head shaking. “A man like that wants a woman who looks good on his arm and better in his bed. That’s the type of man you should pursue. Men who can take care of you, so that you’ll never have to—” Her voice clips off, jaw clicking. Smoothing down her apron, she visibly shakes off thoughts of my having to turn tricks. “Independence is a marvelous idea, but why struggle? Tristian would be such a nice match for you. Wasn’t he escorting you that night at the alumni performance? He looked interested. You should be encouraging that, not selling yourself. He won’t want you if he thinks you’re cheap and all used up.”
I stare hard at my mother, at the gold earrings and the diamond bracelet, reminding myself of everything she’s had to do to earn them, and the truth screams under my skin. I want to tell her why I walked into that pit, under the heat of lights, and cameras, and all those horrible eyes. But here, with my Lords in the other room—with Killian being injured and Dimitri probably packing a loaded gun under his jacket—it seems like a metaphorical H-bomb. This won’t be a discussion that ends in pie and ice cream. It’ll be a fucking bloodbath.
I swallow it all back and say, “Daniel wanted you, didn’t he?”
Her lips press into a thin line, and she clearly has more to say, except then we’re interrupted.
“Well, isn’t this a vision?” I’m not even remotely surprised Tristian has ‘suddenly’ walked into the room. He was probably listening to every word. “Seeing you two lovely women together.” He rests a glass of something amber on the counter, eyes watchful as he assesses me. “Thought I’d come in and see if you needed any help.”
“You’re too sweet,” my mother says, giving me a pointed look. “But you let us girls take care of all this.”
“Nonsense,” he says, grabbing a pair of oven mitts and sliding them on his hands. “I’m happy to help.” He opens the oven and pulls out the turkey. It’s so massive that I can see his muscles shifting beneath his sweater as he hefts it. My mother directs him to place it on the counter and he grins. “This looks like something out of a magazine, Posey.”
She glows at the praise, but only I can see the traces of grimace in the line around his mouth. He’s probably wondering if it’s organic, antibiotic-free, GMO whatever.
“How are your parents?” Mom asks. “It surprised me you weren’t with them for the holiday.”
“They’re good. Up in the mountains. I didn’t want to give my dear old gran another mouth to feed.” His eyes dart to mine. “I prefer to be around Forsyth right now, anyway.”
“I bet they miss you. Especially those adorable sisters of yours.”
He grins. “I’m sure they do, but they’ll be too busy on the slopes to worry about me. They’re very adept skiers already.”
She walks past Tristian, running her arm over his broad shoulders, and squeezes his bicep. “They’re lucky to have such a strong, caring brother.” When he grins down, she winks back.
Jesus Christ. Is she trying to make me jealous?
Fuck me.
Is it working?
He gives me a look, eyebrow raised, that tells me he’s thinking the same thing.
“It’s one,” I announce, feeling awkward and hot and annoyed. “Isn’t that when you said we’d eat?”
“Oh, yes. Let’s get the rest of this on the table.” She picks up two casserole dishes, but as soon as her back is turned, Tristian swoops in.
The kiss takes me off guard, although I’m not sure why it would. Tristian takes his opportunities wherever they arise. If we’re meant to uphold the image of a Lord and his Lady, then he’s more than happy to press me up against the nearest vertical surface and make my head spin.
That’s exactly what he’s doing now, pressing his mouth to mine in a slow, sensual kiss. He cups my cheek, and it’s not filthy like usual—void of all the grabbing and grinding—but it’s no less searing.
I knew with the holiday break, we wouldn’t be like this for a few days, but I’m only just now realizing how much it’d pained me to give it up. Tristian can kiss me so sweetly when he wants to, gentle and unhurried—like he’s giving me something to be savored. Because that’s exactly what Tristian thinks he is. It’s an unconscious gesture to twist my fingers into his nice dress shirt, tugging him closer, because in many ways, he’s right.
Tristian Mercer is absolutely someone worth savoring.
He pulls away, giving me a soft grin, and then turns to take a dish from my speechless, slack-jawed mother. “Allow me.”
My face feels overheated, but I recover quickly, stepping forward to take the other dish. “I’ve got this.” The smile I send her feels wan, but she’s too busy making her eyebrows disappear up her forehead to notice.
I head into the dining room and place it on the table. Turning, I crash right into Tristian who’s inches away. His hand clutches my hip, steadying me, but slowly he withdraws.
“Your mother is very…charming.” He clearly wants to use another word. Possibly something that rhymes with ‘clutty’.
Sighing, I smooth down a wrinkle my hand had made in his nice shirt. “My mother spent her life manipulating men out of their money.” I tilt my head, giving him an assessing glance. “In fact, she strongly implied I should do the same to you.”
“Did she?” His fingers twitch by his side. He wants to touch me again, but there’s no one around to perform for, so he doesn’t. “I guess she knows me better than I thought. I am very malleable when it comes to beautiful women.”
He’s so close. That kiss was the best we’ve had in days, and god, the way he smells. There’s this lock of blonde hair that’s escaped from his careful styling, and this tiny, insignificant, otherwise normal thing suddenly makes him look so mussed and flustered that I find my own fingers twitching.
For a long moment, it’s hard to remember what this whole sex moratorium is even about.
“Tris, where do you want this bowl of disappointment?” Dimitri asks, walking into the room. “I tried to toss it, but Posey won’t let me.”
I look over Tristian’s shoulder and see him staring blankly into the bowl we’d brought. If my mom thinks I look tired, then god only knows what she must think of my Lord. He looks pale and haggard, all his usual brashness absent from the drooping line of his shoulders. His voice is just as hoarse and anemic as he appears. When he glances up, Dimitri’s dark eyes flicker between us, narrowing.
“I’ll take it,” I say, side stepping Tristian and grabbing the cauliflower. I find a spot on the table, which is when Killian and Daniel step into the room. And there we all are, standing stiffly, our eyes avoiding one another.
Forget the turkey. The tension is what needs to be cut with a knife.
“Looks delicious,” Daniel says, walking directly to the head of the table. Arm clutched to his chest in the sling, he passes my mother, still holding the turkey platter between her hands, and leans down to kiss her on the cheek. “Wonderful job, dear.”
“Thank you, Daniel.”
She places the dish in front of him and moves to the opposite side of the table. When I shift to sit next to her, a strong hand settles on my shoulder. A chill creeps up my spine when Daniel says, “Story, we haven’t had a chance to catch up since you arrived. Why don’t you sit down here with me.” His words are polite and casual, just like the easy smile on his face.
Resisting the urge to flinch—a futile gesture that will just embarrass me further—I glance across the table at Killian. His jaw is clenched so tightly that it looks painful. I know the rules. For now, we play Daniel’s game. He’s the King. I sit as instructed and the men follow suit, taking their seats. Beneath the table, I wring my hands, just barely fighting back a disgusted grimace. He’s holding the carving knife, and I can’t help but stare at the sharp point of it, thinking about Viv and the letters carved into her chest. KTR. The same letters that are carved on mine.
The difference is that her throat was slit.
My stomach rolls as he clumsily, one-handed, carves into the turkey. I try to tune it all out. The prickle of awareness of the Lords’ eyes on me. The heat from Daniel standing so close. The sight of the blade cutting into the flesh. Maybe Tristian has the right idea with this veganism stuff. My face must be positively green.
Daniel takes his seat, so close that I tuck my limbs in, certain that if I touch him, I really might vomit. There’s a stretch of time where we all fill our plates, hands reaching across the table. This has never been a table for saying grace. Back when I was a teenager, I used to amuse myself with the possibility that doing such a thing would cause Killian and his father to collapse in a fit of unholy seizure. Now, I’m just grateful we won’t have to do something as absurd as holding hands to pray.
My mom, completely oblivious to the tension, breaks the silence. “Shoot!” she says plucking her napkin from her lap. “I forgot the cranberry sauce.”
I frantically sweep the napkin from my own lap, offering, “I’ll get it!”
A large hand clamps down on my thigh. “You’re our guest, Story. Let your mother give you a nice dinner.”
Standing, Mom instantly agrees. “No need for a fuss. I’ll just be two shakes.”
She’s out of the dining room before she can even notice the stiff set of my spine. Daniel’s fingers dig in deep, so vicious and painful that it’s a physical battle to remain composed, but I do. I refuse to wince. One glance at Killian tells me he’d have this entire table upended if he knew his father’s hand was on me. Hurting me. Bruising me. Marking me.
The second my mom returns, a ceramic dish in hand, I clatter back in my chair, lurching from my seat. Daniel only gets the barest flash of a moment to let me go, but he does it seamlessly.
“I’ll be right back.”
“Story?” my mother asks.
“I-I’m fine. I just need to be excused.” I give a tight smile. “Go ahead without me. I’ll be back in a minute.”
My strides are level until I reach the other room, where I draw in a big gulp of air. I keep walking down the hall, putting as much distance between me and Daniel as I can. Reaching for the bathroom doorknob, I push it open, realizing too late that I’m in the wrong room. This isn’t the bathroom, it’s Daniel’s office. My eyes go instantly to the desk and the chair behind it.
The memory of him drawing me close, pulling me on his lap, feeling the hard bulge in his pants as he ran his hands up my shirt—assessing my development. My vision swims, chest jerking with shallow, ineffectual gulps of air. It’s just all too close now. The memories. The smell of the bourbon on his breath. Old cigar tobacco. Leather. The cadence of his voice as he husked into my ear about chastity and how nice my nipples were getting, and god.
He’d wanted to sell me.
And in the end, he did.
“Story.”
I don’t turn when Killian says my name, but I hear the door click shut behind him. I feel his presence behind me. I always feel it. When I’m asleep. When he’s pacing the halls. When he watches me. “What would you have done?” I wonder, clutching my sides. “If he’d…given me to you. Like you wanted. Like you thought he would.”
There’s a shifting sound, two footsteps behind me, and then he speaks, voice quiet and dark. “I would have taken care of you.”
“You would have fucked me.”
There’s no shifting sounds now. Just utter stillness. “Yeah.”
“You would have owned me.”
Tighter, he repeats. “Yeah.”
“You would have—”
“Stop,” he interrupts, the word emerging with more weariness than I’m expecting. “Stop making it sound that way. I would have fucked you. Of course I would have fucked you. I was sixteen, and you were—” There’s a bitten off sigh, and then, “I would have wanted you to want it, Story. Jesus Christ. I would have wanted you to come to my bed. Stop making me sound like I’m—”
“You?” I ask, turning to glance at him over my shoulder.
His teeth gnash. “Him.”
I turn back to the desk. To the chair. I told him what happened in this room—he fucking saw it for himself. “I thought I was safe here. Really, truly safe. After all those years of my mom dragging us from seedy hotel to shitty apartment, of sketchy men coming in and out at all hours, I thought this clean, beautiful house and the knight in shining armor who lived here would take care of me.”
“You’re right,” he says. “I should have protected you.”
I don’t ask why he assumes he’d be the knight in that scenario. It was supposed to be Daniel, only now that I really think about it, that’s not right. Maybe it was always supposed to be Killian. “You were so mean.” I speak like I’m lost in a memory, and I suppose I am. Running through all those awful barbs and callous stares. Shivering, I remember, “You were so mean to me.”
“I know.” There’s some more movement, fabric shifting. I don’t need to turn to see his discomfort. The vision of his pinched brow and shuffling feet burns in my imagination. “I’m sorry.”
It should make me angry. Apologies are useless now, almost as if they’re something to be checked off a long list of tasks I’ve handed to him. It shouldn’t even mean anything.
But I find myself unable to muster anything but some deep, internal sense of sadness. “It doesn’t matter now. You might not be your father, but he raised you. He taught you. Aren’t we all shaped by our parents? Didn’t I turn to selling a part of myself, because it’s what I’ve seen my mother do?” Turning to him, I wonder aloud, “Do we ever break the cycle, Killian?”
Eyebrows pushed together, he asks, “Haven’t we already?”
It’s not a question I can answer. He let me go, and I’m here because I want to be, not because I need to be. In those ways, perhaps we have. Maybe it’s enough, or maybe we’re doomed in some unavoidable, intrinsic way.
It’s only when his eyes descend that I realize I’m rubbing that spot on my thigh. I can still feel his father’s fingers there, pressing into the flesh and muscle, holding me down, but I hastily cover it with my skirt.
Something dark and still passes over Killian’s face. “What is that?”
Even though I know it’s not meant for me, the quiet, dangerous timbre of his voice makes my lungs clench in alarm. “Nothing.” When he steps forward, I step back, like we’re two opposing magnetic poles. “Killian, wait.”
He stalks forward slowly at first, and then he’s storming toward me, uncaring of the way I’m shrinking back, eventually hitting the desk. I round it clumsily, trying to put something between us, but Killian follows so quickly that it’s barely the span between two blinks before he’s bearing down on me, ripping the fabric of my dress from my fist.
Pressed against Daniel’s desk, I go rigid as Killian reveals my pale thigh, and I don’t need to look to know his father has left a mark. That’s what Payne men do. Instead, I watch the violent emotion swirling in my stepbrother’s eyes as he inspects it. He’d be still, if not for the twitch of that muscle in the back of his jaw.
“He did this.” It’s more of a challenge than a question, the laser heat of his eyes burning into my bruised skin.
“Don’t,” I plead, voice thin. “It’s not worth it, okay? Let’s just get through this dinner and go home.”
His gaze snaps to mine, eyes blazing. “Twenty minutes.”
I blink at him, finding it difficult to think when he’s so close, caging me in like this. “To finish dinner? But we’ll need to eat dessert, and then—”
“There are a million things I’d do differently if I could,” he says, cutting me off. Despite the naked fury in his features, the way he grazes his fingertips over my thigh is feather light. “I would have made a move that night. I would have claimed you, worshipped you.” There’s no mistaking the hard bulge pressing against the thin material of my dress or the low strain of his voice. It’s the one that wakes me from sleep while he’s already inside of me. My body aches at the thought. Eyes dark, he continues, “He never would have touched you, because I wouldn’t have allowed it. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
I struggle to imagine it.
Before I can, he leans in, brows crouched low. “One by one. Every finger of his that’s ever touched you. All we’ll need is twenty minutes.” His hot lips press against my neck, and I shiver against him. “That’s how long it’ll take to cut them off.”
I know then that I’m not the person I used to be. That girl would be aghast at such a gruesome thought. She’d gasp and thrash and cower away from it. Instead, I turn it over in my head, touching it with my thoughts in the same way Killian is touching me now. Slow and careful, but possessive and indulgent.
Daniel would scream.
I shudder out an exhale, responding, “No.” Reaching up to hold his shoulders, I worry, “My mom…” He freezes, and from the clench of his jaw, this is an inadequate reason to restrain ourselves.
When I kiss him, it’s only half tactical. It’s the only way I can think to extinguish the blaze of violence in his eyes, but it’s also oddly necessary. I don’t know why at first, beyond the heat that settled into my bones for him weeks ago. It’s lost in the fog, in the way his tongue feels invading my mouth. This is how Killian kisses—as if he’s certain he’s not welcome, but he’s made a choice to claw his way inside, regardless.
I slide back against the desk, but I frantically bring him with me, parting my thighs for him. All it takes is a hand on his backside, yanking him up against my center, and finally I understand why I need it so badly.
The sound he makes is tight and frustrated when he rears back, hand shooting out to catch my chin. “Story,” he says, tension visible in every hard line of his face. “Don’t fucking tease me.”
I’m already breathless, and there might have been a time that flash of warning in his eyes would scare me off, but I can’t remember it. I reach down to pull my skirt up, curling my leg around his calf to bring him closer. “Why would I?” I ask, hooking my fingers into his waistband.
“You think I won’t?” It’s spoken as a threat, made even more evident by the hardness pressing into me. “I’ll fuck you right here, in the same room he used to—”
I can see the moment it clicks for him. This is where his father used to take me—in the chair directly behind him. Pulled into Daniel’s lap, my eyes once fixed unseeingly to this very desk as he touched and took.
It’s time for me to take it back.
Killian’s mouth comes down onto mine in a hard, bruising kiss, but I meet him teeth for teeth, tongue for tongue. He reaches for his belt and there’s no denying the hard erection pressing at the cotton of his pants. I reach for him, impatiently unhooking the buckle and lowering the zipper. He groans when I touch him, dipping my hand into his pants and feeling the velvet of his skin. He jerks me forward and goes back under my skirt, yanking my panties to the side.
“Always so fucking wet,” he mumbles, rolling his thumb over my clit. There’s no other foreplay, no coaxing or coddling, just the shock of him entering me in a single powerful thrust. It’s all I can do to bite down on the cry I want to make, but he doesn’t give me time to adjust, tangling one hand into the hair at the base of my skull as the other takes a greedy handful of my ass.
“You were always going to be mine,” he grunts, holding me painfully close as he punches his hips into mine. Beside us, something clatters to the floor, but neither of us pay it any attention. “I knew you were mine then, the same way I know you’re mine now.”
I gasp against his lips, fingernails scrabbling for purchase against his shoulders. “Oh my god!” All those nights staying up on the phone with Dimitri—all those afternoons on campus, pressed against Tristian as he kissed me senseless—couldn’t have prepared me for how good it feels to finally have one of them inside me again.
Killian is hard and thick, and he fucks me in these short, brutal bursts of power that would have me sliding up the desk if it weren’t for his arms, crushing me up against the expanse of his flexing muscles, forcing me to take it. “Unlock your door tonight,” is his gnashed demand, pounding into the cradle of my thighs. “Let me fucking in.”
My fingers curl around the edge of the desk, holding on for dear life. Killian is not a man used to being denied and those restless nights outside of my room surge through him in hard, fast, thrusts. His arm winds around my back, pulling me close to him, holding me steady as he fucks into me over and over. I’m surrounded by his scent, his heat, his breath and want. The past falls away, and everything is consumed in this moment. Me. Him. Us.
There’s no room for anyone else. No other history. Just what was always supposed to be.
Story and Killian.
“Killian,” I breathe into his mouth, clamping my teeth on the soft flesh of his lower lip. “Don’t stop, don’t stop—please—oh, god—” Shuddering waves roll down my spine, and my walls clench around him just as tightly as my thighs. I whimper from the force, and he swallows my cries with his kiss, keeping me quiet—keeping me to himself.
The rock of his hips grows impatient, erratic, thrumming into me with wild abandon. It feels so good, so deep, that it borders on pain, but I hold on to him and don’t let go, because as long as we’re like this, there’s nothing else out there. No perverts, no hit men, no murderers, no dangerous thugs. There’s no complicated past, or painful reminders of what was—what could have been. There’s just his body and my body, and how it feels when we’re like this. Wild—feral—primal. And within that moment of mindlessness, a thought comes to me, unbidden, but so true that it settles into the very marrow of my being.
Killian and I were made for this.
We were made to fuck.
To be together.
“Let me in,” he grunts, burying his head into my shoulder as he drives into me. His fingertips dig into my soft flesh, making his own bruises into the marks his father had made. His voice is all hard viciousness, but there’s something buried below it. A plea that stretches with desperation. “Let me in, let me in, let me—fuck.” He goes rigid, and then I feel it: his dick pumping me full of his hot come. He lets out a growl that tapers off into a long, pained groan. “Goddamn, little sister. You’re trying to fucking kill me.”
It’s only when he pulls back, face red and pinched, that I realize. “Oh my god, I didn’t—are you okay?” He can barely handle a necktie with his gut wound, and here I am making him fuck me.
His fingers, still clamped around the junction where my leg meets my hip, massage into the tendon there. When he speaks, he pitches his voice so low that I have to strain to understand it. “You know he’s going to see this, don’t you?”
I hold his gaze, surprised to see the dread swimming within it. He’s worried I’m going to freak out or blame him. But the truth is, I’ve become so conditioned to being watched that it’s just second nature to assume anymore—and especially in this house. In the back of my mind, I wonder where exactly the camera is, but the brief flick of his eyes to the bookshelf to our left is proof enough.
Tilting my head, I answer, “Of course.”
He looks almost as shocked as he does relieved. “You want him to,” he realizes, eyes searching my face.
I bite on my lip, still thrumming even as I feel Killian softening inside of me. “Does that bother you?” It’d be fair if it did. I won’t let Killian into my room—not yet—but I’ll use him to make his father angry. To show Daniel that I don’t belong to him. To take back whatever sense of self I’d lost here, trapped in this room as a naïve, powerless little girl.
Killian’s answer comes in the form of a slow, malicious smile, easing his hips back and leaving me empty. Only I’m not really empty. He reminds me of this when he straightens the crotch of my panties and then presses his palm into my center, whispering into my ear, “Sit in my cum through the rest of dinner and we’ll call it even.”
I shiver at the low tenor of his voice—at the flash of dark satisfaction in his eye when I nod—and help him back into his pants. I should be uncomfortable and humiliated when I head back to the dining room, but the sticky warmth between my legs provides a comfort—security.
Like a lion marking its territory, Killian claimed me.
And everyone in the room, including his father, will know it.
