It’s out of habit that I check the mobile tracker app on my phone, confirming that Story is still in class. The implant under her skin is specific, down to the very room, whereas the regular phone GPS was vague, giving only a general area. After the kidnapping, I check more frequently.
Okay, compulsively.
Killer must really be rubbing off on me.
Once I confirm that she’s where she’s supposed to be, I wait on a bench in the hallway outside her classroom. I’m ten minutes early, so I open my ChattySnap account. I scroll through the pictures quickly; bikini models, health and fitness influencers, a few celebrities, and then the people I actually know. I pull up my own photo library and snag a sexy picture of Story from the football game the week before. I’m working on a caption—always willing to show off my Lady—when I notice the heart up in the corner is lit up. I have a private message.
It isn’t uncommon for someone to try to slide into my DMs. I’m good looking, rich, and powerful. What woman wouldn’t want to get her claws in me? But one woman occupies my thoughts right now, so my intent is to open the message and delete it…until see the picture attached to the message.
It’s of Lizzy and Izzy.
What the fuck?
“Such cute, innocent, girls. I wonder what they’d say if they knew the truth about their brother?”
Rage boils under my skin and I click the account. It’s private with a generic icon. The screen name is ‘executivedaddy10’. I go back again and look at the photo. The girls are in motion, walking out of their dance studio. They have no one idea someone is watching them. My mind calculates, desperately struggling to figure out who would dare send a threat to me like this, when I hear a reluctant, “Tristian?”
My fiery blood turns to frozen steel.
There’s only one thing that could temporarily distract me from the thought of someone watching my sisters.
I force myself to look up, eyes climbing a pair of smooth, tanned legs, thighs hidden beneath a little green skirt. She’s wearing a white, scoop-necked sweater, her blonde hair flawlessly straight. I don’t need to look higher to know it’s Genevieve. I’ve had those warm thighs wrapped around me more times than I could count. I’ve had those tits in my palms, in my mouth. Those long, red fingernails have left so many notches in my shoulders that it took me months to get used to the sight of my skin there, unblemished by her rapture.
Her blue eyes are wide—slightly panicked—which is smart of her.
It’s been three years, but the urge to wrap my fingers around her throat and watch the life fade from her eyes is still all-consuming.
“Oh,” she breathes, those red, whore lips of hers pursed in shock. “I can’t believe it’s really you.”
My smile feels colder than ice and sharper than razor blades. “Gen.” I’d heard she’d gone to Vassar with no intention of looking back. But here she is, smiling all hopefully, like she’s not the biggest deceitful bitch in the whole goddamn world. My phone’s case digs painfully into my palm as I squeeze it. “Fancy seeing you here.”
In my town.
In my school.
In my territory.
This bitch has single-handedly depleted the world of audacity.
She gives a trilling laugh that oozes with nerves. “God, I know. I spent the last two years at Vassar, but my dad got sick and he wanted me back for at least a semester.” She looks me up and down. “Wow, look at you. Better looking than ever.”
My ex is a lying, cheating, puddle of slut-scum that isn’t worth the energy, but somehow it still hurts to look at her. Not because I miss her. Fuck no. It hurts because she’s proof of how weak a man can become. Years spent building a future with this piece of garbage. Jesus, the plans that were made—Forsyth, complementing careers, an engagement at graduation, a destination wedding, investment property, three children. Looking back at the way I’d greet her everyday like a lapdog, with a coffee and a flower. The sex we’d have, always fast and hard and so intense that it’d leave me sapped but hungry for more. It took me until that night with Story to realize why. Something was always missing with Gen. It wasn’t just the lack of eagerness to please me—she would never lower herself to suck my dick—it was also the lack of passion. Need. Devotion.
I was addicted more to the idea of this slut than the reality. She’s the only woman I’ve ever allowed myself to see a future with. The perfect home, the immaculate family, the path laid out before me, clear and expected and proper.
And look what it got me. Her, on that fucker’s yacht, those thighs wrapped around his hips as he fucked my future wife like an animal. I can still remember her eyes, gazing up so openly into his. Because Genevieve is the flawless opportunist she was always raised to be, but she’s also so disappointingly gullible. She was actually into that guy—her own softball coach—a pathetic loser that couldn’t stop reliving his youth. She was into him enough that she allowed him to record the video that would soon after be leaked.
The video that exposed me as a goddamn fool.
The urge to strangle her swells again.
“I’m so glad to run into you,” she says, adjusting the hem of her top. It brings her neckline down half an inch, exposing more of her cleavage. “Are you doing anything this afternoon? Maybe we could go grab a coffee. Catch up.”
The last time I spoke a single word to this girl was right after I set that yacht on fire. I was getting it from all angles—Killian, Rath, my father, Daniel—and I told her the next time I saw her, I’d be lighting a match to something she loved.
I’ve never meant anything more.
A figure moves next to Genevieve and I jerk my eyes up to find Story has arrived. She and Gen glance at one another, and I see the recognition flicker across my ex’s face.
“Hey, sexy,” I say, the words cool and easy as I rise from the bench, towering over them both. “Finished already?”
“Yeah, we got out a few minutes early, actually.” She pushes a lock of hair behind her ear and gives Gen a bright smile. “Hey, we met before, remember? I’m—”
“Late.” I jump in, stepping forward to snake my arm around her waist. The last thing I want is for Genevieve and Story to speak to one another. I’ll light that match again before I let my Lady be tainted. “We’ve got things to do, sweetheart.”
Story looks between me and Gen, something small and satisfied sparking in her eyes. She lays her hand on my chest, straining up on her toes to press a kiss to my jaw. “Yes, sir. Just lead the way.”
My cock swells so fast that I know my chest hitches.
Holy fuck.
Sir.
Gen stares at Story’s hand, at how tightly she’s wrapped her body around me, at the way I’m gripping her, loose but undeniably possessive. In a blink, her face goes carefully blank, mouth pressed into a tight line. “Well, Tristian. I see you have your hands full.”
I look at Story, gazing up at me so sweetly, and brush her hair from her cheek. “You have no idea.”
“Hm.” The hum is low and oozing with displeasure. “Maybe some other time.”
“Oh,” Story says, turning to Gen. “Come and find me sometime if you ever want that campus tour. I’m always around somewhere.” She gives this little self-deprecating laugh I might find cute, except I’m too busy imploding at the thought of her and Gen frolicking around campus together. She winces when I wrench her back to me.
“We’ll be too busy,” I tell her, undeterred by the flash of dread in her eyes as I march her away by the arm.
I can feel her eyes on me as I walk us nowhere in particular—just away. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” I hiss, fingers digging into her muscle. “You don’t talk to that whore. I don’t even want you looking at her.”
Gen randomly shows up at the exact moment I get a private message threatening to tell my sisters the ‘truth’ about me?
Not buying it.
Story grunts as I haul her along, her short legs struggling to keep up. “The contract only says I can’t talk to guys. I already avoid the other Royals. Am I just not allowed to socialize with anyone?”
Her tone is surly and completely fucking out of line, and by the time I find a door, I’m already stiff with rage. I throw it open, only idly recognizing it as a study room. There’s a girl in there, hunched over a laptop, head jerking up at the sudden intrusion.
“Get out,” I command, voice low and dangerous enough that it spurs her immediately into action. She doesn’t even bother shoving her laptop into her bag, sweeping it all off the table and skittering past us, wide-eyed and anxious.
I slam the door behind her and push Story against it, my fingers wrapping around that delicate, slender throat. “What the fuck do you think you’re playing at?”
She stares at me, hot and unblinking. “I’m not playing at anything!” I have no idea what’s in my eyes, but whatever it is makes her attitude turn on a dime. “Tristian, wait,” she says, voice strained as her hand comes up to cup my cheek. “It was just nice to see someone I recognized, because I don’t know anyone around here who isn’t a Royal. I figured all that high school drama was old news.”
My fingers tighten around her neck. “High school drama?”
High school drama is Rath fingering Killer’s flavor of the week in the backseat of her car. High school drama isn’t a video of your girlfriend of three years making love to her fucking softball coach. It isn’t a potential arson charge, it isn’t the heir to the Mercer fortune being publicly humiliated, and it sure as fuck isn’t the one event that led to the girl in front of me on her goddamn knees, crying as I blew my load into that smart little mouth of hers.
She must remember that, too. That and the morning I apologized for it, explaining that I’d just been in a bad place.
“Don’t,” she breathes, staring up at me with those doe eyes. “If she’s really so bad…you shouldn’t let her get to you like this, right?”
I give her a humorless smile. “You know it’s not that simple.”
“I know,” she says in a voice that cuts through the feeling in my chest. Just seeing Genevieve’s face brought all that old anger to the surface. Now, like then, I want to feel anything else. “Tell me what I can do.”
Never fucking talk to her, is on the tip of my tongue, but it’s washed away by another request. I reach up to thumb at her bottom lip, thinking about how this mouth is mine. She’s nothing like Gen. She loves her new car, but she’s not here for my money. She isn’t swayed by pretty men or yachts or flowers. Story is my Lady, bound to me in a net of circumstance.
“You can prove it,” I tell her, ducking down to press a kiss to her jaw. My teeth scrape against the bone. “Show me who owns you.”
I won’t force her to her knees—not again—and I won’t force her to her back.
I’ll let her choose how to demonstrate her loyalty.
Her breath hitches, and there’s a long moment where neither of us moves or speaks. “What do you want?” she asks, the tremor in her voice belying the steel in her eyes.
My dick’s already hard at any possibility, but I humor her, palm sliding down to her breast. “I want to be inside you, Sweet Cherry. I want to feel what it’s like when you come on my dick, quivering around me.” I lick her lips, wet and obscene. “I want to feel you swallow me again. That hot mouth around my dick, taking everything I give you. I want to hear you struggling to breathe because you’re so full with me.” Her eyes look as hooded and captivated as mine feel. “But right now, I want to know that whatever you do, you’re doing it because you want to please me. Only me.” Pressing my thumb into her jugular, I demand, “I want to see your complete devotion. Show me.”
She lifts her chin, hand coming up to touch my wrist. Gently, she pries my fingers from her throat. I let her push forward, a hand on my chest, until she has me spun around and up against the door.
And then she sinks to her knees.
I’m disappointed, even though I shouldn’t be. I didn’t want to fuck her here, anyway. It’s too close, too personal, too raw. But when her fingers undo my fly, lowering my zipper, I still get a balls-deep shudder at knowing I could, if I really wanted to. I wouldn’t even have to order her, I’d just have to ask. I can see it in the way she looks at me.
It’s the exact same look Gen had in her eye for the softball coach.
She pulls me from my briefs, her warm palm giving it a couple of slow strokes. “Whatever my Lord wants.”
The first touch of her mouth is heaven and hell, all wrapped up into one curl of her tongue. It’s so much better than that night in the car—at first, because I can actually see it this time, my hard cock disappearing between those sweet, pink lips. But then she sinks forward and takes me in, a hot-wet glide that makes my toes curl.
And she doesn’t stop.
Before I’ve even wound my fist in her hair, she’s letting me hit the back of her throat, lingering there against me, holding me so deep that I know she can’t breathe. I feel my jaw go slack, fingers massaging the back of her head. Just when I figure she’ll pull back, she goes deeper.
I spit a low, “Holy shit,” because I would have fucked her throat like this, just like I had that night in the car. It’d been a test to see if she could take it—if she could like it—and here she is, giving it away so goddamn freely.
I have to pull her off my dick, fingers fisting tight in her hair. I forget about Genevieve and her lying, cheating, whore face the second my Sweet Cherry looks up at me, eyes wet and wide as she sucks on the tip of my cock.
Humming, I give her hair a pulsing tug. “You’re such a good girl for me.”
She gives me a long, slow blink. I know Killian and Rath think I’m being a patronizing creep when I tell her she’s being good, but the truth is, they’ve never seen the way her eyes soften and shine at praise. Our Lady likes being good just as much as she likes being bad.
She responds by falling forward once more, so determined to take me deep. But she can only do it when I let her, loosening my grip on her hair. It’s the complete opposite from the road head, when I’d pushed her down and made her stay, only to watch her head rise when I allowed it. Now, she sinks down onto me like we’re magnetized. She’d suffocate on my dick if I didn’t yank her back, almost as eager to see that softness in her eyes again as I am to bust in her pretty mouth.
It feels like it lasts hours, Story stuffing her throat with my cock until I wrench her back to hear her wet gasps. I tell her how good she is, and she holds my gaze before starting all over again. It’s messy and overindulgent, and it just might be the hottest thing that’s ever happened to me.
I come with a tight, guttural sound, holding her by a fistful of hair so she can’t bury me in her throat. I want it shallow enough that she’ll be able to taste me on her tongue, and that’s exactly what I do, cock jerking my release between her red, abused lips.
She’s so good that I half expect her to sink back down to the hilt. Instead, she pulls off, sitting back on her heels, and meets my gaze. I think I could come again when she opens her mouth, letting me see my load sitting there on her red tongue. Holding my stare, she closes her jaw and swallows.
“Fuck,” I breathe, thumbing some jizz from the corner of her mouth. I feel like I’m in a trance, hypnotized by the way she instantly sucks my thumb clean, not letting a drop go to waste. Breathlessly, I ramble, “That’s so fucking hot. Gen never would have dreamed of getting this nasty.” Story sucks my thumb, looking up at me owlishly. “That’s why I had to have you like that. So much of high school, listening to Rath and Killer brag about getting head. As soon as I saw your mouth that night, I knew I had to have it.”
It isn’t until she drops her eyes that I realize what I’m saying, and who I’m saying it to. It’s all true. That night had been a crazy whirr of rage, Rath and Killer doing their best to keep me from retaliating. It’d later prove pointless. Only a few days later, I found myself on that dock with the gas can. But that night, I think they knew I needed to see a girl on her knees before me, my dick slamming in and out of her mouth. That’s how I know I’d do anything for Killian. Story was his by rights, but there for a few minutes in his old laundry room, he’d given her to me. A little taste of this thing he wanted so badly that it consumed him. And the thing is, it worked. It was an exorcism, proof that being with Genevieve Carter wasn’t all it’d been cracked up to be. It’d been lacking. She would sooner cut off her own arm than take me into her mouth, let alone enjoy it.
But as darkly freeing as that night might have been for me, it was something else for Story. A possession instead of an exorcism. A marred moment she might have even wanted if I’d been in a place to put in the effort. What must this have cost her, to get on her knees for me, to look into my eyes again as she swallowed me down, knowing what I’ve taken?
Suddenly, I see this for what she meant it to be.
To think I felt disappointed she chose this instead of taking me inside that sweet cunt of hers. The sex will be great—I know it will—but it’s nothing for us. There’s no history or baggage or hurt. Sex will be new and fun, and I can’t fucking wait to see that soft, stunned pleasure in her eyes as I rail her.
But getting on her knees for me, after what I did?
There couldn’t be a better display of her complete devotion.
I tuck myself back into my pants before crouching down and tugging her into my chest. She goes willingly, even if she still won’t meet my gaze. Pressing my nose into her hair, I inhale her sweet scent. I want to say I’m sorry again. I want to thank her. I want to tell her that what’s happening inside my head is just as messy as that blow job was, and I’m not sure where this is going, but I know I want to keep it. It’s not like it was with Gen. Story isn’t an idea. She’s terrifyingly tangible.
But that’s too much, too confusing.
Instead, I say, “You’re more than any of us deserve.”
Her fingers curl into the fabric of my shirt.
She doesn’t respond.
“Would you like to sleep in my bed tonight?” I ask, stroking her hair from her shoulder. So that she’ll understand I’m not her brother, I press a kiss to her jaw, adding, “This isn’t an order. You can say no. We don’t have to do anything but sleep.”
There’s a beat of silence, something strained about her breaths. I spend it preparing myself for the likelihood she’ll say no. That’s okay. I can handle it.
I think.
Instead, she whispers, “Okay.”
