The growing dread has me shaking like a leaf.
I’ve been in the back of this strange limo for hours now. The windows are too tinted to even see out of. If I thought the view from my father’s gilded cage was dark, then this might as well be pitch black. There’s nothing. No silhouettes. No muffled colors. No light. Nothing to give a kidnapped princess hope. Nothing to tell her where she’s being dragged to. Nothing. Not until the limo stops and the back door is whipped open.
My first reaction is to crawl away from the two pairs of gruff hands that reach for me. But there isn’t anywhere to go. The door opposite is ripped open and I’m caught by the collar and pulled out into the dim evening.
“Let me go!” I scream. That’s when I see where I am. My voice carries endlessly through the thick dark forest ahead. We’ve left civilization behind. This is the land of vicious fairy tales. My eyes don’t recognize the landscape, but my subconscious mind screams and claws in terror.
My captors don’t respond to my pleas. I’m just turned around to see the other side of my fate. Tucked away in a vast clearing, rising above the shadows of the jagged pines that wall the property in, is a mansion as dark and formidable as Aiden Kilpatrick himself.
It looms over me like a leviathan, becoming more massive by the second as I’m led into its mouth and up through its large intestine halls. The end destination is a bedroom that’s too big to only have the one stained glass window on its sky-high walls. The lights are off, and when the door is shut and locked behind me, the only light that remains is the deep red that bleeds through the stained glass.
The room is just big and empty enough to feel lonely in. A four-poster bed sits in the middle on top a Persian rug. But other than that, it’s empty. I’m alone in a strange place in the middle of the strange woods, waiting for a strange powerful man to come take my innocence.
My tears run hard now and I crawl up in a ball where I was left at the foot of the door and cover myself from this nightmare. It hardly helps. Now that I’m actually here in my new cage, my mind is racing with a thousand questions.
Why?
Why has my father let this happen to me?
He might have always kept me on a tight leash, but I’ve been to events with him before. On his arm, I’ve met mayors and senators and titans of business and they’ve all bowed to him in reverence and fear. Even the criminals, who my father would always tell me pulled every string from the darkness of the underworld, spoke of my father as if he was untouchable. Only the bravest of them still would even dare compliment me on my supposed beauty in front of him—though I would catch many staring from a distance. I always believed the eyes more than the words. But no matter how much they stared, I never thought of myself as beautiful. My father always said it was only ever my innocence that was beautiful, and that as long as I listened to him, I would retain that beauty, the same beauty that my mother had. My beautiful mother. She died before I was old enough to form a full sentence. My only connection to her was this supposed innocent beauty. So, even long after I became a teenager and my raging hormones wanted to rebel, I remained demur, obedient, connected to my father’s painting of my mother.
But now my innocence is in grave danger. A savage Irish prince wants to desecrate my pureness. He called me his little flower. Does he plan to pick my petals until I’m spoiled and barren?
Why?
What has my father done to be tortured like this? What does he owe? Why am I the only payment that will do? Does Aiden Kilpatrick care that I’m an innocent caught up in this mess, or does that only make me all the more valuable?
I always believe the eyes more than the words. And today, for the first time in my life, my father’s eyes were dark and defeated.
I don’t know how long I’m curled up in my fetal ball for, but when I hear the door at my back start to rattle, a shot of fear gives me the strength to unfurl. My limbs are sore and my cheeks are raw, but I desperately crawl away from the opening door.
“The floor is no place for a princess.” That voice. It’s just as strong and powerful as those stormy eyes. Just as dominating as those broad shoulders and muscular arms.
Aiden Kilpatrick has come to claim me.
“This is where your men put me, so this is where I stayed,” I rasp, looking up at the wild giant. Unlike my father and his men, Aiden’s hair is not greased back neatly. Instead, his dirty blond locks are loose to tumble down his ears like a lion’s mane.
It only makes him all the more intimidating and unpredictable.
“They were mistaken to do that,” he says, his voice not as loud as I remember it being in my father’s office. “This is your room and that is your bed. I expect you to make use of it.” As he talks, his greedy eyes work their way up my body.
When I don’t respond, his canines flash behind his perfect lips. “You look worried, princess. Tell me, what do you think I’m going to do to you?”
He’s playing with me. A predator toying with his prey. The blood red tint from the bedroom’s only window washes him in a brutal light. Bile catches in my throat.
“I know what you’re not going to do to me,” I manage to rasp. For some reason, despite the weakness in my bones, my heart is on fire.
“And what’s that? What am I not going to do to you?”
“You won’t do anything to me that I don’t want you to do.”
That draws a laugh from my dark captor. “And why do you believe that?”
My back hits the bed. I’m trapped as Aiden approaches. He runs a hand through his wild hair and my racing heart stops for a brief moment. Fuck. He’s fucking gorgeous. But that only makes me angrier. “Because I won’t let you.”
“I’m afraid you don’t have any say in the matter.”
“Like hell I don’t!” With that I find the strength to jump onto my feet and lunge across the bed. I don’t know where I’m going—there isn’t anywhere to go—but my fight or flight instinct has been ignited and there’s no fighting this monster.
Aiden doesn’t let me get far. Before I can manage to reach halfway across the sweeping mattress, he’s on me. Those powerful arms lock me in a meaty cage and his hips slam into my ass, pinning me to the bed.
Through my fear, I recognize the hardness beneath his pants. He’s turned on by this. The animal.
His hot breath swirls on my neck and a deep pressure builds in my stomach. Fuck. So am I.
“You’re dirty,” Aiden sniffs.
I’m taken back by his words. I can’t tell if it’s an attempt at sexy talk or if he’s referencing my sweat drenched hair.
“You’re disgusting,” I take no chances. Despite the pleasurable weight of his cock rubbing against my ass, I want out. Out from under him. Out from this bedroom. Out from this contract. Out from this life.
“I think we both need showers.” Aiden gives me one last push before freeing me from his hulking body. The sizzling mark of his hard cock lingers between my legs as I roll out from under him.
“This is so wrong,” I whisper.
“You really are naive,” Aiden smirks. He stands up and begins unbuttoning his dress shirt.
“Not… not that…” I gesture towards the bulge in his pants. “Well, that’s wrong too. But I mean this. You bought me. You bought a person. You must know that’s wrong.”
To my surprise, Aiden shrugs in agreement. “Of course it is. But the world isn’t about right and wrong. It’s about power and weakness. Innocence and corruption. Love and hate. Your family is weaker than mine. Your innocence is fragile against my power. Your father’s love is tiny against my hate. I’ve bought you, not because it’s right or wrong. I’ve bought you because I can. And you will do as I say because you can’t do otherwise. You are too weak. Too innocent. You are not loved enough to fight back against my hate.”
A red-hot pang of fear and fury rises up from my chest. “Liar!” I shout. “I’m not weak! My father loves me. I don’t know what you’ve done to him, but if you haven’t killed him, then that’s your mistake. Because he will make you suffer for this!”
The last button on Aiden’s dress shirt comes undone and the material brushes aside like drapes to a chiselled world of muscle and desire.
“It’s time for our shower,” Aiden says.
Our shower. “I will never shower with you.”
He smirks and I notice his dimple for the first time. My heart constricts before an unexpectedly strong tug at the bedsheets sends me to my back. I stare up at the ceiling, trying to fight away the image of Aiden’s chest.
“Then I’ll just have to make you wet some other way.”
