Twisted Devotion (Kings & Consorts, #1)

by Poppy St. John

If you’re still with me, sit the fuck down and turn that page like a good girl.

I could cover my face, but I couldn’t cover the tattoos. Not with each finger on my left hand inked down to the first knuckle and bold black lines carving up my neck to touch my throat.

My men nodded, taking her by the arms to lead her to the little office where she’d sign away her soul to the devil for one night.

“Just try it. I know you’ll like it. The last one I gave you might have been a little too spicy. This one is more tame,” Tessa reported. “Tame?” I scoffed, reaching for the book. Cracking it open to a random page in the middle, I read the first line I saw. “He touched the cool blade to her skin. She flinched from its cold hardness. Flattened to the tender flesh of her abdomen, one flick of his wrist and he could cut her.” I cocked my head, staring at her. “You call that tame?” She shrugged, compressing her lips into an unapologetic smile.

“Yay for another exciting weekend of contouring a dead grandma’s face,” she snarked. “Someone has to do it.” “Yeah, you. Every day for the rest of your life until it’s your turn to lie on the table.”

The most tragic part about dead bodies was that on some level, everybody was just meat. “Well, after dying, bodies swell. They can get so big that they look double their usual size. That’s when they start to stink and the insects show up. Then everything that isn’t hair, bone or cartilage liquefies,” I said fluttering my lashes. “Do they put that stuff in those books you like?” Tessa shivered, swallowing hard. “N-no, usually they leave that part out,” she said. Good call. I would too.

as one of the living residents of Snow Funeral Services, I probably got out as much as one of the corpses.

“Maybe read it outside, like, in the sun.” I whacked her with the book. “Are you saying I’m pale now, too?” “No offense but you look like Morticia Adams circa 1960,”

“I need you to be quiet, okay?” I said over my shoulder. “Why?” Tessa chuckled. “Are they gonna wake up if I’m too loud?” No, unfortunately. That would have offered some much-needed excitement around here but I’d have to hold out for the zombie apocalypse. “No, but Dad might.”

“I gave you my name, who are you?” A small smile spread across his lips, and a muscle in my jaw twitched. “A ghost.”

if the devil hadn’t taken me yet I doubted he ever would. My soul too rotten even for his taste.

An hour was gone before I knew it. Then two. My promise of just one more chapter turned into five as I devoured page after page of a romance story so dark it had me questioning my own morals. I read until my eyes couldn’t stay open another second, drifting off to sleep with images of tattooed hands around pretty throats crowding my foggy mind.

My hand slipped over my cock until I exploded, spilling my seed on her threshold, marking my territory.

I wanted to ruin her. Ruin her so fucking fully–so completely–that I was the only man who would ever know how to put her back together again.

I wanted her and I was going to have her, it was only a matter of when.

“Please,” she whispered. She was saving herself. She was a virgin. Lust and fear and regret swirled inside her. “Don’t.” “I’m not the one moving, pet,” he snarled in her ear, “you are.”

“Fine.” His lips pulled up on one side in a sly grin. “No dating.” He slid a hand over my thigh, watching me expectantly. “We can just fuck.” “Is there more wine? I might need a refill first.” He put a hand to his chest. “Ouch. Am I that bad in bed?” “Define bad.”

“Are you asleep?” he rasped. I shuddered involuntarily, imagining it. Five to seven minutes of uninspired thrusting that would come to a grinding halt when he came faster than he thought he would. After he got rid of the condom, he’d be out like a light. Was this really all I could hope for? I rolled onto my back. Maybe it was. He brushed a palm over my stomach beneath the oversized t-shirt. “Yeah?” he asked, his gaze heated. “Eat me out first.” His lips spread into a wide grin before he vanished beneath the covers. Instead of five to seven minutes, now, maybe I’d get eight.

“No, little lamb. I’m not going to kill you,” he said, his eyes roaming my face in the dark, making me feel his intentions like a fire held too close to flesh. “I’m going to keep you.”

If Emily returned to this place, she wouldn’t be his daughter anymore, not the one he recognized. Already her past was burning to worthless ash. I was her future.

A soft umber glow radiated from a chandelier bigger than my bedroom overhead, the crystal shards like jagged stars on a ceiling painted in a mosaic of angels and devils. Fire and frost.

I was stunned silent, the whiplash of my capture and this room warring against each other in my head. Next thing I knew the beast of a man who’d corralled me in here would tell me never to go into the west wing.

She didn’t control me. She didn’t possess me. She belonged to me. Mine. Mine to touch. Mine to mold. Mine to break.

Touching her wouldn’t be enough. I wanted to possess her. Wanted to twist her into something that could fit against my broken parts. I didn’t just want her body. I wanted her heart. Her fucking soul. “I want it all.”

Folding my arms across my chest, I slipped beneath the surface of the water, my hair swirling around my face. I let out some air, the sound of the bubbles racing for the surface loud in the water. I let out some more, wondering darkly if I shouldn’t let it all out. If I shouldn’t breathe the water instead. End myself before the bastard who took me could be the one to do it. See him try to blackmail my father with a corpse. There would be no reason to harm Tessa then, either. No more time spent in a cold, dank cell underground. No more guilt. Just… nothing.

“Fear is your red lipstick, little lamb, though it suits you more than that shade ever could.”

When I told her I wanted everything, I didn’t realize how deeply the meaning ran. I wanted her whole heart. I wanted her to love me like she would never love another person on this vile planet. When I was finished with her, I’d hand her the key to her freedom and I wanted her to drop it at my feet. I wanted her to stay.

My mouth snapped shut, watching it harden before my eyes, growing to a length I thought reserved only for porn stars and horses.

“I hate you,” I shouted at him, my voice cracking trying to maintain the volume. His jaw ticked and he nodded. “This time, I believe you.”

“My girl attacked me with a piece of glass after threatening to kill herself.”

“Just one more thing.” There was only one way to ensure no one else touched what was mine within the walls of Delirium. I tugged the collar from my pocket, feeding the leather strap around her neck. She put her fingers to the choker, running them over it as I fastened it into place, and latched on the matching short leash. “There. You’re perfect.”

Male gazes strayed from their night’s distractions, lingering on Emily just a little too long, hungry for fresh flesh. I growled as we passed, sending each pair flying back to where they belonged. “Mine,” I hissed, tightening my grip on Emily’s collar, my shoulders trembling with the injection of testosterone into every muscle.

She turned to me, watching me with guarded emotion in her eyes as she ran her fingertips over the ink on my chest, and up my neck, to my jaw, my lips. She gently touched the scab forming there. The one she gave me. “I’m sorry about this, by the way,” she said. “No, you’re not.” “You’re right,” she said, her lips quirking up on one side in a cheeky smirk. “I’m not.”

It was like learning who someone was in reverse. Getting all the bad, all the dirty, all the ugly, out of the way before glimpsing all the things that were pure and true and good.

Look at me, having a perfectly normal conversation with a man who had ‘body disposal’ on his resume right next to ‘stalker’ and ‘sadist.’

“This house has three libraries. You’ll die before you read every available book. If you’re bored, start there.” “About that. Any chance you could order something that was published in this century, this decade would be even better. Something… spicy.” His smirk grew, he smiled and then he laughed.

“Am I not enough for you?” It was my turn to laugh and shrug. “I need something to keep me company when you leave me for days at a time.” “Hmmm,” he purred, the treble of his tone making my skin prickle. “Suppose I’ll need to rearrange my schedule then.” He rose, stretching, before heading to the door. “Was that a yes?” “Yes, little lamb, I’ll order your filthy books.”

She tilted her face up to look at mine. There was something catlike about her. It was the green eyes and the sharp eyebrows, her small nose and plush lips. It was that smirk she had on her face when she told me shit like this that she knew grossed me out.

I had no immediate or future plans to say goodbye to Emily. I liked having her around the house. I liked talking to her. I liked fucking her more than I ever liked anything else in my miserable life. And she wasn’t actively trying to run anymore. There hadn’t been a locked door to stop her in days. Nearly a week now. But she was still a prisoner. Still trapped. Not a fully willing participant of my twisted devotion.

He filled the wide frame of the door, his shoulders flexing with every heavy breath, every bit the shadow from the cabin again. My ghost come to collect its soul.

A phantom backlit in shades of royal blue, red, and yellow from the stained glass window at his back.

My hands were steady, guiding the needle under her skin and shooting the formaldehyde-laced filler into the places that disease, age, and death had hollowed in her face. Sometimes, the only time people had their makeup done was when they ended up here, at the end of their life, not even able to look in the mirror to see whether they liked the results.

My teeth ground together as I fought against the haze that came over me thinking of him. I was free. I could do anything but when would I finally stop short-circuiting when I thought about him? My life had become foreign. I was foreign.

Even dead, she still meant something. There was a difference between being alive and feeling alive and currently, I was only one of those things. How could I be the one grieving if I was also the one who was also dead inside?

It was his fault I’d been taken. His fault I would never be the same. I didn’t know how to talk to him anymore. The tension since I returned was tenable in every conversation. In every room when both of us were inside it.

My world had always felt like a place where I belonged. Now, it felt tight and ill-fitting. I suffocated at the constricting pressure of it, trying to cram myself back into a box where I no longer fit. The tears came harder the farther I got from the mortuary, coupled with a bone-gnawing guilt. Because I wasn’t crying for the loss of Carlos… I was crying because still I felt virtually nothing when I thought of never seeing him again. I was crying because instead of grieving the dead man in my arms, I grieved the loss of the one who killed him.

“Say hi to Emily for me,” he said, one last jab for the road. In a knee jerk reaction, I whirled, my chest tight with fury as I stared him down. “No need,” I hissed. “She’ll see your face again. I’ll make damn sure she’s the one who pushes your sorry corpse into the flames.”

It was true no matter what I was doing. It was like being suspended in formaldehyde like a wet specimen. No longer alive, despite outward appearances. I could speak, eat, walk around; superficially, I was all there. In reality, it was like walking through water, eating without taste, hearing as though through cotton. Like… I was the ghost all along.

“I know you said it couldn’t work out between you and your mystery guy, but stories like yours deserve a better ending.”

Trading a piece of her soul to the devil in exchange for life.