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You’ve never had a woman like me, one that’s yours. That night was the first time I ever came, and now I can only come thinking about you.”
“Vale, goddamn, I want you. I always have.”
“Are you mine?
“Yes,” I sigh.
“Do you remember how I came for you, Vale?” But he takes over my mind. He’s in it, not me, with his thumb strumming my clit. “Do you remember how hard I fucked your bikini in my fist? How I lifted my hips, thrusting and desperate like it was my cock pumping into your tight pussy? How I arched my back and said your name? How I came, shooting my cum all over my abs, grunting and in so much fucking pain for you?” “Yes. Yes.” My thighs shake. My lips, too. “You came for me, Vale,” he growls. “I watched you, fucking your pretty pussy with your hand. Your lips parted. Your thighs quaked. Your
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“This is our truth, Vale. It has been since that night, and it always will be.” I take my fingers out, and she asks, “You knew my secret all this time?” “Our secret.” I face her, our bodies wedged together.
“After that night and all through college,” she says, “I thought you hated me. Even recently, you acted like you did.” “I hated that I wanted you. For that, I hated myself for a long time,” I confess, playing with her silky raven hair. “I felt like a horrible man. But please know, I always cared for you, but it wasn’t until you came back after your first month at college that I suddenly felt attracted to you.
“I kind of always wanted you,” she confesses. “Like a crush teens get. It’s innocent and safe. I always felt safe with you. You were always so stern and protective, like you wanted to put a chastity belt on me.”
“I did. I…” Careful, she can’t know this secret. “I wanted to protect you because I meant what I said; I’ll kill any man who hurts you.”
“Only you! You’re the pussy party of one in my pants.” I let that make my fucking day. Week. Year. Life. “What about you?” she volleys back. “Who else puts a tingle in your dingle?” “Dingle? Poison, I’m way too big to dingle.” “Okay,” she quips. “Who puts a big gong in your giant dong?” I laugh, wrapping my arms around her. “Woman, you have a PhD in killing me.”
“I’ve never allowed myself to feel…” I press my forehead to hers, “this.” Softly, she asks, “Why not?” “It’s too dangerous. Too risky. It’s a beast of a life, Vale. And if you ever see that side of me, you won’t like him.” “You may be a beast, but you’re a good father.” Her fingertip traces over my heart. “I love how you love Alena.”
“Will you quit saying I’m in the mafia?” “Aren’t you?” “Bratva.” I blurt and immediately regret it. Fuck! Lying next to Vale’s almost naked body has me leaking like a sieve. Her eyes get wide. “Bratva means Russian mafia.” “No, in Russian, it literally means ‘brothers,’ and that’s what we are.”
“No blood family.” I sit up, scrubbing my beard. I need to escape Vale’s gravity, or I’ll sing like a canary. “So…” she processes. “Jace and Grant and Michael Cummings, they’re like your brothers?” “We go way back. I owe them. They owe me. We’re bonded for life.” “Are you Russian?” “Half Scottish, half Spanish, and done with this conversation.”
“Fuck yes, I jerk off to you in the shower. Sometimes at work in the bathroom. Once in Jace’s truck; don’t tell him. Vale, I meant it. For twelve years, every time I come, I think of you.”
“We care about someone when a brother cares about her. We make a vow to protect her, too.” “Um, Houston,” I reply, “I fail to see a problem. You and a bunch of hot men who look like you, all tatted and jacked, caring enough to protect me? Feel free to convince me that’s not every woman’s fantasy.” A dark storm takes his eyes. He gets serious. Deadly serious. “You’re too smart not to realize it’s only fantasy in fiction. In real life, it’s a gilded, barbed, and bloody cage, and you don’t belong in it. I’ll never allow
“But, Nash. “Vale,” he softens his voice. “Shut up.” “But—” “Shut up,” he cups my head on his chest, his voice even softer, “and let me finally sleep with my woman.” Oh… My heart flutters. Okay.
If you think I’m furious and frustrated that I’ve made Vale off-limits to me again? That I’m a fool to think I can have Vale by night, then hide it from my daughter the next day? That I’m fighting the beast inside. The one that lies beside Vale in bed, my muscles tense and telling me to fuck her until we both scream for our lives. For our love? I am, but she’s taking it to the next level. Vale’s not furious about it; she’s ferocious. The worst part? She’s even sexier with her claws out.
“I’m angry because I keep telling you I’ll never hurt you, and I’ll kill anyone who does, so don’t make me do it. Don’t make me hurt one of my brothers over you because I will. You ask me who I choose, but there is no choice. I pick you, Vale, every time, all the time.”
“Yes, be such a dirty girl for your daddy now. Yes, suck me. Suck me, baby.”
“Because you belong to me, don’t you? Just as much as I belong to you.”
“Yes, yes,” he pants as I go back to sucking him. He
I enter him, watching his mouth gape, watching him give me something no one else has had. His surrender. His pleasure. His trust.
“Lick my pussy, Daddy, and taste how much I love choking on your cock.” “Fuck, yes,”
“Fucking say it again!” I thunder. “Say someone’s going to touch her when she’s mine! Do it! Do it, goddammit, and I’ll kill someone!”
“It’s not happening.” I step away from Sire, pulling back from Jace, too. “You don’t touch my daughter, and you don’t touch my woman.”
“You’re the best I’ve ever had, and that’s the only test you need to pass.”
I’m not afraid of this. I want everything with him. I trace my fingertip over his thick brow and boldly ask, “What are the other tests?”
“I fuck you in front of the other kings. I prove to them you’re my queen and that you want to be with me … with … us; that’s the first test.”
“This. Me and you,” he says. “It took me forty-four years to feel this way for a woman, and I swear to you, it’s not a feeling I’ll ever share with anyone else.”
“And it took me almost thirty years to feel this.” I smile. “To feel how it’s supposed to feel. It’s a feeling I’ll only share with you, Nash. I promise.”
“I’m serious,” he answers. “That’s what the tests are for. To see if it’s what you really want.” “I do want it,” I rush. “I want to be with you. I want you to make me yours. I think… I think I’ll get off on it.” I chew my lip. “That’s my confession.” Something stirs in his eyes, then I see it stir his cock. “You’ll get off on it too, won’t you?” I ask. “It’s making you hard just thinking about it.” “What makes me hard and will get me off…” His voice is low. He rolls me over, pinning me down. “Is showing everyone you’re mine and how I’ll never share you.”
“You were never broken, Vale.” Love strains my voice. “You were always mine.” A sob escapes her throat as I kiss the tears falling over her flushed cheek. Her cries—joy, relief, awe, gratitude, pleasure … and something else—flood my heart. I hold her while it rains through us. I didn’t know I could feel this much for a woman. It’s overwhelming and undeniable. It makes me confess everything I’ve hidden for years, “Poison, you take my breath away, and you can have it. I belong to you, too.”
“You’re mine, Vale. Always. Every inch of you is mine to have. No one else.” I keep pumping my fingers in her ass, my cock in her pussy, white heat building in my spine, the pressure about to explode. She keeps groaning and convulsing. “Say it,” I growl. “Yes, Nash,” she stutters. “Oh god, yes.”
I’m an evil man for wanting her, a redeemed man for having her. I will burn in hell for this heaven, and let’s go. I was going to hell anyway.
“Why did you call me your king?” he demands to know. I lift my chin. “Because that’s who I want you to be, my king. I want to be your queen. No matter what.” He steps to me, looming and lovely. “I’ve never been so aroused and irate at the same time,” he says. “You earned your name today because you’re definitely my poison, and you’re about to be his.”
Yes, I can be an evil, violent man. Yes, I can be a loving, devoted father. And now I know I can love a woman more than I love myself. I can break her heart because losing her best friend will break her even more. I can destroy her because it will kill her to hurt someone she loves. I won’t move on. I won’t feel this way for anyone else. I won’t sleep with anyone. I won’t hold anyone so tight against my heart that it beats only for her. I won’t wrap my body around someone and give them every part of me. I won’t be with anyone else because I can’t be with her.
This woman has given life and proudly taken it. She’s raised her sons and me to do the same. We aren’t evil. We kill evil. I believe in her. I’m loyal to her. “Hear me now,” she commands me. “I gave you one of my sons. You know our bond. So you will make Vale Monroe your queen, and then you will tell Alena after her wedding. That’s my mandate.”
I’ll have to figure out how to live without love, and I don’t know what’s worse. Never having love or losing it. Having no man love me, or having the one I love be the one I can’t have. My past bleeds into my present around him. Nash has always been there. He used to heal my pain, and now … he is my pain.
“Do you hate me now?” I ask. “Do you really think I’m a monster, too?” “No.” She blinks, pausing way too long before answering softly, “Give it back to me.” “What?” I ask tenderly. I’m confused. “My kiss.” She lifts her lips to mine. “Give it back to me, Nash. Only you can.”
“Is it a surprise that I love you? I love you, and I mean it—I’m never letting you go
again. You’re mine. I’ll give my life for you, too.”
“Please don’t because I love you, too.” The emotions strangling my throat release with my plea, “Don’t ever let me go, N...
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“The king and queen tradition goes way back,” I explain. “It was done for survival, to protect an entire family. A king claims his queen, and the other kings agree to protect her, to provide for her and their kids should something happen to him, which it usually did.” I pause. “It does. This is a dangerous world we live in, Vale, and if something happens to me, my brothers will protect you.”
She isn’t afraid of my life. She’s eagerly joining it.
“You’re brilliant, and you belong with Nash. He’s so fucking in love with you, and we’ve known it for years. It’s about time you’re his queen.”
“So,” Jace reaches for my fingers, holding them lightly like a gentleman, not a lover. “It will be an honor to be your second king. Yes, we can be beasts; I won’t lie and say we don’t relish that part. But other times, we’re men honoring where we came from. We honor our queens.”
I was lying to myself all these years, saying the reason I never loved or married was because my life was too dangerous. That’s not true. Years ago, I gave my heart to Vale, then resigned myself to die alone. That’s why I never loved or married. But now, the forbidden love of my life gives me life. She’s right here, taking everything that belongs to her because she wants our life together, too … and I’ll crack any skull to make it happen.
“Let’s kick this off,” Nash snarled, standing there. “Go ahead. Ways I’m going to spank your ass for disobeying me.”
“If you want to worship me, all you have to do is ask.”
Because I’m about to be a queen, a Belle to the Beast I love, so I hope my sister can follow her heart, too. No matter the risks.
