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“A man without respect for the law is not a man without respect for anything. All that intensity, that devotion, is channeled toward other things, mostly their people—the brotherhood, family, their women. You can’t experience anything like it until you’ve had it.”
“The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell or a hell of heaven.”
“I’m gonna show you how to live, if you let me in to do it.”
He wanted me to know him. How could any woman resist a man who opened his beautiful heart to her without knowing what she would do with it?
I felt eyes on me. It didn’t make any sense, but I knew the texture of the gaze, the way they fell hot on my skin then slid possessively through my hair over my cheeks and neck like a physical caress.
“A secret in her smile Tucked in a rosy furl I want to pull it out with my teeth Soothe the paper cut with my tongue Dip in the well of her blood and write My own secret on her lips So that every time she talks Every lick of those lips And drag of breath through her mouth She feels me Her tongue scrapes the scar of my secret on the inside of her pout And she can’t deny the truth of it Of me Of us I’ve branded her with it She’s mine.”
“Never met a woman like you. Know I won’t again. You find somethin’ worth keepin’, you find a way to fuckin’ keep it. Not gonna stop, and just so you know, I got it that this could get you fired, that this could cause you embarrassment, but what I got to say to that is this: whatever pain and ugliness I bring you by bein’ with you, I promise I’ll bring you double that in sweetness and beauty. You hear me on that, because I may be a man without a normal moral compass, but I’m a man who makes a woman a promise, and I’ll die before I break it.”
“Shut up, I wasn’t finished,” King growled, stepping close to me so that he could lean down into my face. The only thing that kept his posture from being totally threatening was the hand that found its way to the back of my neck, under my hair. I realized that he did it when he wanted to connect with me, when he needed to reassure both of us that I was his. It scared me how much I liked it. How much I needed it too.
“Second, you’re right. I’m not your fuckin’ boyfriend. Children have girlfriends and boyfriends. Idiots let their women walk around unclaimed, secured by a fuckin’ hope and a prayer because they don’t make their women feel owned, cherished like the ultimate prize. No, I am your man, babe. The fuckin’ man that sees you strugglin’ to make ends meet because of your prick of a soon-to-be ex-husband, so he calls in his brothers to help her out even though he knows they’ll give him shit for being pussy whipped. I’m your fuckin’ man because I love being that for you. Now, do you hear me?”
“I got work to do, so I’m going to ignore your repeated attempts to piss me off until after the guys leave and I can show you just how much of a fuckin’ man I am.”
Happiness is streaking bare-assed naked down the wet sand into the waves, it’s drinkin’ too much and laughin’ too loud with your friends, it’s lovin’ so hard you want to devour the flesh, soul, and mind of another person. None of that is fuckin’ pure and all of it is fuckin’ sublime.”
He leaned in to frame my face with his big hands. “The only thing dirty about this is the people who will try to shame you. You do not need to be pure or ordinary to be good, babe. You just need to live and love without guilt and I swear to you, you’ll leave the world a better place than you entered it.”
I wanted to turn my body into one of his poems, an ode to me written in my skin and bones.
If there’s somethin’ you need, Queen, it’s your King who provides it for you. You don’t like that, you need to learn to eat it.”
He stared up at me with his desire bright in his eyes, a flush streaked high across his brutal cheekbones. “Take out my cock and ride me. Wanna see you fuck yourself on my cock.”
His hands stroked up my back and wound me in a full body hug. “Might get tired but never of you.”
“And I’m not askin’ you to do that because you’re a fuckin’ hot lay. I’m askin’ you to risk everythin’ to be my partner, to stand by my side and rule The Fallen men of Entrance, to lie, cheat, and steal, to breathe my fuckin’ breath, take my kisses and my cock and reign with me. Be the Iron Queen to my Fallen King.”
“Because I love you,” he growled. “Because I fuckin’ love you enough to tear the world apart if it wrongs you, if it causes even a minute of misery for my girl with the whiskey eyes. Never felt this way about anythin’ and I don’t want to ever again.”
“Show me your body,” he ordered again, his voice like smoke as it twined around me. “Show me what no other man will ever fuckin’ see again.”
The truth was, he was young, too wild and reckless, filled to the brim with sex and vigor. His eyes promised to burn me alive, incinerate my inhibitions, turn my morals into ash and my soul into tinder. He held the torch, the threat against everything I had ever stood for, and he had the balls to dare me to come closer.
Now, I hated myself so much I felt sick with it, nauseated and feverish, constantly about to faint. Every time I caught sight of his beautiful face, the breadth of his shoulders strong enough to hold up my sky as it threatened to come down around my ears, and the halo of hair that crowned him like the king he was, I ached with such ferocity, I lost my breath midway through my lesson.
I was stupid but also in love, so goddamn in love with him that I would die an excruciating death every day for the rest of my life if it meant I could be with him.
“Before you, I lived a boring life without passion or turmoil, just the same quiet existence that so many people spend their entire lives living out. It wasn’t enough for me and I didn’t know why. My only escape was through my books. They made me think that life could be made of cotton candy castles and white knights in shining armor. They told me that love was always good in the end, and relatively easy to obtain as long as you were a good person, which I was.
“You are the king of all the fears that ruled my life, a man of ferocity and passion and balls-to-the-wall determination and endless, boyish enthusiasm. You crack the soul of life open in your palms and drink your fill. A man like that needs a queen by his side,”
Like Milton once wrote about good things coming from evil, the horror of King’s arrest and my abduction had grown mild over time and the light we created together had far overcome the dark. My hands still ached when it was damp, which in Vancouver was often, but the scars had been reduced to thin pink slashes that King kissed every morning when we woke up.
