I pushed against his chest, but he moaned in to my mouth and held me tighter. I tried again and when he didn’t budge I bit down. Instantly he reeled back, holding his hand against his bloodied bottom lip. “You are ruining everything I thought I felt about you. Don’t make a mess of what I do remember about us.”
“I’m the one making a mess of this?” he laughed. “You ruined everything when you went after Nikki. You couldn’t just let her go. I told you a hundred times not to get mixed up in her mess of a life but no, you had to let her drag you down with her. You put her above your family by going after her, by getting hurt, by going away. You are the one who ruined us that night. Not me. I’m trying to save us while you’re hell bent on destroying us! So fuck you, Ray! You broke my heart when you left. You smashed it to pieces when you came back. And I don’t know who you think you are, but you aren’t the Ray I knew. And this person I see before me? I kind of fucking hate her right now,” Tanner said. He turned and stormed off into the darkness.
I opened my mouth to call after him but I didn’t know what else I could say. He was hurt and I’d done the hurting. I’d nothing but make one stupid decision after another since I’d been there. It was stupid of me to flaunt the tattoo. I’d acted out of anger. But that didn’t give him the right to treat me like I was a commodity that could be bought or traded…or married.
Although that was exactly what I was.
Chapter Nineteen
Doe
I closed the door to my room and pressed my forehead against it. Devastated doesn’t begin to cover how I felt. King was dead and I’d lost my only friend because I was stupid enough to think that I could use a marriage certificate as a tool to get what I so desperately wanted.
A family. A real family that I chose, just like I’d chosen King and Preppy.
I let out a frustrated scream and clenched my fists, banging on the door until I was all out of fight. I rubbed my lips to erase the taste of Tanner until they felt raw.
“Take your fucking clothes off,” a deep voice growled.
Awareness washed over me like static electricity.
I gasped and turned my tear stained face from the door. Hundreds of years could pass without me hearing it and I would still know exactly who the voice belonged to.
King emerged from the corner of the room, the shadow falling away from his body like a blanked slowly being tugged off. “You know I don’t like to repeat myself, but for you, I’ll do it just this once, Pup.” He stopped in front of me and peered down, his eyes burning with both lust and anger. “Take your fucking clothes off.”
“You’re alive,” I whisper as my heart hammered in my chest.
Was I imagining this?
“You’re about to find out how alive I really am.” He stalked toward me. “You and I communicate better when I’m inside you, and there is a lot I’ve got to say. So instead of the question-and-answer bullshit that will get us a fuck of a lot of nowhere, so we’re going to do this in a way I already know works.”
“I thought you were dead.” My chest heaved with fear and desire. My skin prickled, my nipples tightened.
“Were you grieving when that kid had his tongue down your fucking throat?” King reached for my hand, holding up the finger that held Tanner’s ring. “Is your grief the reason why you’re wearing this?”
I ripped my finger from his grip and placed my hands against his chest. My intention was to push him away, but as soon as I made contact I couldn’t let go.
I didn’t want to.
I fisted his shirt in my hands. The relief I had felt over him being alive was being replaced by my anger at his accusatory tone. “I thought you were dead,” I repeated.
He spoke into my hair, his breath warm against my scalp. “Oh, Pup. I’m pretty sure even death couldn’t keep me from you.”
I inhaled, taking in the scent cigarettes and wind. I’d missed the familiarity of his smell almost as much as I’d missed him. “I never thought I would see you again. I went to the MC. Bear’s dad is the one who told me you were dead.”
King shook his head slowly from side to side. “He’ll be dealt with.” He narrowed his eyes. “As will you,” he said so low and deep I felt his words to my very core.
“What?”
“Did you really think it would be that easy to get rid of me? For fuck’s sake I remember what it feels like to be inside you. You think I can just forget that? You think I haven’t been trying for weeks to convince myself that it’s just my cock who misses you? Because I’ll tell you nothing would make me happier than to be able to rid myself of this fucking hurt, right now. Right here.” King pounded on his chest with a closed fist. “I sometimes wish I could just forget it all, but I can’t. I won’t. Because I don’t want to ever want to forget you. And I welcome this pain because it reminds me that you were real.” I bit my lip so hard I could taste the copper in my mouth.
King spoke while walking toward me, backing me up further into the shadows until my back connected with the dresser. He placed his hands on the wall around me, caging me in, leaning down until we were eye to eye. “I don’t know why you’re holding on so tight, Pup, when your body is clearly telling me that you’re still mine.” King inhaled me, like I did him. Closing his eyes he rubbing his nose across my jaw line. “Do you love him?” He growled, nipping at my neck with his teeth.
“Yes,” I admitted. King pulled back and scowled. I clarified. “It was never a love like he thought it was, like he wanted it to be. I loved him like a best friend, never like the way—” His eyes searched mine, eagerly awaiting the rest of my answer. “Weeks go by without a single word, and you show up out of nowhere, sneak into my room and demand that I take my clothes off on the day I—” I couldn’t finish the sentence. I couldn’t say the words that I didn’t want to be true.
Because King was alive.
And I was married.
“Got fucking married,” King finished for me. His nostrils flared. He turned around with clenched fists like he was looking for something to punch. He placed his hands on his head in frustration. “I watched the entire fucking car crash out there. I know everything.”
“Holy shit!” I exclaimed.
King snarled. “You seem to have forgotten who the fuck I am, Pup. So I’m going to remind you.” He pressed his hips against mine. “I’m the man who took you against your will and handcuffed you to my fucking bed. I’m the man who wanted you, so I fucking kept you.” He cocked an eyebrow. “Do you really think you have a choice when it comes to being mine?”
King lifted me onto the dresser and pushed himself between my legs, forcing my legs apart. He held my wrists behind my back forcing my shoulders backwards and pushing my chest into his. My dress rode up to the tops of my thighs. King pushed a strand of hair behind my ears and leaned in to me, his lips just a breath away from mine. The room was getting hot. I couldn’t breathe. I needed…I don’t know what I needed. “No more questions.”
I opened my mouth to argue. “Stop fucking talking,” he snapped.
King lifted me off the dresser and carried me and set me down in front of the full-length mirror that hung on the closet door. He stood behind me. A head taller than me and outweighing me by a hundred pounds, our differences had never been more obvious. His dark jeans and dark tank top were a stark contrast to my little white eyelet sundress. My pale skin next to his tanned. My white hair to his black. It was a sight that made my knees weak. Because although the reflection in the mirror made our differences obvious, it also made me see how well the two fit together.
“You see this?” King said, his arms wrapped around my waist, speaking to my reflection. “You see how this fucking works? How we fit?” He pushed my cardigan off my shoulders and it fell to the floor. He spun me around and grabbed a hand mirror off the desk and held it in front of me, the same way he did when he was showing a client their new tattoo.
“Do you see this? What does this shit fucking say?” he asked. Pointing to the tattoo he’d given me. The one I just put on full display to spite my father and Tanner.
“It says, I don’t want to repeat my innocence, I want the pleasure of losing it all over again. It’s an F. Scott Fitzgerald quote,” I answered.
“No.” He pushed on my head, shifting my perspective to a slightly sideways view. “Tell me again. Look in the crown, in the vines. What the fuck does that shit say?”
“King,” I whispered. “It says…King.”
Chapter Twenty
King
“You are mine. You always have been,” I said unapologetically.
Pup looked in the mirror with wide eyes, still staring at the tattoo baring my name. “You tattooed your name on me,” she said in disbelief.
My gaze met hers in the mirror. “Marked you the first fucking chance I got. My only regret is not making it bigger, because maybe then that kid would’ve known better than to put his fucking lips on you.”
“It’s not his fault,” she said, glaring daggers at me.
It pissed me off that she was defending the little fuck. He could call himself her husband all he wanted ’cause I found out all I needed to know when her breath quickened at my nearness, when she darted her tongue out and wet her lips in anticipation, the way her nipples hardened against the fabric of the little sexy as fuck conservative dress she was wearing. It wasn’t just physical though because the air around us crackled with our almost palpable connection. I could practically taste it on my tongue.