Page 53 of Reign of the Queen
My gaze roams over the bed, my mind a mess of confusion and swirling thoughts.Why did I allow that to happen?Yes, I want to seduce the kings and keep them distracted so they don’t see the plays I’m making behind their formidable backs, but not at the expense of my sanity.
Did I allow this as part of my plan to ruin them? Ican’t even answer that question sincerely because part of me knows I wanted this to happen. That the weeks of attraction and tension between Theo and me were leading up to this. That we are like air and gasoline, destined to combust and burn everything around us. The other part of me is screaming that we have to destroy them by any means necessary.
Theo clears his throat and looks away from his large bed with regret, sadness clouding his features. His shoulders droop, and he drags me toward a door on the far side of the room. Once we enter the space, motion lights immediately cause the space to flood with light.
He has a walk-in closet almost as large as mine. All along the walls are racks of shelves, drawers, and rods with clothing, shoes, and accessories. His clothes are all neatly organized by color, his OCD clearly on display with how perfect and neat everything is, nothing out of place.
Letting go of my hand and moving to one side of the room, Theo begins opening drawers and pulling items out. With his back turned to me, I immediately notice the raised scars, bruises, and welts against his flushed golden skin. All of them are in varying shades of healing, some fresh, some old, and the skin scarred over. His neck is a mess with my nail imprints and smeared blood.
“Holy shit, who did that to you?” I question and without thinking move quickly toward him, running my hands down his back. His body instantly turns to harden stone, freezing in his movements.
Staring over his shoulder at me, a grimace hard to disguise crosses his face before it once again shuts down and his cold statue mask comes back into place. “No one.” He shrugs from my grasp, turning with a bundle of clothes in his hands, and passing them to me.
I take my eyes away from his storm-filled blue eyes and look down at what he’s passed me: underwear, joggers, and a sweatshirt. I look back at his face, but he’s already turning to grab more clothing, giving me his rigid back again.
“Put those on, Mia. It’s why we came here in the first place,” he gruffs, moving away from me with his own pile.
I want to object and demand that he tell me who did that to him, but his tone and the way he’s holding himself tells me to hold back.
I look from his large frame to the pile he handed me. These are going to be huge on me, but beggars can’t be choosers, and I am standing here with no underwear on and with my boobs exposed. I grab the navy boxer briefs he put on top and slip them under my skirt, removing the skirt once they are in place and making sure my knife isn’t snagging on them and is still accessible. After rolling them a few times, I think they might actually stay up.
Removing my torn, wet, and cum-stained shirt, I throw it on the ground, adjust my bra cups, put on the black T-shirt, and then the Casbury hoodie that’s twice my size. Then finally, I slide on the thick black joggers he gave me. These are huge. I roll them at the waist several times and then bend to roll the legs. Before I can bend all the way down, Theo is there adjusting them and rolling them for me on his knees. My breath hitches in my throat at his chivalrous action.
It’s a reallybougielook, his rolled-up sweats and massive hoodie with my two-thousand-dollar high heel shoes, which I never took off while he was eating me out.Fuckjust the thought of that is hot and makes my core clench. Theo looks up at me from his position at my feet, heat filling his gaze. I can only assume it’s from how I look dressed in his clothes. He places a kiss on my left knee, then my right and then moves away from me.
He’s changed into a pair of navy sweats, another Casbury football hoodie, and white Nikes. I don’t think I have ever seen him so casual. His hair is still a mess from my fingers and is raised in all different directions. I notice the lovely bite mark on the side of his neck with the neat imprint of my teeth, and a giggle escapes me.
Giving me an incredulous look and shaking his head, he stands and moves to the full-length mirror to see what has me giggling. When he spies the bite mark, the imprint of each of my teeth visible and red on his neck, he leans in to get a closer look. Rubbing his fingers across the mark, a look of satisfaction crosses his face quickly before disappearing.
“Hmm, do you have a habit of leaving marks on all your men?”
I roll my eyes and don’t bother answering him, knowing full well he enjoys seeing the marks on himself. Plus he isn’t my man.He isn’t, right?I give my head a little shake to clear the uncertainty and doubt. Of fucking course he’s not, don’t lose sight of why we are here Mia; orgasms are nice but not necessary to our overall plans. Look for something you can use to break these kings.
Walking out of the closet area and back into the main room, I give his room another closer look. I spy a picture of the four kings on the desk and stroll toward it. It’s a picture of them together when they were younger on some mountain top. Full grins and mouths filled with braces proudly on display. They look so young, carefree, and innocent in the picture. Not the devil spawns they are now—orwerewhen I knew them.
I feel him come up behind me, wrapping his arms around my waist, leaning his chin on my shoulder blade. He looks down at the photograph. “That was the year Finn’s stepdad took us to climb Croagh Patrick Mountain in Ireland. We were thirteen and probably had zero business climbing that, but he made it an adventure for us. We even camped on the mountain for a couple of nights.” His voice fills with wonder and pride.
I place the photo back on the desk and grab a tissue from the box on the surface, turning in his arms and reaching up to his neck. He goes completely still at my touch as I dab at the blood welling from my nail marks on the back of his neck. A deep breath leaves his chest and he closes his eyes. “Why am I here, Theo?”
“Look...Mia. Shit got out of hand. I wasn’t... looking for a hookup. I... I just wanted to grab some warmer clothes since you were cold and we would be outside.” He sighs and rubs at his neck a tinge of red making its way across his cheekbones, frustration and embarrassment radiating off of him.
“Outside?” I step back from him and cross my arms across my chest, closing off my body and stance from him.
“Yeah, your highness, outside, you know, the place with open air and trees? Let’s go.” He grabs my wrist and pulls me with him across the room. With one last look in the direction of the sofa, he pulls the bedroom door open, and we walk out of his room. The door beeps behind us as it shuts.
We’re halfway down the landing when we hear a soft, light sound of sobbing coming from the other wing of the house. I freeze, causing Theo to misstep and almost fall down the stairs. Turning my body in the direction of the sound and pulling my wrist from Theo’s grasp, I start walking back up the stairs.
“Mia...” Theo tries to grab my wrist again, but I evade him and quickly run up the stairs and into the other wing. I try to figure out where the sound I’m positive I heard is coming from. Theo’s steps echo on the hardwood floor as he follows me. “Mia. Don’t. Let’s go.” He again tries to grab my arm, but I evade his touch. Terror crosses his features as I evade his grasp once again.
Reaching a door on the far right of the opposite wing, I can undoubtedly hear the soft sobbing coming from inside. I grasp the doorknob and turn it quickly, allowing the door to swing open just as Theo wraps his arms around my waist and pulls me back, off my feet, and into his body.
What I see through the door has my jaw dropping and my body freezing. I become dead weight in Theo’s tight grasp. “Jesus.” I gasp.
There’s a naked blonde woman tied to a wall by cuffs and chains. She’s stretched painfully so she’s on the points of her toes, her whole-body straining into the overstretched stance. A purple butt plug protrudes from her ass with silk ribbons attached like some macabre tail. There are red and swollen welts all over her ass and back in different sections.
A quiet moan from the other side of the room distracts me from the sight of the blonde, my heading turns in the new direction. Another woman with vibrant red hair is tied down, with her legs spread wide to some sort of mechanism chair, and there’s a mechanical dildo fucking the shit out of her. Her body is coated in a sheen of sweat, her face flushed from exertion. Pure horror travels through my body at the scene before me.
“What in the fuck is this, Theo?” My voice comes out shaking and riddled with fear. I push against his tight grip until he releases me. Once I’ve taken a step away from him, I turn and stare him down. Bile races up the back of my throat; he never looks away from me and at the women in the room. His hands are clenched firmly at his side, his jaw tight.He’d give a slab of granite a run for its money right about now.
