Page 23 of The Casella King

My arms come up to his shoulders, and with each thrust, my nails dig deeper and deeper into his skin. I’m dying to come. Holding back my release is almost painful, and just when Ithink he will make this go on forever, he whispers into my ear, completely undoing me. “Come for me, sweetheart.” His dick hardens like a rock inside me as he continues to thrust, my moans ripping through my throat with an intensity I’ve never felt before. He thrusts a couple more times, growling into my ear as he fills me up with his cum. We lay there for a moment, both of us trying to regain some train of thought. Panting, he takes his dick in his hand and gives it a couple of pumps, watching me still coming down from my ecstasy.

My mind reels with what we have just done. I’m never this reckless in my life, but something about Ezra brings out the rebel in me.

I lay across Ezra’s chest, absentmindedly tracing my fingers along the lines of his tattoos as I watch the sunset over the river through our window.

“I’m not ready to go back,” I sigh.

He sits up, and I follow, wrapping the sheet around my body.

“I have a job to do.” He runs a hand over his face as he stares at the wall, silence falling between us.

After what seems like forever, he speaks. “I didn’t want it…” he admits, which confuses me. I don’t speak, waiting for him to elaborate. “…The title of the King.”

There’s more silence as I purse my lips, unsure of what to say.

“But as the eldest son, I had no choice when my father died.” The muscles on his back flex as his arms rest behind him. “I hate living within boundaries. I learnt at a young age that I have none.”

“No, you don’t.” I laugh, but his face doesn’t change, and I realise he didn’t mean it in the way I thought he did.

“I don’t like to live my life by rules, Aries.”

I nod, the air seeming thicker between us.

“I’ve bent the rules for as long as I can remember, and now I break them because I have mastered them.” He looks over to me, his eyes dark, sending a shiver down my spine.

“Dominic wasn’t a true king.” A sinister smile creeping across his face. “And that’s why he’s buried six feet deep.” He talks about his father without feeling as if he wasn’t bound to him by blood.

“He was your father,” I whisper, and he chuckles.

“Dominic was many things, but a father remains low on that list.” His voice drips with disdain, mimicking my own feelings in my chest about my own father.

“I guess we have that in common.” I rest my head on his shoulder and sigh.

He turns to face me, pulling me on top of his lap, and I straddle him. He cups my face in his hands, and it feels like he looks directly into my soul. “I will never let your father hurt you.”

My heart tweaks inside my chest at the thought of Ezra’s father hurting him. “Is that what Dominic did to you?” I ask, my voice low. “Did he hurt you?”

He closes his eyes and grits his teeth for a second, then presses his lips on mine. “It doesn’t matter now, sweetheart,” he speaks, his voice coating me in what feels like velvet.

“Because of him, I feelnothing,” he whispers and a sinking feeling creeps its way into my chest, but I ignore it. I place my hand on Ezra’s chest, and he clasps it within his.

“Isn’t it funny that those who we are closest to end up hurting us the most?” I whisper, and he cocks his head to the side. “I spent years growing up with a father who believed I was a waste of space.” I sigh, remembering the exact moment he said this to me. “It was because I refused to give him my hard-earned money to spend on his insatiable habits. I was working in hospitality, a small café in town, and I had just received my weekly pay. It wasn’t much, but it was something that I had earned. WhenI got home, my father asked me for half, said I owed him for living under his roof.” Ezra’s eyes darken as he listens to me. “Ever since my mother passed away, he was always looking for someone else to blame, someone else to torture.” My words slip freely from my mouth as if Ezra was no stranger to me, and I feel at ease being able to explain to an outsider how my father made me feel. “For years, half my pay went to him, and sometimes he would take it all, telling me that I used too much water that week, or making up some bullshit about the electricity bill.” My chest constricts as I remember living off a loaf of bread that entire week.

“No child should have a parent dependent on them to survive.”

Ezra’s words send a knife into my gut, and it all makes sense to me now. That’s exactly what my father had done, depended on Giselle and me to survive. The constant emotional abuse and manipulation we suffered whilst living under his roof is not a normal part of childhood, and I always pushed it aside, ignored it because everyone kept telling me “he’s your father,” as if that means something when the person who’s supposed to support and protect you treats you worse than a parent ever should.

“Although he never hit me?—”

“Stop belittling it. Emotional abuse is still abuse,” he interjects.

I bite the skin on my bottom lip, considering his words.

“Tell me what else he did.” He pulls me into him, his eyes never leaving mine.

I hesitate for a moment, not wanting to share more in fear of his judgement, but it feels good to tell him. Right here, in his arms is the safest I’ve felt in a really long time, and what could it hurt if I told him? We’d be divorced and never have to look at each other soon enough anyway. That’s what he said after all.

I sigh, closing my eyes and remembering parts of my childhood I had tried so hard to forget. “He used to hit my mother a lot,” I confess. “She would always hide my sister and I in the cupboard and give us our dolls when she knew he was going to come home from work because it was always the same.” I pause. “He would come home, throw his bag on the chair and shout at my mother, asking her why the smallest things weren’t done. Then, when she says she was tired, or looking after Giselle and I, he would hit her and tell her that it wasn’t good enough, that she needed to do better because this was her role as a mother.”

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