Page 34 of King of Liars

It was so fucking disturbing.

I shouldn’t have gone along with this, yet now I knew this was inside me…and it may have been the very thing King had seen that had drawn us together.

“Thank you,” King whispered softly. “My knights are dismissed.”

I started to lean down, but a hand rested on my shoulder, and I looked up at Two, who shook his head.

King wouldn’t approve of me checking in on him, I guessed.

“Just wanted to get him out of these zip ties,” I said.

One opened a drawer near him and passed me a pair of scissors. I knelt and cut his wrists free before doing the same with his ankles.

Two stooped down and wrapped his arm around me, helping me back to my feet.

King must not have liked the guys sticking around when he was like that, since we all headed out quickly, Two shutting the door behind us.

“He likes his privacy now,” Two whispered to me.

“Don’t we need to make sure he’s okay?”

“He’s fine,” Two said. “He’s tougher than he looks.”

The way he said it, I took that to mean it got even more violent than I’d just witnessed—no, fucking experienced.

Two and I offered to stay and clean up the room while Hole and One headed on their way.

I was glad it was down to me and Two, but I waited until we were outside before I said anything. “Two…”

“Hey, you hungry?”

“Could use a little something right now.”

He encouraged me to follow his car, and we wound up at a nearby hole-in-the-wall diner, where we ordered coffees and some food. It was actually a good spot to chat since it wasn’t very busy. Perfect for talking about things that shouldn’t have been talked about in public.

“That was fucked up,” I finally forced myself to say. Before that moment, I’d remained silent. I was in shock.

“Are you okay with it?”

I quieted as I picked at the pancakes I’d ordered. I hadn’t eaten anything, wasn’t sure I could, but it looked good on the menu. “I think the fucked-up part was how much I enjoyed it.”

Two nodded. “Yeah, we all felt that way at first. It’s not wrong that it got you worked up and confused. No one handles it great that first time. Hard to accept that there’s this thing inside us that just wants to tear something apart…or that there’s something in King that wants to be torn apart.”

“Seems like…”

“Something we shouldn’t be doing? It feels that way to me too sometimes. But we all keep going back for more.”

And I knew why.

As disturbed as I’d been, when I’d gotten lost in the experience, when I’d let go and reveled in the moment, there was a rush unlike anything I’d ever experienced before.

Despite the memories it evoked, in hurting King, I had released so much anger that had lingered within me, the secrets that bound my soul. It was life-giving, exhilarating, empowering…and yet, it seemed something so destructive shouldn’t have felt so good.

Or so goddamn erotic.

“It gets easier to manage the more you do it,” Two assured me. “And he doesn’t need it like that most of the time. Just sometimes, when he’s having a hard time. It’s like his own version of therapy.”

“Something tells me therapy would be more helpful than that.”

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