Page 50 of Savage Kingdom

There wasn’t much that didn’t get to me, but I would never take a woman against her will. I felt like it would fuck with me.

“Did you get your revenge?” Her head was cocked. There was no judgment in her gray eyes. She didn’t think I was fucked-up, nor did she pity me. There was blind understanding that sometimes the world fucked you in the arse and all you could do was take it.

“I did.”

She grinned at me, and it made her eyes light up. “I am glad.”

She fascinated me. How she could look broken one second and have a demon lurk in her gaze the next.

“What will you do about Yoro?”

She didn’t answer right away. Instead, she reached for the clothes covering her body. It felt like she was closing a level of intimacy between us.

“Anyone who’s ever crossed me will pay.”

That’s what I was afraid of.

* * *

The next morningDaphne was already up by the time I woke up. She was sitting on the sofa staring out the window. I was up most of the night, and I watched her sleep, wondering what would happen at daybreak.

Most of the night, I fought with the urge to hold her since she made it clear she wouldn’t like that.

“Morning, Petal.” I smiled at her, wondering what I had to do to get between those creamy thighs without breaking out into World War Three. Then on second thought, WWIII sounded like a great idea.

She turned back and gave me half a smile. When she smiled at me yesterday, I told her never to do it again because I knew that was a rare sight, and I wanted all her smiles, all her orgasms just for myself. “Where do we go from here?”

I wasn’t ready for this question, at least not yet. I had hoped we had a bit more time. I didn’t even know what more time would do if the outcome would be the same. We were playing different games; one of us was bound to get hurt.

My cell phone started beeping, and I knew I had to answer the call. I knew what needed to get done, but I chose to ignore it.

Instead, I walked up to Daphne and took her chin, and gave her a kiss. “You and me, baby, we can take over the world.”

Those words were treacherous, but I meant them.

“You’d do that for me?” Her voice was like silk.

I took a second to just stare at her and look at her profile. I wanted to commit her to memory.

I got up and looked out the window, and my stomach dropped as soon as I saw what she had been looking at all along. I turned to her, and she wasn’t even looking at me like I had disappointed her, and that made it that much worse.

People lied all the time.They told themselves it was for the greater good or for self-preservation. Everyone who lied had something to gain. I was raised amongst thieves, liars, and killers, so I was good at spotting them.

When I woke up this morning, I had been wrapped in Gideon’s arms. My head was resting on his chest, our feet entwined. It seemed so mundane and silly for me to keep letting him hold me. It went against everything I had been taught, yet it was the first time something in my life made sense. I stayed still for a moment listening to his heart thump, knowing that if I wanted to leave, he wouldn’t have been able to stop me.

I couldn’t do it.

The moment I came with him, we started a game, one I had no intention of leaving unfinished. Gideon wanted to own me, but monsters didn’t have masters.

I sat in the window when I spotted the SUV. At first, I didn’t think much of it when more cars started to surround the lot, but no one came out. I had been betrayed many times before, but it had never hurt as much as it did at this moment. Loyalty was earned and not bestowed. Secrets left a wedge big enough for a knife to stab.

When I asked him where did we go from the position we had gotten ourselves in, I had hoped he would come clean. That cool and icy demeanor I prided myself on was ready to come to shreds. I wanted to scream in his face, to demand to know why he lied to me, but I swallowed the pain and the hurt. What was one more lie? One more scar? What was pain when you’d been in a world of hurt since you could remember.

“I’m going to protect you, Petal,” he vowed when he saw what I had been looking at all along. I didn’t look at him until I heard the door. When I did, I saw it in his gaze—remorse. It all happened in slow motion; bad things always did. It’s like time stood still so it could stamp itself on your soul.

The door burst open, and Gideon tried to put himself in front of me protectively, but I removed my shoulder before he could touch me. I sidestepped him and stopped pretending to be something I wasn’t.

“If I would have known we would have company for breakfast, I would have dressed up.”

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