Page 16 of Lost Kingdom

“It’s time to get up,” I grumble, comforted by the fact she won’t bewalking to her newest crime scene. Nor will she have to catch a bus or sign out a car not nearly as maintained or safe as it should be.

Sitting up in bed and letting the covers drop to my lap, I glance down at my belly, at the jagged scars that slash across my torso like a tiger took to me at some point in my life.

But no. Not a tiger. Just my father.

Scar tissue makes my stomach bumpy and textured, and ink over the top makes it appear all the more garish. But it doesn’t bother me these days. Nothing hurts me anymore. No one is threatening to shoot me. No one takes their blade to my skin. Hell, no one—besides Aubree—is brave enough to say boo around me.

Except, perhaps, Minka and the cat.

Pushing off the mattress so my covers fall to the side and my cock leads the way, I walk my naked ass across the room and into the hall. Waking alone should mean waking soft. But having Aubree Emeri on my mind means I turn the hot water on as soon as I enter the bathroom, step into the cubicle and tear the curtain around to shield me from the watchful cat. Then I wrap my palm around my dick and drop my forehead to the tile wall with a noisythunk. Already, a groan works its way along my throat and out to join the rhythmic slide of my hand.

Remembering Aubree’s delicious curves sitting in my lap once upon a time is enough to make my balls tense and ache. Forcing her to dance with me? The best G-rated shit I’ve experienced in too long.

I’m a man who relies on sex to regulate. Not for the emotional connection. There’s never been love between me and a woman in the past. There’ve been few morning afters. No semi-relationships. No near-misses where feelings might become involved.

There’s just another mentally screwed up Malone, taught to fuck before he was old enough to grow hair on his balls. Trained to take women, with or without their consent, to serve his every want. We were told we could have whoever we wanted, whenever, wherever, and there would be no consequences afterwards.

Now, I’m still that guy who needs to come, but I’m a fuckin’ eunuch, touching no one because Aubree won’t be with me. Taking no one, because there is no woman on this planet, besides her, that will do.

I squeeze my cock tighter and close my eyes so I can get the job done. Finish. Get dressed and onto the streets, where I need to be.

I think of Aubree this past summer, tanning on the front of a hundred-million-dollar yacht with a cocktail in her hand and a massive wide-brimmed hat shielding her face. Her skin was blindingly pale, but her thighs, sinfully thick compared to the rest of her body.

At a hundred and ten pounds, she’s too thin for her own good. The risks she faces, if she should fall sick, are too real, considering she has nothing to rely on in the event of famine. Her waist is insanely slim, but her hips flare wide. Her arms, painfully narrow, but her backside, round enough to fucking chew on.

Lord. I think of doing exactly that at least once a day.

She’s the perfect pear shape, created as though her god, whoever he might be, molded and planned with me in mind. She’s everything I think about when I touch my dick. And hell, she was everything I used to think about when with other women. Hers was the name I spoke. Her blonde hair, the hair I imagined pulling.

And the women… well, they were all too willing to play along.

I speed my hand as my release barrels closer. Hot water scalds my back, sluicing over the ridged flesh, long ago healed from another man’s abuse. Then I reach down and cup my balls, squeezing just tight enough to make it hurt.

Quickly, skilled at my expediency, I come as hot spurts of Malone poison slam against the tile and dribble down, where it’ll eventually join the swirling water and filter into the drain. While in my mind, I see Aubree’s smile. The belly-laughter she’s always so free to express. Her perfect smile, and fuckkkkk, the paradise I know as her body.

I’m a made man hailing from a world where anything goes and consent is a joke.

But here I am in a whole other city, a whole other reality, whacking off while I think PG-13 thoughts about a woman I’ve yet to touch.

It’s ridiculous, really. But Jesus, who needs porn when you can have Aubree Emeri?

I feel no disgust when I’m done. Nor do I feel relief. I feel… nothing, really. But at least the anxiety swirling in my belly when I wake is gone. And that… that’s why I do this, every single fucking day.

My phone trills somewhere in another room. The high-pitched screeching telling me exactly who is calling, so I pump soap into my hands and clean up for a brand-new day. I wash my cock and make it hard again, though I have no intention of pulling it a second time. I wash my belly, the scarred lines like brail beneath my fingertips. I wash my hair and do the same for the short beard I keep on my chin. Then I smack the shower tap off and step out to grab a towel.

My phone silences, at least for a moment.

I dry off and scrub the towel over my hair to absorb as much water as I can, then I step into the hall and find Capone waiting. Watching. His paws folded under his body and his long, orange tail flicking the floor to communicate his bad mood.

He wants to be fed, and I haven’t gone to the kitchen yet.

I head into my bedroom and drop the towel on the floor, then pulling on a pair of shorts, I keep the crackle of the radio in the back of my mind. They send cars elsewhere in the city to deal with crimes committed against others. Break and enter. Domestic violence. Disturbing the peace, already, so fucking early in the morning. But as I head to my closet and select a pair of jeans, my phone trills again.

Felix’s ringtone, setting my temper on edge and my mood dropping lower.

I love my brother. Honestly, I do. But not once in his entire life has he called me before noon and it turned out to be a ‘just because’ phone call.

It’s always business. Always bad news. Always something that gives me a headache.

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