Page 6 of Hostile King

The doting girl who still lives inside me would happily lick the tanned dip in his throat just to savor the very essence of him. I yo-yo at the thought of it, sucked into a wishful thought where he admits our time together wasn’t meaningless.

“Doyoutrust me?” he asks with a low growl, taking a quick look over his shoulder where Paco is watching us like a hawk, his arms crossed.

When Tomás looks back at me, his brooding countenance vibrates with an emotion I’ve never seen him display before. It makes me shiver with both terror and longing. My faulty instincts scream at me, identifying it as a hunger, a suffocating need that consumes us both.

Behind his lustful eyes, an unsecured temper brawls for control. He looks destroyed and the more we stare at each other, the more I tap into his psyche and feed off this unhealthy infatuation of mine.

“Are you engaged?” I manage to ask, my raspy voice cracking like brittle bark.

His head nods. “Yes.” The truth breaks free without elaborating on the details. “Did he tell you that?” he grits out.

I square my shoulders and suck in a ragged breath. I’m holding the gun with no way to know if I’ll use it. The flimsy speck of pride I’ve fostered during our time together disintegrates before me.

I’m simply the pitiful girl haunted by a mirage of a man and the woman who needs to survive him.

“He did. And he told me I’m a decoy for your wife. Someone to take the heat off the woman you care about. Is that true?”

The growl scraping out of his throat startles every living creature in hearing distance. It chills me right through to my soft bone marrow, making my skeleton freeze even though my heart pumps faster.

“And you believe that?” he hisses. “He’s playing us off each other. Remember what I told you in the car.”

I hear what he says—loud and clear. But this tragedy has too many thorns to catch me with. Too many scratches over my dignity and slashes to cut through my self-respect. I had willingly surrendered to him.

Absolutely. Wholly. Shamefully.

And in return, he’d made me feel alive, night after night.

“He’s right about one thing, Tomás. You’re getting married, aren't you? It explains why you brought me here and why I had to tell everyone I was only your assistant. You knew they’d read between the lines and figure out we were fucking. This dress was just the icing on the cake.” The vintage fibers tighten around me like claws. “A little bit sexy and special enough to turn their heads away from your wife. That’s the fucked up part…that I wasn’t a distraction for you. I was a distraction for her.”

A deadly snarl catches me off guard, the growl so raw it twists my veins. His cold-blooded persona slides into place shuttering me from his humanity.

In a beat he seizes his handgun and points it right at Paco’s face. “You’re a lying motherfucking bastard,” he roars. “Tell her the truth.”

I rush forward, my aim on Tomás unwavering. “Don’t,” I cry out, my voice all breath. “Don’t move, Tomás.”

Paco shifts in the borderline of my vision, instantly dragging my gaze to where he lurks like a viper ready to strike.

I have a choice to make. A path I must travel alone and make peace with the outcome of my decision.

Kill or be killed.

I could accept the feelings unraveling inside me as destiny and live with the consequences of trusting my gut—of believing the bond we forged was genuine. Or choose to become a person who disregards her emotions, who wallows in the darkness of her soul—who murders men that humiliate her.

“He’s a fucking liar, Carina. Look me in the eye for fuck’s sake.” I refuse to fall into his hypnotic abyss and lose myself in the hurricane we had created out of our afflictions. “Look at me, not him. I fucking order you to look at me.” My arms lock in place, but my chest heaves with adrenaline. “Let me kill him,” he spits out, strangling the muggy air in his fists.

Finally, with my soles anchoring me to the planks, I stare at Tomás’ tortured face and swallow the palpitations going crazy in my neck. My tongue skates over the landscape of my lips, my core begging for his brutality to claim my dark side.

It terrifies me how his predatory stance turns me on, even now in the midst of our inevitable war. Our synergistic energy steals the air from my lungs. It feeds my veins with toxic lust and screws with my irresponsible heart.

“Did you feel anything for me at all?” I whisper.

“Do it, Carina.” Paco interrupts. “Kill the king and take back control of your life. Do it for your family.” His taunt triggers a memory, so deeply embedded it could be mistaken as a bad dream.

Groping fingers fist my hair until my aching head reaches gritty cement. An unbearable weight crushes my lungs.

“You’ll never see your family again. Stop fucking moving or you’ll never see the light of day either.”

I wrestle wildly in retaliation, helplessly wriggling like a wretched fish dying on the pebbly shore. I’m overwhelmed by the group of men manhandling me into the rear of an old transit van. My ankles are duct taped and my wrists wrenched behind my back, secured with unbreakable cords. The sharp scratch of a needle penetrates my rigid bicep, a familiar sensation I’ve become accustomed to over the years.

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