Page 40 of Vicious Prince (Violent Kingdom)

His leather-gloved fingers reach around my neck and squeeze, as he uses his other hand to reach for something in his pocket.

My entire body starts to shake violently, and he’s barely touched me. My worst nightmare is to be raped. I don’t accept drinks from strangers, I never walk alone at night, and there’s been exactly one man in my bed the past eight years - Will, the guy I’ve been madly in love with. The kind of guy who wouldn’t so much as ask me twice if I said I didn’t want to have sex. Because my nightmare isn’t just rooted in the fact that I’m a woman, from a powerful family, a family with more enemies than we could ever count. My worst fear is so precise becauseit’s happened before.

I foolishly thought the money and the Capulet name and the bodyguards and my general sense of extreme caution in life would mean that I’d always be safe, from that day forth. Something bad happened to me when I was younger because I had been careless. Foolish. Rebellious. A secret party, a single cup of something sweet, laced without my knowledge, and I’d been a sitting duck. An easy fuck. A girl who blacked out. A girl who woke up in a dark room with no underwear and blood where I had been broken without my consent. I blamed myself, because if I had been at home, in bed, asleep, like I was supposed to be, it would never have happened.

At least, that’s what my uncle Enzo said when he found out what had happened to me.

I believed him.

I changed everything to make sure I would always be safe, so that nobody could ever hurt me like that again. And in my arrogance, I felt completely secure.

How wrong I was.

Look at where I am.

My captor’s large body leans over mine, blocking out much of the weak light. He takes one of his leather gloves off, trailing his fingers along my slit before circling my clit gently. Gently - like a lover would. I thrash around, trying to escape his touch, but all I succeed in doing is making the friction of his finger against me more intense. I stop moving, tensing my fists, my abdominal muscles, my ass, everything.

“Please stop,” I whisper, staring up at the ceiling, feeling hot tears roll from the corners of my eyes and trace their way down my temples, slowly bleeding into my hairline. God, I hate to beg. It fills me with rage. I’ve never begged for anything in my life, except perhaps this morning, when I begged my father to not have to marry Joshua Grayson.

A sob rocks my chest, piercing the statue stillness I’ve forced my body to become, my lungs gasping for breath as everything narrows.A panic attack.What fucking use is a panic attack going to do for me right now?

Though, maybe I’ll pass out if I hyperventilate enough. It’s happened before. My blackouts have been few and far between, but dramatic enough when they come in the middle of a funeral, or a party, or in a hospital corridor when you discover your sister is, indeed, dead. Here? If I pass out, this asshole will probably set me on fire to wake me up again.

Still, that's the thing about a panic attack. It creeps up andattacksyou. It’s happening. It’s not like I have a choice in the matter. Breathing exercises might work in social situations, and meditation apps might work when you’re at a yoga retreat in Cabo, but when your captor is finger-fucking you in the dark after shooting your fellow captive, a panic attack goes and goes without any possible intervention.

I sob and gasp for air as his finger moves almost casually against my clit.

If he does this to me, I want it to hurt. It makes it easier if it hurts. I don’t want his gentle touch. I don’t want his steady rub.

And I think he knows that.

Jesus fucking Christ, who is this guy? How the fuck does he know that the only thing more terrifying than him brutally raping me is him gently bringing me to orgasm as if I want it?

He stops momentarily, and it takes every ounce of self-control that I possess to stop from raising my hips to find his finger again. Shame floods through my body, a poison that spreads to every extremity, and I imagine my naked body blazing red with embarrassment.Just make it cold, I wish feverishly.Make it clinical. Make it terrible, if you’re going to steal this from me. Don’t make it feel like the most pleasurable feeling I’ve had since I fucked Will in the mausoleum.

But I can’t say that. I can’t spoon feed this psychopath with all of the things that frighten me the most. He’ll take each one, mold them into shiny daggers, and use them to make me bleed.

The crinkle of a condom wrapper has me shaking even more violently.This is happening. It’s fucking happening.I crane my head up and to the side, needing to know what he’s doing, desperate to find a way to stop him. In my peripheral vision, I see Rome, his chest rising and falling too quickly, one hand staunching the river of blood pumping from his shoulder. He’s so close I could almost reach out and touch him, but my hands are shackled, and what could I do, anyway? I focus my attention on my captor — our captor — wincing as I see him rolling a condom onto his erection, the tip of his cock dark with arousal. A tiny part of me is relieved he’s wearing protection, because I don’t want any part of him left inside me after this horror is finally over. But on the other hand, a condom means no DNA, and if I survive this, am I really going to live the rest of my life looking over my shoulder, wondering when he’s going to show up and grab me again?

Is that how this ends? Without an ending at all?

Then I remember the XO he painted on my chest in my own blood and all thoughts of survival float away with the rest of my hope. The XO killer doesn’t leave survivors.

He leaves bodies.

He must notice me eyeing his condom-wrapped dick intently. He pushes my thighs apart so hard I feel like I might snap in two, making room for his body between my spread legs as I fight to press them closed. The mask muffles his sigh, as he pushes the tip of his cock against my entrance and stays there.

Resignation punches me in the gut as the fight goes out of me. My knees fall open, no force required to keep them apart anymore. He’s inside me, now, even though he hasn’t seated himself fully inside me. He’s breached my body, and I’m too weak to keep struggling. The back of my head hits the table with a resounding thud, and I turn it to the side, exhausted.

Rome.I blink the film of tears away from my eyes, trying to focus on him through the haze of salt water flooding my vision. He’s in a bad way — worse than me — and I feel my heartbeat speed up when I see how ashen his skin is. Even in this weak light, it’s impossible to miss the grey pallor he’s suddenly taken on, the blood everywhere, the glassy film over his eyes as he meets my eyes, but doesn’t entirely see me.

At least, I don’t think he sees me. His stare is too fixed, his expression too distant. For a moment, I wonder if he’s dead. But then he mouthsI’m sorryto me, and my heart fucking shatters.

Ourcaptor starts circling my clit again, long, deliberate strokes with his thumb that make my body react eagerly, despite my abject horror. I hate this man. I want to sit up and tear his eyes out, choke him to death with my bare hands, slice away at his flesh until he bleeds out at my feet. I’ve never much had the stomach for blood, but here, in this room, the air thick with the copper scent of Capulet and Montague blood as it all mixes together — I thirst for the spilling ofthismadman’s lifeblood like nothing else.

“So wet,” he says, pulling away a little so that he can trail the head of his cock through my soaked pussy lips, the lust in his voice evident even underneath whatever it is that’s altering his voice inside that mask. I make a mental note to rip his mask off the moment I have my hands free, and at least see who he is before he murders me.

I feel blood rise in my cheeks when he says that, because it’s true. Iamwet, not because I want this, but because he’s pressing my flesh in ways that reduce it to the most animalistic of vessels. I am a lioness in the savannah, forced down in the dirt as a larger male lion does whatever he pleases to her, while she growls and lies still and waits for it to be over. We’re in the wild, down here, and we’re nothing but animals writhing in sweat and blood.

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