Page 31 of Royal Beast
“No, Kellan, I thinkyou’rethe one missing the point.”
I stand firm, unwilling to yield to her point. Her expression hardens.
“You dragged me into this situation, this life, this mess of a marriage because you can’t standto be alone. Because you don’t think you’ll get anyone else.”
Her words are a slap to the face, but there’s something else beneath the anger, a spark of something I refuse to name.
“You think I can’t get anyone else? Is that it?”
She scoffs, but there’s a flicker of uncertainty in her eyes. “Prove me wrong, then.”
I don’t think. I don’t need to. My hands fly to her waist, closing the space between us as my mouth crashes down on hers. She gasps, her hands trying to shove me away, but she falters after a second and stops. Her fingers dig into my shirt instead, gripping it tightly as if she can’t bear for me to walk away from her. Our kiss deepens, a mix of passion and anger igniting the spark between us into a raging inferno. Her tongue swipes against my bottom lip as my hands move to grasp the back of her head, pulling her against me to fuse our mouths together.
After several long moments, I regain a modicum of sanity and pull back just enough to look into her eyes, my breath harsh against her cheek. “You’re wrong, Darcy,” I murmur. “About everything.”
I kiss her again, and this time, there’s nothing between us—no arguments, no walls—just the raw, undeniable pull that I can’t ignore any longer. Scooping her up in my arms, I carry her to the bedroom, our bedroom. I need to show her how wrong she is, show her that I can get any woman I want but I chose her, I want her.
She might not know it, but I’ve carried a torch for her for four years, and now that I have her under my roof, bound to my side, I’m not about to let her go anytime soon. Not until she realizes that I’m everything she needs, everything she wants but is afraid to admit.
Darcy and I are twin flames, destined to burn together. Even if that means burning everything else down around us, I won’t let her go.
15
DARCY
After seeing Kellan get so badly injured because of me, it’s made me skittish around him. I’m afraid of how we clash, afraid of letting my stubborn streak take over. I want to say something to ease the tension between us, but every time I look at him, a dark, heavy guilt twists in my gut.
I shouldn’t have run off like that.
Then, inevitably, the old anger flares up again, that helpless feeling I remember from childhood when my father would blow our last bit of money, leaving us without food. That same helpless feeling has me ready to start World War III with Kellan all over again.
So, I’ve been avoiding him, partly to alleviate my guilt and partly to keep myself from snapping. But tonight, he came back from the pub with the scent of beer on his breath, practically angling for a fight. And I knew I wasn’t going to hold back. All that simmering resentment and guilt came rushing to the surface, and we finally had it out, saying everything we’d both been bottling up.
I thought that was the end of it until he kissed me. Now, he’s carrying me to our bedroom. My mind is a blur of desperateneed and the twisted urge to prove he needs me more than I need him.
As he lays me down on the bed, I reach out to pull him toward me, but he steps back, and my eyes widen, shock coursing through me. Kellan’s smile turns sinister, a glint of dangerous mischief in his eyes that sends a shiver racing through me. Nerves and excitement make my pulse quicken as he steps over to the chest of drawers and slides open the top one.
Anticipation builds inside me as he rifles through for something before pushing the drawer closed and turning to face me. “Bad girls need to be punished,” he says. Slowly, he ambles forward, dangling something that glints in the dim light of the room. I inhale sharply when I realize he’s holding a pair of handcuffs.
“Have you ever done anything like this before, darlin’?” he asks, kneeling on the bed before me.
“N–No,” I stammer out. My knees clench, my body torn between eager anticipation and a spark of nervous tension at the sight of the cuffs.
“We’ll use the stoplight system, he says, crawling up the bed toward me. “Red means stop, no questions asked. Yellow means slow down. Green means go.”
His gaze darkens, fingers tracing a path up my thigh. “Now, I’m going to tie you up, and you’re going to beg for mercy, unless you’d rather I didn’t?” He tilts his head, a hint of challenge in his eyes.
I swallow hard, the idea of being completely vulnerable to him sending a thrill straight to my core.
Kellan teases a pattern across my lower stomach with his finger. “What’s your color, sweetheart?”
Our eyes meet and I shiver at the intensity of his gaze. Without hesitation, the word falls from my lips.
“Green.”
His smirk turns downright predatory as he straddles me and grabs one of my wrists, placing a cuff on it. He then loops a cuff through the headboard and places the other cuff on my other wrist so I’m completely tied up, the restraints tethered to the headboard. The cuffs are metal but they’re padded so they’re not uncomfortable. I could probably wriggle out if I tried hard enough, but I’m more interested in seeing what Kellan will do to me.
“Color?” he asks again, the evidence of his arousal pressing against me as he sits back to admire his handiwork.
