Page 54 of Crown of Thorns
“No, hen. You agreed and this is happening. I need to know you’re safe,” he says.
I try to arch my back and dig my palms into the soft bed coverings for purchase. It’s no use. Rhys is faster than me.
Sensing the change in my body language or maybe even just knowing I’m about to spiral and run, he grips the back of my neck in his large hand and pushes the rest of my body into the bed.
“Please,” I beg as I feel the coolness of an antiseptic wipe on my rump. “Don’t do this.”
“I have to,” he says before he reaches into the dop kit with his free hand and grabs a rather large syringe.
“No—” I gasp as I watch him out of the corner of my eye.
He bites down on the needle cover and pulls the syringe away from his mouth before piercing my skin with it and pressing down on the plunger.
Tears burn across my face and soak into the mattress and my tangled hair. I don’t fight. I don’t scream. My body is limp, having given up.
He did it. He put a tracker in my backside. He chipped me like a rescue dog.
“Stella,” he says. His voice is pained but I don’t care. He built this prison for us both and he can rot init with me. “Please understand.”
“I think I hate you,” I whisper.
“You don’t.”
“I do.”
“I’ll show you,” he says as he covers my back with his body and slides his hand underneath me, stroking me, heating my body.
No matter how cruel he is, he knows how to use my body, to manipulate me into compliance. I’m just a hostage to his lust and wants, my body happily following along, and I turn my face into the mattress and groan as he works my tender flesh faster and faster.
Before long, my orgasm rolls through me. But then again, that has never been a problem with Rhys. He always makes me come, unless I’m being punished, of course. But this isn’t a punishment, this is an entrapment. This is a reminder that we’re good together, at least in the bedroom if not dangerously toxic elsewhere. I guess he’s my blue-ringed octopus: beautiful but deadly.
“That’s my good girl,” he croons as he lines up the tip of his cock to my drenched opening, thrusting deep inside of me. “So beautiful as you take my cock. You were made for me.”
“Yes,” I cry out.
It feels so good to be loved by him, even for a moment. And he’s not wrong, it feels like I was made just for him, for this. Maybe we were always meant to crash together, whether he found me intentionally oraccidentally. I’ll never know, but in moments like this, I’m not sure it matters.
He makes love to me thoroughly, before turning me into his arms again, to hold me while we drift off to sleep.
It’s been the most beautiful night of my life, one where I felt cherished and safe and maybe even… loved.
It’s unfortunate that tomorrow will throw us to the wolves again.
Chapter 17
Game of Thrones
“Just breathe,” I whisper to myself in the full length mirror. No one here is going to give me a pep talk but me… and I can do this… probably.
Tonight’s dinner is just a bit more formal than all the others. We’re welcoming the most important players from around the world, or at least the ones we’re supposed to be the closest with. Some are Rhys’s friends, like a sheik from the middle east and the American president—how weird that I voted for him in the last election when I thought I was American too—my uncle, and several others but not the full list of wedding guests. In two days, we’ll have a reception here that everyone who’s anyone from around the world will attend if they’re able. Or so Dahlia tells me. The thought makes my belly tumble around like I put it in a dryer.
Because of tonight’s importance, I’ve been told I need to look as perfect as possible because all eyes will be on me. Why anyone would think that would make me do better, be better, I do not know. If anything, it makes me so nervous that I’ll likely catch my heel on the carpet and face plant in front of some emperor or something equally intense. Or spill soup on my dress.
For that reason alone, I insisted on a darker color. Maeve was beside herself because I’m only to be a bride once.
Ha! I’ve been the bride at what feels like approximately eighty-seven royal wedding events already, with more to come.
Dahlia just laughed because she’s come to know me so well that she knows how frazzled I feel, even if no one else does.
