Page 3 of Dirty Crown
And I didn’t tell him about The Organization. I mean, how could I?
And I didn’t tell him how I’d just been assaulted by Maksim and Avery, or any of the family shit. In fact, he was shocked by my story and I glossed over at least fifty percent of it.
But it helped. As I was laying it out in the open for him, I realized that I wasn’t weak or feeble. I realized that I deserved to have more credit than I gave myself. I had survived so much insanity it was amazing that I wasn’t mentally destroyed by now.
But I knew why that was. Without the support of four men, my four pillars of strength, I would have lost myself long ago.
So there in the dark little tavern with a complete stranger, I decided that no matter how my Kings felt about me, I was going to fight to keep them in my life.
And after about five drinks, I even told the man about them. He was shocked but not that shocked. He seemed almost impressed even and expressed the fact that he wanted to meet them.
“I might have gotten back on the relationship horse if I had four hot men waiting for me,” he’d chuckled and taken a sip.
He was in the middle of telling me about his own history with love and loss, when he got his wish.
“So there I was, dumped and broken hearted and age forty three, dumped by the nicest guy I’d ever dated,” he told me, leaning in close. I was drunk enough that I’d forgotten about everything and was hanging on his story. “When I decided to turn my back on love, I’d already gone through several break ups and a few long term relationships. I was done. But you know what?”
“What?” I asked, mesmerized by his wisdom.
“I didn’t—”
His sentence was cut short as he was lifted out of his seat by the collar of his cheap suit. It took me a second to realize what was going on, and then I looked up into Ryker’s blazing eyes as he held the man above the floor.
“What the fuck are you doing to her?” Ryker roared and Kingston gathered close and glaring down at the man.
“Get the fuck away from her,” Kingston growled and shot the man such a menacing look that I didn’t think he harbored any more fantasies about having four of these beasts around. “What have you done? Why does she look like she’s crying?”
“I was crying!” I exclaimed and grabbed at Ryker and Kingston. I was too tipsy to be that effective, but they got the point. Ryker released the man’s collar, and Kingston stepped back. “I was crying because of what happened!”
“It wasn’t him?” Kingston asked, glaring at the man. The man shrunk back but raised his eyebrows and gave me an approving look.
“No, it was the situation,” I hissed. “It was what you saw.”
“You mean about you and—”
“We’ll talk about it in private,” I warned them. I would die if they mentioned it in front of my newfound friend.
“Come back with us, princess,” Ryker insisted. “You must come with us. We have business to conduct and things to talk about.”
He kept giving the man side eye looks, as if he was worried the man would understand what he was talking about.
Kingston finally took my face in his hands to get my attention, got up really close and pinned me with an intense look in the eyes.
“Princess, if you don’t get your ass back to the group, shit is going to hit the fan and everything will be lost.”
It was the way he said it, like he was in complete command of every thought I had, every movement I made. I melted somewhere inside and gave myself completely to him. To him and the Kings.
“Looks like your men are calling you home,” the man, my new friend, said and sipped his whiskey. “And if I were you, I’d listen.”
He gave each of my Kings a long, lust filled look up and down and winked at me.
I grinned, nodded, and we said our goodbyes but not before he tapped out his contact information in my phone.
On the way out, once we hit the fresh, crisp night air, the alcohol buzz wore off me and I remembered why I had run away in the first place.
“Oh god,” I said as the memory of them watching Maksim’s video reared up inside my mind. “I’m going to be sick.”
And I bent over on a sidewalk in Prague and threw up with a King on either side of me.
