Page 38 of Vengeful King

But somehow, under it, I’m still turned on. I still can’t forget how it felt for those few minutes in his office, when all that strength and power was used to give me pleasure. When he hauled me onto his desk and kissed me like he was going to consume me.

He says I’ll break; I believe him. But half of it will just be me, struggling to untangle everything I feel and want.

I sit in the darkness, my heart pounding, and try not to think about what would happen if I gave up and told him everything.

It would be so easy just to let it all spill out. It would be so simple to tell him everything, beginning to end. But he wouldn’t believe me. And it wouldn’t make a difference.

So I can’t give up. I have to fight, until the very end.

Even if in the end, I die.

CHAPTER14

Lachlan

I storm up the stairs in a blinding wave of anger. When I emerge, it’s the morning sun that blinds me, birds chirping outside the living room window and tree branches stirring gently in the breeze.

It’s been one night since I brought Katrina here. Katrina, notKate Winters. Not some dancer looking for a job. Not some random woman.

Katrina, the woman sent to kill me.

It still doesn’t make any goddamn sense.

I’m pissed. I can feel my blood pumping through my veins, my skin hot with anger. It digs its fingers into my brain until it feels like it’s on fire.

I’m pissed at Katrina. I feel betrayed, as ridiculous as that seems. We never had anything but somehow, it sure fucking feels like it. It feels like there was a chance at something more and she threw it away for this. For a failed murder attempt.

More than Katrina, I’m angry at whoever hired her. I know they’re part of the underworld, whoever they are. They have to be. They chose Katrina and sent her after me. They sent an untrained woman to do something she’d very likely fail at. They can’t have really thought it would work.

Beyond those things, I’m pissed about the situation.

Did the person who sent her know what would happen? That I’d be interested in her?

I’ve held fast to my rules about dancers for so long. But this one woman came along, and for the first time in my life, I found someone I wanted.

The whole thing is a fucking mess.

I was going to take my time learning her body. I was going to draw it out, getting her wet, making her moan and writhe on my desk. I was going to make her come so hard she’d forget everything but my name.

That thought appalls me now. It appalls me that I was ready to throw caution to the wind, let some woman I barely knew control my thoughts like that. I was letting my dick do the thinking.

And now where am I?

I’m pissed at myself. Even beyond wanting her, I’m pissed at not being able to torture her now.

I threatened her. I told her to talk, made a useless comment about making her talk. It was just words. In any other circumstance, I would have broken her fingers. I would have made her hurt.

But I couldn’t.

I couldn’t bring myself to do it. It wasn’t a fear of violence, an unwillingness to get my hands dirty. As much as I use it as a last resort, I’m not a stranger to physical violence. I’ve thrown punches, stabbed, fired bullets, done everything I had to.

I couldn’t hurt Katrina, and that’s not like me.

I don’t condone violence against women—men who stalk their exes, husbands that beat their wives. That kind of violence is disgusting, and the people who do it are not human. They’re filth.

But in my time, I’ve known vicious, bloodthirsty women. In my line of work, I’ve met them all. I’ve met women who killed their husbands to be with men they’d just met at a club. I’ve known women who sold their daughters to men with laughing faces. I’ve known all kinds. Kinds that try to topple empires, only to destroy families.

I don’t spare women because they’re women. They’re capable of the same evil as any man I’ve known. They need to be dealt with just as ruthlessly, when it’s needed.

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