The King’s Maiden (Camelot Court #1)

Chapter Ten

QUINN

G iven that my ex had been practically obsessed with my virginity, always saying how awesome it would be when we finally had sex, I had to admit I expected Landon to react differently.

But then again, my ex’s reaction had been sort of cringe-worthy. And a contributing factor to why I hadn’t gone through with it, besides not feeling with him even an ounce of what I’d felt tonight. At the time, I just thought every guy felt that way about virgins.

Apparently, some guys didn’t share the same fascination with it. Maybe they didn’t all see it as a prize. Maybe my ex’s implication that our first time together would be less amazing if I’d slept with other people had been a giant red flag, and a lack of fascination was the norm.

I hadn’t expected the anger, though, or the betrayal on Landon’s face. And I definitely hadn’t expected him to say what Max had said earlier.

“What does that mean?” I pushed up to kneel on the bed, noting the way he stepped back as I got closer. “Max said that earlier, too. But I don’t understand.”

Landon stopped his retreat, his eyes narrowing on me. “You were talking to Max Dread tonight?”

“Okay, seriously. You too? Does everyone call him by his full name?”

“Answer the question, Quinn.”

The hair on the back of my neck rose. Something about hearing him call me by my name…Not to say it thrilled me to be called Maiden, but hearing it now, it didn’t sit right.

“Why does it matter?” I hedged carefully. “Am I not allowed to talk to the other Knights? Because if so, I didn’t know that either.”

“Did he tell you to say you’re a virgin? To put that on your application so we’d pick you?”

“What? What do you mean?”

He crowded my space, towering over where I knelt on the bed. “You expect me to believe that you applied to be a Maiden knowing what it involved when you’ve never had sex before?”

“I—I don’t—It doesn’t matter to me what you believe, Landon.” I shuffled back on my knees. But I couldn’t get far, and when Landon followed me, I lost my balance. Falling backward, my hands braced my body on the bed. Landon planted his fists beside me, cutting off my escape.

“I don’t know what you’re doing right now, but I don’t like it.” I leaned back farther. “And I seriously have no idea what you’re talking about. No one told me to put that on my application. I put it because it’s the truth.”

He scoffed and dropped his head, so he was right in my face. “You’re lying.”

“And you’re insane!” I shot back, working my legs out from under me. “What do you want, physical proof? A gynecologist to verify my hymen is intact? Blood on the sheets?”

No longer kneeling, I dug my heels into the mattress and scooted back. Landon’s gaze flicked down between my legs, like he might actually be considering that as a real offer.

“What the actual fuck?” I shrieked, snapping his eyes back to my face.

I scrambled back farther on the bed. Letting my back fall onto the mattress, I drew my knees to my chest. Before he could react, I planted my heels on his stomach and kicked my legs out as hard as I could.

He grunted, recoiling from the kick and stumbling back off the mattress. I seized the opportunity and shot for the foot of the bed. I almost made it over the side when he caught hold of my leg. He dodged my kick at him and didn’t loosen his grip. Yanking me toward him, the quick jerk of my legs knocked my arms out from beneath me.

My chest hit the mattress, forcing the breath from my lungs. Landon gripped my upper body and flipped me onto my back. Before I could get in another kick, he climbed on top of me, straddling my hips.

He braced most of his weight on his knees, but I still couldn’t get out from under him. I swiped at his chest, hoping to claw my way free. With one hand, he pinned my wrists above my head.

I bucked my hips and tried to throw him off.

Shifting his weight back, he hooked his feet over my legs so I couldn’t use them to force him off. He stretched the full length of his body over mine, sinking down and pressing me into the mattress. I hated the way my traitorous body noticed how good it felt—how my alarm evenly matched my arousal the second I felt his cock against my pubic bone.

“Let me go, Landon,” I all but growled in his face.

He didn’t budge. “Tell me the truth, Quinn.”

His grip tightened on my wrist, and while his voice rose with his demand, he didn’t shout. He was completely unmoved by my reaction—scarily in control.

Suddenly, his weight felt heavier. My awareness of how it pressed on my chest sharpened painfully, and tears pricked my eyes. I started to panic. My lungs cried out for deep breaths I couldn’t take as a tear escaped and slid down my cheek.

Wheezing past the tightness in my chest, I shouted, “I yield!”

Landon immediately let me go.

He climbed off me, almost falling as he sprang from the bed. His eyes widened as he stared between me and his outstretched hand. The one that had been holding my wrists.

Blinking rapidly, he stumbled backward towards the door.

I pushed myself up, panting hard and watching as his back hit the door. Slamming against it seemed to jar him out of his shock. He pushed the hair back from his eyes and met mine one more time.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

And then, he was gone.

The door ricocheted off the wall and slammed shut behind him.

I lay on the bed, breathing hard and staring at the closed door. Like he might burst through it in the next second and tell me what the actual fuck just happened. So, we could get back to the part where things had been going really fucking well.

But he didn’t.

And the longer I sat there alone, the heavier the weight of his reaction grew.

I needed to get the fuck out of there.

Except when my hand wrapped around the doorknob, twisting as hard as I could, nothing happened. A slightly manic laugh escaped me, my hand running through my hair more than once to ease the insidious feeling creeping up my body, but it wrapped around my throat, anyway.

It squeezed, and my hand jerked the doorknob, rattling it over and over.

I tried again and again.

No. There was no way he’d locked me in here. This was—I was imagining this. I was trapped in a fucking nightmare.

My heart thrashed in my chest while I beat on the door. “Let me out! Please, somebody! Let me out!”

I couldn’t breathe.

A low, pained moan came out as I sank to my knees. For a second, I thought I heard the slow creak of another door. I thought I heard footsteps, but as quickly as they sounded outside my room, they retreated and disappeared. My mouth opened to call out, but the cry lodged in my throat.

I dug through my clutch.

My inhaler—I needed my inhaler.

When my lungs finally expanded, I yelled the only thing in my mind.

“I yield!” I sobbed, dragging in another deep breath as I dropped my head to the floor. “I yield. Please! I yield.”

This time, I didn’t lift my head at the sound of footsteps—sure they would disappear. But the doorknob rattled, and a key turned in the lock. I pushed up onto shaking arms, waiting to see who was on the other side.

The furious voice booming through the wood was the last one I expected.

“Touch her again and you’re dead, Golden Boy.”

I scoot-crawled backwards to make space as an angry and shirtless Max Dread eased open the door. He didn’t even look at me before shouting into the dark room.

“Where the fuck are you, Landon?”

I sat curled up on the ground beneath his feet. Still wearing my lingerie with tears streaming down my face, I seriously ate my words from earlier. He could’ve rubbed it in my face, but instead, he lifted me off the floor.

Hauling me up and into his arms, his voice was a dark, low growl. “Where is he?”

“He’s not here.” My body trembled in his hold, but that only made him pull me tighter against his chest. “He left. I—I don’t?—”

His eye twitched, fingers flexing and digging into my skin. “Did he lock you in here?”

My whole face screwed up as pain, embarrassment, confusion, and anger coursed through me. I tucked my chin into my chest, hiding my face from him. But I kept the maelstrom of emotions at bay and thought through the way Landon had fled from the room.

The door had swung shut behind him—it hit the wall.

I managed to draw in a shaky breath. “I don’t think so. He just left all of a sudden and I…I think it locked behind him.”

Lifting my head, I searched his face. I didn’t want him to use the truth against me. But I couldn’t stir up shit between him and Landon when it wasn’t warranted.

I looked away. “I panicked.”

“Of course, you fucking panicked,” he snapped, drawing my eyes back up. “We have a code for a reason, and that piece of shit knows it.” His jaw clenched when my body shuddered, and he dragged in a breath, his nostrils flaring. “But you’re safe now. You’re not trapped.”

My head turned into him, one hand resting on his chest. Dangerously close to where his heart felt like it might beat right through the solid wall of muscle separating us. I didn’t know what to make of that, but I liked the way it felt.

He dragged in another deep breath, and his heartbeat slowed. My body relaxed against him, the adrenaline fading.

“Thank you,” I breathed softly against his chest. “Thank you for coming to help me.”

“I—”

His muscles tightened under my hand.

It wasn’t exactly the best time to flex, but I supposed he couldn’t help it.

“What the fuck is this?”

Vivian’s shrill voice came from the door, snapping my head up. She narrowed her eyes on Max’s face before glaring daggers at me—the half-naked girl in his arms.

Oh, fuck.

Her complexion paled like white-hot heat, but that ice in her voice I already recognized.

“I’m getting your father.”

As soon as she spun on her heel and left the room, her parting statement hung in the silence of the room. It weighed on his face whether he realized it or not. He stared after the door where she’d disappeared.

This night had been a cluster fuck of confusion and fear. I still didn’t know what to make of what happened with Landon, but I couldn’t even think about that right now. Not while Max had me in his arms, holding me like I was his to protect.

What I’d felt between us earlier tonight, in those brief moments before his one-eighty, returned full-force. I reached up slowly and touched his face, drawing his eyes back to mine.

My fingers traced the line of his jaw. “Why would she get your father?”

His eyelids fluttered under the touch of my hand, eyes softening with that light I’d seen inside him earlier. But it quickly cleared, and he snapped back to the colder, shrouded version of him as realization dawned on his face.

Glancing sharply between the door and me in his arms, he spun suddenly, taking me with him. Before I could even get my bearings, he set me on the bed. He stood over me, his gaze hooded and his upper body so ridiculously, gloriously bare, I wanted to trace a path over every sculpted plane of his chest.

That was all I could think about as I stared up at him—how it would feel to memorize each defined muscle. First, with my hands and then with my tongue.

I also wanted to know what the fuck it was about this place that turned me into a wanton hussy, wanting to jump the bones of every hot guy I met even in the midst of a crisis.

Or at least three of the guys.

He stood frozen above me. Ice splintered through his gaze as he stared down at me, and I flushed at the thoughts that had run through my head.

Clearly, Max wasn’t about to make the start of those fantasies a reality.

“My father oversees The Quest. That’s why my Maiden went to get him. He’ll need to know you had an issue with your Knight.”

His clipped tone hit harder than I expected, and even if I didn’t want him as my Knight, I wrinkled my nose when he called her his Maiden.

“It’ll be up to him to bring this to the King and decide if you’ll continue to participate.”

My head jerked back so I could see him fully. “Wait, what? But I didn’t do anything,” I stumbled, flustered by the unfairness of it. “Why would they kick me out because he?—”

“It doesn’t matter what you did or didn’t do, Princess.” He shook his head, unflinching in his delivery and the derision in his tone. “Not here. It only matters if you can please your Knight. For anyone who cares, from where they’re sitting, you sent yours running within the first hour.”

He flicked his tongue against the back of his teeth, the harsh tsk shaming me for failing so soon. It rushed through me so quickly, my eyes watered. I dropped my head, hoping he wouldn’t see.

Unlike Landon, he didn’t stop me from hiding.

What he did was worse.

He scoffed. “If you’re going to cry about it, you really shouldn’t be here.”

My head shot up, jaw dropping at another complete one-eighty in his behavior. It really shouldn’t have surprised me that time. But every trace of sympathy and comfort he’d offered when he burst into the room had been fully withdrawn. I couldn’t reconcile the difference.

Unless…none of his reactions earlier had been about me.

Had all of it really been about Landon and what Max thought my Knight had done?

Had he ever read a romance novel in his life? Or seen enough movies to know a guy didn’t just barge into a room saying, Touch Her and Die unless he fucking meant it?

Apparently, the answer was a resounding no.

He crossed his arms over his chest, raising an eyebrow. “So, he locked you in a room. That’s what you’re upset about?”

“But—”

His muscles bunched beneath his forearms as he lifted his shoulders. “What happens if it gets worse than that, huh? You cry for your mommy and daddy every time?”

He scoffed again, and it struck me like a match on dry kindling.

But he wasn’t done.

“It’s day one, Quinn. Toughen up or get out.”

My hands clenched into fists, teeth gritting as I spat at him, “Fuck you, Max.”

“In your dreams, Princess.” He smirked, turning on his heel and walking to the door. “I don’t fuck crybabies. Or quitters.”

Every nerve in my body vibrated with the rage burning up inside me. His callous, painful remark about my parents had already wiped away the good I thought I’d seen in him. That final remark blazed like an inferno through a field of wildflowers, destroying everything left.

I growled low in my throat and was seconds from tearing off the bed after him. He wouldn’t shame me for having feelings. And I wasn’t a quitter.

But the presence of another voice stopped me.

“Hello, son.”

I didn’t recognize it, but I knew who it was.

Merle Dread, Max’s father, greeted his son, and I had no doubt he’d be coming for me next.

“I hear you have an intriguing development to share with me.”

I held my breath as their feet scuffled outside the door.

Then, a different one slammed inside the Round Tableau. And at that point, I should’ve expected it. Those assholes put me through paces and left when the next move didn’t involve me.

It was becoming a common theme, but somehow, I had the audacity to be surprised when—once again—I found myself alone.