15. King Takes All
King Takes All
King
My hands are shaking as I zip my jacket and veer off the main trail. The snow is now ice-crusted, and my boots crunch with every step. I walk farther for a few minutes, needing fresh air and space.
I don’t care where I’m going. I just need distance. From Asher, from that cabin, from the way his mouth felt around my cock.
He came in his fucking pants. He didn’t even use his hands, it was just need and fury and surrender. And I liked it. No— loved it. Loved seeing how he lost control over that moment, just like I did.
This was never the plan.
I was supposed to pull the strings. Keep him off-balance. Break him down slowly, methodically until he hated himself for leaving me in that bathroom a decade ago.
Revenge, but also something else—something messier, something that would ruin him.
Something like… acquiring Walter.
Or, I don’t know, making him embarrass himself in front of everyone.
I didn’t have a solid plan, to be honest. I only found out about the retreat last week, and I paid an exorbitant amount of money to snag the last spot.
I never had a partner meeting me here.
And it was easy to send a fake email to Brooklyn Danner, the publicist-slash-casual hookup who was supposed to be Asher’s partner this week.
It was simple. All I had to do was offer her a last-minute PR consulting gig with an absurd day rate, sent through a shell company email address I spun up in under an hour.
The project was ‘urgent,’ ‘high profile,’ and ‘absolutely confidential.’
She replied within twelve minutes.
Something came up and I can’t make it , she messaged Asher.
Of course it did.
That was the easy part. But now?
Now, my thighs are trembling, and the only thing echoing in my head is the sound of Asher’s breath hitching just before he took me deep into the back of his throat.
He’s not the only one unraveling.
And that pisses me off.
He left me . Ten years ago, he walked away and made me feel like a fucking ghost. And now he gets to kneel in front of me like none of it happened? Like I’m some itch he needs to scratch out of his system?
Fuck that.
Fuck him .
I can’t forget why I’m here, even if I’m starting to enjoy his bratty presence.
Even if I’m starting to catalog the way the sun glints off his blue-gray eyes, or the way he seems to implicitly submit to me without even thinking about it.
The things I could get him to do?—
Fuck.
Focus, Ambrose.
I stop walking and drag a hand down my face, jaw tight, breath fogging the air.
This was supposed to be war—the quiet, elegant kind that fucked with him psychologically more than anything.
I was supposed to take everything he wanted and smile while doing it.
There was never any doubt in my mind that he could possibly want to acquire Walter. Why else would he be here? When I realized that, it was the cherry on top.
Asher’s latest shiny thing, ripe for the taking.
Just like the others.
Just like Trent Marchand.
So I made the reservation. I practiced the pitch. I laid the trap.
Then Asher came in his pants while on his knees for me—and it felt like something else .
Not just power. Not just heat—it felt personal.
Which is dangerous.
Because I know what happens when things get personal.
My hand instinctively goes to the gravestone tattoo on my forearm.
One of five.
The oldest. The only one who got out of our small town and made something of myself.
I was thirteen when I first realized obedience wasn’t the same as love. They called it faith; I call it surveillance . Do you know what it does to a kid? To grow up watched? Tracked? Punished for every breath that deviates from doctrine?
You either break…
Or you learn to command.
And I chose the latter.
I was fifteen when I learned control could be wielded however I needed it to be wielded, and that people were easily manipulated. I left our father’s house at sixteen after graduating high-school early and getting into Columbia. Then I moved to San Diego to start over at just nineteen.
Over the years, I took the hunger—the silence, the trembling shame, the fear —and forged it into my idea of control. Into dominance. Into clean lines and unshakable rules. Safe words and rituals. Consent. Pain with purpose.
That’s what people don’t understand. It’s not about cruelty.
It’s about clarity .
But Asher? He makes me forget the rules. He doesn’t just submit. He resists. He claws and snarls and tests —and still ends up on his knees.
And I like it.
Fuck, I like it a lot.
I can’t stop imagining what it would be like if he gave in completely. If he let me own every part of him. No pretense. No fight. Just full, desperate surrender.
He’d be beautiful like that.
No. Fuck . That’s not the plan.
I can’t forget why I’m here. I can’t forget who I was before the suits and the sharp, little smiles. Before I had a roster that anyone in our industry would kill to have.
Before I became King .
I can’t forget what it cost to become someone no one could control again.
I have to ask Walter for a meeting. And I know exactly what I’m going to say.
It’s nothing personal. I’ll tell Asher later, if he even asks. It’s just business , as I always say.
Because I’m not here for him.
I’m not.
I’m not .