Chapter 17
17
Lex
I’m checking the spray under my hand when I hear the sound of Verity’s whisper.
Shaking my wrist, I walk back toward the bedroom, peeking through the doorway. She’s walking—not pacing, not striding, just aimless, idle walking from one side of the room to the other. She looks tired but alert, a strange wildness in her eyes.
And she’s talking. “You don’t have to,” she says, giving the side of her belly a mindless rub. “But if you want it, I’ll make sure it’s yours. Your dad, Wicker—he didn’t get that. I think it’s important. But not everyone wants to be King. It might be an awful lot of work.”
I realize she’s talking to him.
Justice.
We decided we’d let her name him long ago, but until tonight, she’d been keeping her choice to herself. Likewise, she doesn’t know what my brothers and I chose for his middle name yet.
The blood on her dress doesn’t bother me, either. Maybe it’s because of my lessons in the art of torture, which Father started when we were young. Or learning to draw blood at the clinic. Or suturing older PNZs before I was even a pledge. It could be from seeing my own bloody back after Father’s punishments. Maybe a lot of it’s from a youth spent in hockey leagues where the more blood, the better.
But a small, secret part of me worries that it’s older than medical training or hockey. Something so old that the sight of sticky, congealing crimson has become a stone in my foundation. Because maybe it’s from that night, when my father killed my mother. I don’t remember much, but I’ve seen the reports.
They found me caked in my mother’s blood.
It’s something Wicker and I always had in common—being brought into this strange house of decadence under a layer of death and decay.
Verity’s origin in the palace is also marked in red, and as much as she hates it, there’s something glorious about the way she looks in that white dress, bloody handprints covering her abdomen. To steal a phrase from her Dukes…
She’s a fucking victor.
“It’ll take a minute for the water to warm up.”
She startles at the sound of my voice, but just looks up, giving me a small grin. “Oh. Sorry. I was just…” She gestures at her stomach. “Giving him the rundown.” It’s not the first time one of us has caught her doing that—giving baby Justice an outline of the day’s events.
The shower pounds behind me. Since Wick and Pace stayed back to call the Barons and secure the palace, leaving me and Verity to get her cleaned up and into bed, I beckon her into the bathroom. Once she’s there, I move behind her, unzipping the back of the dress to reveal creamy, soft skin. I push the fabric over her shoulders, down her arms, and over her belly, until it falls in a heap around her feet. “Anything hurt?” I ask. “Any pain?”
She shakes her head. “I feel fine. Just tired, yet also… wired?” She sighs, one I know is from exhaustion, and I place my hands under her belly and lift, taking some of the burden.
She shudders out a breath, leaning into me. “God, that’s so much better.”
I feel the weight of it—our son—and ask the question I’ve been dreading. “Are you… bothered? By what you did?” The first kill is always the worst. Victor or not, I don’t like to think of Verity as a killer. To me, she’s the embodiment of creation. To tarnish that with death and violence…
“Should I be?” She turns just enough to show me the curve of her cheek, brow furrowed. “I should feel remorse, right?”
I pull in the scent of her hair. “You should feel whatever you feel.”
Her mouth works around a stilted reply. “I feel… relieved, mostly. He was a monster who helped bring me into this world, and I helped take him out of it.”
I bend to kiss that place on her neck. “That’s the Royal way.”
She hums. “Do you think that makes me a terrible person?”
Pausing, I keep hold of the weight of her belly as I dredge up the memory. “I remember feeling fascinated with my first kill. The way his lungs shook—the sight of his flesh torn open—it was the first time I looked at a human body and saw a machine. And I was… well, annoyed, to be honest,” I confess, hoping she doesn’t think less of me. “I remember it taking a lot longer than I was expecting, and it made me super late for lunch.”
She strains her neck to glance at me, like she’s trying to decide if I’m lying or not.
Gravely, I explain, “It was my favorite casserole.”
What I don’t say is that my first murder victim was a rapist of princesses, too. An ex-Count, to be exact. Lionel Lucia and Father gave him to my brothers and me for experimenting. For training. For… experience.
Verity doesn’t need to know that part. She only needs to know this: “You did such a good job tonight.” I lave my tongue over her throat, tasting copper. “I’m sorry we didn’t give you the heads-up. Everything had to play out just right.” I let her lean into me, tipping her head back to rest on my shoulder. Her hand wanders above my head, finding the tie holding my hair back and tugging it loose.
She whispers, “I think I understand.”
But I still explain, “There was no way of knowing if Rufus would come to his senses and actually abdicate, or if he did have a mole in the group and not just Tommy pretending to give him what he wanted. It needed to unfold as organically as possible so no one can say we manipulated it.”
Her fingers comb idly through my hair. “Did you know they would choose him?”
“Honestly, we weren’t sure. They could have picked any of us.” I graze my thumbs up and down the underside of her belly. “But I think they made the right decision. We’re more mature now, and we’ve proven we can manage East End in a crisis. The rest will sort itself out. Right now,” I add, gazing down the curves of her body, “we have a baby to focus on.”
She settles against me, her hands sliding over mine, and together, for a few quiet heartbeats, we carry this weight together. There’s a small thump against my palm, and I jolt. She cranes her head to look at me, offering a tired smile. “He’s very awake.”
I flatten my hand over the area and revel in the feel of our son moving around. “Can I…” I begin, feeling inexplicably embarrassed. “Can I talk to him?”
Her smile widens. “Of course. He can’t come out of there only recognizing me and Effie, can he?”
I snort. “Turn around,” I tell her, wanting to check the rest of her before she gets under the water. Her front is a contrast from the pale, clean flesh on her back. My scrutiny goes to her abdomen first. Every inch of her bulging stomach is tinted red, the bloody handprints seeping past the linen and onto her flesh. Above, there’s a slash of blood spatter from cutting Rufus’ throat.
I scan her for injuries, although I know there are none—at least, not externally. She inflicted the wounds—the death blow.
She’s the one who broke our chains.
As I kneel before her, just like I did when I swore my oath of fealty, that’s the first thing I tell our creation. “Your mother is a real badass,” I say, shivering at the sensation of her fingers carding through my hair. To her belly—to Justice—I whisper, “I know this is a weird family you’re being born into. But we’re really excited to meet you.”
Thump.
Verity chuckles at the look on my face. “Actually, he already knows the sounds of all your voices.”
I blink up at her, amazement clear in my voice. “How do you know?”
“It’s all in the way he moves.” She bites her lip, seeming to consider this deeply. “With Wicker, he sort of… stretches? I swear, it’s like my belly gets bigger. And Pace’s voice always makes him kick and twitch, these little punches that feel like flutters. And you…” She pushes my hair back, an unbearable softness in her eyes. “When he hears your voice, he squirms around, like he’s turning, searching...”
A lump finds its way into my throat as I watch her belly shift, almost imperceptibly. “You’re sure nothing hurts?” I ask, watching her carefully.
“Lex.”
I know that tone, so I let it go, knowing she’s ready to wash off and get into bed. I ease her panties down her legs before leading her into the shower, and it’s difficult to step away once she has. It’s getting hard not to let the excitement in—the knowledge that in a couple short weeks, we’ll be holding our son in our arms.
Once she steps under the spray, she peers back out, owlishly asking, “Aren’t you coming?”
Pausing, I ask, “You want me to?”
I don’t know how women work in situations like these. My brothers and I always processed our kills in different ways. Wick’s always preferred getting lost in pleasure, slamming his hand over that dopamine button again and again. Pace has always turned to weed and his attachment to Effie. I’ve always just wanted—needed—to sleep it off in peace.
“Please?” Verity, it seems, wants to be close. That, I can give her.
I strip quickly, yanking at the buttons of my shirt and not caring if it rips. I kick off my shoes and shuck my pants, then step into the steamy shower. She watches me, eyes dropping down to my thick erection. I’ve been hard since I first touched her, and I’m even harder now that we’re standing close together, nothing between us but water and steam.
The water rushes down her body but does little to remove the stain of red. There are a million of Wicker’s various bottles on the shelf, and I pick one at random, liking the idea of her being washed in our scents.
Once my hands are lathered up, I start at her neck, eventually running my hands over her shoulders and chest. I use my thumbs to scrub away the droplets of Rufus’ blood that are spattered there. With a deep sigh, she leans against the wall, letting the water rush straight against her chest.
“Does that feel good?” I know the heat can relieve pressure.
“Yes,” she manages, and I continue, massaging her collarbones and dipping my hands down the deep crevice between her breasts. Her chest rises and falls, and despite the warm water rushing down her body, her nipples tighten and peak, making my cock knock into the underside of her belly. I cup her tits and push them together, eliciting her airy groan. “They just feel so full all the time.”
“I knew once you started, it would only get worse.” Letting Wick and Pace nurse from her was probably the most erotic thing I’ve ever witnessed. There was something so primal about following the path, the knowledge that they put their seed into her, let her nurture it into life, and then nourished themselves with it.
If my first kill taught me that bodies are machines, then watching Verity’s change, evolve, create, has taught me the opposite.
“Do you want a taste?”
Her question draws my eyes upward, and it’s obvious I’ve been caught staring—fantasizing. My tongue flattens against my teeth, the urge so bad that I nearly push her against the wall, latch on, and give her a forceful suck. But I drop my hands and squeeze more gel between them, focusing on cleaning the last traces of blood off of her stomach.
I grab the nozzle of the shower head and lift it off the dock, bringing it down to spray off all of the soap. Her hand catches mine, wet lashes fluttering. “I made it weird. I’m sorry, it’s just…is it always like this? I know it was for Wicker, but..” Her eyes dart down, “Well, Wick always is…”
I touch her chin and lift her face up. “What are you talking about?”
“Horny.” Her green eyes are so wide, far too innocent considering what she’s done tonight. “Is it normal to be horny after doing what I did to Rufus?”
I take her in again, this time looking for more than injuries and strain. The blown-out eyes, the shallow breathing, the pebbled nipples. I nudge her down on the seat in the corner of the shower and stand over her, considering.
“Wicker once explained it like… causing death makes him want to experience life.” Tilting my head, I add, “Which, medically, makes a sort of sense. You’re full of endorphins. Adrenaline is pumping through your veins. Your system is on alert, and,” I touch her stomach, “you just went into some primal protective mother mode. It’s normal.”
“Good.” She licks her bottom lip, cheeks rosy and glistening. “Then what I’m going to do now totally makes sense.”
She reaches for me, gripping me tight around my shaft. Her touch is forceful, but somehow still soft, her hand stroking me upward, pushing the blood toward the tip. Her tongue darts out to taste me, and then her lips circle around the head.
Moaning, she sucks.
“Fuck, Verity,” I say, dropping the spray nozzle and bracing my hand against the glass door. She grips the base of my shaft and takes me in deeper, jacking me off with every pull. Shuddering, I stroke my fingers through her hair, overcome by the heat of her mouth. “Jesus Christ, baby, slow down or I’m gonna pop off.”
I don’t think she’s going to, but right when my balls seize up, she releases me. Exhaling, I struggle to catch my breath, but it’s not to slow down or stop. I know my role in this fledgling family we’re creating.
If there’s something her body needs, I’m going to provide it.
She pulls me toward her, hand still on the base of my shaft, and guides my cock between her tits. “If you won’t suck them,” she whispers, gazing up at me with lust-drunk eyes, “then fuck them, Lagan.”
It’s impossible to say no.
Every fantasy. Every thought I’ve had since I saw Verity’s tits for the first time. Every medical exam and night sleeping next to her comes down to this moment. I can’t feel anything but the warmth of her tits engulfing me.
So fucking good.
“I used to dream of this,” I confess, voice embarrassingly guttural as I watch my cock pump between her tits. “In the early days, all those times you were on my exam table, your pussy so pink and wet for me,” she moans and I grunt, feeling the vibration against my shaft, “I’d look up at you and see them—these perfect tits—and daydream about how they’d look once our seed took hold.”
“Oh, god,” she breathes, eyes slamming shut.
“Lean back,” I tell her, pumping up and down to keep the friction. I cup her tits in both hands and squeeze them together, increasing the sensation. Her boobs are huge, and before I think, I tweak her nipple, eliciting a cry. “You tell me if it’s too rough.”
With her head propped lazily against the tile, she says, “The pressure feels good, don’t you dare stop.”
I couldn’t if I tried.
Pumping into her, I say, “It really pisses me off that I couldn’t give my seed to you like they did. I would have been so good at it, baby.” The words tumble out of gritted teeth, any sanity obscured by the sight of her, panting, eyes glazed with stunned arousal. “I would have bred you day and night, so fucking eager to be the one who put my baby into you. That’s what I’m gonna do when you’re fertile for me again. Won’t let you be empty again, Verity...”
“Lex,” she whines, expression collapsing. “Keep going.”
The intensity of the night takes over—Lagan takes over—and I rock into her, increasing the pace. Her eyes hold mine and it’s so good this way, looking down at her face, the lights on, no sleep between us. Her hands cup my balls, kneading at the sensitive sack. “Fuck, baby,” I grind out, trying to keep my wits, wanting this to last as long as it can. “I love your eyes. I love that freckle behind your ear, and the stretch mark on your right hip.” I fuck in and out, delirious from it all. “I love your hands—soft enough to drive me wild, powerful enough to slay the monster in the palace.” I hunch over her, lips pressed against her forehead, watching her nipples as they start to weep. I swipe a thumb over it and stick it in my mouth, tasting the nourishment that will feed our son. “I love this baby and everything it’s doing to your body. I love you, Verity, so fucking much.”
I thrust up one last time, the tip pushing through the top of her cleavage. Cum spurts out, thick and ropey, spilling all over her chest and the swell of her tits.
Her lips part, the crest of a moan tumbling from her throat, and her hand drops, sliding between her legs.
I stop her. “No.”
She blinks, flushed and impatient. “Why?
Glancing over my shoulder toward the door, I explain, “Because odds are, you aren’t the only one who’s horny, and you need to be ready.”