Chapter 6
Royal
I shouldn’t go back again. Not after I pulled out the knife last night.
I know it before my boots even turn toward my own door. Before my hand curls around the knob. Before the heat crawling under my skin becomes a pulse, I can’t ignore.
I should walk the other way. I should put distance between me and the girl I chained to my bed. I should remember the King’s orders. Legend’s orders. Watch her. Don’t let her get close. I should remember the six missing girls, the Reverend’s lies.
But all I can think about…is her voice in that room. Her heartbeat. Her breath. Her defiance. Her scent. And the way she says my name without saying it, like a challenge.
My control frays with every step.
When I open the door, she’s awake. Sitting up. Bare legs stretched out on the cot. Shirt rumpled. Eyes sharp and hot and waiting for me.
She does that on purpose, waits like she knows I’ll come.
“Checking the lock?” she whispers.
But her eyes go straight to my belt.
Straight to the knife. She notices everything. She sees more than she should. More than I want her to. I feel myself crack. I carry guns when I have to.
But knives… knives are the truth.
Knives demand intention. Knives demand proximity. Knives don’t lie. I didn’t come here to use it.
But when she regards it in a manner like she’s imagining it against her soft skin. Something unholy surges through me.
“Stop looking,” I growl.
She doesn’t.
Of course she doesn’t.
She rises slowly, letting the chain drag, letting each increment of movement feel like a dare.
“You came to check on me,” she says. “Brought your blade again.”
Not a question.
A fact.
The truth slams through my ribs like a hit from a goddamn sledgehammer. She steps closer. Too close. And I move before I can think, grabbing the chain at her wrist, yanking her into my chest. Her gasp hits my throat like fuel on an open flame.
“Always coming to me armed. I must be a threat.”
“Back up,” I snarl.
“Make me.”
I do.
I pin her to the wall.
Her breath mixes with mine.
Her pulse jumps under my fingers.
Her thigh brushes the bulge in my pants. And that’s when I lose the last shred of restraint. The blade slides from the sheath. My hand knows the motion. My body knows the thrill. My blood knows the hunger.
I hold it close enough she feels the cold shadow of it.
“You don’t get it,” I say. “You push me, and I don’t push back.”
I break. I destroy. I take.
She looks at the knife like it’s a promise. Like it’s a secret. Like it’s a confession she’s been waiting to hear.
“You think I’m fearful of your blade?” she breathes.
“No,” I say. “You’re scared because you want it.”
Her lips part. Her pupils dilate. And the truth hits me like a kick to the ribcage. I want her with the same intensity I want to drive this blade into the world that hurt us both, sharp, unforgiving, honest.
I lean in. Too close. Too far gone.
If I kiss her, this ends. If I kiss her, I won’t stop. If I kill her, I’ll die, too.
So, I shove the knife back into its sheath, step away like she burned me, and force myself out of the room before I undo everything I’ve ever been.
The door slams behind me.
I don’t breathe again until I’m halfway down the hall.
I hate her.
I want her.
I crave her.
I fear her.
I’d bleed for her.
I’d make others bleed for her.
I’m already lost.
And she’s still chained to my bed.
I make it ten steps down the hall before I have to brace myself on the wall. My breath drags like my lungs forgot how to work. My hands shake. My pulse hammers like a war drum.
I haven’t lost control like that since I was a kid. Since before the club. Before discipline. Before I learned to bury every urge under steel and silence.
But Becki Crowley unravels all of it.
I should walk away. I should go to the war room, breathe, pray, sharpen my knives until the desire burns out.
Instead… I turn back. Not to her door. To the room I’ve been staying in, the one in the basement. I lock myself inside and lean back against it, head tipped to the wood, chest heaving.
This room is a tomb, but I imagine my room, the mattress, still rumpled from her sleeping chained to it.
Her scent is still me, soft, warm, maddening.
My fists curl. I want to tear the place apart.
I want to drag her back into my arms and hold her until the shaking stop, hers or mine, I don’t know.
I want to press her against the wall again and see how far she’ll let me go before she stops pretending she ain’t begging.
I want.
No.
No, I want too much.
Because Becki betrayed the club. She can never be anything but my prisoner now.
That’s until Legend decides we’re done with her.
I grab my knife and slam it onto the desk.
But the moment I let go of the handle, I feel more untethered.
So I grab it again. The blade gleams under the dim light, catching the tremor of my hand.
I imagine her looking at it. The way her breath hitched. The way her pulse jumped. I imagine that expression again. But on her knees. Or on top of me. Or with the chain wrapped around her neck while she whispers my name.
I squeeze my eyes shut.
“Stop,” I growl at myself.
But the image doesn’t stop. It gets worse. Better. I pace. My boots thud against the concrete. My breath comes hard.
I’m losing the war inside my own skin.
So I do the only thing I can think of not to drag her out of that room right now. I take the knife, flip it in my hand, let the cold steel kiss my palm. And press the flat of it hard against my own throat. Just to feel something sharp enough to cut through her.
Not the blade. Not the edge. Just the chill. I don’t cut this time. Just the reminder that I’m still in control.
For now. I breathe in. Slow. Deep. Shaking.
And I realize something that terrifies me more than the Reverend, more than the missing girls, more than the demons I’ve carried since childhood. If Becki Crowley ever asks me to cut her with this knife. I won’t say no.
I won’t even hesitate. But I’m not waiting for her permission.
I laugh once.
A broken, ragged sound.
“Fuck.”
I sheath the knife and force myself not to go back to her door.
But I know it’s only a matter of time.
The adrenaline from the knife is still buzzing in my veins when I shove the door closed behind me, leaving the basement. My hand shakes once, just once, and I curl it into a fist before it can betray anything real.
Becki’s just a prisoner. Just leverage. Just trouble chained to a bed. I repeat it until the words scrape raw. I don’t make it three steps down the hall before someone clears their throat.
“Royal? You good?”
Joey leans near the wall outside my room, long legs crossed at the ankle, wearing one of those too-short tank tops she buys from the biker boutique in the next county over. Black lace. Glitter. Skin. The way she looks at me is familiar, hungry, bright, uncomplicated. Everything Becki isn’t.
“Yeah,” I say, tugging my cut straight. “What do you need?”
Joey Donut's her nick name, and my brothers have lots of reasons why. Besides the obvious, they say she's into cops. She ticked off a cop's wife, and now she's laying low with us rebels.
She pushes off the wall and walks toward me, hips swaying like she knows damn well I’m watching. I’m not. Or maybe I am. Doesn’t matter.
“Brothers are talking,” she purrs, dragging a finger along my chest patch. “They said Legend stuck you on guard duty for the preacher’s girl.”
“Orders,” I grunt.
“Mm.” She presses closer, glossy lips grazing my jaw. “You ever get bored in there? Locked up with her? All that attitude and venom… that’s a lot for one man.”
I catch her waist and set her back a step. Not roughly. Just enough.
“She’s a prisoner,” I say. “Nothing more.”
Joey arches a brow, amused. “Didn’t say she was more.”
But she’s looking at me too carefully, too knowingly. I hate that.
Joey and I… we ain’t anything serious. A couple of long nights. A dozen hours. A warm body when the world felt colder than usual. She liked the way I touched her. I liked not having to think.
It was supposed to stay simple.
“How would it be more? You have the best girlfriend.” She bats her purple lashes.
Fuck. “You done?” I ask.
She laughs softly, pushes a strand of blonde hair behind her ear. “You’re tense, baby. More than usual.”
“Long night.”
“Long month.” She steps closer again, purple fingernails trailing up my forearm. “Do you know what today is?”
Shaking my head, I dread the answer.
“The anniversary of our first kiss.”
“Joey, I don’t have time…”
“Well, baby. If you need stress relief… you know where my bed is. Hell, you know how to find my shower, too.”
I should smirk. Make some filthy comment back. Play the game we’ve always played. Instead, all I see in my head is Becki’s face when the knife kissed her throat.
The way she refused to flinch. The way her breath hitched, anyway.
Joey notices something shift in me because her teasing falters. “Royal?”
My eyes move aside. “It’s nothing.”
“It’s her, isn’t it?” she asks quietly.
“No,” I snap, too fast, too sharp.
Her smile comes back, slow and wicked. “Funny. You haven’t even texted.”
“Drop it.”
She laughs, and it’s soft, easy, nothing like Becki’s biting little smirk. Joey rises onto her toes, presses her lips to mine. Light. Testing. Familiar.
I let her. Just for a second. Because it proves something. I can. I can kiss someone who isn’t chained to my bed with fire in her eyes. I can want something uncomplicated. I can choose easy. Joey is beautiful, sweet, loyal. She wants me.
When she leans back, breath warm, she murmurs, “I’ll come by later. You shouldn’t be alone on guard duty with… crazy Becki.”
“Don’t call her that,” I growl.
Joey gives me a look that says I’m a liar. “Whatever.”
She walks away, boots clicking down the hallway, hips shifting in a way that used to make me follow without thinking. This time, I stay where I am. My gaze drifts to the door behind me. Becki’s door. The muffled sound of her breathing seeps under the frame like smoke.
Just a prisoner. Just leverage. Just trouble. I clean my mouth using the back of my hand. But the truth won’t shut up. All I can think about was the problem I left shackled to my bed.