Chapter 17
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
SIRE
Jesus, Jesus. I thought the Bible had drama, but my family is running a close second.
“So, tell me about Zar’s initiation.” Wren sits on my island countertop, sipping tea. “And my initiation. What will it be like?”
No, wait. We’re about to be tied for the dramatic lead.
I’ve brewed chamomile tea so I could calm the fuck down after that fight, but apparently, Wren’s excited, too. For all the tempting reasons.
Setting my mug beside her, I stand between her legs. It’s an ungodly hour in the early morning, but my angel always looks like heaven.
“Before we discuss initiations, give me the green light to kill him.”
We stare at each other before she’s slitting her eyes. “Do you really think Waylon’s hurting other girls?”
“I know he is.”
“How?”
“My brothers don’t know this. It’s part of my damning secret about my father, but he sends me clues.”
“Clues?” She shocks back. “What is this? ‘CSI’?”
“I don’t know why he does it, but people are at stake, so I follow them, and that’s how I found you. That youngest girl that I rescued with you?”
Her face bends, heartbroken. “Kelsey?”
“Yeah. She was from Chilhowee. Waylon’s part of a ring, grabbing girls from rural towns.” Her breath changes. “How did he grab you? You’d burned down his lab, his crew was dead, so how did he kidnap you?”
With resignation, she sighs, “I was camping, trying to hide and hunt, and it worked for months, until he tracked me down and got me while I was sleeping. The next thing I knew, I was in the back of a semi-truck with nine other girls.”
The images I conjure of him hurting Wren, of him hurting all those girls, make me snarl, “Give me the green light, Wren.”
“Don’t hurt Alan.”
“You have my word.”
“Okay,” she sighs. “But I’m going with you.”
I huff, “The hell you are, Annie Oakley.”
She huffs back, “The hell you can find him without me, city boy. That’s the deal. You want vengeance, and I want Alan in treatment. Deal or no deal.”
She jabs her hand out, raising an eyebrow. Her lips are sealed, which is fucking rare.
This is my lesson: never negotiate with terrorists when you’re falling in love with them.
“Deal.” I shake her small hand.
She lifts mine to her lips, sucking my middle finger before tempting me, “Now, tell me about the initiation tonight.”
Gently, I grab her hips. “I can’t tell you about Zar’s initiation. I’ll never lie to you, but initiations are sacred, and the kings don’t talk about them. We do it out of respect for our queens. If you want to know what happened, you’ll need to ask Zar.”
Her voice rises. “Did you just trick me?”
“No. No matter what, I can’t tell you about initiations.”
“But I don’t know Zar.”
“You will soon, I’m sure.”
“Where was he tonight? And everyone else?”
“Grant and Delphine took Nick and Zar out to celebrate. Probably to my mom’s club, while the shit hit the fan with the rest of my brothers.”
“So, your mom’s involved with the initiations?”
The disgust on her face matches the urge I have to puke.
“Oh, hell, no. Never. She leaves that for us. She just insists that all queens are honored, so she bakes a Korovai for the initiation.”
“What’s that?”
“Russian wedding bread.”
Her eyes widen. Each word, a shock to her system. “Your mom. Bakes bread. For your. Orgy?”
Fuck, she makes me laugh, and goddamn, I need it. “It’s not an orgy. It’s a… Well…” I falter, remembering what happened tonight and not wanting to lie.
“Come on.” Her shoulders sag. “What can you tell me about the initiations?”
I cup her cheek, stroking my thumb over her soft skin. “They’re a lot like a wedding. First, the king makes his vow to his queen. Then, they consummate their union. Next, the second king makes his vow to honor their new union and to protect the queen before they consummate their shared bond.”
Wren smirks, believing in that like flying unicorns. “You mean … you fuck, and then have a threesome in front of the other kings and queens?”
“Yes. They bear witness.”
“Is that all they bare?”
I tongue my teeth. “Often, they bare more.”
“So…” Holy hell, the way Wren’s eyes look aroused by this stirs Dick. And here I thought he’d be exhausted. “Are only the first and second kings involved in initiating the queen?”
I squeeze her hips, loving the handfuls I get with her, loving the images I’m getting with her. “We give our queen whatever she or he demands.”
“How many queens are there?”
“Right now? Two. Delphine and Zar, and if you want, you’re next.”
“If I want?” She chuckles, amazed. “I haven’t even tasted the first flavor yet, which is you, and now you’re telling me there are seven flavors? And you’ll let me try them all?”
I stare into her topaz eyes, and oh fuck…
Here comes the storm.
Arousal and anger whip inside me like the winds forming a tornado. The hottest thoughts of the most taboo pleasures I can give Wren collide with the cold reality that she’s just begun … and it makes me want to destroy something.
I’ve enjoyed years of kinky sex, indulging my darkest desires, while Wren hasn’t even been opened. She hasn’t explored all she’ll crave, and as a man who craved breeding women and men, I know what’s fair. She should have an equal chance.
But tell that to my heart.
I’m a deviant devil who wants a godly marriage with her.
I crave dirty things with my pure woman.
I want all to see my claim, but I only want to do it with her.
I believe in freedom, but I want to control her sex.
I’m well aware of the contradictions.
They’d amuse me if I didn’t feel them splintering my soul.
“What?” Softly, Wren touches my cheek. “What did I say? You look upset. Was it the seven flavors thing? I’m sorry. I was joking. I only want you.”
I don’t have an answer, and she blinks, tears welling in her eyes.
“I mean it. You, Sire. You’re all I want. You’re just so honest with me, which I love. So, when it comes to sex, I want to share it with you, whatever that looks like, as long as it’s me and you. Together.”
With my heart pounding, I softly kiss her. I can destroy this delicate creature, while all I want to do is rip apart anyone who hurts her—even myself.
This must be love: this vortex of emotions.
Nature’s most powerful storm.
I nuzzle her forehead. “I only want you, too. All my years faded the moment I saw you, Wren. You became my now and my future. I know it because I have a past, and you don’t when it comes to sex.
And I feel like a complicated, hypocritical, selfish man because I have pure feelings for you, like now, but then I get dark urges with you … like what we did with Nash.”
She nibbles her lip. She can’t control her reaction to the salacious memory, and I murmur, “You liked it, didn’t you? You came so hard when Nash watched me eat your pussy.”
“Yes,” she sighs. “It made me feel beautiful and powerful and dirty at the same time. I loved it, and I’m not ashamed to tell you that I want to do it again. I want to do everything with you.”
This woman is a war I don’t give a damn if I win, just as long as I’m with her until the day I die.
“I want it, too. But then…” I brush my lips over hers. “I want to make you my wife and the mother of my children. You’re sacred to me, Wren.”
She rests her hands over my thundering heart.
“I feel the same about you. Would it scare you if I told you that afternoon on the sidewalk, when I was holding baby Isaac, and waiting for his mom to pick him up, and you came over and held him, too: it felt like fate. I knew we’d have babies together, too. ”
Fuck, I’m fighting tears. It’s moments like this that I believe in God and heaven and love … and … now us.
“I had the same vision. It scared me, but it also made me happy. How is that possible?”
“Because, Sire,” she pauses, “we’re meant to be everything together.”
Age becomes another contradiction we share, because in moments like these, Wren’s the wiser one.
She won’t back down from our stare. She believes, “I think we can be sacred and sexy, complicated and committed, hypocritical and hot, selfish and—”
Jesus, Jesus.
She’s the one.
The only one.
I grab her lips with a passionate kiss—a kiss like none I’ve ever had.
Wren’s first kiss felt like mine, too. Humility and hunger overwhelmed me, claiming her lips and tongue for the first time. I just kept kissing and kissing her, and going deeper, and finding my home. And I feel it now: home with her. And really … really fucking hungry for her, too.
She tastes like the sweetest sin, panting over our lips, “That was a helluva interruption.”
“You make a helluva good argument.”
“Did I win?”
“I’m losing my heart to you, Angel. We’re both winning.”
Trailing my lips down her neck, I inhale a new scent on her flesh: daisies, caramel, and sexy musk. Before, her scent was pure soap, but now, it’s pure seduction.
“Fuck,” I growl, “when did you get perfume?”
She opens her neck for me. “In the lingerie store, when I went shopping with your mom.”
I nibble her flesh. “Never say ‘mom’ and ‘lingerie’ to me in the same sentence.”
She giggles. “Did you just get soft?”
I steam over her ear, “Hardly.”
Reaching down, she squeezes my aching cock, and I groan, “Careful, Angel. You’re making me nineteen again.”
“Is that a bad thing?”
“It is for your virgin pussy, because I’m not nineteen. I’m forty-three and I know exactly how to fuck you and make you come all night like you deserve.”
I pull back and she gazes down, admiring my erection, before meeting my eyes.
“I want you to have what you deserve, too,” she insists. “Make me a wife and a mom, and a complicated, hypocritical woman, too. Because I won’t share you with other women. I’ll get too jealous. But I’ll share you with men.” She chews her lip. “It kind of turns me on, too.”
My hard cock twitches. Excitement lights up her eyes, making me warn, “Not yet, Wren.”
With the sexiest pout, she strokes my heavy dick. “You’re such a wet pussy tease, Pastor Rutledge.”
Fuck, when she calls me that, I lose it.
I fist her hair. “I’m not teasing. I’m in charge.”
Cupping her hand, I force our palms to stroke my dick together, our moans mingling with my vow over our heated lips.
“I’ll tease your virgin pussy and make you come, and I’ll let you play with my hard cock like it’s your favorite toy. But I mean it, Wren Chapel. You’ll be my wife before I open you. You’re mine, the right way, before we do every wrong thing together.”