Chapter 2
Scared me
Gradually, I float back up to the water’s surface. I floated, adrift, for who knows how long. All I know is that I must be dead. I’m surprisingly at peace with that. If my piece is moved off of the game board then no one else will be harmed on my behalf or to punish me.
Is this heaven?
Will I finally see my mom and dad again? Butterscotch, the dog I had when I was a little girl?
My lashes sweep my cheeks and flutter upward like a butterfly’s wings over and over until I can finally hold my eyes open. A blurred form sits near me. I blink again to clear my vision.
The broad shoulders of a man slowly come into focus, and my breath stalls in my lungs.
“You gave me a fright, hen,” Rhys says in his deep brogue, and I realize I’m not in heaven. I’m still in hell.
I stop fighting and sink into the pillows of the hospital bed, pushing out a frustrated breath between my lips.
It’s like I’m stuck in that old movie, Groundhog’s Day.
Every time I wake up, I’m still here. I squeeze my eyes tight to quell the tears of both anger and frustration that are bubbling to the surface.
It’s no use. One slips free and I feel its hot trail burn down my cheek.
“Oh, don’t do that,” he says softly in his rumbly voice that I love so much as he shifts his large frame closer to me. “I hate to see you cry.”
“Then stop making me cry,” I whisper.
Can’t he see that he’s hurting me? That he keeps hurting me over and over again?
I was better off in my quiet lonely life in New England.
I had a job I loved and a little apartment that was mine.
Eventually, I’d have adopted a cat. It was a quiet life, but it was peaceful and mine… even if it was lacking a bit.
“I’m afraid I canno’ do that,” he says gently. “I canno’ let you go.”
“You have to.” I pull in a deep breath to shore up my courage and open my eyes to look at him. He looks ravaged with emotion, but I just don’t trust it. How can I know what’s real and what’s not? “I know. I know everything. It’s okay.”
“You do no’.”
“I know about the other women,” I whisper and my chest shudders with the sob I refuse to let free. “I know that you don’t even want me. It’s okay, I promise. Just let me go home.”
Rhys presses closer. His chest hovers above mine as he leans in, his face just inches from mine. The monitors behind me speed up their beeping to match my heart rate.
“You know not one fucking thing, hen, and I suggest you close your gorgeous mouth before you piss me off.”
“But—”
“No,” he says before he fists his hand in the tangle of hair behind my head and kisses the life out of me.
I wish I could say that I stop it, that I push him away knowing I’m just a pawn in a game of global power and intrigue.
But I don’t. Rhys has and always will be a weakness of mine, and I let him part my lips with his tongue to sweep further inside, tasting me, owning me.
Truthfully, I do nothing but hold on for dear life.
The door slams open and I hear the stampede of footsteps fill the room. I pull back and open my eyes to see a doctor and two nurses all staring at us, wide eyed.
“I’ll, uh… just note the alarm as a glitch in the monitor,” the doctor says, bowing his head to Rhys, before rushing from the room.
The two nurses burst out laughing before turning to us. “I guess if you can snog like that, you can probably go home in a bit. I’ll check with Dr. Stanley when he’s composed himself a bit.”
“Carry on,” the other one says as she turns to follow her friend. “It’s good to see you well. We’re all so glad that you’re here,” she says before bobbing a curtsy and walking out the door.
“See?” I snap, slapping at his rock hard chest.
“See what?” he asks with a stupidly smug smirk on his face. The bastard is proud to be caught making out like a couple of teenagers.
“This is why I have to go home! A king can’t be seen making out with his girlfriend.” Doesn’t he get it? There’s a level of decorum that needs to be maintained here and I’m failing at every hurdle. But worse, he’s a cheating bastard who doesn’t love me and someone wants me dead.
“Probably not all the time,” he says with a smile on his face like he’s explaining something simple to a child.
“But when the king’s fiancée is almost killed in a car wreck like his mother was, then it’s probably understandable that he’s so overcome with happiness and love that he gets swept away in the moment. ”
“I see you already have your spin in place,” I mutter to myself.
“My spin?” he asks.
Unfortunately, I don’t notice that his tone has changed from playful to pissed.
“Yeah.” I shrug my shoulders, looking away. “Your spin. The story you weave to make this look good. Your PR people must work overtime.”
The pads of his fingers dig into my still bruised cheek and my chin as he turns my face back toward him, and I flinch from both the bite of his fingers and the look in his eyes. “Excuse me?”
“I know that you don’t love me—”
“I do,” he growls.
“And I know that you lied to me, and you cheated on me.”
There, it’s all out now. He can’t deny it anymore because we both know what we know, and the truth is all that’s left.
“I didn’t tell you the whole truth at the time,” he says. And I wonder how long he’s been believing his own tall tales.
“That is still a lie. One that was used to manipulate me here, into the position I’m in now.
” That’s the part I can’t get over. He lied to me to get me to fall into his plan.
I left my home thinking I was going to support my boyfriend as his dad died and stepped off the plane as the fiancée of a king.
I was manipulated at every turn because he knows that if given the choice of exercising my own free will, I would not be here now.
“That’s true,” he agrees.
“So, you’ll let me go home?”
“No.”
“But why?” I cry. He’s being ridiculous. This is so much bigger than him and me.
“Because,” he says, leaning in close again. “You’re mine.”
“But I don’t want to be anymore.” Why can’t he see that? I need him to set me free because I don’t want to be here anymore. I probably never did. If I was given the chance, I’d still be in my one bedroom apartment.
“Don’t lie to me, hen,” Rhys warns, and I feel myself dig in my heels for a fight.
“I’m not.”
“You are,” he says. “Because you love me, and you love being mine. You kiss me like you’ve never been kissed so sweet before.
I know, because I haven’t either. And I know you’re lying because you love the way I fuck you, raw and deep, my cock filling you up like you were made just for me, and me for you. ”
“Stop,” I beg. I don’t want to hear anymore. I don’t want him to pull me back under the spell of being his. And besides, it was all a lie. Good bed chemistry doesn’t mean he loves me and that’s something he’s specifically leaving out.
Did I love him? Yes, but that doesn’t mean that he ever loved me.
“And you love the way I hold you in my arms at night and whisper things I’ve never told anyone before,” he says.
“That’s not true,” I say, shaking my head. “I want to go home.”
“To what?” he asks softly. “A job in a bookshop and a lonely life with no real connections.”
“That’s not fair,” I gasp. That was a low blow, and he knows it. “My uncles—”
“Are gone,” he says sharply. “I know you read your dossier, although I’m not sure how it came to be in your possession.”
“I didn’t go snooping, if that’s what you mean.
” Does he really think so little of me? But then, I guess he does.
Rhys thought I was too na?ve or dumb to question how he was manipulating my entire life, to position me as his dutiful wife in a way that I could never unravel all the knots and strings tying me to him no matter what.
“No, hen,” he says. “I mean it was given to you to draw a wedge between us. But it couldn’t because, the truth is, you don’t know your real family. Fran and Paul might have raised you ,but they are not your blood. I’m all you have and you’re going to learn to accept that.”
“No! They love me.” How could he be so cruel to throw this in my face with everything else?
One thing can’t be denied; Rhys will do whatever is necessary to keep me here.
I never stood a chance where he is concerned.
I’m going to have to keep my wits about me because the next time there’s a chance to escape, I’m taking it.
“They do,” he says gently. “But they had a duty to their king and it’s done now. When the time is right, you’ll meet your real uncle as the duchess you rightfully are, but also as my queen.”
“No,” I cry. “I won’t do it! I won’t marry you knowing that you’re with everyone else. How could you want to hurt me like that?”
“That’s the third time you’ve claimed that I’ve been unfaithful, hen, and I have to tell you that it’s starting to piss me off.”
“Then don’t lie to me,” I yelp. “Just stop denying it.”
“I wouldn’t,” he says, and I raise a brow because we both know that the elephant in the room is that he’s lied to me countless times. “Not about that.”
“I saw you with her.”
“No, you bloody well didn’t,” he snaps.
“You were sitting on a sofa with your back to me and she was on her knees…” I trail off and avert my eyes, not wanting to voice what I saw.
“I don’t know who you saw but it wasn’t me,” he says. “I don’t even know what woman you’re accusing of sucking me off.”
Rage fills me entirely and a hazy red film coats my vision.
I won’t let this man push me around anymore.
He wants to deny fucking his bitch of a stepmother, then he can go ahead.
But I know what I saw. I let the slimy feeling surface, recalling the way she smiled at me as her lips wrapped around his fat cock, knowing that it was killing me to see him give himself to her.