Chapter 9
The Proper Order of Things
Istare at myself in the tall dressing room mirror and feel a sinking pit open up in my belly.
I just know that this dinner is going to be a disaster.
I’m dressed wrong, I’m going to embarrass my long lost uncle who is on equal footing with my fiancé when I have absolutely no footing at all.
Maybe I’ll use the wrong fork or spill spaghetti down the front of my dress.
Do royals even eat spaghetti? Who knows?
We feel so far away from the couple who ate spaghetti in my apartment so long ago.
I feel like I don’t even know that version of me anymore.
This one has scars on the inside that match the one through my eyebrow.
The options are really endless though. I’m definitely spiraling and, honestly, who could blame me?
“Everything is going to be fine,” Rhys says as he comes up behind me and presses a kiss to the patch of skin just above my shoulder that sits uncovered.
He’s in a gorgeous white dinner jacket. His tux shirt is unbuttoned at the collar and his tie hangs loose around his neck.
He expertly fastens the collar and begins to tie his tie in the mirror as he stands behind me.
There’s something so insanely intimate about it as he goes about his task while simultaneously watching me apply a pale peach gloss to my lips.
“I’m glad you’re so confident,” I mutter as I cap my gloss. “Because I have a feeling this is about to be a disaster.”
“Oh, it’ll be a nightmare for sure.” He winks at me and the gesture doesn’t make me feel remotely better. “But it’s just one more hurdle to cross before we can live our own lives.”
“I think you’re already living your own life,” I mumble, hoping he can’t hear me but I’m also not wrong.
Rhys isn’t the type of man to hold himself back from much.
He’s like the tornado in the movie Twister that scoops up all that lies in its path of chaos and destruction—only, weirdly in a mostly good way—and I’m one of the cows that moos every now and then while it’s tossed about.
I feel like I started in New England living a normal life and woke up as Dorothy in a faraway land.
Only, no one is explaining the rules to me and I’m bound to inevitably get a house dropped on my clueless head.
I let out a distracted sigh until Rhys speaks again, pulling me from my derailing train of thoughts.
“You’re right,” he says. And his gentle smile turns into the arrogant grin that says he does get exactly what he wants, when he wants it. Unfortunately, it’s also the one that makes my brain go on the fritz. “I do tend to get what I want.”
“Hmm… love that journey for you.” I roll my eyes.
He wraps his arms around me from behind, and I can feel his smile against the side of my neck and the laughter that emanates from his chest where it’s pressed to my back. “Aye. I love that for me too.”
“Of course you do…”
“And do you know what I want right now?” he asks as he starts to gather the voluminous folds of baby blue chiffon of my skirt in his hands, slowly revealing the matte silver pumps that I have on underneath.
“No!” I practically shout, stopping him from revealing more. “It took me ages to look halfway decent and you’ll mess it all up. Besides, we’ll be late.”
“You’re much more than halfway decent, hen,” he says, his fingers soft on my chin as he turns my head, dropping a quick kiss to my mouth. I watch him pull back with wide eyes as the peach gloss smeared on his lips shimmers in the light. “And we’re already late.”
“Ohmigod!” I gasp as I look at the clock. We’re already a good fifteen minutes late. “We have to go. Like, now.”
“Fine,” he says with a sigh. “I guess we must.”
“Come on already! I’m tired of always being in trouble,” I practically shout at him as I grab my silver evening bag covered in hand stitched on bugle beads.
“You’re never in trouble with me,” he says, and I side eye him hard. He might not be in trouble, but I am forever putting the wrong foot forward.
Best case scenario, I look like a blundering idiot, worst case scenario, someone fills my bed with pit vipers.
I stop at the door and close my eyes, moving my hand over my upper body in the way my mom first showed me, and then repeated by my uncles, as I say a quiet blessing and ask God for protection.
“Then what do you call this afternoon?” I ask, the exasperation is clear in my tone of voice.
“A rather enjoyable interlude.” He smiles at me like the cat that got his cream, and in a way, I guess he did. “Besides, should you really be reminding me of more enjoyable pursuits at this juncture when we’re due to dine with our families? I’m more than half hard for you already.”
“I guess not.”
“Aye.”
“Besides you’re always more than half hard,” I reply snottily. “That’s hardly my fault. You’re hard for any female.”
Before I can get even another half step down the hall, with my foot raised in the air like the statue of an old war general, Rhys grabs me from behind and pushes me up against the silk covered walls.
The tops of my breasts spill out of the demure neckline of my gown, pressed against the wall below my cheek, as I breathe heavily, in and out.
I feel the rigid length of him pressed hard against my backside and I gasp as he cups my pussy over the layers of tulle that make up my skirt and pulls me back against him by the anchor point between my legs.
But it doesn’t matter how much fabric blocks him from the very heat of me because I feel him there as if I’m bare.
“Rhys—” I whisper a cautious warning, but he stops me short when he rocks his hips against mine. I feel him everywhere.
“Hush, hen,” he snaps. “I’m tired of the attitude and I’m tired of the bullshit. Aye, it’s true I’m hard all the time but it’s for no one but you.”
My heart thunders in my ears. He’s never taken this tone with me before and it scares me. I’d be lying if I said it didn’t also light a fire inside of me, and that fire licks up the inside of my pussy with a molten wet heat.
Still, I know better than to challenge him now, so I keep my mouth shut.
“Aye,” he says. To me? To him? I don’t know… But I want to and at the same time, I don’t. “I think you need to learn a lesson, hen. Learn fast and listen well.”
He rucks up the back of my dress and I feel the cool air of the hallway wisp over my exposed flesh as I hear the snick of his zipper. I feel the sting as he rips away the expensive silk panties that he paid for and stuffs them in his pocket.
And then he’s there. The blunt tip of his hard length pressed up against me but it’s the only warning I get before he thrusts all the way in, my body burning as it tries to make room for him.
It hurts… but there’s more to it than that, and I have a feeling Rhys needs this.
He needs to show me this cruel side of him, and I’d be foolish not to see this lesson for what it is.
This man, who has tied me to him so thoroughly, is not a hero of my story… He’s the villain.
It’s all I can do to press the flat of my hands against the wall and brace myself as he drives into me over and over. His hands grip my body over the front of the dress that looks as if it’s come from Cinderella’s own closet.
I hear a gasp and look over my shoulder as a shocked maid stands at the end of the hall. I have no idea what door she came from and I suspect it doesn’t matter either. She looks as stricken as I’m sure I do, both of us being debased by Rhys’s sudden cruelty.
“That would be Meg,” he growls into my ear. “And aye, I’ve fucked her too. Just like this, hen. In this very hallway no less. But it’s no’ her body that drives me to distraction, it’s no’ her sleeping in my bed every night, and it’s no’ her bloody bullheadedness that’s driving me daft!”
“Rhys, please—” I beg as I watch Meg bite her lip.
“She’d let me fuck her even now, knowing that I’m to marry you. How does that make you feel, hen?”
“Does it matter?”
“Aye,” he growls as he fucks me harder. My body is no longer burning for him, this is nothing but pure punishment. This is nothing short of torture. “It does. Tell me, do you want me fucking her instead of you?”
“No,” I whisper as the first tear rolls down my cheek.
“Do you want her to join us in our bed then?” he asks as he plunges into me over and over. “Do you want to share me with her? Or anyone else?”
“No.” I close my eyes, unable to look at the maid anymore, knowing that she could take him from me at any time. My place here is as unstable as my safety, even though I’m not sure I want to be here. But that’s not about being with Rhys the man, that’s about living life with Rhys the king.
“Then she won’t be,” he says as if it’s that simple. “Now take your fucking like a good girl and you’ll wear the cum of a king through dinner to remind you of not only who you belong to, but who belongs to you.”
And then his hand slides down the ruched bodice of my gown and slides under my skirt where it’s bunched up to accommodate him.
His fingers effortlessly find where we join and he strokes me, knowing exactly what my body wants, what it craves, and he sends me hurtling toward an orgasm when I didn’t think one was possible.
“Rhys,” I pant.
“Aye,” he groans, his hips moving faster as he pumps into me. “That’s it, hen. Aye but you’re a glorious fuck.”
“Yes,” I beg. “Fuck me.” I need it. I need what he can give me. I should have let him give me that orgasm in front of my dressing room mirror and then I wouldn’t have been so wound up to begin with.
But then he plants himself deep and groans as he spills himself inside of me.
His hands slide away from my body and land on the wall beside mine as he holds himself up.
The only part of him still touching me is his cock as it softens, and he effectively denies me my own orgasm even though he upped the level of humiliation I’ve been dished out inside the walls of this castle.