Chapter 5
CHAPTER FIVE
LOCH
“Fuck!” I fall onto my bed, shouting to my ceiling. “I’m falling so fucking in love!”
Mutt jumps on the bed beside me; I don’t give a shit if his paws are dirty. I love my dog, but he can’t talk me off this ledge. There’s only one person who can. Plucking my phone from my back pocket, I call my oldest brother.
“Yeah, man?” Sire answers.
“Got a minute? Or are you praying and shit?”
“I’m conjuring the Lord, yes.” He sounds entertained. “We got a captive in the bunker. Axel wants to cut and salt him; I want his head. What’s your vote?”
I’m unfazed. “You alone?”
“Gimme a minute.”
I hear tortured shouts and clanging metal doors before Sire proclaims, “Alright. Axel’s inside, playing with knives, and I’m out here. What’s going on?”
“I need my brother the priest, not the Bratva prince.”
“Pastor,” he corrects.
“Yeah, yeah, you’re allowed to fuck. I get it, but I need to confess, and you can’t say shit.”
“Oh, this’ll be good.”
“Good? No. I’m in love.”
Sire laughs. “With Alena.”
I jolt up. “How’d you know?”
“Uh, one, because she’s hot. Don’t tell Nash. Two, she’s perfect for you. You both love nature and shit. And three, you’re not supposed to love her, so of course, you do. Forbidden love is in our DNA.”
I scrub my face. “Nash will kill me if I touch her.”
“Yup.”
“Then Axel. Then Mom.”
“Yup, and yup. Mom I’d fear the most.”
“Not helping.”
“Lie not to one another,” Sire quotes scripture, and I roll my eyes. “Or like Mom would say, ‘Don’t piss on my leg and tell me it’s raining.’”
I stress, “Alena’s like a daughter to her. She practically helped Nash raise her after her mom died.”
“Yeah, all of our queens will be like Mom’s daughters. She’s kinda overdue for some. She’s been putting up with our dumb dicks for far too long.”
With six boys in tow, our mom narrowly escaped Russia.
She was fourteen when my father kidnapped and forced her to marry him. She bore his six sons, and the only reason we escaped our father’s sadistic clutches was a dark romantic twist of fate.
In my father’s tradition, one of ruthless, powerful men with wealth, when a man claims a wife, he shares her with another man on their wedding night.
It’s a ritual dating back to kings and paupers. When women were property, providing offspring as labor and lineage for the king.
Should the king be killed before his first son could inherit his dynasty, the other man would claim the woman, her children, and the wealth as his own.
Not only did my father rape my mother on their wedding night, but he forced another man to do it.
But that man, my mother’s second king, as they’re called, fell in love with her. He saw what she endured with dignity and never abandoned her.
Over the years, they grew closer in secret. He hated my father but loved his sons. Whose sons? No one is sure. But my mother’s second king honored his vow. He died helping us escape our father.
My mother’s second king was Maxim, and to this day, my brother, Jace, says I look like him.
I’ve always wondered if that’s why Maxim risked everything for us. Because I was secretly his son. Maybe one of my other brothers is too. Or maybe Maxim was madly in love with my mother. She’s a breathtaking, badass woman.
Either way, Maxim was our saving grace; the second king who died, saving his queen and her children.
This is the story I’ve been told. And it’s why my brothers and I continue the tradition of the first and second kings. It’s to honor Maxim and our mom.
We’re seven brothers, seven kings now—because we include Nash—who’ll find seven queens.
Each king will marry his queen, but he must take a second queen too. In one night, one ritual, he and another king bond with her. They lay with her, vowing to protect her and our family.
But unlike what our father did to our mother, our queens consent. They love their first king, their husband, and choose their second king. If they wish, they can receive more than two kings on their initiation night.
All the kings and queens are there.
All witness and want it.
Our queens now have control, and the kings provide their protection. Of course, our mother isn’t involved in the bonding or present to bear witness, but she supports us. She knows more than anyone how it makes us even stronger together.
Powerful queens and protective kings: it’s a carnal, consenting bond, using our evil father’s tradition against him because he’s still alive.
Ruslan Kholodov is scouring the earth, searching for his escaped wife and sons.
“So, what do I do?” I start pacing my cabin, my phone pressed to my ear. “Alena will figure out who I am one day.”
“Which part?” Sire sounds amused. “The Bratva part or the secret bodyguard part or the you’re-in-love-with-her part?”
I stop in front of my windows. “All of the above, and it’s not funny, man. I just spent the best day of my life with her. Even though I squealed like a little bitch at a snake, and she busted me.”
Sire laughs. The holy fucker. “Wait till she sees how you love spiders.”
“I’m not afraid of spiders, despite y’all putting them in my fucking hair all the time.”
“Aw, man, I’m sorry.” And yet, he’s still laughing. “We were total dicks to you. Boys will be boys, but big brothers are assholes. You may need counseling.”
“You weren’t always assholes.” I huff, staring at the sunset over the mountain. “You also all had my back.”
Sire taught me how to read. Axel always came to my football games. Nash gave me investment advice. Grant didn’t laugh when he found out I was a virgin at twenty-two. Jace shares my love of romance books. We tell our brothers to fuck off when they give us shit for it.
And Nick is just a couple of years older than me. A born athlete who encouraged me to play football in college as he did, but school wasn’t for me.
Alena was for me.
It just took me years to figure it out.
“Alright, so what are you going to do?” Sire gets serious. “Are you really in love with Alena?”
“Yeah, I’ve been falling in love with her from afar and—”
“What do you mean you’ve been falling in love with her?”
“I mean, it didn’t happen overnight. Growing up, she was just Nash’s pretty daughter. But then, I was eighteen, she was fifteen, and I saw her on Folly Beach with her friends, and she’d matured. She was fucking beautiful, and broke my heart in a sweet way and—”
“Wait,” Sire hedges, “you two didn’t—”
“No! It was just teenage stuff. Like, me protecting her from afar. I never broke the rules. Never talked to her. She never knew who I was, while I knew damn well I wasn’t supposed to want her, so I tried with other women for years until…”
“Until? Oh fuck, is there a secret baby or—”
“No! I’ve never even kissed her. Though I fucking wanted to years ago, when I knew I was so fucked and in love.”
“Is this the secret baby part?”
Now, he’s just busting my balls, so I give him the silent treatment until he chuckles. “Kidding. Keep going.”
So I confess, “Until three years ago, on Folly Beach, I watched Alena swim into a wicked riptide to save a little boy from drowning. She also could’ve drowned, but didn’t care.
It was badass and super sweet. I was about to jump in to help her, but she swam down shore, and carried him out, and I just stood there in the sand, in awe, falling so fucking in love, wishing I could’ve talked to her then. ”
I keep spilling my soul. “And for two days now, I’ve finally been able to do it, and my chest fucking hurts, my dick gets hard, and I have to ball up my fists to keep from pulling her into a kiss.
She’s smart and funny, and so damn hot. I want to throw her on a bed, and fuck her for hours, then hold her, laugh with her, until I fuck her some more. Twenty-four seven. Send snacks.”
“Oh, shit,” Sire mutters. “Yep, that’s falling in love. You got it bad.”
“Real bad, and I don’t want a cure. I want her.”
I bang my head on the window, not caring that my lights are on, and Alena can probably see me. That’s how fucking hopeless I feel.
“Then do it.” Sire shocks me, preaching, “Love her.”
“As of today? Done.”
“No, I mean love her. Woo her and shit. Make Alena fall in love with you too. Hold her, laugh with her, show her all those fucking skills Delphine taught you, and Alena won’t ever want to leave your bed.”
I wince, unsure if Alena will ever let me love her, or how that part of my past will be okay with her. How I’m Delphine’s second king. How she trained me years before I realized I had it bad for Alena.
“If Alena ever finds out about Delphine”—my stomach twists, answering Sire—“it’ll be another reason she’ll hate me.”
“No one will hate you.” Sire’s always kind to me. With others? Off with your head. “You don’t love Delphine. She’s Grant’s wife. She loves him. He’s her king, and she chose you to be her second king. Yeah, y’all are close, but not like that. It’s not romantic. It’s… different.”
“How the fuck am I supposed to explain different to Alena?” I argue with my windows.
“She doesn’t know about us, the kings and queens, even though she’s one of us.
She’s our princess because she’s Nash’s daughter, but he’ll never let her be initiated as a queen.
She’ll never love her first king and choose her second king, so she’ll never know how it feels.
And you know how it is: you have to feel our bond to believe in it. Otherwise, we sound like sex fiends.”
Sire chuckles. “Should I be flattered or insulted?”
“I’ve seen you breed women and men at the club. All are very flattered to be fucked by you.”
I mean the Atlanta sex club where Sire and I go. We don’t usually get our kinks on at our mom’s club.
And the fact that our mom owns a Charleston sex club is another issue. Actually, we use the profits from her club to fund our missions to rescue trafficking survivors, so it’s an altruistic issue.
Still, we’re kings with kinks Alena will never understand.
“I’ve seen you online, LuvPounder,” Sire goads. “Many are flattered by you too. What do you have? Like a million OnlyFans?”
And Sire knows where my kink resides.
Or at least, how I’ve survived this long without Alena.
And fuck, what if she finds out I’m @LuvPounder? Then I will really have only fans, never love.
“You’ve watched my dick online?”
Sire huffs out, “Man, please. I changed your fucking diapers. I busted you jerking off at twelve, and watched you make a woman squirt like a fountain at twenty-two. Your trained dick has no shame with me. In fact, I’m impressed.
I mean, I got stamina, but how do you jizz that much?
And damn, that far? Can you really shoot it into your mouth? ”
My eyes roll. “Practice. Kegels. Foreplay. And you let it build. And, yes, I can taste it. Anyway… back to Alena.”
“Look.” Sire sighs. “You’re adults. She assumes you’ve had sex before, and you can just tell her it was with an older woman who taught you how to do it right.
Lucky, Alena; she’ll reap the benefits.” He puzzles.
“Besides, she’s had sex too. Right? Fuck knows with who because Nash will kill him, but Alena will understand. ”
“I don’t want to think about it,” I mutter, feeling sick.
“We can’t all have virgins, man.”
Sire’s joking. He’s into sex so raw, it’s XXXX-rated. He’d scare the hell out of a virgin.
I bang my head again on the window. “I’m lying to Alena about who I am, and if we’re ever together, every breath I take with her will be a lie too.”
“No, it won’t.” Sire gets that tone. “You love her, and it’ll feel more real with her than you’ve ever known.” It’s a peaceful tone. He has a godly way, even though he’s a deadly devil.
“Listen,” he preaches, “love covers a multitude of sins.”
“Shit. You quoting the Bible again?”
“Yeah, and quoting real life. All anyone needs is love. Love that understands. That’s how you feel about Alena, right?”
“Yeah.” I sigh heavily. “Sometimes, she’s all I understand.”
Like my brothers, I’ve found my calling: to protect Alena.
“So, one day,” he predicts, “she’ll find out who you are, and how your greatest sin has been wanting to protect her, and she’ll understand. Trust me; your love will also cover that.”
I glance next door, and if I didn’t know better, I’d swear Alena was just watching me, but she glances back down to the book she’s reading in bed.
“She’s not in love with me,” I mutter, hopelessly in every fucking emotion.
“Not yet.” Sire vows, “And I won’t say a word when she is.”