Chapter 43
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
ALENA
Loch takes me on a romantic dinner date, high atop a hill, with sunset views overlooking the white buildings of Mykonos.
He gives me a red rose and holds my hand there and back to our hotel with a chaste peck on my cheek at my suite door.
The next day, we hike to the iconic windmills of Mykonos, where he teases my lips with a pucker for our selfie, as the cobalt sky kisses the azure Aegean Sea behind us.
But that’s it.
He doesn’t try anything else.
When he takes me to Elia Beach the following day, I smirk, knowing his game.
It’s a popular nude beach, loved by all sexualities, frolicking in the sun. And all it does is set me on fire watching Loch strip bare. Men everywhere drop their jaws as he rises, naked, hard, and rubbing oil on his inked muscles with his eyes only on me.
So I snap my bikini free, feeling stares my way, but I don’t care. With him, I always feel beautiful as we lie on white padded sun loungers, facing each other, nude yet not touching, aroused bodies glistening, hungry breath huffing, driving ourselves insane.
Am I still mad at him?
What the hell is anger when I want him so much?
Because Loch’s doing it again. He’s being so damn perfect, and this time, he’s literally not hiding a thing. He needs me to see how much he wants me.
Hours later, Axel and Ruby host their rehearsal dinner on the glowing terrace of The Mercier Mykonos.
Luca Mercier, the hotel’s owner, is Ruby’s brother-in-law. He spared no expense, giving Ruby and Axel his entire lavish hotel, spa, and beach for their wedding week.
When Loch asks me to dance as our families enjoy dessert, toasting with milky shots of ouzo, I gasp as he silently pulls me near.
Sweat dampens his white linen shirt. I’m getting misty in my gauzy white dress. Not from the temperature. It’s mild in Mykonos in the fall.
It’s the heat between us. The wet storm. A palpable yearning roused and magnetic. I’m breathless, feeling Loch stirring hard against me, but he won’t cross the line while I’m dancing delirious with desire.
My lips tickle the shell of his ear. “Are you going to kiss me?”
Votives twinkle on tables. Guests murmur. Shot glasses tink. The sun has set, and the DJ’s received the romantic memo for the night. It’s the perfect moment.
“Remember the first night I did?” His fingertips caress the small of my back.
“Yes.” I sigh into the scent of his inked neck—tobacco and sweet vanilla.
“You wanted to go slow because you needed to know me.”
“Yes. But we didn’t go slow; we fell in love.”
“I’ll always be in love with you.” He pulls back, his hand cupping my cheek. “So you need to know something else about me.”
My pulse climbs.
I don’t want to go back. I want to go forward with him, but… “Okay.” I steel myself.
“I’m so sorry for my lies, Alena. But please know our truth.
..” He pauses, holding my gaze. “The bully you told me about? The one who hurt you? It was me that day on Folly Beach. I was there with my brother Nick, throwing a football, and once I realized what that asshole did to you, after you ran away crying, I beat the shit out of him. I blinded him. I almost killed him.”
My heart stops. “What?”
He cups my other cheek. “I wrote you a letter that day because I couldn’t talk to you.
You weren’t supposed to know who I was then.
But I needed to say it. How he was so fucking wrong because you are so fucking beautiful.
And it took me years to go back to that beach, and when I did, I saw you again.
Rescuing that little boy in the riptide. Do you remember that day?”
I can’t forget it. The boy’s mom was screaming for help. She couldn’t swim, not like I’d been trained, and…
“Yeah.” I gape, shocked. “You were there?”
“Fate.” He nods. “I was there, and I swear I fell in love with you that day because you were so fucking badass and beautiful. Just like your mom. The woman who made me love Slurpees. I’m so sorry I had to lie to you, and so fucking sorry I hurt you.
But our love is the truth, Alena. How many times does Fate have to prove it? ”
The lump in my throat makes it hard to breathe, to talk. “Loch, I—”
“And yes,” he swears, “I want to kiss you, but if I do, I’m not stopping until the day I die. You’ll be mine again because I’ll always be yours. No chances. No lies. No secrets. Just Fate and our love because it’s all we fucking need. Please come back to me, Alena.”
Our feet. The world. The music. It all stops as I search his eyes, welling with tears. They match mine.
“Kiss him!” my dad shouts, and I laugh, locked to Loch.
His name. His love. His life. Nodding, I whisper, “Kiss me.”
“Like anyone can fucking stop me,” he growls before granting my wish.
He holds me so close, I cry into our kiss, my happy tears salting our lips, his tongue seeking mine, his inhale claiming my exhale.
When it’s love, it only takes a moment to reunite because forever awaits.
Shrilling whistles and claps explode.
It’s obvious as hell when Loch takes my hand that we’re going back to his room. They assume we’ll fuck the night away, but first, he needs to know something about me.
No more secrets.
It makes me gently nudge him to sit on a plush Grecian blue chair by the balcony doors of his lavish white-marble suite, open to the night ocean beyond.
“I need to tell you something,” I say, straddling him, wanting to look him in the eyes for this.
There’s a moment of silence, my heart racing, before he grabs my hips, urging me. “I have more to tell you.”
“There’s more?” I gulp, “Jeez, Loch, this Bratva life is ad nauseam.”
“But it’s not bad. At least, fuck.” He puffs. “I hope you don’t think so.”
My heart was in my throat, knowing what I needed to tell him, but now it falls to my feet. “Please don’t hurt me again,” I whisper, and he clasps my cheeks.
“Never, Alena, no, it’s just…” He lets go, dragging a hand down his face. “It’s just one more thing everyone is letting me tell you because it’s pretty… well… intimate.”
“Intimate?”
“It’s about the kings and queens.”
I shrug. “I know. Your mom. The Queen. She’s a descendant of the Russian Czar.
And I know about your father. And the man who saved you and your brothers from him.
How Maxim was royal and died, getting you out of Moscow.
She told me how all her sons are like escaped princes.
” My fingertip glances the green gem around his neck. “It’s where this ring came from.”
He sits taller. “And in Maxim’s honor, we keep the tradition. Each brother, a king, claims his queen and vows to protect a second queen too.”
I breathe slowly. “Okay, and…?”
There’s more in his eyes, his words following, “And let me just tell you this next part, then you can tell me how you feel about it.”
I nod, bracing for a firestorm of info. At least this time, I’m prepared.
He exhales. “We keep the tradition through an initiation. A king claims his queen in a ritual where we witness their vow. I mean, me and my brothers. Not my mom, but she knows about it.”
I cock a brow, suspicion coiling. “Claims?”
“Fucks,” he clarifies, and lust zips through me. “It goes back to the wedding night tradition when it wasn’t consensual for the bride, but with us, it is. A queen chooses her king and her second king, and we all witness their bond.”
Oh.
Oh my god.
“You mean?”
He nods. “Axel did it with his first wife. It’s how we started the tradition.
Though Katya wanted Sire as her second king way too much, so I can’t say I was sad when she left Axel.
She never felt right for him. But Delphine?
” His grip on my hips tightens. “I’m her second king. That’s why she trained me.”
I huff, understandably overwhelmed, shockingly curious. “I need you to stop talking in platitudes and speak plainly. What happened?”
He sighs, “Delphine’s been through some shit, and my mom got her out.
She brought her to the US so we could keep her safe, and she and Grant fell in love.
Like head over French heels, obsessed with each other.
Grant wanted Delphine as his queen, and when she chose me as her second king, I freaked out. ”
“Wait. Why did she choose you? Does she lo—”
“God, no,” he scoffs, grinning. “Delphine is free with her body, not her heart. It’s Grant’s. And it’s why she picked me. I was the youngest, the least threat to my brother. You know who they are now. Just imagine.”
Oh.
I can.
Mentally, I comb the landscape of the seven kings. Even my dad. And it’s all menacing ink and mountains of mighty muscle, tensed and threatening to explode. No wonder they’re inked with lions. Like a warning for those who enter their territory.
“So, Delphine picked you because you wouldn’t make Grant jealous?”
“Yeah, in fact, Grant took pity on me because I was a virgin. Just looking at an apple pie could make me cream it. It was embarrassing.”
I giggle. I can’t help it. “So, Delphine used a whip and trained your little lion?”
He smirks. “There was nothing little and no whips. Just schooling me like a pupil so I wouldn’t embarrass myself in front of my brothers.”
“Did you?”
“No, thank fuck. It was my first time, and I made Delphine proud. It was her initiation and my graduation.”
I nod, waiting for jealousy to lash through me, but it doesn’t. “So that’s where you get it from. Your Pleasure Dom kink.” Instead, I remember all the time Loch’s spent between my thighs, and me, losing count of my gushing orgasms. “I guess I should thank her.”
“You’re not jealous?”
“It was before me. I had a first too.”
I inhale, ready to tell him, but he interjects, “There’s more.”
“Oh my god.” I throw my chin up, squirming. “What now?”
“It’s just…” He shifts beneath me, distracted, huffing. “Fuck, Babygirl, when you straddle me with these hips, all I want to do is fuck you hard and make a hundred babies.”
I drop my stare, meeting his, my heart swooning. “Don’t tease me.”
“Goddamn, I’m not. Me and you, fucking in the woods and making a dozen babies to fill our log cabin in the mountains. Fuck yes, it’s my dream with you. Just let me finish.”
“Is that what Delphine said?”
He laughs. And so do I.
I don’t understand this complicated flood of emotions, but at least we’re sharing them. We’re talking and hiding nothing.
“Yeah, sort of, because every queen has been initiated,” he continues. “Delphine. Ruby. Wren. Zar.” My eyes widen, and he nods. “He’s Nick’s future husband, so we love him, too.”
“Did you—”
“No.” He shakes his head. “Delphine’s initiation was the first and last I was, um, carnally involved in.”
“So that means?” I wince. “Oh god, that means my dad and Vale and…”
Quick, hand me a paper towel to wipe the mental image away.
“Yeah, you need to talk to the queens, and decide if…” He pauses beneath me, eyes heating, his voice husky as his dick hardens. “If you want to be my queen, Alena.”
It blurts from my mouth. “Am I not already?”
Why? Because it feels natural, complete.
I’m Loch’s.
But he trails his thumb over my bottom lip. Teasing. Coaxing. Reminding me of my training. I suck it as he slowly pumps it into my mouth.
My nipples tighten as he urges, “Not like you deserve to feel with us, Alena. It’s a powerful bond. Yes, we’ve tested our kink with others, but it’s not like the kings and queens together.”
I flinch, and he reads my mind, assuring me. “Of course, never with Nash around, but I’ve always felt left out, watching the queens relish their initiations. They felt so much pleasure, but it was fucking painful for me, wishing you were on your throne beside me.”
I’m flooded with questions, with arousal. “So, how would we…?”
“I don’t know,” he says. “But if we talk about it, we’ll find a way. You’ve always been off-limits. Like our little princess, but you’re not anymore. You’re grown and badass, and as strong as the other queens. I want you to know them like I know them and—”
“But wait.” My stomach fists, logic returning. “That means I’d choose a second king.”
“We can figure it out,” he reasons. “Most are already claimed, and Nick’s not available for a woman, but A—”
“Loch, I need to tell you something.”
He opens his mouth, but I rush out, “And don’t interrupt me this time, please, because…” My lips suddenly tremble. “This is hard to tell you.”