12. Chapter 12
Chapter 12
Annie
I t’s been three days. Or is it five? It’s hard to tell inside the McKenzies’ long-abandoned home that feels like a portal to a forgotten time, its former opulence still obvious despite the building’s decay. The vaulted ceilings, the velvet curtains still hanging from high arched window frames, the statues and the furniture fit for an aristocratic family all make it feel like the ruins might come alive any second. It’s almost magical.
But what makes me stop in my tracks every single time is the grand stairs. And every time, I spend minutes rooted in the ground, staring at the immaculate marble. It emits a strange energy, or maybe it’s the story Carlton told me about his parents dying here, right in front of him, that compels me.
Sadness balls in my chest, unfolding into a trail of sorrow. I can’t imagine these kinds of wounds ever healing. There are people who never get over lesser trauma, let alone something of this magnitude.
“You look beautiful,” his voice rumbles behind me, but I’m no longer surprised when he appears out of nowhere.
“Marcus Wilde was a monster,” I say, my eyes still fixed on the stairs.
“We all are.” His hands rest on my naked shoulders. “It’s what Kings are supposed to be.”
I suppose you can’t deal with the likes of Kovac otherwise, which is what I come to understand the more I try to fit my mind into Carlton’s mold. To understand his true nature. What I do know beyond a doubt is that he’ll never not be a man who cuts throats and severs limbs whenever he deems someone worthy of his violence. And yet I can’t help feeling that he’s exactly what the world needs sometimes.
“At least now I know the truth,” I whisper, placing a hand over his on my shoulder. “There are no more secrets between us.”
“Oh, there are secrets. You’ve heard the truth about what a monster Marcus was. You don’t know the truth about what a monster I am. ”
“I know you .” I turn to face him, the folds of my canary-yellow dress flaring with the motion. It feels so at odds with the sinister vibe of this place, yet every time Carlton goes out to get food and water and home care products, he comes back with something for me to wear, too.
He runs a hand through his hair, looking away, but I reach up, cupping his chin and turning it toward me.
“You’re a monster the world needs,” I assure him. “I needed you when you killed that guy at the Royales mansion. I had never felt more grateful before in my life.You were my guardian angel.”
“The world needs this monster as long as it’s under control. Because of you, the monster broke loose, and no one is safe anymore.”
“So you brought us here not just for my safety, but the world’s?”
“I don’t care about the fucking world anymore, and that’s the problem. All I care about is you. About selfishly keeping you to myself.” Those scorching eyes search my face, heating my skin. “I’ll never be able to let you go, Annie, not even if I want to, so don’t get your hopes high. ”
I smile, trying to lighten the mood, since the intensity is getting overwhelming. “I don’t want to run away from you anymore. I don’t think I have the strength to.”
“You will, once you learn the truth. Because, in this fairy tale, the beast doesn’t turn into a prince, Annie. It’s the other way around.”
That doesn’t scare me nearly as much as it should. But I guess Carlton isn’t equipped to understand how deep my feelings for him go, insecure as he is about his lovability. Must be why he could never take intimacy to deeper levels than kinks and twisted lust. Except with me, and I’m dying to know why.
And there will be no better moment to ask than now, as we walk arm in arm toward the kitchen. He lets go of my hand to grab the grocery bags from the island.
“Why me, Carlton?” I ask while reaching for one of the bags to help. He grabs my hand in the air, kisses it, then gets the bag out of my reach, turning his back and placing it next to the sink.
“What do you mean, why you?”
“You can have any woman you want. Why me of all people? ”
I watch the white shirt pull over his broad back as he works to take the groceries out of the bag. He stops, resting his hands on the counter. My stomach twists at his silence, and I start to wring my hands.
“Why does it matter?”
“Because I want to know if it’s reversible.” My voice breaks. There it is, my ugly truth. The fear that he might be into me because of something. Because I insisted, because of the sex, because he already did too much for me that he can’t undo.
“God himself could not reverse it,” he says.
Delight trickles down my limbs, easing some of the tension.
One thing is clear—he might not be right in the head, but I’m not much better either.
“Those who challenge God tend to get into trouble.”
“I’m already in trouble.”
I walk over to him, slowly placing my hands on his back. I lean in, breathing in his scent, familiar and exhilarating, and reaching to parts of my soul that no one ever has before.
“Convince me that nothing will ever come between us,” I whisper, wondering if God would ever bless our union. Some people I used to know in church would say the Almighty wouldn’t have let it happen if the Almighty didn’t approve, but Mom always scoffed at the argument.
He takes a deep breath, his large back expanding in my hands.
“I tried to resist you for a very long time, Annie Jones. But now I realize I never stood a chance.” He turns around, wrapping his arms around me, his dark eyes finding mine. “Even if you hadn’t manipulated your way into that ritual, I would have come after you eventually.”
“But I annoyed you in the beginning.”
“I thought you did, too. But that was just because I wanted to keep you at arm’s length. To spare you the monster I really was because I knew that once I tasted you I wouldn’t be able to stop. Deep down, I knew that I’d want more and more until I consumed every last drop of you. That I’d leave you a shell of your former self and ruin you for anyone else.”
His arms tighten around me, slow and deadly. A jungle snake indeed .
“There’s no one I wouldn’t kill for you, Annie.” He brushes a rogue tendril of hair off my face, pushing it behind my ear. “I knew I’d be the end of you if I gave you what you wanted, but you turned out the end of me, too. You took away my self-control. And I took away your freedom in return, because it’s the only way I can keep some measure of balance. Or this darkness—” he presses me to his chest, crushing me against those concrete pecs, “—this darkness is going to consume us both.”
He kisses me and I melt into it, forgetting all about the world around us. He pulls me ever deeper into his kiss until we’re wrapped in a universe of our own. And here, on this island, we can actually have it—our own world, our own bubble, a place where no one will ever find us. By the time our lips peel off each other, I realize I’d choose him over my freedom anytime, which is a terrible thing for a strong, independent woman like myself to accept.
He drops one arm off of me to return to the groceries, pulling me into his side while he works with one hand. Needing to make myself useful, I reach for the tomatoes .
“Let me help,” I say sweetly, but he catches my hand and kisses the back of it.
“I’m cooking tonight.”
And he does, tonight and the night after and then the next night.
I don’t remember a time when I was this spoiled, not even by Aunt Rita. If anything, I was assigned hard work back home. Not that it bothered me. On the contrary. I even miss it sometimes, especially the chickens and the summer mornings, and the evenings when Mr. Jinx, our cat, rested lazily on the porch, basking in the sunset.
But all Carlton will have me do is lie in his arms in the largest bed that ever existed up in that huge bedroom, and let him fuck me.
All. The. Fucking. Time.
The bed posts hit the wall, the canopy swaying above us. He no longer hides his sounds of pleasure, and I lose it every time he lets loose those animal grunts. The more he takes me the more I want of him, and he obviously feels the same. He doesn’t miss a single chance to hoist me up on the kitchen island and eat my pussy, or bend me over the bathroom counter and take my cunt from behind when all I’m trying to do is brush my teeth.
And when we talk, it’s never about him anymore.
Every time I try to broach the subject of his past, he somehow slips through my fingers. He turns the conversation back to me, drinking in every word. Still, I can’t help but notice he avoids looking at me when I talk.
“Why do you do that?” I finally ask as I watch him chop vegetables for dinner, while I’m perched on a chair in the kitchen. “You’re always averting your eyes from me when I talk.”
“Because I can’t look at you and not want you,” he replies, and it’s enough to make me squirm my thighs together.
But he remains quiet.
Too quiet. I feel shadows creeping in on him, demons he doesn’t tell me about. And I want to be right there, inside his own personal hell with him.
“Do you remember their faces?” I ask quietly.
His shoulders stiffen. He knows who I’m talking about, he doesn’t need me to spell it out.
“Only their faces as they died. ”
He spins around and sticks something sweet wrapped in perfectly fried bacon into my mouth. The taste explodes on my tongue, and I moan, my eyes rolling back. It’s exquisite.
“God, this is better than any of Auntie Rita’s kitchen miracles,” I say as I munch. “Where did you learn to cook?”
“Training as a King. It’s part of basic survival skills.”
“Survival where, at Michelin restaurants?” My cheeks heat up. I would have made a fool of myself in the kitchen if he’d let me anywhere near the stove. I’m not a bad cook, but I don’t like it. I only ever cook in order not to die. Not even Auntie Rita’s warnings that a man’s love is won through his taste buds was able to motivate me, not even when she referred specifically to Carlton.
Auntie Rita. She must be worried sick at the Royales mansion, wringing her hands, deep rings around her eyes from lack of sleep. No doubt the girls know who I’m with, even though they have no idea where, and they surely tried to calm her down, give her some peace of mind, but knowing her, it didn’t work .
“There are some perks to doing what I do, I guess.” He plants a kiss on my forehead and returns to the food.
I’ve watched Carlton work before, getting everything in this place up and running like a pro, from power to running water, because there’s no staff here. I’ll never not get wet when I think about the way his forearms snaked while he fixed the pipes under the sink.
But watching him cook is an entirely special experience. The way those hands move is almost magical. Yet those same hands that are so expertly chopping carrots slashed a man’s throat right in front of me months ago. I knock a bowl of fruit off the kitchen island at the memory, the china smashing against the floor.
Carlton glances over his shoulder, raising an eyebrow, just the way he did as blood pooled out from under the man’s cheek after he hit the ground, the light in his eyes dimming until it extinguished completely. Yes, he was a murderer, and he was there to kill me in cold blood, but that doesn’t change the fact that Carlton is at least just as cold blooded .
I get off the chair intent on grabbing the broom to gather the shards, but Carlton stops me.
“Leave it. I’ll do it in a minute.”
“You don’t have to do everything around the house, you know,” I manage, but something’s changed in my voice.
Which I’m sure isn’t lost on Carlton.
He goes on to chop the carrots as I get flashbacks of the severed hand in the black box on my windshield. Trying to get the broom, I knock over another chair.
The chopping stops. He doesn’t turn around, but the stillness of his body is that of a deadly animal listening for sounds in the woods. No chance in hell he didn’t pick the shift in my mood.
Without a word, I get the broom, while he continues his work, slowly, until I sit back down.
“I wish I could at least call Auntie Rita,” I say, trying to sound as casual as possible. “She must be worried sick. I know that the girls and the Royales brothers probably gave her a good story, but she knows I wouldn’t have left without a word.”
“Your Aunt Rita knows you’re taking advantage of a scholarship in Asia. It’s where all the groundbreaking tech happens.” He turns around and places a bowl of fresh vegetables in front of me, giving me one assessing look. It feels like needles are piercing me everywhere—the look of a Heathen King scanning a subject for secrets and lies.
A lick of threat runs down my spine, even though I know he’d never hurt me. Not physically, at least.
“Is that where my parents think I am, too?” I ask.
“It is.”
Picking up the steaming pot off the stove, he places it on the wooden support on the island, then whips the kitchen towel over his shoulder.
“Will I ever see them again?” I swallow the knot in my throat, looking up at his face, fearing the answer. He’s been sedating me with his presence, with the glee just looking at him gives me, yet I’m starting to become aware of the loss and sorrow that surrounds this illusion.
Carlton Wilde is a killer. The very way he got me here was by leaving a trail of blood behind, and he’d continue adding to that trail without the twitch of a muscle if I decided to make things difficult for him. The man I’m in love with is a huge walking red flag, and no amount of intimacy and affection is going to change that.
“I can’t answer that question in any way that you’ll like,” he says, and my heart sinks.
“So it’s you and me…indefinitely?”
He scoops food onto plates with the calm precision of a surgeon before he takes the two plates and heads with them toward the dining room. I follow him from the kitchen into the great hall that might once have hosted impressive balls. The energy of opulence still lingers in the air like a ghost, crawling up the grand marble stairs toward the endless ceiling, imbuing the large windows overlooking a crenelated stone terrace. With only a few soft lights spread around the large space, marking the way toward the round table Carlton prepared for us by one of the windows, we can see the star-filled sky spreading out over the expanse of night and sea beyond the castle.
Carlton sets the plates down on the table and holds a chair for me to sit.
I stare up at him as the delicious smell of the meal wafts to my nostrils. This is day-number-God-knows- what that this gorgeous man has cooked for me, and it still hits me like the first time.
“You should try the beans,” he says, whipping an immaculate napkin and spreading it on his lap. “I cooked them soft, just the way you like them.”
“You’re amazing,” I say, watching the low light playing on his masculine yet beautiful features. “So many gifts and skills that people would never guess you have.”
“Would those gifts and skills be enough to keep you by my side if you had a choice?” he asks in that sedating voice while he pours me a glass of my favorite wine. I don’t usually drink much, but the wine in his cellar is something else.
“You mean enough not to miss my friends, or my family?” I shrug, grabbing the wine glass by the stem. “Depends for how long.”
He looks at me over the table.
“I can’t give you a time frame yet, Annie. It could be a month, it could be a year.” Then, softer, “It could be forever.”
I sip my wine, and the corner of his mouth lifts .
“You still don’t get it, do you? You still don’t understand the lengths I’d go to make you fully mine.” He takes my hand and raises it to his mouth, pressing his lips gently on my knuckles while intensity grows in his eyes.
My lips part as I watch him set down my hand.
“Eat your beans,” he says as if he didn’t just seduce me with nothing but the tone of his voice a second ago.
Taking a few moments to calm my breath, I pick up the cutlery and try to circle back to his plans for the future, but he keeps steering the conversation back to me, as usual.
To my supposedly idyllic life in the countryside in Alabama. To the chickens and Mr. Jinx. To how my mother failed or even refused to see my talents. How she insisted that I put church ahead of school and, honestly, a man listening to you like that, being there with you in your memories as if wanting to breathe the very air that used to fill your lungs, has something magnificently compelling about it. Even though I’m all too aware the coin can flip any moment and things can get seriously toxic, I can’t resist it. His power keeps pulling me in.
I’ve always been extra careful about how I presented myself to Carlton, but now being around him has become the most natural thing. It’s true that I’ve always been showy about my attraction to him, stared at him openly and made public business of my drooling after him, but that version of me was a careless girl with a thing for kinky romance novels and pastel-colored dresses.
Now I feel like a tragic heroine willingly drowning in her own destiny.
After finishing his dinner, Carlton leans back with the wine in his hand, a perfect blend of elegance, patience and beastly good looks. I push a strand of hair behind my ear.
“I can’t remember the last time I talked so much about myself,” I say. “I must sound obnoxiously self-involved.”
“I was the one probing. But that’s just because I want to know everything about you, Annie Jones. I want to partake in every little experience you ever had. I want to be part of the life you lived before we met. ”
I pick up my glass of wine. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you’re a serial killer who wants to know how it feels under my skin.”
“I am a serial killer, and I do want to know how it feels under your skin.”
It’s not easy, but I manage to keep a straight face. This is my chance. “Tell me about your first time.” I try to imbue my voice with the same soothing calm he’s been using on me. “The first time you took a life. The first time Marcus Wilde made you do it.”
His chest expands with a deep breath, and for a moment I’m worried he’ll slip through my fingers again but, to my surprise, he doesn’t try to.
“You’re not going to let this go, are you?”
“I want to know you, Carlton. The real you. Just like you want to know me.”
The depth in those dark eyes sucks me in. It’s all I can do not to grab the table to keep steady. This is the first real glimpse of him.
“This isn’t about knowing you. It’s about experiencing you.” What do you say to that? He smiles like he knows exactly what I’m thinking. “And, judging by how you tried to break up with me before I brought you here, the reverse hasn’t worked that well. The more you experienced of me, the more you wanted distance. So why force yourself through more of that experience?”
“Because,” I whisper, licking the wine off my lips. There’s no better way to answer this than with the truth. “Because I love you.”
Who would have thought that silence can drop in with a bang? But this is exactly what happens now. My eyes automatically fill with tears while Carlton’s widen. It’s just a little, but I catch it. Blood rushes into my cheeks and up to the tips of my ears, drowning the distant sound of the waves.
“Please, say something,” I whisper when Carlton fails to react. I can see that my declaration surprises him, but not what it makes him feel. A veil has fallen over his face, his features hard. He’s no longer my twisted boyfriend, but a distant god.
As unreachable and unattainable as the first time I met him.
I take a large swig of my wine, hoping to numb the overwhelming urge to cry. I barely manage to swallow it before I burst into laughter .
“Aren’t you sorry you’re stuck with me now?”
“Is this a ploy to get me to feel safe and return you to your friends, your aunt and your old life?”
I set the glass down.
“Carlton, I’m serious.”
And then I wait, but I’m not even sure for what. It’s not like I expect him to say it back. I don’t know what really drove him to kidnap me and bring me here, but it wasn’t love.
He pushes his chair back so harshly that it startles me. Next thing I know, he’s taking my hand.
“Come with me,” he orders. “There’s something you need to see before you play with words like that.”