King Read online

  has air conditioning,” Nikki said, fanning her pits. She picked up a photo with a thin plastic frame and turned it to me. “Sweet looking kid huh?” She ran her fingers over the picture of a little blond girl with curls smiling into the camera. For the first time since I’d met Nikki I saw her smile, although there was a lingering sadness behind it. She shook her head, set down the picture, and opened the bottom drawer, shuffling through some paperwork.

  “Motherfucking BINGO!” She shouted. When she lifted her hand from the drawer, she produced a huge stack of bills tied together with purple bands. She waved it in the air and my stomach flipped at the sight. That money could buy a lot of food.

  It could buy the start of a whole new life.

  The thought went out just as fast as it had come in, because there was no fucking way I was about to steal it.

  There is no way I am stealing from HIM.

  I was desperate, not suicidal.

  There was a loud bang followed by the rattling of the doorknob. “What the fuck?” A voice on the other end of the door shouted. “Why is this locked?”

  “We gotta go!” I shouted. Nikki grabbed another stack of bills from the drawer and darted for the window, shoving me aside before I could offer for her to go first, losing a few bills along the way.

  Nikki barely had one leg out the window when the door flew off its hinges, sending the door frame splintering into a million little wooden pieces throughout the room. Bear, the man who’d sent me up here, stood in the doorway. We locked eyes for a split-second before he noticed the empty drawer, the loose bills on the floor, and the open window where Nikki was already halfway out.

  Bear took one step into the room. Nikki reached into her purse and produced a small handgun I didn’t know she had.

  “Stay where you are!” she shouted, aiming the gun at his chest. He stopped, raising an eyebrow at Nikki.

  “Are you sure you want to do that?” he asked with no sign of fear in his voice, if anything he sounded like he was taunting her. Teasing her. He made it seem as if it was old hat to him to have a gun pointed directly at him.

  The green-eyed shadow man appeared in the doorway and instantly my heart restricted in my chest. When he saw Nikki and the state of the room his lip curled up on one side. He took slow confident steps toward her, passing Bear. “Don’t fucking move, or I’ll fucking shoot!” Her voice wavered as he approached.

  “So shoot,” he dared, each step toward her a challenge.

  Nikki turned toward me, the gun shaking in her hand, an unreadable emotion flashing in her teary eyes. “I’m so sorry,” she said.

  She squeezed the trigger.

  There was a loud echoing crack in my left ear, like a pick being hammered into a block of ice, followed by a disorienting ringing sensation.

  I don’t know how I ended up on the ground, but I found myself lying on the carpet on my side, holding my knees up to my chest. My eyes closed. My hands covered my ears, and I just laid their willing the ringing to stop. Just as it had started to subside, strong hands flipped me flat onto my back. My head thunked against the ground like a dead weight.

  “Redhead’s gone.” Bear said, tapping the screen of his phone with his thumb. “I sent Cash and Tank to find her and put the word out to the locals. Towns too small for her to get too far without someone noticing. We’ll catch up to her sooner or later.”

  The green eyed man glowered down at me from only inches above my face. A vein pulsed in his neck. “Seems I was wrong. You are a whore. A thieving little whore,” He must have taken my confused look for not being able to hear because he ripped my hands away from my ears. “Listen you little cunt bitch…” He paused mid sentence and looked down to where his hands held mine, and my gaze followed. Sticky red coated my palms. He grabbed my chin, turning my head one way and then the other. When he touched a spot over my ear, pain sliced down my neck, and I cried out.

  “Fuck,” he said, his fingers were now coated in the same red as my hand.

  Is that blood?

  Bear stood off to the side with his arms folded across his chest. I opened my mouth to ask him what had happened, but nothing came out.

  The two men exchanged some words I couldn’t make sense of. A black halo formed around the room and it’s contents, and as the seconds ticked by everything faded further and further into the expanding dark tunnel. My fear of the dark caused my pulse to race, but a sudden eerie sense of calm took over and I concentrated on the beautiful face of the angry man hovering above me.

  “I don’t even know your name,” I whispered.

  I managed to stay conscious long enough to hear his answer.

  “They call me King.”

  Then the blackness surrounded me and swallowed me whole.

  Chapter Five

  King

  I’d never been so angry in my entire fucking life. And in the past twenty-seven years I’d been alive more than a few people had felt the wrath of Brantley King.

  Few had lived to tell about it.

  How old was this girl anyway? Seventeen? Eighteen?

  I didn’t know her long enough to hate her, yet I had the overwhelming urge to wrap my hands around her throat and strangle her. Better yet I wanted to unravel one of the belts from my forearm and tighten it around her neck. I wanted her to feel every bit of my fury as I squeezed the life from her boney body.

  I wanted to take out all of my frustration on her, but it wasn’t just her I was angry with. I was also pissed-off at myself.

  I’ve always been nothing short of meticulous about security, but I’d haphazardly tossed the stack of cash Preppy had given me that day into a drawer.

  A fucking drawer.

  The old me from three years ago would’ve placed it in my attic safe and changed the combination three times already.

  How did I go from being overly careful to dangerously careless?

  I should’ve had security guarding the doors. I had enemies going into prison, and I came out with a few more. Instead, I forgot all my past protocol and left a girl I didn’t know shit about, alone in my fucking room, when I should of tossed her out on her ass the second I decided I wasn’t going to fuck her.

  Which wasn’t me either.

  I didn’t fuck her because she was afraid of me? Because she seemed innocent and naive? Not to say that she didn’t get my dick hard, because she did. I nearly came in my pants when her hands shook as she undid my belt. I told myself that I couldn’t go through with it because what I needed was a girl who could work me like a pro so I could rid myself of the pent up aggression that was turning me stupid.

  But that was a lie.

  Something inside me, something I could almost mistake for a conscious, told me not to take advantage of the situation. No, it told me not to take advantage of her. Walking away while her cheeks were still flushed from fear, embarrassment, anger, and if I was reading her right, a little bit of desire, was torture on my straining cock. It took a lot of control not to march back and take her up against that wall.

  But that was before. Any feelings of doing right by her flew out the window with her friend and my money. The six grand the redhead managed to steal wasn’t enough to scratch the surface on the amount I would need for a payoff, but the amount didn’t matter. Two fucking cents would have been too much.

  One way or another, the girl passed out in my bed was going to pay.

  I sat down on the mattress and peeled back the covers. Her skirt, which was much too large for her little frame was rolled up at the waistband so it wouldn’t fall off her hips. The material, which was missing most of the sparkly things hanging off of it, had ridden up to her waist in her sleep, her white cotton panties exposed to me. I trailed my fingertips up the outside of her leg from her ankles to her thighs. The simple contact caused my body to shudder and my dick twitched to life.

  She was too skinny. Her cheeks were sunken. She had dark circles under her huge eyes. Her elbows were sharp and her ribs reminded me of how Preppy looked when I first
met him. She wasn’t the usual kind of girl I went for. I liked tits, ass. Something to play with while my cock took care of business.

  So why couldn’t I stop myself from touching her?

  I peeled off her tank top and tossed it to the floor.

  No Bra.

  Small but perfectly round tits. Tits that made me wonder how much more perfect they would be with some meat on her bones. Tits I wanted to watch bounce in my face while she rode me.

  The girl sighed heavily but didn’t wake. When her breathing had again leveled out I traced lazy circles onto the smooth skin of her stomach, around her belly button and then around her little pink nipples. It took a fuck of a lot of restraint not to lean over and suck them into my mouth. I wanted to bite them until I drew blood. I wanted to lick the blood off of her pale white skin.

  I’d never both hated and wanted something so much in my entire life.

  A quick hate fuck might wipe away the unfamiliar sentimental feelings rolling around in my twisted brain, but the girl was injured and passed out in my bed.

  Technically, you can say that I was caring for her.

  Technically, I wanted to face fuck her until she gagged.

  My conflicted feelings were giving me a fucking migraine.

  I had to get out of there. There was no good that could come of me touching her while she slept, but I couldn’t bring myself to get off the bed. Then she stirred. Just a little, just enough to remind me that I was crossing into Preppy territory. But I couldn’t leave just yet. What if she woke up and tried to escape? Then, I would really never know where the redhead went with my money.

  I ignored the fact that it was impossible for her to escape, especially since I had her handcuffed to my headboard. Instead of getting up and walking out the fucking door like I should have, I stripped down to my boxer-briefs and got in bed beside her. Hauling her back against my chest, I covered us both with the blanket.

  It was a first for me. I’d never been underneath the covers in my bed with a woman before. I’d never let anyone stay long enough to sleep before.

  I splayed out a hand on her concave stomach, the heat from her core radiating onto my thigh making my dick even harder. I propped my head up on my elbow and found myself fascinated at the contrast between us, her pale and perfect, to my tanned and heavily tattooed.

  Now I was painfully hard.

  The thought of tearing off those innocent little school girl panties and defiling her pussy with my cock right then and there sent spasms up my spine. The only reason I came back to the room earlier was because I’d changed my mind. As innocent as she appeared, she was the one who’d offered herself to me, and who the fuck was I to say no to that?

  Maybe prison had changed me, but I wasn’t ready to accept that change. I had been downstairs for only ten minutes when I turned on my heel and headed back upstairs to strip her down, bend her over, and show her what the fuck she’d gotten herself into.

  I twisted a lock of her white-blonde hair in my fingers. Over and over again, I reminded myself that the girl was a thief and a whore and that I had every right to take payment for what she stole from me and then some.

  I owned this bitch.

  She was mine to take.

  Only as much as I wanted to roll on top of her and sink deep down inside, I couldn’t bring myself to do it.

  There was more to this girl’s story than what was obvious on the outside. Her friend was obviously a junkie with her humungous pupils and shiny red nose. This girl didn’t act like a junkie, but her clothes and rail thin frame had me thinking that dope could be the only reason she’d be hanging around with Bear and his crew.

  I was going to pry her story from her when she woke up. Then I was going to decide what my plans were for her which would preferably consist of naked and on her knees.

  She let out a deep sigh, and I stilled, fearing she might wake before I had the chance to get out of bed, but oddly enough her entire body relaxed back into me. Her ass pressed against my straining erection.

  I stifled a groan.

  Only my boxers and her panties separated us. I wanted to rock against her, alleviate the pressure building in my balls, but I stopped myself and just as quickly as I’d gotten into bed, I got back out.

  I picked my jeans up from the floor. Before I left the room I glanced back at the girl sleeping in my bed. The moonlight shone through the window making her blonde hair appear even lighter, her skin even paler.

  More haunted.

  I didn’t know whether I wanted to kill her or fuck her.

  Maybe both, but one thing was for sure.

  One way or another, I was going to make her scream.

  I was finally starting to feel like my old self again.

  Chapter Six

  Doe

  I awoke groggy and confused. My skull felt like it was going to crack open against the pressure of my aching head. The mattress underneath me was soft, the sheets cool against my skin. A much better alternative to the park benches or pavement where I usually made my bed.

  I stretched out my legs one by one, then raised my arms to do the same. Except my left arm wouldn’t cooperate, it was stuck. My eyes sprang open when I heard a rattling. My wrist was bound to the headboard.

  By handcuffs.

  Fuck.

  I sat up quickly and glanced around in a panic. Sharp scratching pain assaulted the side of my head when my shoulder brushed my ear. Feeling around, I realized my left ear had been covered in some sort of bandage. Then, I remembered the events of the night before.

  I’d been shot.

  Nikki had shot me.

  I was in the same room as the previous night, but in the light of morning the details that the darkness had hid were now on full display. At the foot of the bed a wooden dresser that was splintering at the corners sat below a huge flat screen TV. A bi-fold closet took up the entire wall on the right side. The room was only large enough to fit one nightstand beside the bed. It wasn’t huge, but it was comfortable with a plush navy blue comforter and simple wrought iron headboard—the one I was cuffed too.

  Where are my clothes?

  I was completely naked from the waist up, but thankfully, my panties remained.

  I had to get the fuck out of here.

  My stomach twisted. I let out an agonized moan and clenched my hands over my belly. The door opened, and the man from the night before appeared.

  They call me King

  He stepped into the room like he was stepping out of the gates of hell and onto earth where the very presence of us mere mortals pissed him off. He held my gaze with a steady glare that shook me to my very core.

  “Name,” he demanded, closing the door behind him, stopping at foot of the bed. He folded his muscular arms over his chest. On the right side of his neck a vein pulsed beneath the ink of his tattoos.

  His eyes darted down to my chest and I crossed my free arm over my breasts the best I could to cover myself.

  “What’s it to you?” I quipped. King wore the same dark clothes as the night before, same belts around his forearms. The only difference was the addition of a dark grey skullcap. In the light of day I noticed that the tattoos I’d caught a glimpse of the night before were very intricate. If you took the scary out of the equation, King was drop dead gorgeous. His eyes were so dark green they almost looked black. His lips were full and slightly pink.

  “I figured we might start with your fucking name and then move on to you telling me where the fuck that bitch went with my money.” He seethed.

  He was the most terrifyingly beautiful thing I’d ever laid eyes on. With my fear of the dark, things always seemed scarier at night when my mind had a tendency to exaggerate the situation. But in the daylight King was more everything. More intimidating, more scary, more angry…more beautiful.

  “You stole from me, pup. This is your one and only chance to tell me where the redheaded bitch went. You will pay one way or another, but if you tell me right now, you might just get out of paying with you
r life.”

  My head was fuzzy and starting to spin. My life was on the line, but I could only seem to focus on trivial things. “Where are my clothes?” I asked.

  “You stole six fucking grand from me, you’re fucking clothes should be the least of your concern.”

  Holy shit! Six grand?

  Fucking Nikki.

  “Don’t play with me girl.” King wrapped his hands around my ankles and yanked, sliding me forward until I landed flat on my back. My arm stretched as far as it could without tearing out of the socket, held captive by the handcuffs. My other hand was braced on the bed, my breasts were again exposed. “Are you worried I copped a feel while you slept? Maybe I did. Because what you are going to learn is that I can do whatever I want with you, whenever I want. Because right now, I fucking own you.”

  In all the time I’d been living on the streets, I’ve had some close calls, some serious gut check moments. I’ve seen things that have made my skin crawl and my heart race. I was very familiar with feeling afraid.

  Fear had nothing on King.

  “Don’t keep trying to cover those pretty tits of yours. Last night, you were about to wrap those pretty lips around my cock, so don’t suddenly feel the need to cover up now. Even though, those little girl panties of yours have kept me hard since I stripped you down.” King leaned forward, bracing a knee on the mattress on each side of my hips. He cupped my cheek in his hands. I tried to turn away from him and he dug his fingers into my jaw and yanked me back to face him. “Do you want to know what exactly it is that I do to people who steal from me, who take what’s mine?”

  “No,” I panted. And I didn’t want to know.

  “I’d refer you to someone who could tell you firsthand, little girl, but none of them are breathing right now.”

  Shit.

  “I don’t know where she is, I swear. Please, just let me go.” I plead as I squirmed underneath him. I didn’t want to die because of Nikki’s stupidity. “We can work something out.” I said. I have no idea what exactly I meant by that, but I would’ve said anything to get the hell out of those cuffs and out of that house.

  King looked me up and down. “I’m not interested. That ship has sailed,” he said, coming close enough to me to run a finger along my protruding collarbone. “You may be pretty, pup, and those eyes of yours get my cock hard, but you’re all skin and bones. Besides, I don’t fuck junkies.”

  “I’m not a fucking junkie!” I screamed wildly. Being called a junkie when in the time I’d been living on the street I hadn’t touched a single drug, set me off like a lighter to a fuse.

  “Bullshit! There is no other reason you could possibly be stupid enough to steal from me besides needing a fix. And I know you’re not from around here, because if you were you wouldn’t have even thought about taking what’s mine.” His voice grew louder, his glare ice cold. He thought I was just like Nikki. A junkie. He expected me to cower.

  He expected wrong.

  “I don’t give a fuck who you are, asshole.” I seethed. “And you’re not as smart as you seem to think you are. Tell me something, who exactly was it who appointed you judge of all people?”

  I thought my words would start an all out war but instead King didn’t look angrier, he looked only mildly amused. “Well you are partially right. Because when it comes to me and mine, I am the judge. I am the jury. And if need be, I am the motherfucking executioner.”

  His words hadn’t yet had the chance to marinate in my brain when my stomach took the opportunity to interrupt by growling loudly. King’s gaze followed the sound to where I hugged myself with my free arm around my mid section in an effort to steady the ever-growing ache. The dizziness again threatened to take me under, but I fought it back.

  King was still sitting upright on his knees, straddling me. I sat up as far as the handcuffs would allow until my face was only inches from his. “Nikki is the junkie. I’m just hungry you fucking asshole!” I spat.

  King fists clenched at his sides. He raised his hand. I ducked and covered my face the best I could, bracing myself for the strike.