Callous Prince

by Becker Gray

  To say the Huntington mansion was large would be like saying being gutted with a fish hook stings a little. The mansion had a footprint bigger than most national museums, with grounds that stretched for acres and acres, sloping all the way down to a cold and crashing sea.

  And I was currently being hauled like a Viking captive across all of it.

  Well, maybe not all of it, but close enough. Lennox carried me, struggling and twisting atop his shoulder, out of the ballroom, and through another arched room strung with fall foliage and thousands of twinkling lights. It was also filled with people talking, mingling, drinking, and not one of them stopped to help me, even though I was clearly being hauled off against my will. No one hardly even looked at me, and when they did, their eyes would slide over to the famous white of Lennox’s hair and they’d give me an apologetic sort of look. As if to say: I couldn’t possibly stop a prince, you understand, don’t you?

  Rich people were absolute garbage.

  Except then, I realized—belatedly and only as we walked through a set of massive doors and onto a breeze-buffeted portico outside—that I’d been smiling.

  Smiling!

  Fuck, no wonder no one had helped. I must have seemed positively gleeful to be perched atop the tuxedoed prince’s shoulder.

  “Lennox, put me down,” I said, as authoritatively as I could. “Or take me back to the portico.”

  His arm was banded around the back of my thighs, and it tightened, as if even the idea of letting me go pissed him off. “If I put you down, then I’m tearing your dress off right here on the steps, darling.”

  He made the word darling sound like the angriest and filthiest word in the English language. “And it’s not a portico,” he added, “it’s a loggia.”

  “And you’re not a prince, you’re a prick. Put me down.”

  “No.”

  “I mean it, Lennox.”

  “Or what? You’ll hurt me? We both know if you truly wanted to be off my shoulder, you would be in a heartbeat.” He was taking the shallow steps two at a time down to the moonlit lawn, away from the house and towards the sprawling hedge maze that stood between the mansion and the sea. “But you don’t want to be off my shoulder, do you?”

  “I do,” I said, but it came out weak even to my ears. He was right; if I’d really wanted out of his hold, I would have been out by now. I knew at least seven different ways to get down from here—four of them wouldn’t even require any strength or particular skill at all, only speed.

  So why was I still here? Why was I barely able to keep that smile off my face? Why did I want him to make good on his threat and rip my dress right off me?

  Lennox’s shoes crunched on the crushed gravel of the path as we walked away from the house.

  “You’re not going to throw me into the ocean, are you?”

  His voice dripped with scorn when he answered. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “Don’t be ridic—you have me over your shoulder like a caveman! Or a Viking! Or a Viking caveman!”

  “And what do you think Vikings did with their beautiful captives, Sloane? Do you think they threw them into the ocean?”

  There was that word again. Beautiful. Something hot and dangerous bloomed in my chest to match the hot and dangerous thing already pulsing between my legs.

  “Well, historically, yes,” I managed to say, “some were probably sacrificed—”

  “I’m not throwing you into the ocean,” he interrupted coolly. “Although I have half a fucking mind to. I told you that you belonged to me, and I meant that shit.” We were entering the maze now, Lennox’s strides long and sure like he’d walked this path many times before. “Clearly you need to be reminded.”

  Familiar ire itched at me. “I already told you. I’m not yours.” I kicked my legs to prove my point, which earned me a hard, fast slap on the bottom.

  I should have shrieked. I should have pulled his hair or scratched his eyes out. Instead, I moaned.

  Moaned.

  I was becoming seriously unhinged over this boy.

  At the sound of my moan, Lennox’s entire body stiffened under me. “How interesting,” he said after a minute, his voice sneering and soft and fascinated. “I don’t even need to have my fingers inside you to hear that noise.”

  Embarrassment flooded me everywhere. I hated that my desire for him could become a weapon in his hands. I hated that I didn’t hate him . . . or that I didn’t only hate him.

  “Fuck you,” I breathed. “Fuck you so much.”

  “Believe me, darling, I’ve thought about nothing else since the day we met,” he said coldly. “Breaking you and fucking you. My twin obsessions.”

  “I could break you first.”

  “You could try. But we both know that the minute I touch your pussy, you sheathe those kitten claws for me, don’t you? We both know I can make you come so good that it doesn’t matter how much you hate me, you’ll keep coming back.”

  I knew it was reckless when I opened my mouth, but I didn’t care. I wanted to piss him off. I wanted him to be as angry as I was. “Maybe that’s why I’m here tonight with Rhys. Maybe any Hellfire Club boy with long fingers will do, and I want to get my fix elsewhere.”

  Fury rippled through him, palpable and hot, and then he started walking even faster, muttering under his breath in his delicious accent. I could only catch a few words—owed, mine, come—but it was enough. Enough for me to know that whatever came next would be our biggest clash yet. Enough for me to know that he was serious as hell about me being his to torment and break, and he would stop at nothing when it came to wrecking me.

  I was freezing by the time we got to the center of the Huntington maze. My dress was a gossamer-thin silk with barely any sleeves and two high slits up the front, which meant I was covered with goosebumps head to toe.

  It also meant I felt the warmth of the fires before I saw them—dancing flames throwing light against the dark hedge walls. We were in the very heart of the maze now, approaching a stone structure that faintly resembled an ancient Greek temple—or at least, the idea of a Greek temple according to some Victorian-era Huntington who’d had too much money and not enough firsthand exposure to ancient architecture. Four braziers burned brightly at each of the corners, and the open spaces between columns were hung with curtains. Some were opaque, some were sheer, and they were all billowing gently in the breeze, parting just enough for me to make out a sunken fire in the middle surrounded by cushions and pillows and blankets. It was a space clearly meant for leisure and relaxing.

  Or sex. Because everything about it—from the fires to the silk curtains to the cushions—screamed do immoral deeds here!

  Which was exactly what I suspected Lennox had in mind.

  Lennox mounted the stone steps into the open-air room and finally set me on my feet. For a brief instant, I considered running. I was in heels, yes, and I had very little practice running in them, but I had excellent balance, and anyway, I could always kick them off before I went. The slits in the dress would make for easy movement, and I’d noted every turn Lennox had taken in order to get here.

  I could find my way out.

  So why wasn’t I running?

  Lennox was closing the curtains from where we’d come in, and when he turned back toward me, his golden eyes were molten with raw anger and his mouth was the sharpest and cruelest I’d ever seen it.

  “You fucked up coming here with Rhys, darling,” he said, taking a step toward me. “You weren’t his to bring.”

  “I keep telling you, I’m not anybody’s.”

  Another step. “But that’s not true, is it? I already own you. I have for years.”

  I shivered at his words. Because I hated them . . . or because they were true, I didn’t know. I just know they made me feel like he already branded his initials on some tender, vital organ in me. Like my heart.

  Why did he captivate me so much? Why did I smile when he carried me, why didn’t I run away when I had the chance?

  Was i
t that mouth? Those unnaturally beautiful eyes? The cruelty?

  The challenge?

  I didn’t understand it, and I hated things I didn’t understand. Dad always said it would be my biggest weakness in criminal justice: my hunt for the bigger reason, the why of it all.

  Sins very rarely have an interesting motive, he’d told me once. Lust, greed, ambition. Everything gets boiled down to something predictable in the end.

  “Why?” I asked Lennox now, knowing that I wouldn’t get a satisfying answer but needing to ask anyway. “Why this? Why us? Why did you decide I was yours? Why did you ever even notice me?”

  He was in the middle of taking another step forward, and I could see my question surprised him a little. A faint line appeared between his brows. “I noticed you because you’re you,” he said, as if it were an indelibly obvious answer. “But as for being mine . . . well, I decided that once I heard your name.”

  “My name? But—”

  “That’s when I learned you were Nathan Lauder’s daughter.”

  “Why—”

  But I stopped myself, because I already knew why that mattered, didn’t I? After three years of thinking it couldn’t be the reason, here it had been all along, plain as day. Obvious to anyone with eyes.

  Obvious to anyone who hadn’t blindly trusted her father’s lies.

  My next words came out slowly, reluctantly dragged from somewhere deep in my throat. “Years ago, my dad told me he was only barely involved with your father’s case, but’s that’s not true, is it? He finally told me this week. He was the one who made the arrest. He was the one who investigated your father.”

  I couldn’t read Lennox’s face or voice now; it was as if everything in him had gone flat. Dead. “Investigated is a kind word, Sloane. A very kind word.”

  “And what—I’m some sort of revenge plan? Because your dad was a criminal and my dad was a cop? I thought you wanted your father in prison—I know Aurora does—so how can you blame my father for putting him there? How can you blame me? Want revenge against me?”

  A muscle jumped in his jaw, and he opened his mouth—and then closed it again. As if he’d changed his mind about what he was about to say.

  Instead, he took another step forward. He was close enough to reach out and touch me now, though he didn’t. Not yet.

  It was strange, the disappointment I felt right then. All this time, I’d thought I’d somehow earned Lennox’s hatred on my own. I thought we’d become mortal enemies because of some marrow-deep connection . . . some fated gravity between us.

  But no.

  The bullying, the torment, the stolen kisses . . . it was all about a years-old grudge. Despite what I’d believed—what I’d foolishly chosen to believe—it was about my father all along. Not about me at all.

  I was completely irrelevant.

  “It doesn’t matter how it started,” Lennox finally said. “We’re still going to finish it.”

  I looked up at him, feeling dull and teary. But I did everything I could to blink the tears back. He hadn’t made me cry in four years, and I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction now.

  I had to go. I needed space away from him, from us, from this toxic bloom that was our fascination with each other.

  “There’s no finish for us, Lennox. I don’t know what this is—” the words left me in a choked breath “—but it’s over now. Goodbye.”

  I made to step around him, but his hand shot out to grab mine and his eyes shifted then, going from winter sun to blazing summer light. “Don’t go,” he said, and there was something wild in his voice, something that wasn’t cold or cruel at all. “Please. Don’t go yet.”

  I looked down at where he held me. He wasn’t holding my arm or my wrist. He wasn’t gripping me with any real strength. Not because he didn’t care if I left—I could practically feel him vibrating with how much he cared—but because he was asking.

  For the first time, ever, Lennox Lincoln-Ward was asking for something.

  “We both know you can fight me,” he continued, bending his knees a little so he could catch my gaze. “We both know you can fend me off, beat me down, kill me if you have to. So stay, Sloane. Don’t go. You know I can’t really hurt you.”

  “You should know,” I tell him, pulling my arm free and glaring, “that there are more ways to hurt a person than only with their body.”

  “Then hurt me for every time I hurt you. Kick me when I sneer. Punch me when I taunt. I don’t care, just stay.”

  Misery shimmered through me like waves over hot asphalt. “I don’t want to kick you or punch you, Lennox. All I’ve ever wanted is for you to leave me alone.”

  The wildness was still in his face and voice when he reached for me again. “I won’t, I won’t leave you alone, not ever—”

  His fingers made contact with my wrist and something snapped in me. Something that was more than anger, something that was worse than embarrassment.

  Hurt.

  The outside edge of my free hand came down hard on his wrist, loosening his grip, and then I shoved him back, hard enough to make him stagger a step or two backwards. It felt so good that I did it again, and again, shoving and shoving him until he was practically in the fire pit. Shoving him until my body was hot with something other than hurt, until my hand was fisted in the lapel of his tuxedo, and my nipples were hard enough to bead against the silk of my dress.

  “Do it until you feel better,” he said, his voice ragged and his breaths coming fast. “Hurt me as much as you want.”

  “I’d have to hurt you for a thousand years to make up for all the things you’ve done to me,” I whispered, and his eyes were so gold right then, and his mouth was so gorgeous, and the fire gleamed all along those sharp cheekbones and that perfect jaw, and I hated him, I hated him, I hated him—

  This time it was me seeking his mouth. This time it was me yanking him down to my lips and kissing him like I’d die if I didn’t. Like the only way I could breathe was against his mouth, and the only air I could drag into my lungs was the air we breathed between desperate, hungry kisses.

  11

  Sloane

  It was his turn to shove now, and I was pushed right onto my back, like he really was a Viking intent on pillaging me. Except I didn’t fall onto the ground, I fell onto a pile of luxurious cushions and blankets, and he was no Viking, but all prince, with his ten-thousand-dollar tuxedo and his white-gold hair falling into his eyes as he crawled over me.

  “Go ahead,” he breathed, “hurt me. Stop me. We both know you can.”

  I could. I could have him off me in a heartbeat. I could have him cupping his testicles and weeping. I could have him blinded and screaming.

  But instead, I threaded my fingers into the white silk of his hair and pulled him down to my mouth again.

  His kiss was as hot as his heart was cold, and when his mouth opened over mine, a moan worked its way free from my throat. There was nothing like his kisses, nothing at all, nothing like that tongue slipping past my lips and stroking against my own. Nothing like the way he searched and plundered my mouth, seeking out all my secrets and all my lies.

  An exquisite heat knotted between my legs, directly tied to the fluttering in my stomach and the ache in my breasts, and I parted my thighs, my hands finding his hips and pulling him closer. There was no argument from him, and the moment his tuxedo-clad erection pressed against my needy core, we both groaned.

  Still he kissed me, still his mouth made me his own, but now he propped himself on one hand as his other hand slid up my leg. One of the dress’s slits had opened around my thigh, and so my leg was completely bare and exposed to the chill of the night. The contrast between the cold air and his warm hand was enough to start my stomach fluttering all over again.

  And then his hand moved between us, using the slit for its inevitable purpose.

  “A thong,” he murmured. “Have you ever worn a thong before, Sloane?”

  His fingers traced around the edges of the fabric as he talk
ed. As thongs went, it wasn’t meant to be sexy. It was a seamless thing meant to hug my body and prevent any lines from showing through the dress. It was functional and direct. Like me.

  But when Lennox touched it, he made it feel like it was woven of the naughtiest lace and the purest sin. His fingers were shaking, and his pupils were so blown that his eyes were no longer gold, but black, with only a gilded ring around the outside.

  His breathing was harsh. Ragged. Like this was the sexiest thing he could have ever imagined.

  This is definitely the sexiest thing I could have ever imagined, with the possible exception of watching him jerk off in his sleep.

  “No,” I managed to say. “I’ve never worn one before.”

  “It’s wet here,” he said, the back of his knuckles brushing over my seam. I bit back a moan. “So wet. Did you feel naughty wearing this? Did you feel naughty knowing I’d inevitably see it?”

  “Yes,” I admitted. “Yes.”

  He tugged at the fabric, causing it to press and pull against my swollen flesh. This time, I couldn’t hold back the helpless noise I made.

  “I want it off,” he growled, his fingers now curling around one side of it. “I want you completely bare for me.”

  It didn’t even occur to me to argue. Why would it have? I wanted less between us too, I wanted nothing between me and his touch. I helped him pull the thong off, and I didn’t even mind when he tucked them into the pocket of his tuxedo pants, as if he planned on keeping them. And then he kissed me fiercely, almost like a reward, and I was lost. Lost to his drugging kisses, lost to the feel of his hand roaming everywhere—cupping a breast, searching out a nipple, sliding to my hip and the slit in my dress and rubbing me until I was arching and gasping.

  “Um, why are you—” His voice cracked. “Have you had a Brazilian?”

  I groaned. “Oh my god, Serafina insisted when we did spa day. Can you imagine?”

  He coughed a laugh. “Sort of. But I like it.”

  I bit his bottom lip. “Okay, it feels kind of amazing, actually. Your fingers on my bare skin.”