The King

by Jennifer Armentrout

  “I will have the element of surprise.”

  “That’s a godforsaken terrible plan.”

  My face flushed under the layers of foundation. “I didn’t ask for your opinion.”

  “You should ask someone.” His eyes widened with surprise. “Anyone. They’d tell you the same thing.”

  “I have a plan,” I seethed, pulling on my arm. And I did. Kind of. Not that I was going to share it with him. “Why do you even care?”

  His eyes flashed a stunning tawny color, and somehow, he was even closer, and we were no longer on the sidewalk but in the alley. Each breath I took was filled with his fresh scent. “Because if you do happen to find Neal and force him to bring you to Aric, he will kill you, and it will be slow and painful.”

  The image of Aric formed in my mind. Short, with light brown hair and a scar that cut through his upper lip. Coldly, cruelly handsome. He had the most…malicious laugh I’d ever heard.

  “I already lost someone—” He cut himself off, and I frowned. “You have no idea what you’re up against and the type of cruelty he is capable of. He already knows we’re connected. You do not need to be on his radar any more than you already are. You’re…” He trailed off, but my mind decided to fill in the blank with something he’d once said to me.

  You are a treasure, Brighton.

  Yeah, what he’d told me before had obviously been a lie. What had he said about us? Not like I’d forget that anytime soon. He’d said it was a mistake—a stupid mistake.

  It hadn’t been for me. God, it had been the opposite. I had opened myself up for the first time since the attack, feeling comfortable enough to talk about how I needed retribution and about that night. Because I had believed…I believed that he understood. I’d let him in.

  I pushed all of that aside. “Let go of me. There’s nothing I want to talk to you about.”

  He cocked his head to the side. “Agree to let this need for revenge go, and I will.”

  “How about you agree to do the same thing? Oh, wait, we’ve had this conversation. You think it’s different because it’s you.”

  The King’s eyes swept over my face. “You want to know about Aric. I think you’re being this way because of us.”

  “There’s no us,” I shot back.

  “You’re right.”

  The sharp slice of pain returned, cutting through me as if he’d jammed a knife into my chest.

  His nostrils flared, and he took a step toward me. “Shit.”

  Damn it, he was sensing what I was feeling. There were a lot of things that annoyed me when it came to Caden, but this was probably in the top three.

  The King looked away, jaw hard. “I’m—”

  “Don’t.”

  He ignored me. “I’m sorry.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “But you do.”

  “And that’s the problem, right? You know, I do have something to say to you. You led me on. But for what reason? That’s what I don’t get. What did you have to gain by pretending you…wanted me? Were you just bored and decided to mess with my head?”

  His gaze snapped back to mine. “That was not it.”

  “Then, what? You felt like you owed me because I let you feed on me when you were dying?” I demanded. “Or were you just slumming it with the thirty-year-old human?”

  The King’s eyes widened, and when he spoke, his voice was so low that I almost didn’t hear him. “Why do you view yourself so poorly?”

  “What?” I gasped, skin flashing hot and then cold.

  He shook his head. “You have to. It’s the only reason you’d believe that was my motivation.”

  His words stunned me, and the little voice in the back of my head that whispered that there was some truth to what he stated propelled me into action. I yanked on my arm and, this time, he let me go. Unprepared for the shift, I stumbled backward, and my damn boots were no help.

  The King sprang forward, catching me. A startled heartbeat later, I was in his arms, and my hands were on his chest.

  Holy crap.

  This was as close as we’d been since he kissed me, and I seemed to have forgotten how incredibly warm he was. His body heat chased the chill from the air. Standing this close to him was like sunbathing. My skin turned shivery as a deep, aching pulse took root.

  Space. I needed space. Like a different time zone’s worth of space.

  But I didn’t move.

  Slowly, I lifted my head. Our gazes connected.

  There was hotness to his stare. A thick, predatory gleam to his eyes, and a challenge to the way his lips parted. A wild thought occurred to me. He wanted me to push him away, and he wanted to chase.

  A deep, hidden part of me wanted to be hunted by him.

  And that was so wrong.

  The King’s gaze drifted over my face once, then moved lower. I felt my chest swell against his.

  “I hate when you look like this,” he said, his voice thick. “Not the dress. I love the dress. And the shoes. But the hair? Makeup? I hate it.”

  It took nothing for me to remember him telling me that before. The fact that he preferred me, the real me, was one of the reasons I…

  Why I had started to fall for him.

  His chin lowered. “You should burn all these wigs and throw away the makeup.”

  My heart pounded. “Not going to happen.” I sounded way too breathless. Way too affected.

  “That’s a shame.” His head tilted, and then his lips were inches from mine. When he spoke, I felt his breath. “I would pay any amount of money for that.”

  I considered that. “How much? Tink is an expensive roommate.”

  “I can imagine.” His eyes took on a heavy-lidded quality, and I felt the softest, barely-there brush of his mouth.

  I gasped.

  The King jerked away. This time, he didn’t spring forward when I stumbled. I caught myself as he moved back several steps until he wasn’t even within arm’s reach of me. Breathing heavily, I didn’t know if I should feel relieved or disappointed that he hadn’t kissed me. Well, the problem was, I knew I should feel relieved. And I didn’t. Disappointment crashed through me as we stared at each other in the soft glow of the street lamps.

  “Go home,” he said after a few moments. “There’s nothing here for you.”

  I flinched at the double meaning. His words stung, but a wave of prickly heat soothed the hurt. I latched on to it. “Don’t tell me what to do.”

  “I’m not.” He folded his arms. “I’m giving you a choice.”

  “Really?” I laughed as I mimicked his stance, crossing my arms. “Sure doesn’t sound like it.”

  “Oh, but it is. I’m telling you to go home, and I’m giving you the choice to do so all by yourself. Or, I could pick you up, put you in my car, and drive you there.”

  My mouth dropped open. “I would love to see you try to do that. Seriously.”

  His head cocked to the side, and then he unfolded his arms, taking a step forward.

  I threw out my hand. “If you so much as touch me, I will cut off your nuts and stab you in the face.”

  “Damn.” He chuckled, sending a fine shiver down my spine. The sound was as deep and as nice as I remembered. “That’s aggressive.”

  “I’m feeling really, really aggressive.”

  “Hmm.” He tipped up his chin. “Normally when I touch you, you want to do other things to my balls.”

  My lips parted on a sharp inhale. A dozen different things I could do to his balls danced like really weird sugarplums in my head, and none of them included kicking him.

  Then I saw the way his jaw had softened and noticed the curve to his lips. He was…amused.

  Fuck that.

  I stiffened my spine. I’d be damned if he found me amusing. “You know what? You’re right. There was a whole lot of things I wanted to do to them. Kiss them. Lick them. Suck them.”

  His humor vanished as his gaze sharpened on me. An almost predatory glint filled his eyes, making them luminou
s.

  “I wanted to get so familiar with them that we were on a first-name basis,” I continued, keeping my hand up. “But that was before. Not anymore. Now, I’d rather cut them off.”

  “You sure about that, sunshine?”

  “Don’t call me that. And, yes, I’m a hundred percent positive. A hundred and twenty-five percent, to be exact.”

  “A hundred and twenty-five percent?” he murmured. “Interesting. Then why haven’t you engaged your blade with me?”

  With a frown, I glanced down at my wrist. He was right. I hadn’t triggered the blade from the cuff.

  Damn it.

  Damn it all to hell.

  Chapter 3

  Why do you view yourself so poorly?

  The King’s words haunted me throughout the evening and all night long. Was that what he thought? That I had no self-esteem or sense of self-worth? Just because I couldn’t understand why he’d pursued me and then wanted nothing to do with me.

  Stewing over what he’d said, what it could have possibly meant, had kept me up for hours. But what woke me a few hours before dawn on Sunday morning, was the little voice that kept whispering that there might be some truth to his question.

  After all, why did I think that he’d said all those wonderful things about me? Why had he kissed me and brought me such mind-numbing pleasure? Was it because he felt that he owed me for getting his brother back to Hotel Good Fae when he’d been hurt? Or because I had allowed him to feed on me when he was gravely injured with wounds that wouldn’t have been so serious if he’d been feeding in the first place? He’d been shot the night I’d found Elliot, one of the missing fae younglings that had turned evil, presumably due to the tainted nightshade.

  Not once did I think to myself that he’d simply been attracted to me, despite the fact that I was human, and he was surrounded by stunning, ethereal fae.

  And there was a good chance that he was still attracted to me despite cutting things off. It seemed like he’d been about to kiss me on Saturday night. Hell, his lips had touched mine. Barely, but still. And what if he had kissed me? Would I have allowed that? I couldn’t seriously be questioning that. I knew that I would’ve, and likely would have been pissed off at myself afterward.

  I needed to get my life right.

  Starting with finding and killing Aric and not allowing myself to be wooed by the King. Both, at this point, seemed of equal importance. None of this stuff with the King mattered, and neither did my possible lack of self-esteem. If I survived my showdown with Aric, I’d work on that with self-help books or something.

  Sighing, I watched the early morning sunlight creep across the floor toward the edge of the bed where Dixon lay curled in a tight ball. He hadn’t been there when I fell asleep.

  The sudden creak of a footstep landing on the loose board I kept planning to fix stirred the cat awake. Dixon’s furry head lifted toward the door I knew he’d managed to nudge open at some point during the night.

  He started purring, sounding like a mini-engine.

  Figuring it was Tink, who was probably about five seconds from dive-bombing the bed, I rolled onto my back and looked toward the door—

  My heart stopped in my chest.

  That was how it felt, like it came to an unexpected, jarring halt. My lips parted as my brain tried to process who I saw standing there. It wasn’t Tink.

  It was him.

  The King.

  He stood in the doorway of my bedroom like he belonged there, as if he’d been invited. And he most definitely had not been invited, nor did he belong in my house.

  At all.

  But it was him, his golden hair free and brushing the full breadth of his shoulders, his plain black shirt following the lines and curves of his muscles.

  All I could do was stare at him.

  One side of his lips curved upward. “Good morning.”

  I sat up so fast I startled Dixon. The cat stood, shooting me a baleful glare before hopping off the bed. “What are you doing in here?”

  “Tink let me in.” He glanced down as Dixon brushed against his leg, the cat’s tail high. “You know, most people usually respond with ‘good morning’ when they are given that greeting.”

  “I don’t care what most people do,” I exclaimed, promising myself that I would straight-up murder Tink. Which was a promise that I made a lot. “Why are you up here? In my bedroom?”

  Reaching down, the King scratched the cat’s head, earning himself a rather loud purr from the feline. “I wanted to see you.”

  It took me a moment to get my tongue to work. “I think I made it pretty clear the other night that I have no interest in seeing you.”

  “I know.” The King gave Dixon one more pat, and the cat scampered off down the hall. The fae rose to his full height, those tawny eyes meeting mine. “But we both know that’s not true.”

  “I-I—” I sputtered in disbelief. “You’re out of your mind. Seriously.”

  “I was never in it.” His gaze flickered over my face and then moved lower, lingering. “Definitely not now.”

  My brows puckered as my gaze followed his to the deep vee in my sleep shirt. The pale pink top had slipped off my shoulder, and the material was thin enough to reveal that there was a chill in the room. That was the reason my nipples were hard. It had absolutely nothing to do with the King’s presence or the way he was staring at me.

  Nope. Not at all.

  I clenched the edges of the blanket. “You could’ve just waited until I got up.”

  “I’m not very patient.” He strode forward, and I tensed, my eyes glued to him as he sat on the bed—my bed.

  “I didn’t say you could sit down.”

  “I know.”

  I stared at him.

  The King stared back, his infuriatingly sexy half-grin appearing. “I wanted to talk.”

  “About?”

  His gaze flicked from me to the wall. “About Aric.”

  Every muscle locked up. That was unexpected. “And this couldn’t wait until later? Like when I’m not in bed?”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “I’ve found catching you off guard makes conversation with you easier.”

  My brows slammed down. “I don’t think that was a compliment.”

  “It actually was,” he replied, his gaze tracking over my bedroom, lingering on the stacks of books and framed pictures of my parents and me. “He’s truly evil.”

  I blinked, not following him.

  “Aric. You wanted to know more about him. That’s what you need to know. He’s pure, unadulterated evil, and I do not make that statement lightly. Nor do I believe most have ever come across someone who is actually evil,” he said, and I could not stop the shiver of dread from curling down my spine. “He cut straight through me in battle, weakening me so I was susceptible to the Queen’s spell. But he wasn’t always my enemy. At least I had not known him to be. But you knew that already.”

  I did.

  “He wasn’t just one of my Knights, assigned to protect me. We grew up together, his family closely linked with mine. He was one of my closest confidants. My friend. And the whole time, he was plotting to betray my family and our Court.” The King looked away. “How does one look another in the eye, day after day, have supper with their families, and be privy to their secrets and desires, all the while hating them enough to destroy those closest to them?”

  “I…” I swallowed. “I don’t know.”

  “Neither do I.” He cleared his throat. “He drew our Court into war by killing many of our younglings before taking someone who meant a lot to my family…to me. He did not just kill his captive. No, that would’ve been too easy. He did things that no creature—human or fae or animal—should ever suffer through. And he did this, all the while pretending to help us find our loved one, eventually leading us right to the body of…” He shook his head. “It’s something I will never forget seeing. Even under the Queen’s spell, the images… They remained.”

 
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, reaching out without thinking and placing my hand on his arm. His skin was warm under my palm as I squeezed gently. “I really am.”

  He looked down at where my hand touched him and, after a moment, he continued. “It wasn’t until we were in the middle of the battle that he revealed that he’d been behind it all. And he reveled in my shock, my despair. He got off knowing how deeply that cut because I looked upon him as a brother—not of my blood, but of my heart.”

  Sickened, I had no idea what to say.

  “And he made damn sure I knew what had been done to the one he took. To all of them. I saw the proof his words carried on the bodies of his victims,” he said. “I saw what he was capable of. I felt what he’s capable of. Some kill because they have to. Some because they enjoy it. He’s the latter.”

  I believed that beyond a doubt.

  “Do you understand why Aric is so dangerous? He is capable of anything.” The King lifted his gaze from where my hand still rested on his arm. “Not just because he’s loyal to the Queen, but because he is truly evil. A real monster who enjoys inflicting pain and terror. He’s not like others you’ve faced. He’s not…he’s not even like me when I was under the Queen’s spell.”

  “I do understand. He’s done terrible things to you. To me. He’s dangerous, and he’s evil,” I told him, swallowing the thick lump of emotion that had taken root in my throat. “But I’ve always known that about him. I know that I—”

  “That you will most likely die seeking vengeance?” he cut me off. “A slow, most definitely agonizing death? Is revenge truly worth that?”

  I pulled my hand back. “I think you of all people know the answer to that.”

  A muscle flexed along his jaw. “Brighton, please—”

  “There’s nothing you can say. Nothing you can do—” My words ended on a sharp inhale as he moved too fast for me to track. He was suddenly over me, his arms caging me in against the headboard. I inhaled, drowning in his citrusy scent. My heart thumped against my ribs as his warm breath coasted over my lips.

  “I won’t do it,” he growled.

  “Do what?” I whispered, shivering as he lifted a hand, placing his palm against my cheek.

  “I won’t do it,” he repeated, sliding his thumb over my lower lip. I gasped. His head tilted as his hand slipped down my throat and over the bare skin of my shoulder.