“Cured? Of what? Of my torment? Of my memories, Miss Turner?”
“Mia. For fuck’s sake, my name is Mia!” I punched his chest.
He looked down at the spot and grinned wolfishly.
“Yes,” he said slowly, “and we had a deal; you are mine.”
“You left me! And our deal is over. Way, way over!”
“I did not leave you. I had to take care of a few things.”
“You mean kill some people?” I yelled.
“What the fuck do you think, Miss Turner? You are mine. No one touches what’s mine.” He reached for me and pulled me into him. His lips crashed into mine, and his hot tongue delved into my mouth. His taste, his heat, his smell overwhelmed me.
I wanted to fight him, but my body didn’t have the strength to resist what it so badly needed. He spun our bodies around and pinned me against the wall with his hard frame. His hands reached between us, freeing his hard cock, and then grabbed for my thighs. He lifted me up and positioned me just right. “Slide your panties aside,” he growled.
Longing for his thick, long shaft to extinguish that hollow, erotic ache, my fumbling hand removed the barrier, and King thrust the silky head of his cock inside me.
Heaven and sin, lust and love. Feeling King plunging himself into my needy body felt like all of those.
He groaned with a deep masculine breath and pounded into me with fierce hard strokes that stole my breath. This wasn’t like the time he’d taken me in Athens, nor was this like the time he’d first made love to me on that beach after having thought he’d lost me. This time, he claimed me, each penetration of my soft needy flesh a reminder that only his cock could deliver what I needed, and no one could make me feel like he could.
My muscles contracted with that rapturous, almost unbearable tension, and my nipples hardened to sharp tingly points. Meanwhile, King’s hard frame flexed and pushed as his hips hammered into me. “Come for me, Mia. Come hard.”
I couldn’t hold back any longer. Every muscle in my body flexed, preventing me from moving as the release tore through. King’s head bowed back, and he leaned his hips forward, thrusting the tip of his cock as deeply as it could go. His throaty groan was so male and primal, so sexy, that the mere sound triggered another euphoric contraction.
For several moments, we clung to each other, and I savored the sensation of his erection pulsing inside me, releasing those final drops of cum.
He moved his lips to mine, and our panting breaths mixed the air and heat from our lungs.
“God, I missed you, Mia,” he whispered.
Mia. I was Mia again.
My head slowly drifted down from the sinful place he’d taken me as King applied lazy, sensual kisses to the corner of my mouth.
I didn’t want to come back to earth, but it couldn’t be helped.
“King, please, put me down.”
He stilled for a moment, resting his forehead to mine, but then pulled out and slowly lowered me.
I yanked down my dress while he put himself back into his pants and straightened his blue silk tie. The knot was crooked, but I didn’t say anything. The little imperfection in his appearance felt comforting somehow, a reminder that he was no longer the cursed man who demanded perfection.
But he’s still King. I couldn’t help but be in awe.
He flashed one of those wolfish, sly grins. “Like what you see, Miss Turner?”
I ignored his arrogant little comment. “Why are you here?”
His black silky brows knitted together. “I am many things, woman, but a welsher I am not.” His blue eyes flashed to my wrist.
I held up my arm and noticed the missing “K.” Hagne’s spit tattoo remained, however.
“I don’t understand,” I said.
“We made a deal. You would give me one night of what I wanted, and I would give you your freedom.” It was a deal we’d made a while back, long before my trip to Minoa.
“But my nightmares of the blood and the things you did to—”
“Those were not your nightmares, Mia; they were my memories. With the curse lifted, I must now deal with three thousand years of them.”
My eyes drifted back to my wrist. “I was seeing your thoughts?”
He nodded. “I did not realize it at first, but the facts spoke for themselves. You are too strong a woman to allow the past to consume you as it does me.”
I cupped my hands to my mouth. “I’m so sorry, King.” He’d suffered enough as it was, and now hearing that his past, his guilt, would continue to haunt him…well, it was profoundly unfair.
He stared at me with those fierce blue eyes. “Yes, well.” He cleared his throat. “I hope that with time, my old memories will be replaced by new ones. Speaking of, Miss Turner. It is now time for you to choose.”
“Choose what?”
“You and I made a deal, and it still stands. I said I would free you to make your own choice in exchange for,” his eyes swept over my body, “getting what I wanted. And that was one hell of a fuck.”
This was his way of asking if I still wanted him. It was such a King move.
I stepped in closer and gazed up at that perfectly masculine face. “I’m not sure.”
His blue eyes widened a bit. “Not…sure?” he growled.
I reached for his tie, pinning him with my eyes. “I might need another…fuck.”
The side of his mouth turned up. “Perhaps we can renegotiate our deal, then.” His voice was deep and seductive.
“Yes. But,” I wiggled the knot of his tie and planted a sensual kiss on his full lips, “you should know I’m already spoken for by a dangerous, sexy man.”
King grinned. “I can take him. Rumor has it, the man is a bit…old.”
I laughed. “Crazy-old. My great-grandfather’s socks are spring chickens compared to him.”
A subtle twinkle of joy sparkled in his eyes, and he slowly lowered his slightly swollen lips to mine. “I love you, Mia.”
I felt the tears welling in my eyes. “I love you, too.”
He pulled back. “Then it is settled.”
My eyes shifted a bit. “What?”
“You have chosen, so do not think of welshing. You know what will become of you if you do.” He tugged me back inside the club, and we bumped into Becca as he dragged me toward the front door.
“Mia?” she said.
I waved at her as her jaw dropped. “Is that King?” she mouthed.
I nodded and made a phone sign with my hand to tell her I’d call later.
Once outside, King walked over to a very expensive-looking, black Mercedes sedan with tinted windows. He opened the passenger door and turned around.
“Get in,” he said.
“Where are we going?”
“To put the past where it belongs and make new memories. We start tonight with a clean slate.”
I took a moment to digest the sight of this tall, deadly, elegant man who’d lived over three thousand years, ruled an ancient civilization, died, and had come back to life, now standing next to the car, waiting for me like an eager puppy. Not in a million years could I have imagined that we’d make it. But here we were. I wanted to cry and laugh and kiss him and scream and…
“For fuck’s sake, Mia. Are you going to stand there all night?” The stern look in his eyes and those muscles flexing beneath his black-stubbled jaw indicated he was about to carry me off if he had to.
I laughed. “You are going to have to work on your impatient streak, King. And that mouth. Jeez. Don’t let my mother hear you talking like that.”
He grinned and dipped his head in a way that indicated he might make me pay for that little comment. I was really looking forward to it.
EPILOGUE
Six months later.
My beautiful king and I were married on an unusually warm winter day, standing over the same spot where we’d first made love roughly three thousand years earlier, near his home in Crete. At first, I wondered why he’d insisted on this location—after all,
we were busy making new memories now. But he’d simply said it was the one memory he would never replace: the moment he fell in love.
No woman in her right mind could argue with that.
It was a simple, quiet ceremony with a minister, my mother and father as witnesses, and Becca acting as both maid of honor and best man as Mack was…well, I didn’t know where, and King wouldn’t talk about it. Yes, more secrets. But I’d learned I would have to accept that about King. He wasn’t evil anymore, but he was still King. The man would always have his secrets.
Anyway, despite the obvious absence of both our brothers, the event marked a new chapter in our lives, one filled with a quiet joy that we’d made it.
As for the Spiros family, King had not wiped them off the face of the earth as I’d thought, but I didn’t doubt King had shown no mercy to Stefanos or his brother. I didn’t know what to think about it, but King assured me that the family was no longer a threat. I’d simply have to trust him on that.
As for the 10 Club, King had decided to come clean the night after he’d found me in the club. He was, in fact, the man behind the giant smoke screen, the wizard secretly pulling all of the strings. I suspected that the psycho Vaughn had figured it out and that was what he’d meant to say before I killed him.
“But why in the world did you start something like that?” I’d asked King.
“It began after I tried to kill you in Athens,” he’d explained. “You disappeared, and I needed to find a way back to you. I needed a cure for this curse.”
I cried after hearing that news, but it was what it was. The silver lining was that King was in a position to slowly dismantle the Club and “deal” with the members. I suspected, however, that his monster-slash-curse had created a monster of its own that would never go away entirely. Corrupt people like that, with more money and power than they knew what to do with, would exist whether he charged a membership fee or not.
But, again, it was what it was.
As for facing all of the lies and deceptions cursed-King had orchestrated around me during his quest for the Artifact, there were simply too many to count, and it was now a moot point. King, my King, simply explained it as such, “I loved you, and when he was in control, I never wanted him to know how much you meant. But every step of the way, I did what I could to show you, to tell you I was there. I hoped you’d see past his evil and see me. Waiting for you. Waiting for the chance to end him.”
King also explained that had I surrendered to my own darkness and demons, I might have ended up loving the cursed King more than him. If that had happened, the monster would have come to life in his place. Thankfully, I’d fallen in love with the right King, for the right reasons.
After that revelation, we made a promise to put the past in the past. I knew, however, that King still carried a tremendous amount of guilt for everything he’d done, despite knowing he’d not been in control. Anyway, that became my unspoken quest: to help him forget and fill that arrogant, sexy, cocky head of his with new, beautiful memories.
So, that left us where we are today: our extended honeymoon. Six months traveling around the world on a five-hundred-and-thirty-foot yacht. Turns out that King did own one, something he’d denied once. And it was a floating slice of heaven, staffed with a gourmet chef, three butlers, an eight-person crew, one Ypirétria, and a helicopter pilot. Yeah, it was really, really over-the-top extravagant, but I wasn’t going to complain. I needed some serious pampering.
“Mia? Are you coming or not, woman?” King screamed from the aft deck, his voice pouring into our suite above through the open balcony doors.
I smiled and finished tying up my too-tiny white bikini and then strolled outside onto the private terrace. There, standing shirtless in black board shorts—too cute—was the most beautiful man in the world. He was also loyal, determined, loving, and dangerous as hell. Yeah, like I suspected, removing the curse only made the damned man that much more powerful. I wasn’t going to complain. His powerful side—now not so evil—gave me a sort of comfort that allowed me to feel safe, allowed me to lick my own wounds and heal.
I sighed and beamed down at him.
He lifted a pair of diving flippers and jiggled them at me as if to say, “I’m waiting.”
We were anchored in the Bahamas this week, and he’d promised to teach me to dive today.
“Almost ready!” I held up my index finger, watching as his smile melted into a look of pure irritation.
I turned away from him, stopped at the foot of the bed, and untied my top, grinning like a fiend as I lay down in the bed. One, two, three, four, five, six—
The bedroom door burst open, and there was King, his broad, bare chest heaving, his eyes completely furious.
I smiled up at him. “You are so predictable.” He hated to be kept waiting.
The moment he registered my topless body, breasts waiting with perky hard nipples, his look once again shifted. This time into lust. Pure and simple lust. Topped with a heaping helping of love.
His beautiful blue eyes narrowed, and he cracked a wicked little smile. “That was a dirty trick.”
I shrugged and grinned.
“I might have to punish you for that.”
“I kinda hoped you would,” I said.
King was on me like a hungry wolf, tearing his cock free from his trunks. He positioned himself between my thighs and tugged on the side string of my bikini bottom, effectively removing the barrier between us. Gazing into my eyes, he gripped his long, hard, thick shaft in his hand and watched with erotic fascination as he slowly guided himself into my ready entrance.
I flung my head back on the pillow and savored the sensation of his stiff hot flesh entering my body. Inch by inch he fed himself into me until he could go no further.
Still arching over me, he pillared his arms to either side of my head and gazed into my eyes. “I will never get enough of you.”
“You have no idea how sexy you are, do you, King?” His large lean frame was every woman’s sexual fantasy. He fucking rocked my world in bed. And as long as I wore the ring and he wore his, the one he’d had made—yes, in hopes that this day would come—we’d never grow old. We’d never die.
“I think I like punishing you.” He pushed his hips forward sharply to apply exquisite pressure on all the right spots. I orgasmed instantaneously, gripping fistfuls of sheets.
He watched with pleasure as he repeated the movement and made me come again.
How he did it, I didn’t know. But I didn’t care. The man could practically make me come for him on command. Okay, yes, his sensual mouth or huge penis is normally involved, but there was that time with his hand when he—
“Silence, woman,” King barked and thrust again. “Or I will not make you come again.”
Oh, yeah. And then there was that. I’d made King put back his mark. I’d told him that whatever pain he had, I wasn’t going to let him live it alone. I was his, and he was mine. Anyway, he was back to listening in. Not always a good thing when he was working…down there.
I snapped my mouth shut. “Silencing. Not another peep.”
He smiled with that sensual, wicked grin and lowered his hot mouth to mine, pumping and licking with a leisurely pace.
I felt the tension coil deep within once again and then…Heaven.
Sensing the contractions, King pushed the tip of his hard shaft forward and stoked the flames, making the experience a seemingly never-ending, mind-blowing event. As usual.
The moment my inner walls clenched around him, he began to pump fiercely—one, two, three thrusts—and came hard deep inside me. He released a throaty groan and collapsed.
“Careful,” I said, “don’t smoosh my stomach.”
He chuckled and rolled to my side. “You are far too paranoid.”
I rubbed my tummy and grinned. “Well, he is a miracle.” And I knew that King would make sure there’d be a ring waiting for him, too, when the time was right.
“That he is.” King kissed my bulging
stomach and then reached for the phone next to the bed.
He paused for a moment, waiting for the galley staff to answer. “Hello, Paolo,” King said in the deep, velvety voice that made my toes curl. Pause. “Yes, Mrs. Minos and I are fine, thank you.”
Oh, yes. I forgot to mention that. His last name, as it turned out, was Minos. (Mee-nus.) As in King Minos. Homer would later embellish on local folklore and turn my King into a fictional character—a god—who also sparked the legend of the Minotaur. Yes, I found excessive amounts of humor in that he would most be remembered for working for Zeus, but it was weighed down by the historical references tied to Draco, the Lawgiver. Both were extreme fictionalizations of the real man, but I guessed it couldn’t be helped. After all, King was larger than life.
“Yes,” he said to Paolo, “it is a beautiful day, indeed. Could you ask Ypirétria to leave a bottle of sparkling water outside the door for my wife and some champagne for me?” Pause. “Thank you, Paolo. We’ll be down shortly for our excursion.”
One might wonder why King had insisted on bringing Ypirétria—a seventy-year-old Greek woman who’d served in his house since the age of eighteen. That too was a pleasant surprise. After my trip to ancient Athens, when I’d been taken as a slave, King kept his word and sent his men to give money to those freed slaves. With nowhere to go, many followed his men home and insisted on staying. King said they worked harder and were more loyal than any “help” he’d ever had. From that day forward, he began paying all of his people. “It made good business sense,” he said. But I think a part of him did it because it felt good. Anyway, Ypirétria, as it turned out, earned about one hundred grand a year, plus benefits. She’d paid for college for her six children, and now that they were all grown, she’d decided to stay with King. She liked “the adventure and danger,” she’d told me, compliments of Hagne’s spit tat that ironically translated every language. Yes, I decided to keep the damned thing. It was a handy little piece of magic and reminded me of my time in Minoa, something I never wanted to forget.
I looked at my king and grinned. “You ordered champagne. You haven’t had that in a while.”
KING OF ME (THE KING TRILOGY Book 3) Page 21