King’s Captive

by Amber Bardan

I straighten and jog down the path. Pa kneels on the ground, back in his regular clothes, pressing dirt around a seedling with his fingers.

  It won’t be easy for him to get back up but my pity gets squished by what’s festering in my chest. A vile concoction of hate and anger.

  Right now for the first time, it’s aimed at Pa.

  “You’re a priest.” My words are so sharp and so curt they sound like a language much more blunt than English.

  Pa stills. Hand flat on the earth.

  “I just want to know one thing. How do you do it?” Something hitches in my throat and I’m talking English again, a husky, pained English. “How do you stay here, ministering to a man like Julius King?”

  My eyes prick. Not sure why when I’m supposed to just be angry I stare at the top of Pa’s bent gray head.

  “How do you do that and get good with God?”

  He reaches beside himself for the shovel, plunges the end in the ground and rises with more strength than I’ve seen from him in the past year since his joints have been failing.

  “Because I—” He finally meets my eyes.

  I get to see it, what I’d hoped for. Remorse. Then something else. Air squeezes in and out my tight lungs.

  He shuffles closer.

  “Sweet girl—” His dirty hand rises, brushes my cheek. Brushes a tear.

  Good Lord I’ve started crying. How the hell did that happen?

  “I pray God doesn’t hold grudges.” He holds my gaze. For so long I think that’s all he’ll say. “Sometimes the flock strays, and the shepherd has no choice but to follow.”

  I catch his wrist, and remove his paternal touch. “So you’re trying to save him? You’re doing a shit job of it.”

  He nods. A small movement of acknowledgment.

  “Are you related?” My emotions suck themselves back in check.

  Pa leans on his shovel. “We’re family.”

  “Why do you all speak in circles?” I settle back on my heels. “Is it an Irish thing, or a criminal one?” I scan his features, the bones under the wrinkled mat of his skin. He doesn’t look like Julius. Doesn’t have any of his big brutishness. “Why are you here?”

  “We do strange things for love.” He sighs. “Sometimes we do terrible things. There’s no black and white, there’s only intentions.”

  I swallow. My throat itches. “Don’t they say the road to hell is paved with good intentions?”

  “That they do.” Pa looks back out across the lawn. “That it is.” I sit on the bench and stay there long after Pa drags himself back to the house, gardening left half-done.

  My stomach gurgles, reminding me Julius will be getting lunch ready and there’s so much more than one bone I have to pick with him. I get up and make my way down to the house. Julius stands at the head of the stone table, a fat silver fish on a wooden board before him. He’s in jeans and a T-shirt again. His knife scrapes across scales. The movement causes a flash of green to protrude from his sleeve. Curling ink leaves. Part of that grotesque snake tattoo.

  My stomach aches. Not as much for food anymore. For what my eyes take in. The Garden of Eden on his skin. He’s always one for irony. I’ve avoided that image, yet just now, as I close the final steps to the table, I find my unwilling gaze drawn to that place, right at his sleeve. I need to know, need to see, just what the rest is like under his clothes.

  His biceps flex, and his thin blade slices a fillet cleanly from bones. There’s no scent of fish. Only a mild hint of ocean. He caught these himself.

  My attention breaks from his skilled hands and finally takes in his expression. His blunt chin points down. Ruthless planes of his face somehow beckon me to study him closer, to see his beauty, not only his hardness.

  “What do you pray for?” The words leave my mouth before I realize I’ve spoken.

  His blade slips, tearing the fish.

  My lips snap together. Right up until this very moment, I’ve never rocked the boat with questions when the answers might be worse than the ones I imagine. What could he possibly say to make anything okay? My goal has been getting away. But now time is almost up, and don’t I deserve to know the one who’s about to make me suffer?

  He looks up, chin only half-raised. “Pardon?”

  Those eyes, hooded under his lashes, hook me more efficiently than whatever caught those fish. No amount of struggle can wrench me free.

  “I said, what do you pray for?”

  He sets down the knife on the board, wipes his hands vigorously on a cloth and rounds the table to me. I can’t move, I’m still strung by those eyes.

  “It takes three years for you to ask me a single personal question and that’s your first?”

  He stops right by my side. My body moves, faces him, as though that line pulled tight between him and me. There’s no choice in it for me.

  “That’s all I want to know. What do you ask God?”

  His eyes narrow. Two slits with a hint of blue in the middle. He leans closer to me. “You want to hear my confession, is that it?”

  My teeth mash together. Confession, no. I’ve seen his worst. “I know what you’ve done. I want to know what you believe.”

  “You don’t think I can believe in God?” His voice softens. Becomes a wash of air that reaches my lips. “You think I’m too wicked, too full of pride?”

  My tongue darts between my lips. “Yes.”

  “You’d be wrong.” His mouth curves. “I’m completely fucking reverent. Only commit the sins I have to.”

  I snort. Why did I bother asking? As though he’d be honest. “You mean that you follow the rules so long as they suit you?”

  His eyes relax again. “No, so long as I know I’m in the right.”

  Nothing he’s done is right. He’s a self-serving criminal. We both know it. I clutch the fabric of my dress to keep my hand at my side and not cracking across his face.

  “How sweet, you’re a virgin.” I purr the words, and cock my head. Soak in the pleasure of his expression tightening as effectively as if I’d doled out the slap he deserved.

  “Do I seem like a virgin to you?” His eyes issue a warning.

  “Well, I assume you don’t absolutely have to bang women you’re not married to. Therefore—virgin.” I’ve always been a little hit-and-miss with warnings. “It’s a shame, really.”

  He doesn’t so much as flinch. The curve of his lips turns into a bitter grin. One that renders me completely still.

  “You’re worried I’m not capable of fucking properly, is that it?” His hand moves to the back of my head, tangles in my hair, moves my head back just enough to tilt my jaw up. “Oh, baby, are you asking me to prove it?”

  I breathe through the tremor in my throat. Keep my gaze locked on his. How, after all this time, has our game gone from zero to a hundred in moments?

  “But you can’t go around fucking women if you’re so pious,” I hiss.

  His fingers cradle my skull.

  Now the gates have opened, I can’t seem to contain myself the way I did before. “You have no morals, no virtue. You’re using me for your own entertainment. Toying with me for sport.”

  He says nothing, but there’s a war in his eyes. A war between the destructive force in his gaze and the resistance cording his neck.

  Destruction wins.

  He pushes himself against me. My hip knocks into his with the impact of falling against a concrete wall. “If I wanted to use you, I could have had you the day I took you.” My neck bends to the tug of his hand. I see him only over the curve of my cheeks. “If I wanted to toy with you, I’d have made you my pet.”

  His breaths are hot puffs that stroke my lips. A quivering loss of control that I’ve almost never seen in him.

  Mine are faster, panting gasps for air.

 

His mask slips enough to see the beast beneath the facade is more carnivore than serpent. “I could have had you twenty times a day. Had you in ways you can’t fathom. Broken you so cleanly you’d believe with every part of that willful mind that it was all your idea. That there’s nothing you wouldn’t give, not even your last breath, to have me inside you.”

  My head spins, but I hold on to the will to talk. “You’re not half as good as you think you are.”

  A dark rumble escapes his throat. You could call it a laugh, I’m not sure I would. His free hand closes on my jaw, fingers pressing into my cheeks as his lips talk into my temple. “All that bravado, and passion, and pride, and misplaced loyalty that you try to stifle—I’d take that too. It’d be mine. You’d live for me.” His grip shifts, he strokes my cheek. My face turns. He’s turning me I think. Isn’t he? I’m looking at him. I’ve seen his poker face, and this isn’t it. He’s making a promise. “You can believe in that.”

  “You’re demented.” My voice shakes. If he’s demented, I am too. Because my head isn’t just spinning, it’s pounding. Pounding with images of him and me and us. Pictures so tangible I no longer know if I’ve been here three years, or if it’s been thirty.

  He gets closer, somehow. “You want to deny it?”

  “Yes.” Despite my words, my flesh melts, becomes liquid against the fingers brushing my face, stroking their way to my throat.

  “Do you really think I can’t feel it?” The button on his jeans catches on my dress, hikes it up my thighs. His face moves so he’s not speaking into my temple anymore, we’re nose to nose. “Think I don’t feel the way your spine bends, your hips arch toward me. The fast little breaths you take. Think I don’t know right now you are all wet?”

  My thighs squeeze. Everything between my legs clenches. Every slippery, wet, drenched, needy, hungry place between my thighs.

  But he’s not right. I can’t let him be right.

  “Wet. For. Me.” He breathes the words right into my opening mouth. His touch travels down my side. My muscles and skin contract the trail of its path. Then two fingers, just two, press low on my belly. “You’re wondering just how long you can resist us.”

  Those fingers on my belly, the breath on my lips, the scent in my lungs, take possession of my blood. Inject me so full of lust my thighs do open. His eyes flare, then he’s cupping me, right through my dress. Palm over my pussy. My ass hits the stone table, and my spine does bend. Just like a ballerina, I’m arching.

  His fingers push fabric between my legs. “Shall we test it now?” He rubs, and I’m so flooded with blood, my clit so engorged beneath my folds, that I almost scream. “See who’s the deceiver here?”

  He pushes harder, higher, so fabric scrapes against my pussy, drags the length of my slit. My teeth clamp down on my lower lip.

  “Ah,” he says, his fingers rocking a little. “No need, we’ve proved it already.”

  I fall against the table. His weight is gone. A foot of space clear between us. No hands on me, only his gaze, and it’s fixed on my crotch.

  I glance down. A rush of heat fills my face and neck. There’s a dark patch at the front of my skirt. A patch where he pushed the blue fabric between my legs and my lust soaked it. I straighten, and my hands fist. He doesn’t take that bold gaze from me. The smug asshole enjoys every moment he has over me.

  “So why haven’t you?” I lift my chin and this time I’m the one moving, bumping into him; staring him down. “If you could’ve done all this, why haven’t you?”

  “Because as you said, I don’t fuck women I’m not married to.” His entire expression shifts and for one moment, we’re locked in something not a game—in gravity. “I never have.”

  And like that, as hot as I’ve been now, I’m cold.

  Freezing.

  I leap back, against the table again, and lucky it’s solid stone to hold me because as much as I enjoyed teasing him, I know he’s no virgin, and I know exactly what he means. He’s been married. But there’s no wife waiting on the mainland, of that I’m positive.

  I get every single fucked-up shattering layer of what he’s telling me.

  Every threat and every promise.

  “Did you kill your wife?”

  He looks at me for what feels like centuries. Not for the first time there’re answers in his eyes to questions I can’t fathom. Then his expression flattens as I’ve seen so often.

  The hand on my belly trembles, and I pull it tighter into my middle. He walks away, back to his chopping board. He’s filleting fish once more.

  Not sure how long it takes me to get my balance, but when I do, there’s no waiting for fish to cook. I walk to my bungalow.

  Spend the day in bed, not a bit hungry anymore.

  Chapter Nine

  Bloody Birthday

  1:40 p.m.

  The handgun presses into Dad’s forehead. His skin dips around the barrel.

  “It’s too late,” Dad breathes, so low I almost miss his words. Yet he stares at the man with a gun to his forehead without blinking. “What you want is gone. You’ll only do more damage.”

  “I will find a way.” Julius’s fingers flex around the base of the gun, loosening then tightening. “Where’s the safe?”

  My heart rises into my esophagus and pounds in the base of my throat.

  The safe? That’s what he wants? A thief, I wouldn’t have guessed that. Not at all.

  Dad’s mouth forms a stubborn line I know too well.

  Shit.

  “Over your dead body, right?” Julius takes a step back, weapon still fixed on Dad. Joel moans, rolling on the ground, hands covering his blood-streaked face. Pete’s not carrying but his fingers twitch by his sides.

  Now there’s another figure jogging toward us. Barry must have seen something from his east-boundary patrol. His bolt-action rifle is already raised as he closes in.

  “I didn’t expect any less from you.” Julius steps backward over Jim’s limp body without so much as a glance.

  I can’t breathe over the heart-sized lump in my throat.

  He stands even with me.

  Beside me.

  “You don’t get to be where you are, Anthony, without being strong—” his voice drops an octave “—without being ruthless.”

  My insides lurch. “Wait, I’ll tell you.”

  His gun arm remains trained on Dad, but he turns his face. Those icy eyes focus on me, make the world tilt.

  “Will you?” He reaches with his free hand to touch my hair. The almost-white curls everyone talks about. They press against my face where he strokes them down.

  His eyes flicker. Mine sting. I can’t blink. Can’t let him out of my sight.

  His fingers splay on my skin. He stares at me, expression melting.

  I catch a breath, air skates into my lungs.

  He looks at me like he loves me—loves me more than life.

  My lungs open, reacting to emotions not my own. The pressure on my throat deepens, challenging what I think I’ve seen.

  He pets my hair again. I don’t need the deadly gleam of gunmetal in his hand to know this man is crazy.

  Completely out of his mind.

  His thumb brushes along my cheekbone. “You’re the sensible one here, aren’t you?”

  My gaze flicks around us—Dad waves his hand and weapons lower—then settles back on Julius.

  “Everything will be fine.” Julius’s chin dips a little, and he studies my eyes. “As long as I can trust you.”

  “Sarah—” Dad warns, drawing my gaze back to him.

  Julius taps my cheek twice with his thumb, returning my focus to him. “Can I trust you?”

  I blink at this madman. Thoughts gather and collect in my mind. Dad won’t like it, but it’s the only way.

  “Yes, it’s in the shed. The safe is in the back shed.”

  Chapter Ten

  A pin grazes my scalp, scraping over the rope of a scar buried in my hair. The area is numb. The reminder that I was there the day my mother died, and the day my dad did too.

  I pull the wild, reckless tumble of my curls into something contained and orderly. The only person in my family left alive is my brother and as much as part of me feels missing without him, I can only be thankful he’s safe and free.

  I lean my palms on the vanity and stare at myself. I can take everything back with Julius.

  Go back to biting my tongue. Get through however many more days it is I need to get through before that useless pirate comes and loots me off this island.

  If that ever happens.

  I roll my shoulders. Of course it’ll happen. Dad promised. He might not have told me everything but he’d never let me down.

  A knock rattles the door.

  I get up and open the door slowly. Stupid stands on the other side. I try not to groan. The boys are back from their day off, it seems. None of them must have families.

  “Yes, Ash?”

  He doesn’t quite look at me, stares somewhere over the top of my head. It’s for the best. My chest pangs anyway. I maybe, almost, had a friend.

  But any friend of mine would pay for the privilege. I can never forget that.

  “He wants you inside.”

  “I’ll be ready in a minute.”

  I wait for him to leave, then go down to the main house. Walk past the empty barbecue area and enter the seldom-used dining room. Dan enters the room from the inside door, a large cooler in his hands. Leo trails behind him carrying a smaller one.

  Julius looks up from where he sits at the head of the table. His expression flickers. He stares at me. I can’t take another step. Just stand in the open doorway.

  His attention travels over me from top to bottom, and his brows shift and twitch. Then his gaze connects with mine. So intense, so full of I don’t know what, I’d empty the entire cash-filled contents of my underwear drawer to anyone who could tell me what he’s thinking.

  His eyelids narrow a fraction.

  -->