by Donya Lynne
She huffed as if she hadn’t thought of that, but then said, “I’ll get used to it.”
“And what if something happens to Bain and I have to fill the role of king?”
A coquettish, lopsided grin curled her lips. She leaned toward him until her face was only a few inches from his. “Would you make me kneel before you?”
Desire began a slow churn in his groin. “Only if you wanted to.”
She bit her bottom lip and trailed one finger down the center of chest. “King Micah. I like how that sounds.”
“Don’t let it go to your head,” he teased, enjoying her seduction. “I’m just the understudy. I’m not the king and may never be. In fact, I hope it never comes to that.”
Her hand trailed lower, stoking embers into flames beneath his skin, until she reached the waist of his pants. Her palm flattened against his cock and firmly rubbed down and back up before her fingers curled loosely around his shaft through the flannel.
Blood doubled its efforts, racing to his growing erection like firemen rushing to a burning building.
“You’ll always be my king.”
“Is that so?”
“Yes.” She crawled closer and brushed her lips over his, reinforcing the friction down below.
Her soft lips left simmering kisses down the side of his neck then back up to his ear, where her tongue flicked his earlobe right before she caught it with her teeth.
“You’re taking all this better than I thought you would.” He caressed the backs of her thighs as she climbed onto his lap.
She released his ear and rose up over him, hands on his shoulders, and circled her hips, making him grow even harder. “Maybe I’m channeling my fear into something more productive.” She giggled and rotated her hips against him again. “And maybe power turns me on.”
He grinned and shook his head, sinking down until he was flat on his back. “You’re too humble.”
She laughed and rocked her hips forward. A flash of heat zinged down his back and burst inside his groin. His grip on her thighs tightened as he rolled his hips against her, increasing the contact.
Her laughter cut off abruptly, giving way to an aroused sigh as she dropped her hands to his chest and arched her back, rocking against him more forcefully.
No more talking. No more rehashing the night’s events. Now was the time to love his female and feel her body give way to his. She was his foundation. No matter the challenges he faced outside these four walls, he could always come back to her and find his center.
Without her, he would be nothing. He wouldn’t be where he was now. She was his power. She was the strength that made him the male he was. With her, nothing was out of reach. He could accept anything life threw at him as long as Sam was by his side.
She quickly stripped out of her shorts and tank top as he shoved off his pants, and then she sank down on him and paid him the kind of fealty any good king deserved from his queen.
Chapter 26
Soft skin. Ronan had never felt such soft skin. And he’d never felt silkier hair flowing between his fingers or looked into bluer, kinder eyes.
Where am I?
It didn’t matter as long as she kept touching him and he could keep touching her.
Her.
He didn’t even know her name, but he knew her face. He knew her heart. And she knew his.
Her body rolled against him as she tasted his lips. God, she was the sweetest female he’d ever laid eyes on. Who was she? Where had she come from? Her fingers locked around his, and she held down his hands as she took her pleasure from him.
She wore flowing pale-blue robes that cascaded all around them, lifted as if on a breeze.
Everything was white. Soft white bedding beneath them, white walls, white sky outside the white-framed window.
“I choose you,” she whispered.
It was an odd thing to say, but here, in this white room with its angelically white walls, it sounded perfect. He knew exactly what those words meant, even though he couldn’t put that meaning into words of his own.
“I choose you, too.” He pulled her mouth to his and kissed her. Deep, thoroughly, feeling the connection all the way to his soul.
She felt it, too. He could feel everything happening inside her just as if it were happening to him.
This was right. As she sighed and rocked her hips more insistently against him, they both knew how right this was.
“I never thought I’d find you,” she whispered, her breath warm and urgent against his skin.
“I didn’t think I wanted to find you.” He’d never seen a more beautiful creature. One who stole his breath, his heart, and his body with only one look.
“Don’t let them take me.”
“No one will take you.”
“I’m scared.” Even as tears formed in her eyes, her body quickened.
“I won’t let them hurt you.” In this place, he had no idea who “they” were, and yet, he did. He just couldn’t see their names. Only their faces.
She gasped, grinding herself against him harder, faster, with a sense of desperation.
He felt her pleasure rise alongside his, but hers was all he cared about.
“Stay with me,” she begged.
“I’m here.”
“Don’t let them take me.”
“I won’t.”
“Pleeeaase!”
A blast of white light exploded from within her as she came in a powerful rush. And then she was gone. Her weight lifted off him as if stolen away.
He could see her, but he could no longer hear her. No longer feel her. Someone was dragging her away from him. She was screaming. A scream without sound. She reached for him, but he couldn’t move. He couldn’t go after her. He wasn’t keeping his promise. He’d told her he wouldn’t let them take her, but they were, and he couldn’t stop them.
“No!”
Her mouth opened in a soundless scream as she strained to free herself, but she couldn’t wrench herself out of their grasp. She was being pulled farther and farther away into a black tunnel that spread its impenetrable darkness into the room. The walls, the bed, the space outside the window . . . all of it turned into an inky well of black as it swallowed her like a pool of oily quicksand.
“HELP ME!” Her scream finally broke through the thickness, and it was the most agonizing thing he’d ever heard.
His heart shattered. Outrage rose inside him like a volcanic eruption.
He would find her. He would save her. And when he did, he would kill those who had stolen her from him.
Kill them!
He jolted awake, breathing hard, covered in sweat, eyes darting around the room.
Where was he? Just like in his dream, there was a lot of white here. White and chrome. And monitors. And beeping. He had tubes and wires hooked up to him, and a bag of clear fluid hung from a tall stand beside the bed.
Was he in the hospital?
How the hell had he gotten here?
He tried to sit up and was met with a shit-ton of no-fucking-way-that’s-happening as pain lanced every muscle in his body.
Holy hell! Had he been run over by a pack of Hell’s Angels and couldn’t remember?
That’s when the evening started coming back to him. The cemetery. Rule. No . . . Rysk. His name was Rysk. The werewolves. The bite on his arm. He tried to lift his arm but immediately abandoned the idea as he let out a strangled, anguished grunt at what felt like a thousand needles stabbing up and down from shoulder to wrist and back again. Talk about acupuncture from hell. Satan himself was putting in these needles. All at once. And his limbs were like one-ton sacks of lava. Hot, heavy, and hard to move without a forklift.
“Ah, you’re awake.”
Unable to move much else than his eyes, Ronan looked toward the female voice to find a doctor with short blond hair walking toward him, wearing the kind of smile all doctors wear when they’re about to deliver bad news.
“Where am I?” His voice sounded the way the rest of him fe
lt, coming out in a string of croaks that served as syllables.
“AKM.” The doctor checked his IV and studied what he assumed were monitors behind him.
“What happened to me?”
“You were bitten by a werewolf.” The doctor pulled her stethoscope from around her neck and popped the ear pieces into her ears with the expert swiftness of someone who’d performed the task a million times. “A genetically altered werewolf,” she added as she pressed the scope to his chest.
Her name tag read Dr. Snow.
He closed his eyes, wanting nothing more than to go back to sleep and dream about the beautiful blonde some more. But with pain ranging up and down his body like an electric current being woven into a web by radioactive spiders, sleep wasn’t something he could look forward to anytime soon.
“How do you feel?” Dr. Snow grabbed a blood pressure cuff from somewhere to the side.
“Like shit.”
She laughed as she carefully wrapped the cuff around his arm and began pumping air into it. “Can you be a little more specific?”
He sighed, and even that hurt. “There’s pain everywhere. All over my body. Nothing doesn’t hurt.”
She stopped pumping, listened with her scope for a few seconds, and then released the cuff. “I can increase your painkillers for the next twenty-four hours to see if that helps.” She made a note on her iPad.
Painkillers would be awesome. As in, better-than-bacon awesome. And nothing was better than bacon.
“I can’t move, either. Everything feels heavy.” Abstract fear briefly iced his blood. “I’m not paralyzed, am I?” But that didn’t make sense. Why would he be feeling pain if he were paralyzed.
She shook her head. “Your nervous system has been traumatized, but you’re not paralyzed. One of the lycans who saved you had to use his own venom to kill that of the werewolf. What you’re feeling is partly the result of the war that raged throughout your body as the lycan venom neutralized the werewolf venom. You’ll be able to move again in time. We’re going to start you on physical therapy as soon as you’re no longer in so much pain. That should speed things along so you’re back on your feet again in no time.” She glanced to the side and smiled. “Well, look who just woke up.”
Ronan couldn’t see who she was looking at, but as he inhaled again, his whole body went rigid as he identified the other person in the room by scent.
His father.
“I was just checking his vitals,” Dr. Snow said to him.
His father came into view, his dark eyes sleepy but concerned. “Is he okay?”
The doctor smiled and tucked her iPad under her arm. “He’s stable.” She turned to Ronan. “I’ll leave you two to visit.”
“I’d rather you didn’t,” Ronan said.
She just smiled again and lowered her gaze. Before she could say anything further, a nurse poked her head into the room. “Doctor, we have an emergency.”
Ronan caught the sounds of rushed movement outside his room. Equipment and personnel raced to whatever was happening.
The doctor paid them a hasty farewell and raced out of the room, barking an order to someone to bring him pain medicine before disappearing from view.
As the commotion continued outside, silence stretched like poisonous gas between he and his father. Ronan refused to look at him. He didn’t want to see the disappointment staring back at him. Didn’t want to face the scrutiny and criticism he was sure his dad wanted to unload on him. You shouldn’t have taken the ankh. You shouldn’t have stolen it from Micah and tried to use it. This is all your fault. You wouldn’t be in this condition if you hadn’t acted out like a spoiled ten-year-old. If only you could be more like Micah. He never would have done something so foolish. So destructive.
Ronan closed his eyes, trying to block out the pain that had nothing to do with World War III taking place in his organs. This pain hurt twice as much and cut ten times deeper.
You’d think after all this time, he’d be immune to it, but you never really grew immune to being dismissed and cast aside. You just learned how to channel and twist the pain in a new direction.
“Go ahead and say it,” he said, keeping his eyes closed. “Tell me how bad of a fuckup I am and get it over with.”
His dad remained silent.
“Come on, Dad, I know you think I’m a failure. I know you resent that I’ll never live up to Micah’s name and that you wish I’d never been born and—”
“I don’t think that.” His father’s hand wrapped around his, jarring Ronan’s eyes open to find his father standing right beside him, staring down at him with nothing but love and compassion.
Ronan frowned. His father had never looked at him that way.
“You’re the only thing that kept me going all these years, Ronan. I know it didn’t always feel like that, but you’ve given me purpose again, and I couldn’t be prouder of you.”
All the years of criticism and hurtful words rushed back to him, emboldening his anger. “You sure could have fooled me.”
“I was in a bad place, Ro. In a lot of ways, I still am. Without your mother, and still suffering the loss of Isabel, I made a lot of mistakes. I couldn’t be the kind of parent you deserved, and I fumbled my way along, trying to say and do the right things but never quite able to get the words to come out right.” His father frowned and looked away. “You were never the fuckup, Ronan. I was.” Their gazes met again. “I was the fuckup. I failed you, not the other way around. You could never fail me. You honor me just by existing.”
Ronan wasn’t sure what to say. This was a side of his father he’d never seen. A side he’d longed for throughout his childhood. A side he’d needed for so long he’d stopped hoping for its existence long ago.
But he was an adult now. The time for a caring father who was proud of him was over.
“It’s too late for apologies.”
“It’s never too late for apologies,” a voice said from the side.
Ronan followed his father’s gaze to the door as Rysk entered the room. Rysk, a.k.a. Rule—a.k.a. lying sack of shit.
Rysk approached the bed. “Don’t let your resentment prevent you from letting your father in, Ronan. What happened isn’t his fault.”
Liar.
The word rose unbidden inside Ronan’s mind. Rysk had lied to him, too. About his name. About who he was. Where did the lies stop?
“How would you know?” This was just what he needed right now, a tag team of disappointing father figures to irritate the holy living shit out of him while he already felt like someone had taken a meat tenderizer to him.
“Because I was part of it,” Rysk said. “I was part of the reason why you were kept in the dark.”
Ronan scowled at Rysk then at his father. His dad and Rysk knew each other, and not because they’d just met. The unspoken awareness passing between them bespoke a familiarity that extended far beyond only a couple of days. They’d always known each other. Seeing them together proved it.
“Who the fuck are you?” If only he could move, he’d deck the fucker and storm out of there, to never look back.
“I already told you. I’m your grandfather.”
Ronan’s thoughts shot back to the cemetery. You’re my great-great-great grandson. He’d thought Rysk had been joking. That he’d been playing some kind of sick mindfuck on him.
“You were serious?” Where was the doctor with his painkillers? He just wanted to go back to sleep. Or maybe he was asleep now and the dream he’d had about the beautiful blonde had been reality.
It didn’t matter. He didn’t want to hear this. Any of it. And, yet . . . he did. He wanted to belong to something bigger than himself. He wanted to believe he had a family. He just couldn’t accept that this was the family he’d been born into.
“Ronan,” his father said, touching his hand again.
Ronan yanked it away, immediately crying out as pain exploded up and down his arm, rippling out to the rest of his body.
His father and Rysk j
umped away from the bed.
“What’s going on in here?” A nurse rushed into the room, carrying a small bag of fluid. Most likely morphine.
Ah, relief. Relief that would not only get rid of the pain, but would also put him back to sleep where he could be with the beautiful blonde.
Every muscle in his body twitched from the overstimulation, which sent even more stabs of agony through him.
The nurse shoved past Rysk, who backed even farther away, and thrust the bag onto one of the hooks on the IV stand. Moving like quicksilver, she hooked the bag up to his IV then started a slow drip.
Within seconds, the drug broke into his system, calming the spasms, dulling the physical torment to a subtle ache. Just as he began to sink into a blissed-out stupor where he didn’t care about anything but the sweet sensation of nothingness, he heard the nurse tell his dad and Rysk that maybe it was time they left. That way he could get some rest.
His dad argued, but the nurse insisted.
Through blurry vision, he watched as his dad gathered his things, gave him one last, sad look, and lumbered out of the room. Rysk followed.
At last, he was alone.
Now he just needed to return to his dreams and find the female. The female who took him away from his shit life and gave him a better one. The female who needed him to save her. The female he vowed to save even if it killed him.
The female he had chosen.
But for what?
He didn’t know. But whatever he’d chosen her for, it felt important.
Like the difference between life and death.
_________
Persephone’s eyes shot open as her body arched violently off the bed. Searing pain ricocheted inside her chest. When she collapsed back on the bed, she didn’t so much gasp for air as she gulped in heaving vacuum-like draws for oxygen. She felt like she’d been underwater?
“We have a heartbeat!” someone shouted.
A heartbeat? Surely, they weren’t talking about her.
Paddles were drawn away from her exposed chest, and hands worked all around her, touching, examining, probing.
“Pulse is erratic. She could still crash again.”
“Hold.”