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With a blink, he shutters it all away, and Whitaker Ashby is in front of me again.

“Front row,” he grinds out, breath hot against my cheek. “And put a smile on your fucking face.”

He pushes off, releasing my wrist in the process. By the time I peel myself off the wall, he’s gone.

23

Wicker

A signof a skilled musician is that we operate not just on sound, but how the musicfeels. The vibration of the strings, the reverberation in the hollow core of the cello under my fingertips, is as familiar as the sound of a woman seizing beneath me, spine arching, breath shallow. Their bodies are as much of an instrument as this carved piece of wood between my legs.

Me? I’m just the one who pulls the strings.

Which is why I think Verity and all her disapproval and probing questions annoy the fuck out of me. Her job is to get pregnant—to create—not to talk. Not to question. Not to mindfuck me two minutes before I have to perform in front of this room full of vampires.

The most annoying part is that she was right. I did bring her for a purpose—as a shield.

There’s a reason I fuck her from behind. Why I don’t look her in the eye when I’m balls deep inside of her, or when she’s down on her knees sucking my cock bringing me to the edge. Even now, I focus on anything but her–the strings beneath my fingertips, the way the vibrations rattle through my chest and the eyes of everyone watching me. Every woman. Every man. Everyone but the guy in the back, who can’t stop looking down the front of his girl’s dress. Don’t blame him. She’s got a killer rack.

But everyone else wants one thing: a part of me.

Time after time, I do it, because I don’t have a choice. Never have. I give and fuck and smile, snatching away little parts of myself and hiding them away, because they’ll be taken if I don’t. It’s all taken, in time. Some days I wake up and wonder how there’s any of me left. Some days I seek out my brothers and just sit there as they talk, like I’m an empty battery and they’re charging me up. Some days I feel like a brittle skeleton in a lake of piranhas, picked clean, nothing left to offer.

Buther? She can have my cum. Nothing I can do about that.

I refuse to give her anything else.

I sense her in the front row, catching glimpses of her smooth legs glued together at the knee. She looks like a Princess, prim and proper except for that skirt inching up her thighs. It’s four inches too short, and I chose it specifically for its accessibility.

I don’t need to look at her to know she doesn’t see me the way the others do. There’s no hunger in her eyes. No desire. She loathes me for being a Prince. For taking her that night, bloody and torn, claiming her for me and my brothers. She despises me for hunting her down twice a week, multiple times a day, for releasing and unleashing into her to make up for my brother’s failures.

She hates me for locking her in two nights ago with Lex.

After years of being used, there’s a certain thrill in being able to do it to someone else.

I draw the bow back and slash across the strings, a sharp tune cutting through the air. I didn’t lie about Verity being my muse. Just not in the way one would expect. I refined the piece after Father’s session with Lex. Slowly plotting it out while watching over him at night, the wounds painful and oozing. A tribute to how this girl has done nothing but add conflict and turmoil in our lives.

Over the moving bow, I see her legs shift and it pulls my eyes up. She’s trapped between Trudie and Christine. Her hands are folded on her lap, her thighs spread, revealing a gap in her skirt. Our eyes meet over the cello neck, the dark glint matching the small uplift of her lips in a tiny smirk.

Her knees drop to the side, giving me a full view between her legs.

As my cock swells, anger licks against my spine. She’s the only woman I can have right now. The only one I can fuck with absolute abandon. The women in here, the ones eyeing me like a piece of meat, I’m for them, not the other way around.

Heat creeps up my neck, my fingers are numb from gripping the bow. The calluses are hard and thick, built up from years of practice. I never look away from her, not when she lets her fingers dangle against the inside of her knee, or when her tongue darts out to wet her bottom lip. The room is still as I draw out the last note, letting the sound reverberate against the high ceilings. When the sound ceases, I stand, barely on my feet, and dip into a tense bow before Trudie jumps to her feet, clapping furiously. Two seats over, Christine follows, leaning over to give me a view of her tits. One by one, the crowd stands, until the only one left seated is Verity.

“Thank you, Whitaker,” Trudie says, snatching the microphone. She grips my bicep. “Such an incredible talent…” She drones on about donation envelopes and the children at Open Hearts, but I don’t listen to her. I don’t care. I step off the stage, grab Verity by the hand, and yank her out of her seat.

“Where—” she starts, but I step into a staircase, one that winds down a floor and leads to glass double doors. Swinging it open, the scent of chlorine hits my face, and I toss her inside. Verity stumbles on the tile pool deck, her pale pink dress in contrast to the aqua blue water behind her.

“You think taunting me is smart?” I shrug off my jacket, tossing it on one of the lounge chairs. “Getting me hard in the middle of a performance?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she says innocently, eyes tracking me as I yank off my tie and loosen my collar. “You’re the one who put me in this dress and told me not to wear panties. You’re the one who brought me into a den of horny hyenas, playing perfect little Prince and then getting pissed when I ask questions.”

“That’s enough!” I shout, grabbing my belt buckle. I point at the lounge chair. “Bend over.”

She has the audacity to look appalled. “No.”

“No?” I laugh, easing the buckle loose. “You don’t have the right to deny me,Princess.”