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We walked down the same hallway. Door after door. Red so loud I could hear it pulsing through the veins of the house. We stopped outside the one that read Vitiosis on the front. The same gold plate over the same crimson door.
I hated this place. I didn’t care for fucking anything anymore. When you’re fed rage all your life, you refuse the taste of peace, so I needed it. The feeling of undiluted anger to stream through me. I needed it to get me through. Fuck peace.
My lips were flat. I wondered if my uncles knew about this, since I never saw any of them here. This didn’t seem like Elite Kings’ business. Kings were venomous outlaws, but this was something else. They killed, meddled in illegal trades across the board, but rape? Never.
Lucan pushed open the door, placing his foot in front to stop it from closing. “Inside, Brantley.”
I went. I took the three steps it was to enter the familiar room. A single camera. The bed made up of simple white sheets.
White. Sheets.
My eyes searched the two girls who were on the bed. They had to be around my age, maybe older. Bile rose up my throat. I turned to face my father. “I don’t want to do this anymore.”
Lucan leaned down, shutting the door behind us. The click of him locking it would haunt me for years to come. That sound. Click. The only click sound I’d ever want to hear after this would be from my gat. “If it’s not them, it’ll be Saint. You make that decision, Brantley.”
I gritted my teeth. “I mean, I don’t want to do this ever. To anyone.”
Lucan didn’t speak. His eyes held mine. “You don’t have a choice.” He shoved me toward the bed. “So what will it be, Brantley? Will it be them, or will it be Saint?”
I turned to face him over my shoulder. “It will never be her.”
Present
I squeeze my eyes closed as I come to, rubbing the sleep from them. My sheets are on the floor, my body slick with sweat. Rolling off the bed, I lean over, gripping one of the posts of my bed. The memories flick through my head in 4k clarity. I suck air in my lungs, then hold, before exhaling. My mind is a contortion of dark images. Scenes and scenarios.
Thirty-seven girls and boys. Sometimes older, sometimes younger, other times the same age.
Thirty-seven and I remember every single one of them.
I spin around to head down to the gym, but freeze when I see Saint at my door. My eyes flick to the clock on my bedside table. Three a.m.
“What are you doing awake?” I rub the sweat off my chest, caught off guard by what she’s wearing. Little white shorts that are honest-to-God too short to be considered anything but underwear and a simple white camisole that rides up to show a sliver of her belly.
She steps forward, her platinum hair falling around her shoulders in natural waves. “I had a weird dream.”
I step backward. “This isn’t the place to come for comfort after a nightmare, Saint.” Why the fuck is she still moving toward me.
“I heard you scream,” she further says, and now she’s too close. Her little body directly in front of mine.
“Like you haven’t heard it before.”
“That’s the thing,” she says, and her head tilts so she can look up at me. It’s dark in the room, with the only light coming from the hallway that’s spilling through the crack of the door. “I haven’t in a while, and this time was different…”
“How?” I growl, searching her face. Fuck, but she’s beautiful. Everything forbidden, too pure for this world.
Her fingertip grazes my stomach and I tense. Blood rushes straight to my cock at the connection. “You screamed my name this time.”
Fuck.
“What are you doing?” I snatch her finger into the palm of my hand.
“I don’t know,” she whispers, her eyes on the tattoo over my chest. The only ink I have. The angry Elite Kings’ skull carved into my flesh with the word Vitiosis over the top of it. “But I’m going with it.” She leans up on her tippy toes, her small fingers around the back of my neck.
I groan. “Saint…” There have been numerous times that I’ve thought about having her exactly like this. In front of me. At my fucking mercy. But the truth of the matter is, I don’t deserve her. What I need, she will never be able to give me.
“Brantley?” She tugs me lower, and I abide, the tip of my nose touching hers. “Kiss me.”
My jaw tenses. Fuck it. I wrap my fingers around the back of her neck, my other arm around her tiny waist. I could snap her with a simple flick of my wrist. Having something so fucking delicate in the palm of my tactless hands sends a rush of power sizzling through me. Tsk, tsk. This is why I’m bad for her. My lips brush hers.