Page 22 of Beauty & Chaos

For almost a week I walked around on eggshells until Leo called me into his office, and without looking me in the eye announced I’d be going to Phillips Academy to stay as a student. A boarding school.

I had cried when I returned to my room.

Leaving was as scary as staying. That house was the only place I’d called home, despite the horrors.

“Where is Sofia?” I’d asked the day the car came to take me to my new home, not knowing I’d never return.

“Gone.” And he was getting rid of me as well.

The fucking coward.

Exceptheis the coward, not me.

Now I’m fulfilling the promise I made to that little boy and getting revenge. Taking what is important to him. Using what tools life puts in my path.

Which includes Brooklyn McKenna.

CHAPTER SIX

BROOKLYN

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“Genevieve! Stop!” Lancelot cries as he follows me into the woods.

“No. Go. I can’t be near you.” I sob.

He whips me around and I close my eyes, so I don’t have to take in the handsome knight with his steel-gray eyes and powerful jaw. He pushes me against a large tree trunk and with two hands cups my face.

“I will not live without you.”

“You must.”

“I would die first.”

My eyes pop open. “You might, Lancelot! Then I could never live with myself. Don’t ask that of me.”

“Damn you.” He glances away but doesn’t release me.

I don’t want him to. His armor is cold against me, but the thickness of his thigh is warm and strong against my leg. I long to have his strong and ripped naked body on top of mine once more.

As if hearing my thoughts, his eyes drop to mine and drift to my lips. “What if there was a way?”

I shake my head and softly reply, “There isn’t. We had one night. Let that be it, Lancelot.”

“You belong to me.”

I know.

But Arthur is the king and my husband. What he wants, he gets. Including me. Instead, I nod, and say, “I am yours, my love.”

“Then call me and come to dinner with me. I promise to treat you like a queen, then fuck you like a naughty wench.”

My eyes fly open. I bolt upright in bed, looking around my room as my dream state fades and reality descends.

No Lancelot.

No twelfth-century woods of Camelot.