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CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

NASH

“So,” Vale traces her fingertip over the lion on my chest, “will I get to wear a crown?”

I laugh. “This again?”

It’s still raining outside the boat’s cabin while we lie in bed. I could stay like this forever, but we’ll have to face it too soon.

“I’m sorry.” I squeeze her tight. “I’m so sorry I hurt you. It’s just for too long, I had to hide how I felt about you; it was instinct. But fuck, it felt so wrong, and I promise I’ll make it right.”

Her grey eyes gaze up at me. “Is this you groveling?”

“There’s not a goddamn thing I won’t do for you, poison. That’s how much I love you. Always. So, if you want me on my knees for you?—”

Her eyes dance with her dirty mind; I can read it.

“Yes,” I answer. “I know where my mouth belongs when I kneel for you.”

“Is that what it means to be your queen?”

“That’s what it means to be my love … if you’ll take me back.”

“Back? But we were never official.”

“I’ll make it official. But first…” My chest, with her resting on it, suddenly feels heavy. “Vale, you need to know what you’re agreeing to.”

“I do. I’ll be your queen, and we’ll tell Alena about it, about us .”

“The first part, yes, but the second part, no.”

Her face bends, hurt. “But I thought we were?—”

“We are.” I brush the hair off her shoulder. “We’ll be together, and I’m never letting you go. This past week, I felt sick without you. It ripped my heart out to leave you, and I won’t do it again. I promise.”

She nods. “Once, I’ll let you break my heart. Never twice.” Pause for her pride. “Or I’ll bite your dick off. You know I can.”

I trace her nose. “I don’t doubt it … or us. We belong together, so we’ll tell Alena about us, but she can’t know the part about you being my queen.”

“Can you please stop confusing the hell out of me?”

“It’s not confusing,” I answer. “It’s survival. We’ll wait until after her wedding and tell her about us as a couple. I hope she’ll be okay with it in time, but she’ll never be okay with who I really am.”

“You mean the not-mafia-mafia part?”

“Yes. Once the threat of Turner is gone, there will always be another. It’s the risk we take with what we do. But it gets even riskier if Alena knows, if she becomes an asset someone can torture for intel.”

“But,” Vale scoffs, “it’s okay if they take and torture me ?”

“Never.” I cup her cheek. “That’s why you’ll be my queen. I’ll protect you, and so will the other kings.”

“Okay.” She pops up, sitting like a kid ready for her lesson, and I’m the teacher. “Tell me everything. What is this whole king/queen thing, and how does it work? I know it’s not like the British royalty. It’s all Bratva and taboo, and I’m in.”

I scrub my face, mentally parsing what I can and cannot tell her. Yes, Vale is in my world, but she can never know the depths of it, the depravity sometimes. Not everything.

It’s too dangerous.

“The king and queen tradition goes way back,” I explain. “It was done for survival, to protect an entire family. A king claims his queen, and the other kings agree to protect her, to provide for her and their kids should something happen to him, which it usually did.” I pause. “It does . This is a dangerous world we live in, Vale, and if something happens to me, my brothers will protect you.”

“Okay,” she shrugs, “I get that part. Of course, I don’t want anything to happen to you, but it’s romantic as hell they’ll protect me, so what’s the problem?”

“The problem?” I sit up, too. “Vale, with me or my brothers, you’ll be in danger for the rest of your life. Do you not get that?”

She blurts, “Do you not get women are always in danger? Hell, I can go to the grocery store and have some man grab me outside and ruin my life. Safety is not a reality for most women. But at least with you and your brothers, I have a fighting chance.”

Fuck, she’s right.

Again.

“Besides,” she says. “I love you, I adore Jace and Grant, I can tolerate Axel, and as long as that Sire guy doesn’t preach all the time, I think it’ll be fun.”

“Fun? There are other brothers, and they’re not always fun.”

Her eyes grow. “There are more ?”

“Yes, there are seven of us. Seven kings and I’m the only one who’s not a brother. Well, not by blood. And we all answer to one woman, The Queen.”

“Wait? What?” Can her pretty eyes get even bigger? “ The Queen? Who is it?”

“Their mother. She’s like my mother, too, and you know her.”

It’s beautiful watching how wickedly fast her smart brain works. “Ms. Faye!” She snaps her fingers. The CIA has nothing on my woman.

“She’s Jace’s mom? And Grant’s? And Axel’s?” She sighs, “Jeez, it makes so much sense now. God, they all have her blue eyes. Wait!” Yep, her eyes can get bigger. “You said your tests involve fucki?—”

“God, no!” I interrupt her assumption. “We don’t involve her like that. When the kings make their queens, The Queen isn’t there. She’s not involved, but it is her tradition. It’s how she escaped Moscow with her six sons. Their father, her husband, was an evil man. He kidnapped and raped her and made her his wife at fourteen, but he did one thing that wound up saving her. He made her have a second husband, in the king and queen tradition, and that man, her second husband, loved her and got them out.”

Vale shakes her head, taking it all in, and there’s more , but I don’t want her to run away screaming.

Not like she could escape me anyway.

“What do you mean?” she asks. “A second husband? First, are we getting mar?—”

My heart drops. “This isn’t how I wanted to ask you.” I take her hand. “Let me do that part right. And later. And you fucking better say yes, but there’s more you should know before you do.”

She chews her lip, joy dancing in her smokey eyes. “Okay, I’ll wait.” Pause. “And I’ll say yes.”

I can’t let myself be happy about it. Not until she knows everything. Because once she does, she’ll change her answer.

“I won’t share you, Vale. You’ll be mine, and only mine, but to be my queen, you have to have a second king. We’re supposed to do your … initiation . Just once and never again.”

Fuck, I still don’t think I can do this.

I can’t watch another man with her and not murder him.

“What’s the initiation?” she asks, but by the curious look in her eyes … she knows.

“I make you my queen in front of them,” my heart starts pounding, the beast threatening to claw its way out just saying it, “and you accept a second king, too.”

“Accept?” She raises a brow. “You mean fuck . I’ll have sex with you and one of your brothers?”

“Goddamn,” I groan, suddenly imagining it. It makes fury flood my veins. “I can’t do it. I’ll kill him.”

“Who would it be?”

“You decide, and hell no, it’s not happening.”

We aren’t tossed by a storm outside anymore, but the one inside me rages. One force says I should do this; the other says to fight it.

“But, it’s the tradition,” she argues. “I’ve studied polyandry: one wife with multiple husbands, sometimes brothers. It was done to protect inheritance and scarce resources and?—”

“Traditions change,” I argue back. “I won’t make you do this.”

“Nash.” She squeezes my hand. “If I’m with you. If you’re there and we’ll be together … you’re not making me do it. I want to do it.”

“You can’t give consent, Vale.” I sneer, “It’s coercion, pressuring you to do this, and I won’t.”

“Okay, we need to make a few things clear.” She sits ramrod straight, and I struggle with furor and sudden lust, trying not to stare at her tempting breasts. “I’m a survivor, I’m not a virgin, and I’ve been no prude. I’ve done things because I wanted to. I’ve been with women. I’ve been with men. Two men one time because I really wanted to come.”

“Fuck!” I roar. “Don’t tell me that!”

“Why not? You know it didn’t work. I didn’t come, but boy, did I try. It was my choice. The only thing coercing me was the search for my ever-elusive orgasm until, of course, you found it.” She arches her brow. “And don’t act like you haven’t been with women. Lots of them, I’m sure, and probably two at a time.”

Don’t do it. Don’t let her see she’s right.

She smirks.

Too late.

“I didn’t love them,” I answer. “I’ve never loved any woman but you.”

“Thank you,” she huffs. “That’s sweet because clearly, we can make the other jealous as hell, and that’s what I mean. We have pasts, and we’ve made choices. And I choose to do this.” She leans toward me. “And good luck making me do a goddamn thing I don’t want to.”

Damn, I love her.

“I won’t allow it.”

But some habits die hard.

“Oh, so it’s only about what you want? How patriarchal, and please.” She rolls her eyes. “I’ll get what I want, too, and I want to be your queen.”

“You want to fuck one of my brothers?” I’ll kill them. All.

“I don’t not want to.” She twists her lips. “I mean… I only want you. I love you, too, and yes, you better ask me in the most romantic way to marry you one day and make it a big surprise. But if I didn’t know you, it’s not like your brothers aren’t hot enough to fry eggs on a sidewalk. Except Axel. He’d have to shut up because he’s sexy, but that mouth of his limps my pickle.”

I don’t know whether to laugh or murder.

“And if I get to decide,” she eases, “I choose Jace.”

“Jace?” I clench my jaw, wanting to gnash a brother I love with my teeth.

“Yes,” she chirps. “I trust him. He’s not hard to look at, and I’ve known him for years. Well, not the whole Bratva brother part, but any man who holds my hair while I vomit strawberry daiquiris and nachos has earned the privilege to fuck me. Once .”

“I’ll kill him.”

“Just beat him up for doing it, and then we can move on. How about that?”

“How about fuck no.”

“Nash,” she groans, annoyed. “You’re confusing me. You say I’ll be your queen, but then you say you won’t do the thing that makes me your queen.”

“You’ll be my queen,” I bark, “you just won’t have a second king!”

“Will your brothers allow that?”

Suddenly, guilt steps on my chest like an elephant, denial kicks me in the balls, and resignation breaks my bones.

Everything my brothers and Nadine have done for me and Alena. We wouldn’t be here without them, and soon, we’ll be a real family together. They’ve never asked for anything but my loyalty, and I’ve never hated this tradition before. I got off on it, honestly … until it was my turn.

I am many evil things, but I’m not a traitor. If I give someone my word, they have it for life.

“No.”

“Because?”

“Because,” I concede, “we already have queens, and they were initiated. They have second kings, and I’ll break my vow if I don’t do it, too. It would be the ultimate betrayal and insult.”

Suddenly, it feels done. It feels like fate.

Again, Vale’s brain works like a supersex computer. It’s fascinating to watch. And slightly terrifying.

“Are you a second king to a queen?”

“I am. But we don’t reveal second kings until the queens are initiated. We stay in the background where, hopefully, we’re never needed.”

She looks over her shoulder. Slices of the sunset break through the clouds outside, shards of golden light illuminating the boat’s cabin. “Is there someone here who’s going to bust us?” she asks. “Tell me. No one will know.”

“It’s not tradition.”

“So now you’ll follow it?”

Like a burning white flag of surrender, I see no choice. I fucking hate to admit it, but oddly, I’m relieved too. “I think we should.”

“You think we should follow the traditions?” Her lips purse, fighting her smile. “ All of them.”

“Don’t look so goddamn happy about it.”

She leans over, naked with a smirk, crawling on top to straddle me. I grab her hips while she traces over my scowling lips.

“Let’s recap our convo,” she says before softly kissing me, giving me something no man has had. Over dead bodies, will any man have her kiss but me.

“I’ve loved you, Nash Allen, since I was eighteen, and you love me, too.”

Fuck. Open the hatch and toss out all my resistance to her.

“You’ve always seen my heart,” she says tenderly, “and I’ve always adored yours, even when you try to be a big, sexy dickhead.”

See? Why do I bother saying no to her? She doesn’t hear it.

Vale presses her forehead to mine as if she can will her will into me, and goddammit, it’s starting to work. I’m beginning to accept this.

“And one day,” she sighs, “you’ll ask me to wear a fifteen-carat, black diamond ring for you.” Noted. “And I’ll be your proud queen, and in my heart, you’ll be my only king. You’ll let one of your brothers, aka. Jace, make it official, and we’ll live happily ever after in not-mafia-mafia heaven and hell.”

She kisses me again, taking my hungry erection and possessive lips as signs of my agreement. But of course, she has to be, “Right?”

“Shut up, Vale,” I answer, flipping her over.

And for the next four days, I treat every sweet hole of hers like I’m a king.

Her only king.