Page 39 of The Kingpin's Call Girl

Chapter Thirty-Seven

EDIE

It takes me forever to get to sleep because the students on the floor above are blasting music, and the bass is thudding like a heartbeat in my skull. It doesn’t help that at any moment, Bender could call, and I’d have to race across town to face Luka again.

A man whose face I still search for in crowds.

A man whose voice echoes in my dreams.

A man who might kill me if he knew what I was up to.

Or would he? I usually have good instincts about people, honed over years of watching my mother bring home iffy guys and moving us into neighborhoods where survival meant learning to read people fast.

I bury myself in a book. Eventually, the music stops, and I drift into a restless sleep.

The next thing I know, a rough hand slides down my cheek.

I gasp and try to pull off my sleep mask, but a hand is over it. “Keep it on.”

Luka.

Adrenaline bolts through me.

“What are you doing here?”

His lips brush my ear. “Taking the princess in her castle. ”

He found me. Does that mean he knows about Bender? Am I in trouble?

“Is everything okay?” My voice is a whisper, breathless.

“Why wouldn’t it be?”

“You shouldn’t be here.”

The bed groans as he climbs on. “Oh, I definitely shouldn’t be here. You’re right about that.”

Something brushes my bare skin. His suit sleeve?

He seems to still. “What happened to your arm?”

“It’s nothing.”

His voice turns lethal. “Did somebody hurt you?”

“Walking and texting. One star. Do not recommend.”

In the silence that follows, he touches it lightly, seeming to examine the loose wrap I wear to bed. I wish I could see his face. Did he hear the lie? Has he figured out about Bender and me?

Satisfied that I’m intact, he trails a finger down, down, down my belly.

His touch is electric. Wicked fingers slip down the front of my sleep pants, and heat floods my core, mixing with something sharper, something dangerous.

Luka is here. Luka the kingpin. Luka the killer.

A coil of unease wraps around my spine, but then his fingers find my clit, and I don’t even care anymore. The forbidden pleasure of this bad man’s touch overrides everything.

“Tell me to stop, princess. Tell me.”

I lick his neck. He groans, stroking me nearly into oblivion.

And then it hits me. Luka is never alone.

He’s always with Orton and that Arctic soldier. Sometimes, he even has more people around him.

“Are we alone?” I go for my mask.

He grabs my wrist. “What did I tell you? The mask stays on.”

“But… your men.” I wrench against his hold to dislodge the mask.

His lips brush my ear, teasing, taunting. “Ah. Would the barbarian fuck the young princess in front of his men? Is that what you’re asking?”

“W-what?”

His mouth claims my nipple through my thin nightshirt, and my body bows under the sensation.

“Just tell me if we’re alone,” I gasp.

He hums against my skin. “Your roommate seems to have won a trip. Pretty amazing.”

My stomach drops. Luka arranged for Odetta’s boyfriend to win the trip? Just to get me alone?

“And yes,” he continues, pulling my pants and panties off. “My men are all around the bed, watching me defile you. They’re dirty and brutish, dressed in furs. Some still carry their weapons from battle.”

It takes me a second to get what he’s doing—showing me he knows all about what I study.

Calloused palms slide over my hips, drinking in bare skin. “Their eyes all fixed on the princess who thought herself above them.”

Images flood my mind of rough men watching from the shadows as I’m devoured by a brute of a man.

“Drinking in the sight of your utter submission.”

“What the fuck,” I whisper.

“Enough.” Strong hands flip me onto my stomach, baring just my ass, and then—a wicked slap. The sound cracks through the air, sharp as my gasp. Pleasure slices through me.

This game feels wild. Dangerous.

He jerks up my hips so my ass is in the air. “They’re watching me take the innocent princess, their hungry eyes tracing over all this soft skin.”

I imagine their fists wrapped around crude weapons, knuckles white with tension, eyes burning. Heat pools between my thighs.

His fingers slide through my wetness, teasing, torturing. And then he’s gone, and there’s nothing. Just emptiness .

Come back.

“They know that only I get to have you.” Another slap. “The sacred ritual of claiming royal bloodlines.”

The scholar in me wants to correct his historical inaccuracy, but then he reaches around and twists one of my nipples, and all facts dissolve into the air. There’s only his hot breath against my ear and his achingly male scent.

“They’re barely civilized. None of us are civilized. We take what we want. When I see a princess as pure as you, I need her hard and brutal.”

I slide my palms over the cool sheets and then squeeze wads of it in my fists. Waiting. For him.

Is this really happening? It’s so wrong... and so hot.

Cool air brushes my back as he pulls away. “Don’t move.”

I couldn’t if I tried.

More like I wouldn’t .

A belt buckle clanks. Fabric rustles.

My breath stutters as strong hands rip my sleep pants all the way off me.

He pushes apart my legs, and the thick head of his cock presses against my entrance, teasing, testing, but not pushing inside.

Desperation claws at me. I push back, needing him, needing to be filled.

He growls low in his throat. Another slap, sharper this time. “Be still.”

I don’t care anymore. I don’t care how he found me or if I’m in danger. Right now, I only need one thing.

Again I bear back.

A cry tears from my throat as he thrusts deep, his claim absolute. He fucks me long and strong. He takes what he wants.

At some point, I am on my back, still with the sleep mask on, and we’re fucking like animals, crying, losing track of ourselves in this strange dance that we do .

Pleasure detonates through me, an explosion of every forbidden color, every wrong need.

He comes with a guttural grunt, his massive hands holding me in place.