by Madison Faye
Riley looked around before she gave me this wild-eyed look. “King Hayden.”
Xavier lunged to his feet and immediately smacked his head against the bottom of the desk. Apparently I wasn’t the only one forgetting current circumstances.
“Okay, what the hell was—”
“Stubbed my toe!” I said quickly, hissing like I’d done just that and it wasn’t that the older, gorgeous man who’d been between my legs teasing my pussy with his tongue had just tried to stand up under a desk.
“Wait, Callie is marrying King Hayden? Today?”
“Yeah, like literally right now! So let’s go, okay?”
Yeah, that wasn’t going to happen. Not when my wrists were tied to the damn chair, not when my dress was pulled up around my waist, and not when a mostly naked Xavier was crouched under the desk with a rock-hard erection and my pussy all over his mouth.
“Uh, how about I meet you there, okay?”
Riley stared at me, slowly shaking her head as her brows knit. “Dude, are you sure you’re feeling okay?”
Xavier’s fingers teased over my slit just as I was about to respond. Instead, I snapped my mouth shut and just nodded quickly.
“Are you high or something?”
My cheeks flushed as Xavier’s finger slid back into me, sliding in and out and fucking me just enough to make me crave the real thing.
“I just have to go do something,” I blurted quickly. “I’ll meet you there right after.”
Riley looked confused. “Look, will you just get off your ass and follow—”
Her eyes dropped, and suddenly, I watched them go wide. I followed her gaze, and when I realized she was staring right at my wrists, my whole face went bright red.
“Okay what is—”
Her eyes suddenly went wide, snapping back up to mine. And this time, she grinned, as if she could suddenly see through solid wood and knew exactly what was going on.
“Uh, how about I just see you there?” she whispered gleefully, still grinning as she wagged her brow at me. Our eyes locked, and I knew. I knew she knew — at least enough that this cat was officially out of the bag.
“TELL ME LATER,” she mouthed at me. My cheeks burned fiercely as I nodded at her as she backed out the door and shut it behind her.
Xavier was on his feet, pulling me free of the ties in a flash.
“Uh, you heard all that, right?”
“Yes,” he growled, pulling his tie free of me and the chair. “I heard, and I think the shit is about to hit the fan. Hard.”
“What should we do?”
I mean, I knew what we both wanted to do was stay there and finish what we’d started, but he was right. If King Hayden was seriously about to marry Callie on her wedding day and steal her away from King Milton, that was going to get ugly really quickly.
“Find your friends, angel,” he purred, pulling me close and kissing me as he started to button his shirt back up. “I’ll find mine, and then I’ll get you so we can get out of here. I’m one of Hayden’s best friends,” he growled when he saw the question on my face. “And I’m pretty sure Milton believes in guilt by association. I think it’s best if we get the hell out before he finds out.”
“Uh, yeah.”
He grinned as he pulled me into him, his hand smoothing my dress down as his lips brushed mine.
“But don’t go thinking I’m done with you, baby girl,” he whispered into my ear. “Oh, and I’m keeping these.”
He pulled my panties out of his pocket, clenching them in his fist as he leaned down and kissed me deeply.
“Trust me when I say you will not be needing them later when I get my hands on you again.”
Chapter 15
Xavier
It was insanity. It was bat-shit crazy. But then, fuck, I also had to hand it to Hayden. And really, most of me was proud for my friend. He’d seen what he’d wanted, and he hadn’t let anything get in his way.
Plus, I was hardly one to start throwing stones about being with a girl he shouldn’t have been with.
“Xavier.”
Cole nodded at me with his chin and arched a brow as I stepped into the ballroom and saw him.
“Guessing by that look on your face that you heard?”
“I just did.”
Cole swore, shaking his head and grinning. “Well, shit, looks like this wedding is about to get a lot more interesting.”
“Where is he?”
“Getting married.”
I stared at him. “Wait, right now?”
“Apparently. He flew in that priest that was friends with his dad and everything. Faith said Sven’s there too—”
His mouth snapped shut, but not before he had my full attention.
“Cole—”
“I’m really not looking for a fucking lecture,” he hissed, his tone icy as he stared me down.
But I just grinned. Fuck it. I could have given him shit about Faith since he’d basically just admitted it. But like I said: who the hell was I to start getting on a high horse about being with someone he shouldn’t be with? Hell everything in the world said I shouldn’t have had a damn thing to do with Lola, but it’s not like that was doing a thing to stop me.
“Well I’m fresh out of lectures, dick,” I shot back, grinning at him. “You going to be okay there?”
“With her?” His jaw clenched.
I nodded.
“Yeah,” he growled, his eyes growing fierce before he sighed and shook his head. “Look, I know there’s every reason for a guy like me to stay the fuck away from a princess like that, but I just…”
I clapped him on the shoulder. “You don’t have to try and explain to me, man,” I sighed.
“Love, huh?” Cole grinned at me. “Who’d have thought I’d ever be stumbling into that whole thing huh?” He shrugged. “Well, maybe me, but you?”
I flipped him off as he chuckled.
“Duke?”
The voice came from behind us, and I frowned as I turned towards an unfamiliar man in a dark suit. His thinning hair was slicked back, and he had this kinda rabbit-like buck-toothed smile.
“Duke Danes?” He stuck his hand out, and I shook it. “My name is Robert Tile.”
I frowned. The name was vaguely familiar. Like I’d read it somewhere.
“Yes?”
Robert smiled this rodent-looking smile.
“I represent your ex wife, Shana.”
Fuck. Yep, that’s where I’d read the name — on the material Winston had given me on Shana getting together her new law team and investigators. Robert Tile was one of her new crooked, highly-paid lawyers.
“What do you want?” I hissed.
He just kept fucking smiling at me. “I think you know what I want.” He popped the briefcase in his hands and pulled out a file folder. “These are for you.”
I took the papers from his hand with frown, but when I glanced down at them, that frown turned into a mask of rage.
“She’s suing me?”
The attorney grinned smugly. “She is, Mr. Danes.”
“For what?!”
“I think you know what.”
“Enlighten me,” I snarled, drawing glances from a few other nearby guests. I felt Cole’s hand land on my shoulder as I moved towards Robert, like he was cautiously holding me back from taking a swing at the guy or doing something else that would certainly bite me in the ass in the long run.
“Do you want me to say it outloud?” Robert tossed back with this smug, shit-eating look on his face.
I glanced back at Cole before leveling my eyes on the asshole lawyer. “Yes.”
He shrugged. “Princess Lola? And yourself?” Robert made a tsking sound as he shook his head.
“Hey, you know what?” Cole growled, pushing past me and shoving a finger in the man’s face. “I think you need to fuck the hell off, right now,” he hissed.
“Oh,” Robert chuckled, holding his hands up as he grinned away like a fucking weasel. “I’m not judging, I mean sh
e is one hot little thing, now isn’t sh—”
I lost it. I roared like a fucking animal as I lunged for the man. Cole swore, his hands grabbing me and yanking me away, holding me back.
“Hit me, sir,” Robert spat, the fear in his eyes taking away any sort of toughness the words might’ve carried. “Go ahead and hit me and see how that pans out in court!”
“You son of a bitch…” I snarled.
“You know,” Robert grinned right at me, clearly trying to provoke me. “I’m actually impressed that a man your age can keep up with her.”
“Keep up with my boot in your ass,” I snapped.
He chuckled. “Well, you know the terms, and you’ve provided us with all the ammunition we need.”
He reached into his briefcase again, this time pulling out a stack of black and white photographs. I felt my blood run hot as he held them out to me. I knew what they were before I even took them. But when I did, and saw the shots of Lola and I kissing in the shadows of a dark hallway — clearly shot by a pro with one hell of a remote camera or a drone or something — my heart clenched, and my eyes narrowed at him.
Fuck. Double fuck.
“That right there, Duke,” Robert sneered, “is all the proof I need to sue the fuck out of you, have your testimony dropped, and see my client freed from the completely unjust way she’s been imprison—”
“Your client is a murderous psychopath,” I growled at him through clenched teeth, my hands closed into fists. I moved towards him again, but again, I felt Cole play the sensible card and hold me back before I did something rash.
“Allegedly, Duke Danes.” He smiled. “Allegedly a murderous psychopath.”
I could feel every nerve in my body sizzling with rage. I felt wronged, and like the one goodness I’d found was about to get ripped away from me.
“I’d tell Lola to get hidden for a while,” Shana’s prick lawyer chuckled. “Because when these go public the way I plan on making them public, I think we both know there’s going to be a very big spotlight on her.”
Chapter 16
Lola
I tripped through the gardens, biting my lip as I scanned the hedges and rose bushes for any sign of Riley. When she’s blurted out the news to me back in that office about Callie, I’d barely had time to process it while also trying to get her to leave. Which meant I hadn’t even been focused enough to ask her where the hell “there” was when she’d said she’d just “meet me there”.
The gardens seemed like a good place to at least start looking though. For one, because people get married in gorgeous rose gardens, right? And for two, because these were the same gardens where I’d caught Riley earlier with King Sven.
Okay, it wasn’t a bulletproof place, but it seemed like a good place to start.
“Lola.”
Something froze in me, and my feet came to a stuttering stop. The cold feeling inside spread, turning to ice as it crept over my skin, chilling me to my core. The voice I’d all but forgotten from my past uttered my name for the first time in six years, and it felt like the world was dropping out from under me.
…It was the voice of my father.
Slowly, I turned, and there he stood, like some sort of apparition.
“Dad?”
It’d never been hard to forget this man. I hadn’t lost him when he went to jail and I went to live with Xavier, I’d lost him years before that. I’d lost him when it became pretty obvious that he’d never wanted to be a parent, and that I was more of a burden than a joy to him. And then of course, he’d gone to jail, and moving on from that had been a sort of relief when I’d moved in with Xavier. When my father had used the last of resources and favors to bribe his way out of jail before his final sentencing and escape to God knows where, I guess in my mind I’d considered that a final closing of that door.
In my mind, after that, he was just gone, and I was okay with that.
But the man standing in front of me was very much there in the flesh and blood. He looked haggard, and a little bedraggled. His hair was longer than I remembered it, and there was a grizzled week-old beard on his roughened face. Dark circles pocketed under bloodshot eyes, and he looked at me with this weird sort of skittishness.
He smiled at me, but it was this forced-looking smile, like he had to put on an act to do it.
“Hey there buttercup,” he said in a haggard voice. I frowned. “Buttercup” wasn’t ever a name he’d called me. He leaned closer, eyeing me, and then I could smell the booze on his breath.
“Dad…” I swallowed, shaking my head at him. “Dad what are you doing here?”
The man in front of me, stranger to me or not, was a wanted criminal. He might have once been my father, but the man he was now was a man who’d actively plotted to blow up a children’s hospital so that he could make sure his power remained in his own hands.
I took a step back, and his bloodshot eyes narrowed.
“The fuck do you mean what am I doing here?” he muttered. “It’s a royal wedding, Lola. And a man of my standing—”
“Dad, what standing?” I balked at him. “You’re a wanted felon, you know.”
“By those lesser than people like you and me,” he hissed. “People who have no birthright to even speak to me!”
I snorted, scowling at him as I shook my head. God, he’d really drunk the kool aid. He, and the others like Xavier’s ex-wife who’d planned the violence they’d almost carried out truly believed that they, as “royalty,” were actually better than other people who weren’t. I mean, it was also clear my father was drunk, or maybe on drugs or something too. But that God-complex thing was still there at his core.
“Lola—”
He reached for my arm, but I yanked it back, backing away from him. His eyes narrowed.
“I’m your father, Lola!” he spat.
“What do you want?”
His eyes darted from side to side, his jaw grinding.
“My, uh, my funds have been frozen.”
“Yeah, that will happen when you escape from jail after planning mass murder and treason,” I hissed.
An anger sparked in his eyes, but he just kept glaring at me.
“You’re my flesh and blood, Lola. And I need you to—”
I barked out a laugh. “Are you here asking me for money? Is that it? You’re back after all these years because you ran out of drinking money?”
“Goddamnit, Lola!” he roared, making my pulse jump in fright. “Maybe I wasn’t father of the fucking year, but you will not turn your back on me right now!”
“Dad,” my voice trembled, my eyes starting to sting. “You need to leave.”
“You don’t speak to me like that!” he snapped. He moved towards me, making me gasp as I stumbled back.
“Get away from me!”
“Or what?” he snarled. And then slowly, a cruel, evil smile crept over his face. “Or are you going to call you new daddy on me?”
I shivered, and he laughed a brittle laugh.
“Oh, a little bird told me all about that,” my father hissed.
“Get away,” I choked out. I don’t even know what you’re talking—”
“You and Xavier.”
My heart jumped, that cold feeling like a knife twisting in my chest.
My father swore and shook his head at me. “You little slut. What, working out your daddy issues by screwing my friend?”
“Get away,” I hissed coldly, fighting back the tears. “Get away before I scream for the fucking police.”
But he didn’t budge. In fact, he just smiled.
“How about we do this instead, hmm?”
He reached into his jacket pocket, and I swallowed thickly as he withdrew a manilla envelope and popped it open. He reached in, and when he pulled out the photographs, the whole world started to tumble around me.
Oh God.
I knew what they were before he even showed me.
…They were of me. Me and Xavier, to be exact — shot by either an insanely sneak
y photographer or a drone or something. Pictures of us kissing, and of Xavier holding me so tightly and so possessively. They were pictures of me at my happiest, but there in my father’s hands as photographs, they were the opposite of that.
In those pictures, they were poison.
“How about this, daughter of mine. You free up my funds and pass them my way, and if you can do that, these won’t hit the newspapers.”
I swallowed, fighting back the tears as I squared my jaw and scowled defiantly at him. “Go for it. I don’t care.”
He chuckled. “Sure you don’t.”
I took a shaky breath, and closed my eyes. I breathed again, and then slowly, it hit me. Slowly, I realized it wasn’t just calling his bluff.
…Slowly, I realized it was true.
I didn’t care. I wasn’t ashamed. I wasn’t concerned with what anyone had to say about Xavier and me. What could anyone say? That the man I loved was older than me? That it was “inappropriate”? So fucking what? Hell, one of my best friends was supposed to have been marrying a total creep that day because of some arranged debt-settling bullshit. Who the heck was going to say that was “appropriate” but me falling for Xavier wasn’t?
I didn’t realize that I was laughing quietly until I realized my father was staring at me like I was crazy.
“Tell the papers,” I spit back at him. “Tell anyone who will listen to you. I don’t actually care, and I’m not giving you any mon—”
I gasped as his hand suddenly shot out, grabbing my wrist tight and yanking me close.
“Yes you are,” he hissed, his eyes narrowing violently at me as his grip tightened. Fear shot through me, even as I tried to fight, and tried to yank my arm back.
“Let go of me!”
“My own flesh and blood!” he roared. “Denying me help!”
“Let go of—”
My father grunted, his grip on me going slack as he suddenly went toppling over and crashing into the hedge next to me. A new hand grabbed me, pulling me back and into a familiar chest and a familiar smell.
Xavier.
My heart jumped, and the relief washed through me as his strong, loving arms went around me, holding me tight and pulling me back from my ranting, unhinged father.