Total pages in book: 141
Estimated words: 128585 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 643(@200wpm)___ 514(@250wpm)___ 429(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 128585 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 643(@200wpm)___ 514(@250wpm)___ 429(@300wpm)
I studied Cheska’s face, fucking myself up by trying to imagine her in my world. Trying to picture her by my side—a fallen spring queen holding my bloodstained hand. I pushed it from my mind.
It wasn’t real. Couldn’t ever be fucking real.
“And all around his kingdom were the worst horrors every level of hell could conjure up. Demons and beasts all gunning for the king’s evil throne, vultures circling, readying to steal his crown. His throne built on the bones of his enemies, by the victims he had torn apart with his bare, clawed hands.” I leaned in closer still. So close that I felt Cheska’s breath drift over my face. “The victims he enjoyed killing, enjoyed bringing down, stealing their last breath as he watched them fight for air.”
Cheska drew in a ragged breath. “Yet the queen still wants him,” she said, and the crack she had smashed into my concrete chest years ago started to throb. I held her stare. Daring her to fucking look away. Telling her silently to run. To fucking jump from the chair and run while she still could.
“The queen knows who and what the dark king is, and she still wants to stand by his side.” She dropped her eyes. I inhaled a breath, knowing she would eventually fail my challenge. But her eyes snapped back to mine, swirling with fucking fire. “She has always wanted to stand by his side. Even when she didn’t know what it meant to be with him, what it entails. When she didn’t know it all.”
“She doesn’t fucking know it all,” I snapped, my voice dripping with poison.
I rose from my chair and stepped around the table to hers. I kicked the table holding the chessboard, the pieces clattering to the wooden floor behind me. I caged Cheska in, my hands on the arms of her chair.
“The queen knows shit,” I said. “She knows only what she’s let herself hear. She pretends she knows what the king has to do to keep hold of his kingdom.” I paused and smiled. “What he likes to do.” I leaned even closer, so close that my nose ran over the tip of hers. “The queen has no fucking idea what she’s asking for. She’s just a naïve little princess playing at wearing a big girl’s crown.”
Cheska’s expression darkened and, taking me by surprise, she lifted her hand and gripped my jaw. I wasn’t easily surprised. And I saw red. I fucking saw red. But instead of wanting rip off her head for daring to touch me, I had to fight back the need to slam her against the wall and fucking destroy her pussy. Fuck her until she screamed and didn’t try to fuck with me again.
“This queen is not playing dress-up,” she hissed. “She’s waiting for the king to stop talking in riddles and fucking expose who he truly is.” She smiled, and the cocky sight boiled my piss. Her nails sank into the skin of my jaw, and my cock filled with blood. “She’s waiting for the monster she has been warned against to come out to play, not the handsome façade he hides behind.”
Cheska brought my face closer to hers, grazing her lips against mine and speaking against my mouth. “She’s waiting, has been waiting, for the king to show his true colours. Then he’d realise she’s not waiting for the valiant knight on his white horse to carry her away to her happily-ever-after. Rather she’s waiting for the fucking dragon to appear, to burn any suitor who gets in his way, and claim the queen once and for all. She wants the dragon, Your Majesty,” she said mockingly. “She wants the fire. She wants the thorns and the razor-sharp branches. She wants the eternal fucking darkness. She wants to sit beside the king on his treasured throne of bones.”
Cheska was breathing hard, as if adrenaline was pumping her blood like rapids through her body. I grabbed her wrist and squeezed until her fingers fell from my face. I could tell by the sting those nails left behind that she’d broken the skin and drawn blood. My heart was thundering in my chest, and my blood was lava, fucking scalding and incinerating the walls of my veins.
“You want darkness?” I said to her, pushing her back with my wide chest until she was pinned against the back of the chair, trapped. “Then you’ll get darkness. You want the fucking dragon, the fire and blood? Then you’ll get the motherfucking dragon. You want the bones, the flesh and the death … ?” I brushed past her cheek and down her neck, then scraped my teeth against her throat. “Then you’ll get fucking death,” I said against her scorching skin.
I pulled back, glaring down at Cheska as she lay back against the back of the chair, gripping the arms and looking up at me like I was every inch the dark lord the pathetic bloody papers claimed me to be. “Tomorrow night, you can come with us, and we’ll see if you still want all the sadism and depravity you claim your pussy gets soaking wet for.”