CHAPTER TWELVE
Two years later…
age twenty-four
Four years had come and gone, and I’d finally served my time. I paid my penance. I played the game. I kept my distance, just like I’d promised.I kept her safe.
Every Christmas and Thanksgiving, my parents flew to Ayelswick to celebrate the holiday, and we spent the summer breaks traveling the world. Dad popped in for visits while he was here for his annual Bindenberg meetings with the Obsidian Brotherhood.
When he wasn’t here, he checked in every Sunday night for four years, just like a warden. Every Sunday night, I gave him the same report.
I’m staying out of trouble.
I’m going to all my classes.
I haven’t talked to Tatum Huntington.
Sending her a mold of my dick wasn’t technicallytalking. I made sure to send Chandler a sufficient thank you gift for making sure all my presents got delivered.
If she thought just because I was an ocean away that I wasn’t keeping tabs on her, she was mistaken. I knew everything she did. I knew she moved to her parents’ house in the Hamptons right after she graduated high school. I knew she skipped college and started teaching dance at the studio on the corner of Sixth and Twenty-third. I knew she stopped at a street vendor on cold mornings and ordered a hot chocolate with whipped cream and cinnamon. And I knew she’d been seen with Brady more times than I was comfortable with over the last couple of years. That shit would end the minute I stepped off the plane at JFK.
I took back all the things I’d ever told myself about being okay with her fucking another man as long as he wasn’t a pervert. Brady Rogers was a good man. I still didn’t want her anywhere near his cock. The dildo was a simple reminder that she was still mine, even though it might not seem like it right now. I thought about how many times she’d fucked herself with it. How her perfect pink pussy lips looked wrapped around it while it stretched her wide open. Did she fuck herself hard and fast or slow and easy? Did she close her eyes and moan my name? Did she bring it to her lips and suck her juices off when she finished?
Fuck. Just thinking about it had me reaching for my cock and pulling out the cunt tunnel. The blood rushed to my dick, making it throb with hot, urgent need while I pictured her pretty face like it was her I was about to fuck and not some overpriced rubber sleeve. I held the fake pussy on the bed with one hand the way I would hold the small of her back if she were here bent over in front of me. Would she lose her breath when I slid it in like this? Fuck, I hoped so. Would I hold back and go slow? Fuck no.
This was wrong. It should have been her that I was fucking. It should have been her tight little pussy wrapped around my dick. It should have been her feeling my swollen length stretching and pounding her until she cried.
I watched my thick, purple head thrust in and out of the toy’s flesh-colored lips and thought about Tatum, about the way her tears trailed down her cheeks, about the way her breath hitched every time I knocked the bottom out, about that sexy fucking sound she made when she came. Fuck, I would give anything to hear that sound again, give anything to see her dripping wet with need.
Thrust.
This felt so fucking good, but I needed more. I tightened my grip and pounded harder. Faster.
Grunt.
I neededher, bent over and exposed with my fingers digging into her flesh until I left her marked with pretty purple bruises.
Thrust.
Fuck. I needed to come.
With one final grunt, I came all over the fucking bed the way I wanted to come all over her creamy skin—the way Iwas goingto come all over her skin very soon.
***
During my time in Ayelswick, I’d eased my way from the outer rings of Prince Liam’s inner circle all the way to the nucleus. I’d charmed diplomats and debutantes. And I did it all while maintaining academic excellence and soaking up everything there was to know about finance.
If my father thought I was a threat before, he had no idea the damage I could cause now. Wanna know what powerful people hid behind the masks they wore? Become friends with their children. Prince Liam had an easy demeanor, the way I would imagine a prince should. He had exquisite taste in women, which he sampled freely and often. People were drawn to him, as though they didn’t have a choice. He was the epitome of charming—the polar opposite of me—but we clicked right off the bat.
I learned more about the king and queen in one drunken night on the quad than my father learned in years from his inside spies. And now, thanks to my newly acquired college education, I knew exactly how to put that information to good use.
Fuck my father and Huntington with their threats. I wasn’t the kid who bowed down to them anymore. I was the man who dared them to follow through.
***
The air back home felt different… in a good way. I’d missed this place. While Ayelswick was gothic towers made of stone with pointed steeples, walled gardens, and arched bridges, New York City was a concrete jungle with towers made of glass and steel, crowded sidewalks, and bright lights. Ayelswick kept her secrets behind wooden doors in stone towers. New York buried hers in elusive meetings and hefty bribes. Ayelswick had Summer’s End. New York had Mischief Night. There they congregated in a grassy clearing with a massive bonfire,Fight Club-style competitions, and sex. Here we partied beneath a tomb with Celtic music, drugs and alcohol—and sex.
On the outside, it all looked different. From the inside, everything was the same.