KINGSTON ROSS
I was drowning in my rage.
My soul had turned ice cold, my heartbeat slowed, and I couldn’t see anything but blood and a dark, heavy wave of fury that blocked out everything else. It was holding my consciousness captive, and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t break out from it.
I’d known this would eventually happen.
I knew eventually my rage would become unstoppable. The memories from the past hour were like someone else’s memories, or a film, making me wonder what exactly I’d done. How badly had I messed up? Did I even care?
Not really.
No, all I cared about was the small source of warm golden light curled up on my lap. Dahlia. My princess.My everything.I knew I needed to do a full inspection of her, to make sure she was okay, but all I could do right now was hold her and absorb every inch of the warmth she offered. It was possible I was imagining her at this point— it was a fear of mine, always had been. That I would wake up one day and realize the source of my obsession, the center of my being had been a figment of my imagination, a golden ray of sunlight that had just passed through this reality but was now gone.
The world could be exploding around us, people being slaughtered by the thousands, but none of it mattered because I was holding her. My nose brushed over her bloodied hair, loving the scent of it mixed with her naturally floral scent. I wanted to feel guilty about tainting her with my sins, both with the blood on my hands and the darkness in my soul, but I didn’t. Instead of dimming her light, our darkness seemed to only make her stand out more. I was a selfish bastard, and I loved that.
I loved knowing that she was ours. Completely. Dahlia could never leave me. I would rather die than to live a life without her in it. The stark reality of that had never been as clear as when I thought Ian was going to push her off the cliff and I knew I would dive in right after her. I had lived so long not wanting the shadows of my life to touch Dahlia, but now I was realizing they could protect her. I wanted her wrapped up in our darkness so that no one could touch her again.
“King?” A soft voice pulled me from my dark hell as I tried to focus on connecting the voice to the woman speaking. I needed to find her. Find my Dahlia. Why was it so damn hard to focus?
I couldn’t breathe, my lungs frozen, and I felt like I was so far removed from anything I would have normally recognized as myself. Something had fundamentally changed in me when I’d heard she’d been taken. When someone had dared to take my princess away from me. I had been angry while hurting George, but hearing that had been different, and something inside of me had snapped so violently that I wasn’t positive it could be repaired.
I wasn’t positive if I wanted it to be. This version of me had slaughtered to find Dahlia, and I would be that man, that monster, as long as she needed me to be. I didn’t care what blood I had to shed, I would carry my princess in my arms over it all, showing her the carnage, the massacre made in her honor.
“King?” The voice held more of a panicked tone now, and I frowned, trying to concentrate as my hands tightened on her form. Why couldn’t I fucking focus?
“Kingston.”
That voice was different, and the fact that it was masculine had me feeling a level of anger and possessiveness that was unparalleled. I snapped out of my daze, letting out a feral sound as I pulled Dahlia further into me, her hands rubbing against my chest. Dermot and Yates were staring at me with concern; the others must have been in a separate car. Good. I didn’t want any other men around her right now.
I didn’t wantanyonearound her right now.
“You need to hold her a little less tight,” Yates warned. “She’s injured.”
My eyes moved down to Dahlia, her face pale and chalky, but her eyes filled with warmth and affection. I could feel the overwhelming and dark emotions I felt for her trying to burn a molten path through my consciousness.
“What did they do to you?” I asked, finally able to speak.
“Kicked me in the ribs and punched my stomach, mostly because I was trying to fight back.” Her chin was up slightly, pride surging through me, completely unsurprised by her reaction. Dahlia didn’t need to fight for anything. I would give her everything, but I never doubted that her base instinct was to fight back, especially for those she loved.
I ran my fingers over her jaw, the others talking as I continued to examine her face, accounting for all the light freckles that only made an appearance during the summer. Pain shone in her gaze, and when tears started to well there, making her dark lashes almost glitter, something started to rattle in my chest.
We needed to fix why she was sad. Why couldn’t I remember how to do that? The icy walls weren’t giving in, and I could feel the darkness trying to pull me back under.
“King,” Dahlia pleaded, her voice filled with agony, “Please come back to me?”
There was fear in her gaze, but it wasn’t fearofme, it was fearforme. I ran my fingers up across her throat while gently tilting her jaw back, my head dipping to press a soft kiss to her lips. A surprised noise came from her throat as she wrapped her arms around my neck, securing herself against my body. I wanted to carry her around like this forever.
Molten emotion began to burn hotter through my veins, chipping away at the icy walls as a hunger so impossibly strong it didn’t feel natural began to batter my head and body, unrelenting in its force. I deepened the kiss as she whimpered against me, her legs splitting further as she slid down completely to straddle me. A groan broke from my chest as she rocked against my hard length, the heat of her pussy making my facade of calm nearly snap in half. Dahlia was this golden, vibrant magma that destroyed my defenses and coping mechanisms with a need that leveled me.
Somewhere, distantly, I felt the car come to a stop. None of that mattered though. No, all that mattered was the way her hands moved over my chest, making me realize my vest was gone, my weapons discarded to the side and forgotten.
I murmured her name as she tugged at my shirt, her eyes flashing with a need that I wanted to fix. I wanted to give her what she wanted and needed. What she was begging for. There was another part of me that recognized I shouldn’t take her, not after today, but it was grossly overshadowed by the dark need to possess her.
I tugged on the shoulders of the jacket we’d covered her with, having discarded the bloody robe on the cliffside. A low rattle left my chest as it fell to the floor, my eyes running over her perfect bare form.
“I need you, King.” Her whimper had me realizing how much she was suffering.
I knew I had scared her earlier. I had seen the realization and fear in her eyes. I had seen her shy away from me, but now she was handing herself over to me again, after all of this. I was thankful she hadn’t tried to run because she would learn very quickly the extent I would go to, to make sure that she never left my side.