Sovereign (4 page)

“You haven’t told him about the fun?” Cal tsked and took a drink of wine. “That doesn’t seem very fair.”

“I tire of Acquisition talk,” Sophia said. “And frankly, I’m not certain why this one is allowed to eat with us.” She waved her hand at me. “I mean, really, are we going to have the hunting dogs at the table with us next?”

I held my tongue. Not for my sake, but for Teddy’s.

Sin laughed, his booming amusement like a knife twisting in my back. “We simply thought the Sovereign might enjoy a look at Stella.”

“If you tell a redhead joke, so help me—” She leaned in and kissed Sin, their lips meeting and taking my breath away. It was obvious this wasn’t the first time.

They were together. My mouth went dry as she gave him another peck and pulled away.

Cal sighed. “Fine, darling, if it’s going to bother you that much, we’ll send her out.”

“Thank you, Daddy.”

Daddy
. It all clicked into place. Sophia was Cal’s daughter.

“Stella will take lunch in her room. Thank you, Laura.” Lucius kicked my foot.

I stood and squeezed Teddy’s shoulder before walking from the room. He needed to stay silent, to sit through the meal and pretend to be one of them. Despite his goodness, he had to know that a certain level of acting was necessary just to survive in the world of Sovereigns and Acquisitions.

Just as I reached the door, Sophia called, “How’s your arm?”

I turned to her, confusion and déjà vu mixing like a molotov cocktail in my memory. “What?”

Sin draped his arm across her shoulders and pulled her closer, dropping a kiss in her hair.

She laughed, as if I were behaving like a silly child. “Your arm. Don’t you remember?”

“That was you.” She’d been disguised by a mask at the Christmas trial, but I recognized her voice and eyes. When I’d tried to dress for the cold and give Brianne my sweater, Sophia had hit me with a black baton. It took a month for the bruise to heal, for the bone to feel strong again.

“That was me. Too bad I didn’t break it.” She leaned back into Sin, her dark eyes sparkling with malice. “Now get out of here before looking at you puts me off my lunch.”

CHAPTER FOUR

S
INCLAIR

T
HREE MONTHS EARLIER

“
I
F HE LOSES THE
Acquisition, Sin has to kill Teddy?” Stella’s weak voice floated down the hall.

My steady steps turned into a sprint until I was at my mother’s open door.

“Teddy dies.” Rebecca’s voice, wizened and brittle like a fallen leaf, cut through the air.

Panic sliced my heart when I saw Stella standing at the mouth of hell, her skin pale, her eyes wide.

“Stella!” I rushed to her.

“I see no harm in telling the peasant girl the rules.” Mother smiled, hate in every wrinkle, every line.

“Tell me. Tell me all of them.” Stella stared up at me, her green eyes watering, though not a single tear fell. “I have to know.” She gripped my arms, holding me tight and pinning me to the spot with the anguish in her voice.

“Tell her, son. Tell her.” My mother’s gleeful cackle was too much to bear.

I wrenched myself free of Stella’s hold and went to the medicine cabinet.
Locked
. I gripped the handles and yanked, pulling until the wood splintered and the doors flew open. Grabbing a syringe, I turned and approached the demon on the bed.

“Please don’t.” Renee cried, but didn’t rise to stop me.

“No.” Mother tried to scoot away, fear darkening her wild eyes.

I grabbed her arm and pulled it straight. She slapped me and scratched my neck. I ignored it, just like I ignored every bit of pain she’d caused since that hellish night in Brazil. Even as she struggled and screamed, I hit her vein and depressed the plunger.

Her motions slowed, her words ceasing, and then she collapsed back into the bed, finally asleep. Finally silent.

Renee shoved me aside and sank down on the bed, stroking Mother’s face and crying. “How could you?”

“It needed to be done.” I tried to clear my head, to douse the fire of emotions that raged inside. I usually had an easy time of it. Not now. Not when my mother had seen fit to shove Stella into the same razorblade straightjacket I wore.

Renee smoothed Mother’s hair, doting on her as if the woman were anything other than a venomous snake. “She was fine. She wasn’t hurting anyone.”

I threw the syringe in the garbage and looked at Stella, her eyes haunted.

“She’s hurt plenty.” I took Stella’s hand and pulled her from the room. She didn’t resist, shock settling on her like a lead weight.

I took her to my room and locked the door behind us. She sat on the bed and leaned over, her head cupped in her hands.

“Stella?” I knelt in front of her.

“Why Teddy? Why? He’s the only good thing in this house, in this entire godforsaken family.” She shook her head and still wouldn’t look at me.

I pulled her hands from her face. They were soft, so easily broken. But nothing about her was in pieces, not shattered the way I was.

“The rules. It’s what makes us compete. It turns us against ourselves until the strongest comes out on top.” That was the explanation, but not the reason. Was there any reason for this torment other than providing entertainment for the depraved lot of us?

“Why didn’t you tell me?” A tear rolled down her cheek and hovered at her jaw line before dropping onto my scarred wrist.

“Power. If you’d known that from the start, you would have had the upper hand. Teddy is the heart of this family. You didn’t know that when you arrived. You could have used that information against us.”

“But after? When you knew how much I cared for him?”

“I didn’t tell you for the same reason I didn’t tell Lucius.” I grazed my thumb along her cheek, wiping her tears—the ones I’d caused—away. “How do you feel now that you know? Stronger? Better?” I shook my head. “You are weaker. It’s meant to be a spear in my side, as the Acquirer, to know what will happen if I lose. By the time you’d come to care for Teddy, I realized telling you would give you the same pain, the same weight, the same fucking dread that’s crushing me.”

She put her warm palm to my cheek. I pressed into it, needing so much more from her than I could even admit to myself.

“You’ve had to bear it alone.”

The pity in her eyes, pity for me, almost broke what little of a heart I had left. “I’ve done what I had to do. I’ve been the man I had to be. I can’t lose Teddy. But you… You were the best choice and also the worst for my Acquisition. If I’d only known…”

“What?” She edged off the bed and sank to the floor in front of me, her body pressing against me and her mouth tantalizingly close. “If you’d known what?”

I couldn’t help myself. She was my weakness, my downfall. Everything about her was my undoing. I pulled her to me, her scent of vanilla and lavender filling my nose as her very essence filled my soul.

I stared into her green eyes. Her heart was laid bare, though she’d never spoken the words to me. I’d acquired her, but she owned me. “If I’d known I’d fall in love with you.” I kissed her, needing her past all reason.

She opened her mouth, and I slanted over her, punishing her sweet lips with my rough kiss. She was mine. I couldn’t give her up. I needed her raw and wild, rough and passionate. Grabbing a fistful of hair, I pulled her head back and bit her neck like a savage leaving his mark.

She clutched at my shirt. I hated the feel of fabric between us. I needed her satin skin, her hot, wet cunt. I needed to bury myself in her and forget everything else except her taste, her breath, her life.

I pulled my shirt off and yanked her to her feet before shoving her down on the bed. “Strip. Now.”

I unbuckled my belt and slid the leather between my fingers. It spoke to me, told me to punish her. But I couldn’t wait, couldn’t stop myself from having her. Not this time.

She bit her lip, her eyes half-lidded. I kicked my jeans and shorts away as she pulled her pants and her panties off.

“On your back, head on the pillow, and spread your legs wide.” I gripped my shaft until it almost hurt, and stroked slowly as she lay back and spread. Her pink pussy glistened, wetness there for me.

She was perfect, her skin luminous and her breaths coming in shallow pants. I wanted to hurt her, but not just that. I knew she would take some of my pain and turn it into her own pleasure.

“Touch your pussy.”

She kept her eyes on mine as she reached down and slid her fingertips across her slick clit. My cock leaked at the sight and I slowed my strokes, needing to be inside her.

“Tell me who you think about when you touch yourself.”

She swirled her fingers around the tight little nub. I wanted to bite it.

“You,” she breathed.

“Finger yourself. Two fingers.”

She slid her fingers between her folds and sank them inside, her hips rising from the bed as she did it.

I dropped to my knees and moved between her thighs. Her soft moans echoed through my mind until I seethed with need. “What do I do to you?”

She bit her lip and pulsed her fingers in and out. Watching was torture, but I had to feel the sting before the pleasure. She would, too.

“You push me down and take me rough.”

The words were like a lash at my back, driving me closer to her. “What else?”

“Y-you hurt me.” The words were barely a whisper.

The animal that clawed at the inside of my chest howled at her admission. I gripped her wrist and pulled her fingers away. I licked them, savoring her taste.

“Grip the headboard.” I devoured every inch of her skin with my gaze, searing her pale flesh into my memory.

Her hands wrapped around the antique wood, and I ran my palm from her chest to her pussy. I hovered my hand over her heat, never breaking eye contact. Then I drew back and slapped her wet folds.

She moaned and tried to close her legs. I wrenched them apart and slapped her again.

“Sin.”

“Fuck, yes. Say it again.” I licked her wetness off my palm and sank two fingers inside her.

“Sin!” She writhed, her back arching, her hips pushing down onto my fingers as I roughly pushed in and out. Her tits shook as I leaned over her, bracing myself with one arm while using the other to finger fuck her.

“This? Do I do this to you in your fantasies, Stella?”

“Sin, please. Don’t stop.”

The heel of my palm slapped into her clit again and again, and I leaned down and pinned one of her hard nipples between my teeth.

She moaned, low and long, and spread her legs even farther. I sped my pace and she froze, her hips seizing as her pussy clamped down on my fingers. I withdrew and slammed my cock into her as she writhed beneath me, her orgasm squeezing me as I started a pounding rhythm.

Her throat; I had to take it. I wrapped my fingers around her neck, her life, and squeezed. I lowered myself to my elbow and gripped her hair so she had nowhere to go, nowhere to look but into my eyes as she rode the wave of her pleasure.

I shoved into her, jarring the bed with how much I needed to mark her as my own. She needed to feel me for days, to wear my bruises on her thighs. She didn’t look away, didn’t try to move her hands from the headboard. Even as I stole her breath and refused to give it back.

“Sin.” A strangled whisper from her lips that turned me into a demon. Because I needed to hear it again. I needed my name always on her mind, on her tongue.

I released the pressure at her neck and she gasped, but I stole her breath again by kissing her hard and biting her bottom lip until I drew blood. She moaned and opened her mouth, the coppery taste mixing with her sweetness as I took everything from her.

Her blood was honey on my tongue, and her pussy heaven on my cock. I was never free, not until I was here with her. Just the two of us. Just her locked in a cage with the beast who lived inside me. She was unafraid. Even from the start, from the moment I’d seen her, she had been a piece of steel that I railed on, beat, and tried to break. She would never break. Instead, I’d shattered against her like glass against a stone.

Her tongue snaked inside my mouth, and I wrapped my arm under her back. I wanted to feel every bit of her skin I could, to meld her into me until we were one—my darkest elements wrapped in her light.

“Touch me.” I growled against her lips and moved to her neck. She obeyed, her nails streaking down my back, the pain heightening the pulse in my cock.

I thrust into her and stayed there, pushing against her deepest parts as I rocked my hips. She clawed my ass as I bit her shoulder, sinking my teeth in until I almost broke the skin. Pushing my hand between us, I stroked her clit with my thumb as I thrust deep.

“Come for me. I need to feel you.” I dragged my teeth up her throat and rested my forehead against hers. “Give me all of you.”

We panted, our breaths mingling as we surged into each other. Her body tightened and my cock thickened even more.

“I’m there. I-I’m coming.”

“Say it, Stella.” I shoved harder into her as her walls clamped down. “You know what I want.”

“Sin. I’m yours.” She repeated my name.

The sound was the richest aphrodisiac, one that sent my hips into a frenzy as I came, my release ripping through me as I shot deep inside her. I grunted as she moaned, her pussy still spasming as I emptied everything I had into her, coating her with me.

Her lips were swollen, the bottom one red and angry from my bite. I grazed my mouth across hers gently, the need to hurt her momentarily extinguished. I let go of her hair and put my palm to her cheek. She answered by wrapping her arms around my neck and pulling me into a possessive kiss. Her tongue sought and took, and I was more than willing to give. I’d already given her everything.

I pulled away so she could take a breath. So much emotion flitted across her eyes, but mostly the one that spoke to my soul. The small flame of something I’d tried to stamp out, to destroy. Somehow, it burned still. For me.