Twisted Games (Twisted, #2)(70)

Rhys cursed under his breath and pulled his hand away. It was the smart thing to do, but I still wanted to weep at the loss of contact.

He opened the door to my room behind me and gently pushed me inside. “Tomorrow night. Gazebo,” he said in a low voice. “We’ll go together.”

There was a gazebo behind an abandoned farm, about a fifteen-minute walk from our inn. We’d passed by it on our way into town.

“And princess…don’t bother wearing any underwear.”

The throbbing between my legs intensified.

Rhys closed my door right as Henrik’s opened. Their voices filtered through wood as I tiptoed to my bed and climbed in, my head spinning from the events of the past hour.

Would the pleasure be worth the eventual pain?

I only had to listen to the frantic beats of my heart to know the answer.





28





Rhys





I’d tried to resist. I really had.

Perhaps I would’ve succeeded had Bridget been beautiful and nothing else. Beauty, on its own, meant nothing to me. My mother had been beautiful, until she wasn’t—and I don’t mean physically.

But that was the problem. Bridget wasn’t beautiful and nothing else. She was everything. Warmth, strength, compassion, humor. I saw it in the way she laughed, in her empathy as she listened to people’s problems and her composure as they railed to her about everything they thought was wrong with the country.

I’d known she was more than a pretty face long before this trip, but something inside me snapped last night. Maybe it was the way she’d looked at me, like she thought I was everything too when I was nothing, or maybe it was the knowledge she could be ripped away from me at any moment. She could get engaged next week and I would lose even the possibility of her forever.

Whatever it was, it erased every bit of remaining self-control I had. Costa Rica had been a crack, but this? This was full-on obliteration.

The grass rustled as Bridget and I made our way through the fields toward the gazebo. We’d snuck out after everyone had gone to sleep, and even though it was late, the moon shone bright enough we didn’t need the lights from our phones to guide the way.

Was what we were doing—what we were about to do—a bad idea? Fuck yes. Ours was a story destined for a tragic ending, but when you were already on a train headed off the cliff, all you could do was hold on tight and make every second count.

We stayed silent until we reached the gazebo, where she walked to the middle and took it all in. Besides the chipped paint, it’d withstood the test of time surprisingly well.

“No one comes here?” she asked.

“Not a soul.” I’d done my research. The town had a small population, but it sprawled across vast acres of farms. The inn was the nearest inhabited building, and everyone there was asleep. I’d made sure of that before I texted Bridget to meet me in the lobby.

“Good.” Her response came out slightly breathless.

Southern Eldorra was far warmer than Athenberg, and we could get away with not wearing jackets even at night. I’d donned my usual uniform of T-shirt, combat pants, and boots, while Bridget wore a purple dress that swirled around her thighs.

I drank her in, not missing a single detail. The wisps of hair curling around her face, the nervous anticipation in her eyes, the way her chest rose and fell in time with my own uneven breaths.

Part of me wanted to march over, hike up her skirt, and fuck her right then and there. Another part of me wanted to savor the moment—the last wild, beating seconds before we destroyed whatever was left of our boundaries.

I was a rule follower by nature. It was how I’d survived most of my life. But for Bridget, I would break every rule in the book.

It only took six weeks of being apart from her and another six of fucking agony for me to accept the truth, but now that I had, there was no going back.

“So.” Bridget tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, her hand trembling. “Now that we’re here, what do you have planned, Mr. Larsen?”

I smiled, slow and wicked, and a small, visible shiver rippled through her body.

“I have lots of plans for you, princess, and every single one ends with my fingers, tongue, or cock inside your sweet little cunt.”

I didn’t waste time beating around the bush. This had been two years in the making, ever since I stepped onto her driveway and saw her staring back at me with those big, blue eyes.

Bridget von Ascheberg was mine and mine alone. It didn’t matter that she wasn’t mine to take. I was taking her anyway, and if I could tattoo myself onto her skin, bury myself into her heart, and etch myself onto her soul, I would.

Her eyes widened, but before she could respond, I closed the distance between us and grasped her chin with my hand.

“But first, I want to make one thing clear. From this point on, you’re mine. No other man touches you. If they do…” My fingers dug into her skin. “I know seventy-nine ways to kill a man, and I can make seventy of them look like an accident. Understand?”

She nodded, her chest rising and falling more rapidly than usual.

“I mean it, princess.”

“I understand.” Definitely breathless.

“Good.” I swiped my thumb over her bottom lip. “I want to hear you say it. Who do you belong to?”