The King - S.R. Jones Page 0,80

self-control and pick her up. She squeaks, but I kiss the top of her head.

“I’m taking you to bed. You’ve had a horrible day, a shock, and you probably need a doctor.”

“No doctor,” she whispers. “Please.”

I carry her up the stairs, and my heart swells when she wraps her arms around me and buries her face in my neck, pliant and trusting.

For the longest time now, I’ve wanted to become king of all I survey, for reasons I didn’t fully understand. People call me King K, or King Konstantin, but I wanted more. I wanted to be a genuine fucking force to be reckoned with. The king of not just Moscow, but London too. With this woman in my arms, I already feel like a king. She makes me feel like the most powerful man on earth.

It’s heady and dangerous, and I could get addicted to it.

I can’t go there.

I have enemies on all sides now, and I can’t afford a distraction like Cassie.

For my own sake as well as hers, I need to back off. At least until I know more about who and what are in play against me. I need to focus.

A good fuck will help you focus, the devil on my shoulder says.

Not with her, the angel of my better nature supplies. Besides, it goes on, she’s injured, terrified, in shock.

For once, listening to my better side, I place her under the covers of the bed in the room I’ve given her and give her one last kiss, this time on her forehead.

I assure her she’s not in any trouble, and tell her I will send Derek up to see if she needs anything, then I go to find Vasily.

I’ve got a war opening up on two fronts now, and I need to plan.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Cassie

I can’t sleep. It’s two am, and my mind is racing. I can’t breathe too well either. It’s as if my lungs have sand in them. I’ve never experienced this before, and I think I might be having the mother of all panic attacks.

My jaw throbs where Denis hit me, and my breast hurts. He grabbed me there, but I didn’t share that snippet of information with Konstantin. Too ashamed. When I got undressed for bed, after Konstantin left, I looked and saw horrid bruises where his massive sausage fingers gripped my flesh. He laughed as he squeezed, and I cried out in pain. Then he made his threats to me, of what he’d do to me before he shot me if I didn’t transfer the money.

I cried as I transferred the money from Konstantin to Denis and Liza.

I should hate Konstantin because without him in my life I’d be at home and safe, but I don’t. In fact, my foolish body seems to crave him still, and not simply in a sexual sense. Something about him, his scent, his warmth, it makes me feel safe. I’ve never felt as protected as those few moments when he carried me in his arms.

Am I suffering Stockholm Syndrome? Cleaving to the least dangerous person in a group of very dangerous men? Well, no, that’s not correct. Konstantin is the most dangerous of them all, but something tells me not to me. Whereas Vasily would probably quite happily shoot me and have done with the stress of having me here, and Denis is under Liza’s vile control, Konstantin is his own man. He rules the castle here, and he seems to like me alive.

Sometimes he looks at me, and I see attraction there. I know I do. I haven’t made it up or imagined it. He likes me, maybe despite himself. Maybe despite not wanting to.

I shiver. It’s not objectively cold in the room, but I can’t get warm. There’s a bone-deep chill in me, and I can’t stop freaking out about what is going to happen to me. What if Denis comes back and attacks the house? I shudder.

Konstantin would protect me. It’s something I’m sure of.

He kissed me.

What a kiss it was. In one kiss he turned me on more than any other man has. I’m not surprised, though. He did the same with mere glances and smiles when I first knew him as nothing more than a dark and mysterious regular at the coffee shop.

Add in the danger of the last few days, and I’m sure my adrenaline levels are sky high. I read somewhere once that being fearful or in dangerous situations can enhance libidos, and that’s why there were so