Cheska. “He especially needs the queen.” I gritted my teeth but let myself say, “She’s his most important piece. His protector. His strength.”
“She is?” Cheska said, her voice dropping. A blush coated her cheeks and she licked her lips. “And without her?”
“The king is easily captured. Checkmate. Game over.”
Cheska nodded. She glanced at the books surrounding us, but I knew she wasn’t looking at their titles or covers. She turned back to the chessboard, then picked up her queen. It was ivory, proudly wearing the crown.
Cheska finished off her gin, lowered her glass to the table, then boldly met my eyes. “Then I would say it’s in the king’s best interests to stop pushing her away.”
I let her words sink in. Then I let the torch she’d just brought to my flint ignite. Cheska never broke her gaze from me. She was pushing me. Challenging me. Trying to fuck with me.
This was new.
I smiled. Wide. Her eyes grew round. I leaned forward, resting my elbows on my legs. “The king doesn’t take well to mind games,” I said and watched Cheska’s chest rise and fall harder. “He doesn’t waste his time on queens who have fuck-all place in his world.” I dropped my ebony king right beside her ivory queen. One light. One dark. Opposing sides. “Queens who pretend they crave the darkness, but in truth want a noble knight on a white horse that will whisk her away to a castle like some fucking fairy tale.”
I leaned further over the board. Cheska stayed where she was, her lack of submission making my dick twitch in my trousers. I could smell the shower gel she’d been using—almond or some shit. Something sweet. Something that made me want to lick every inch of her skin.
“The king that the queen is intent on provoking is that darkness.” Cheska’s cheeks burned red, her olive complexion unable to disguise her fucking raw need. “He doesn’t live in an ivory castle. He lives amongst the monsters in the haunted forest. There’s no daylight in his world, only night. Perpetual fucking night. No moon and no stars in the sky, the landscape nothing but lifeless trees with broken branches and dead rose bushes laced with dagger-like thorns.”
I studied Cheska’s face, fucking myself up by trying to imagine her in my world. Trying to picture her by my side—a fallen spring queen holding my bloodstained hand. I pushed it from my mind.
It wasn’t real. Couldn’t ever be fucking real.
“And all around his kingdom were the worst horrors every level of hell could conjure up. Demons and beasts all gunning for the king’s evil throne, vultures circling, readying to steal his crown. His throne built on the bones of his enemies, by the victims he had torn apart with his bare, clawed hands.” I leaned in closer still. So close that I felt Cheska’s breath drift over my face. “The victims he enjoyed killing, enjoyed bringing down, stealing their last breath as he watched them fight for air.”
Cheska drew in a ragged breath. “Yet the queen still wants him,” she said, and the crack she had smashed into my concrete chest years ago started to throb. I held her stare. Daring her to fucking look away. Telling her silently to run. To fucking jump from the chair and run while she still could.
“The queen knows who and what the dark king is, and she still wants to stand by his side.” She dropped her eyes. I inhaled a breath, knowing she would eventually fail my challenge. But her eyes snapped back to mine, swirling with fucking fire. “She has always wanted to stand by his side. Even when she didn’t know what it meant to be with him, what it entails. When she didn’t know it all.”
“She doesn’t fucking know it all,” I snapped, my voice dripping with poison.
I rose from my chair and stepped around the table to hers. I kicked the table holding the chessboard, the pieces clattering to the wooden floor behind me. I caged Cheska in, my hands on the arms of her chair.
“The queen knows shit,” I said. “She knows only what she’s let herself hear. She pretends she knows what the king has to do to keep hold of his kingdom.” I paused and smiled. “What he likes to do.” I leaned even closer, so close that my nose ran over the tip of hers. “The queen has no fucking idea what she’s asking for. She’s just a naïve little princess playing