The Rivals - Dylan Allen Page 0,66

ask impatiently.

“You love me. I belong to you,” he whispers, and I close my eyes on a pathetic whimper. He strokes his nose alongside mine. A tear rolls down my cheek.

“You belong to me,” he says before he crashes his lips on top of mine. He snags my lower lip between his teeth and sucks it, bites it. My fingers slide into his hair, and his tongue slips into my mouth. I let him taste me while I drink as much as I can handle before my body throbs for more. And then I gather tufts of his hair into my hands and yank—hard.

“Fuuuuck!” he roars and breaks our kiss.

I scramble around the bed.

“I belong to myself,” I snarl. “And yes, I kneeled in front of you and took what you gave me. But, I will never kneel for you again.”

He looks angry, but I still see that fear and I hate it. “You better not walk out of that door,” he says.

“Or what?” I hiss.

We face each other. His bed is like a battlefield between us. I press my knuckles into the mattress and lean toward him so I can look him in the eye one more time. There’s real distress in his that shakes my resolve. Damn him for making me love him so much.

“I am not afraid of you. How could I be? When you were so afraid of me that you needed a background check—" I say.

His face is pained. “I’m sorry—”

“You should be,” I snap. “But not for me. I’ve survived worse than a man who’s too blind to see that I’m the best thing that will ever happen to him.”

My heart tugs at the nearly gray pallor on his face when I turn to pick up my things. With each piece of clothing I throw into my bag, my resolve grows. I face him again. He’s watching me, his face thunderous and his body perfectly still.

“I’m leaving,” I tell him.

He shrugs. “You’ll be back. And I’ll be waiting.”

“Right,” I scoff dismissively and zip up my suitcase.

“You’re mine. My queen. What do you have without your king?” he asks coldly.

“All the power,” I say with an equally icy tone and then I smile and walk away from him.

Part II

RIVERS WILDE

* * *

HOUSTON, TX

THE RETURN

HAYES

I careen through the winding and nonsensically narrow street of the Rivers Estate. The rows of manicured shrubs are nothing more than blurs of dark green as I run yet another stop sign.

On a street without a single intersection.

In a subdivision with only one house.

It’s just one example of the lack of planning and the sense of entitlement that’s created the mess I’ve been cleaning up since I took control from Uncle Thomas.

It’s been eighty-seven days of inconsistencies, complaints, and so much fucking disappointment, that I’m starting to forget what it feels like to be satisfied.

A flock of baby geese step into the road just two hundred and fifty feet ahead of my speeding car. I slam hard on my breaks to stop in time. My high- performance Maserati protests with groans, shrieks, and sputters. I struggle to hold my steering wheel straight to stop the threatening spin out that’s pulling my tires to the right. The acrid stench of burned rubber and the uncertainty of whether I had ten geese crushed beneath my car congeal like cooled grease in my stomach.

I peer out of my window and breathe a sigh of relief when the gaggle waddles past, completely oblivious to the havoc they nearly wreaked and how close their lives came to ending.

“Where’s your sense of survival, you idiotic animals?” I chide them as I pull past them and hook a right up the dark, concrete tiled driveway. The rows of pink flowering bushes on either side were planted by my mother the year before she died.

I’m surprised Eliza didn’t pull them up. She tore out the rose garden my mother planted within months of marrying my father. I pull up the drive and park under the huge carport that should have been knocked down years ago. I throw my car into park and give myself a minute to collect my thoughts before I walk into the house.

Built at the turn of the twentieth century by my great-great-grandfather, Jeb Rivers, it’s one of Houston’s oldest homes. As my uncle likes to remind anyone who will listen, at nearly twenty thousand square feet that sits on two and half acres of land, it’s also one of the biggest and most expensive homes