at it like a mouse. Even her nose screws up during her chews.
Once she’s finished her share of our bread roll, I ripped through another one with my teeth to ensure her it’s safe to eat before handing it over.
When her little nibbles get the better of me, I mutter, “You better tell me your real name soon, K, or I’ll start calling you Mouse since you eat like one.” An unexpected smile tugs at my lips when her nose screws up even more. She’s not a fan of the nickname I chose for her. “You don’t want to be called Mouse?” When she peers up at me with her big eyes out in full force, the thud in my chest shifts to my ears. “I guess I wouldn’t be a fan of being called a rodent either. Do you have another nickname in mind? I’ll call you anything you want to be called.”
I wait and wait and wait for her to answer me.
When a peep fails to leave her lips, I say, “Come on, K. I heard you talk. You can do it. You’ve just got to be brave enough to take the plunge.”
I flick on the wiper blades when rain patters my windscreen partway down the long dirt road that leads to Jim’s. This is the slowest part of the trip when it’s dry, so I have to go even slower in the wet.
My tires slip and slide more than usual when K exercises her vocal cords for the second time today. “Duchess.”
Even with it being dangerous for me to do, I remove one of my hands from the steering wheel so I can wiggle a finger in my ear, certain I heard her wrong. I’ve only ever called one woman that name. It was when I was claiming her virginity in her daddy’s food pantry.
Although this is a piss-poor excuse, my head was still a little fucked-up from the drugs I consumed last night, so mixing Dok’s weak-ass prescription with my already drug-laced veins could be causing a slight bout of hearing loss.
“What did you say?” When panic darts through K’s expressive eyes, I’m quick to shut it down. “I’m not mad at you. I just want to make sure I heard you right. I can barely hear anything through the thump of my pulse in my ears.”
I wasn’t meant to say my last sentence out loud, but I’m glad I couldn’t hold back when K removes my hand from my ear to place it on hers. Since her heart is beating as fiercely as mine, I can count her pulse through her ears.
Because I’m too busy staring at her, fucking lost on what the hell is happening, I fail to notice the massive pothole I narrowly missed two days ago. When I hit it front-on, it juts my car out far enough, my tires slip off the portion of road Nikolai pays to have graded every six months so his crew can travel to Jim’s as often as needed without hindrance.
Since the road is in the process of being redone, the sides are high and full of loose dirt. I’m bogged in an instant and seconds from burying Rory in a shallow grave instead of feeding him to the pigs as per Nero’s suggestion.
After numerous failed attempts to free my back tires from the slop, I stray my eyes to the pigsty on the horizon. It’s drizzling, but Rory is as weightless as he was pathetic, so I’ll have no trouble carrying him to his final resting place before asking Jim to tow me out of the slosh.
“You can wait here, K. I’ll only be a few minutes…” My words trail off when she cranks open her door and slips out of the passenger seat at the same time I notch up the trunk’s latch to release its lock.
Like a psychopath with a fondness for blood and gore, my cock hardens to the point its painful when the removal of Rory’s naked-ass from my trunk is quickly chased by K’s foot landing in his stomach.
I can’t understand a word she snarls at him when she lays her boot into him for a second and third time, but I’m as confident as fuck she deserves the title of Duchess.
As Nikolai said all those years ago, not all princes wear crowns.
The same can be said for princesses.
“You good?” I ask her when the lack of nutrients in her stomach has her grappling for air four kicks later. “He’s