Chapter 8
Serenity
Montes shrugs off his suit jacket and throws it over my chair back before rolling up his sleeves. My eyes linger far too long on his tan, corded forearms. I’d forgotten that underneath all those layers of fine clothing was a fit man.
He then grabs a cardboard box sitting off to the side and heaves it onto the desk. Tossing aside the lid, he pulls out the first file and drops it in front of the chrome computer situated in the middle of my desk.
“Here are reprints of the files you were working on. Any notes you had with the originals are, unfortunately, lost,” he says, sitting on the edge of the desk.
It’s hard to focus on anything he’s saying. He might be six feet and some change of a man, but his presence fills the entire room.
An unfamiliar part of me wants to step between those powerful legs of his and trail my fingers over the backs of his hands.
I could do it—I know he would welcome it—but I fight the impulse. He still feels alien to me.
I’ll have to lay with him tonight.
An odd combination of anxiety and anticipation flares through me.
The king watches me with those penetrating eyes of his, and I swear they can see into my mind.
I try to stay as far away from him as I can when I open the folder in front of the computer.
“Ah, yes, these reports,” I say, remembering them. I’d been reading through the files when the Resistance laid siege to the king’s palace. The reports had been largely skewed for the king’s purposes. I’m too ruffled to point that out. “Thank you,” I say instead.
“‘Thank you’?” He reaches out and catches my wrist before I can step away, then reels me in.
I end up between his thighs after all.
His other hand steadies my chin. “What’s going on in my vicious little wife’s mind?”
I try to jerk away, but he holds me in place.
“Montes, let me go.”
“Not until you tell me what you were just thinking about.”
I’m so close to kneeing him in the crotch.
However, neither of us gets the chance to see our actions through.
Not before another memory hits.
All I saw was crimson blood and all I heard were Will’s screams. The outer walls must’ve been thick to silence such agonized cries. The king’s wrath was just as frightening as I’d always feared.
I squeeze Montes’s thighs as a memory rolls through me. I’m being swept up in its tide.
“I’ll do whatever you want, Montes, just please, stop torturing him.” It was Will, after all. I might hate what he’d become, but torture … I didn’t wish that on my worst enemy.
I was halfway down the hall when I heard a bang. My body jumped at the sound, and a tear leaked out.
Gone. Will was gone.
Back in the present, I choke on a gasp.
“You killed Will.” After torturing him nonetheless. Death, at that point, had been a mercy.
I try to pull away again, and again Montes refuses to release me.
“Let me the fuck go.”
He ignores my command and instead forces me to look at that pleasing face of his. “Yes, I did have my men kill him,” he says, “and I’d make the same decision over and over again. In case you still don’t remember, your friend Will had his men shoot you,” the king says. That vein in his temple pulses. “He threatened you with torture.
“Anyone who thinks to torture you, Serenity, will be made an example of, and I don’t give a damn how well you know them.”
I stop struggling against him, though none of my ire is gone. “Well, I do.”
He sighs. “Out of all the slights against you, that’s the one you punish me with?”
He catches my fist before I can land the blow, and now he holds both my hands prisoner.
I try to knee him, but the angle is all wrong. The last of his mirth leaves his face. Using the grip he has on my hands, he yanks me onto the desk next to him and rolls over me. The file scatters and the computer monitor topples over as he pins my torso down.
That vein of his still throbs, and several loose strands of his dark hair brush my cheeks. He smiles down at me, but it’s not kind. “You try that again,” he breathes, “and you won’t like the results.”
But I have rage to match his. “It’d be worth it,” I say.
“For you, I imagine it might.” Slowly, the anger drains from his face. He doesn’t let me go, however.
Instead, he moves both my hands into one of his, and he uses the other to reaches into his pocket. Pulling out a phone, he types something onto the screen.
A moment later, the guard enters the room. I’m still pinned to the desk, and Montes appears to be five seconds away from having his way with me, yet the guard doesn’t bat an eyelash.
I renew my struggles against the king.
Montes readjusts his hold, his eyes trained on his man. “Please tell the staff to see to the earlier dinner arrangements we discussed.”
The guard inclines his head and bows. As his footsteps retreat from the room, the king returns his attention to me. All at once he releases my hands and straightens.
I work my jaw as I push myself up to my forearms. The urge to hit him is still riding me hard.
“You will dine with me.” You will surrender to me.
His mouth and his eyes say two very different things.
“No.” I’m not interested in either.
I stand and brush myself off. I’m wearing a dress someone else clothed me in. This entire day has been one unpleasant experience after the last.
He steps in close and tips my chin up.
“Yes, you will, even if it means having my guards drag you to dinner. Fight all you want, it won’t change my mind.”
Even if I didn’t already have a vendetta against this man, I would develop one quickly enough.
“I’ll drop you off at our room and give you time to rest and get ready,” he continues.
I step away from him. “Don’t bother. I’ll find it myself.”
I don’t head back to our room because fuck him. Instead I spend the next several hours figuring out the basic layout of the palace. When I was with Montes I didn’t want a tour of the place, and I still don’t, but there is use in knowing how a machine like the palace works.
This one is U-shaped with east and west wings. Montes already showed me most of the central building and the west wing. Those appear largely to serve formal functions.
The east wing, on the other hand, contains the king’s official business. I pass several doors fitted with placards of the king’s highest-ranking advisors. Another conference room, and a room that bears a sickening resemblance to the map rooms of the king’s other palaces. I leave before I can look at any of the crossed out faces too closely. The last thing I want to see is my father’s face among them.
I head back outside. A maze of hedges rise up on either side of a central pathway. Beyond them are a series of structures.
I squint up at the sky. Pinks and golds have replaced the earlier blue. I won’t have time to explore all of this place, not before the king drags me off to dinner. And I’m sure he will indeed drag me to it if I resist. Montes doesn’t make idle threats. Like me, he stands by his words, no matter how perverse they are.
I take in the many buildings that sit off in the distance. Towards the far corner of the palace grounds, I notice a series of long, squat structures. The soldiers’ barracks, if I had to guess. I have enough time to visit them, I think, before the king calls on me. So I head there next, ignoring the two guards that follow several feet behind me.
When I arrive, I can tell I guessed right. Several soldiers loiter between buildings, some laughing with each other. Of course, that all ends when they see me. Quickly, they stand at attention, bowing as I make my way through the barracks. I sense a good dose of that earlier wariness here. It’s just a feeling—perhaps the soldiers’ eyes are a tad too hard, their spines a bit too straight—but I know that I’m not entirely welcome. It doesn’t stop me, however, from moving through the buildings.
Mess hall, sleeping quarters, and to my utter delight, several training rooms. This, I belatedly realize, is what drew me out here. Amongst all the soft, painted faces, I feel hopelessly different. But this place that lacks adornment and smells like sweat, this I understand.
I run my hand over a metal dumbbell stacked against the wall, the grips worn down with use. I decide then and there that I won’t become what I detest. I’ll come here to train, and I’ll earn the guards’ respect or I won’t, but I will not lose the soldier in me.
From behind me, one of the guards now approaches. “Your Majesty, the king’s called for dinner.”