Dukes of Madness: Chapter 32

I watch him, so beautiful and wild and convicted, and a part of me breaks to see it. A bigger part is paralyzed in disbelief. “You’ve lost your goddamn mind.”

I’d like to think something more eloquent would come out in a moment like this, but no, apparently not. I welcome the anger, the shock, the swell of utter incredulity, because it’s better than the hurt. That doesn’t mean the hurt isn’t there. It tears at a wound so old that it became a part of me long ago, and now I’m grasping at it, frantically trying to keep my insides from spilling out.

The rage is easier.

Because I’m pretty fucking sure Remy just announced his father is the Baron King to justify having his cock sucked by a cutslut.

“That’s what you all want me to think,” he says, poking me with that finger again—hard, stabbing. “But you made a deal with my father, and that’s a fucking fact.”

I react on instinct, slapping his finger away and lifting my knee, ramming into his soft, exposed balls. The bottle flies out of his hand, shattering against the hard tile, and he doubles over instantly, sucking in a hard, shocked gasp.

There’s a stretch of silence, and then his choked, “Son of a fucking bitch!”

“Clive Kayes is the Baron King. Everyone knows it!” I don’t wither at the sight of his fiery eyes when he raises them. There was a time this lethal fury would have scared me. Not anymore. I bear down on him, snarling, “If you want to fuck other girls, then at least have the balls to own it, you goddamn coward!”

“I’m a coward?” he hisses, cupping his groin. “I’m not the one trying to hide what I’ve done! ”

Pressing my fingers to my temple, I yell, “You’re not thinking straight, Remy!” But the eyes looking back at me are completely blown, more pupil than iris, and it makes a tight ball of alarm build in my gut. “You’re fucking blitzed. What the hell are you on?”

His face is pinched and contorted as he tucks himself away, zipping his fly. “You’re not turning this around me. I’m not the one who made a deal.”

My stomach drops, because suddenly the answer is right in front of me, delivered to me by Sy.

“R is prone to catastrophization and delusion. Without all the facts, his mind reaches to fill in the details, which will often be negative and grandiose.”

He never actually showered after his fight. His hair is weighed down with sweat, giving Remy an odd, gaunt-like appearance, the hollows of his cheeks seeming deeper in the dim light.

Defeated, the tears begin welling up. I blink them back furiously, unwilling to give him the satisfaction of seeing me cry over it all. When I’m steady enough to speak without my voice wobbling, I ask, “You want to know what the Baron King asked for? You want to know what Nick and I did to get that skull? The gun?”

“I already know,” he hisses, the muscles in his jaw grinding just as hard as the glass under the sole of his boot. “You let him fill you up with his rot. He’s been taunting me with it for weeks!”

It takes me a moment to understand what that even means, but the word triggers a memory. The night Nick won me in that fight against Perez, when Remy had me cornered up in the balcony.

“Nice pussy like yours getting all used up on geriatric King dick? Such a waste. They’ll fill you up with five flavors of rot.”

My head jolts back in disgust. “You think I sold my pussy to a King for intel?” My heart pounds and all I want is to scream in his face, claw off the handsome face that sucked me in, reveal the demon underneath. “I would never,” I say, voice low, “ever fuck someone for information about my sister.” He’s still favoring his side, palm cradling his crotch. Like Sy taught me, I take advantage of his weakness and push his chest with both hands. “How dare you accuse me of something like that!”

He stumbles but springs right back, eyes crazed. “It’s what they made you to be, Vinny. I see that now.” Looking up and down my body, he sneers, “I know that revolver, Vinny. The first time I saw it was when I was eight, mounted on the wall behind my father’s desk. I saw the etching, the ‘B’ on the barrel. I spent weeks obsessed with it, all fucking shiny and sleek. It’s the first thing that made me want to be a Duke!” Head shaking, he looks as disgusted as I feel, lips pulled back into a livid grimace. “The Barons would never give up a body for nothing, and my father? He’s a collector, and he doesn’t give up his prizes without intention. And yet, he gave both to you!”

“Would you listen to yourself?” I inhale, no longer caring if I hurt him. “Imagine it, Remy. Think of me and Nick going there, visualize me offering my cunt for information, and ask yourself this:” I hold my arms out, shrugging. “In what fucking universe would Nick—our Nick, my Nick—let that happen?”

Remy stares at me, chest heaving, but doesn’t speak.

Across the shower, a faucet drips onto the tile.

“The last two men who touched me without Nick’s permission,” I say, voice low and full of venom, “are fucking dead.”

Remy starts, “That doesn’t mean—” but his teeth click, jaw grinding away. “He could have let—”

“He wanted me to play Russian roulette with that revolver,” I confess, arms going limp at my sides. My voice emerges dull and lifeless as I explain, “The King. That was his request. A fifty-fifty shot. It was some sick, twisted game to him.”

A thick crevice digs its way between Remy’s eyebrows. “What?”

Nodding, I go on, “Nick wouldn’t let me, of course. He took my place and pulled the trigger on himself before I could find the will to stop him.” I gesture heavily to Remy, who’s standing stock-still, eyes dropping to my chest. “When I came to you and Sy—when I trusted you to see me at my fucking lowest—I didn’t tell you because I was ashamed that I let it get that far. Ashamed that I almost killed your best friend for my precious sense of closure. But mostly,” I add, giving a hollow, bitter laugh, “Nick and I didn’t tell you because you’re batshit fucking crazy enough to go back and play his mind games—because we didn’t want to see you die—because we—” My voice cracks and I clamp down on the swell of tears. “Because we love you.” Shrugging, I turn away from the sight of his face paling. “I guess that makes me the idiot.”

The victory party downstairs is the opposite of the clock face I’m staring at.

It runs without maintenance or supervision, people having already arrived to stock the bar with booze. I can hear them all down there celebrating, and it strikes me as odd. The Dukes aren’t very good leaders, and god knows I’m shit at being their Duchess. For a long moment, there in the dark of the tower’s main living area, I wonder why we’re here at all. To fight? To mend? To sow enough chaos that the cycle starts again?

I climb the spiral staircase to my loft. It’s nothing like it used to look, empty and flat and cold. There’s the twin mattress, pressed up against the face of the clock, covered in blankets and pillows, most brought by Verity. Story sent some fairy lights and a fluffy rug that Archie enjoys dozing on in the morning rays. Nick dragged a bookcase up from the living area, claiming most of the books on it were mine now, anyway.

It’s more of a reading nook now than the sad little nest it began as, but I’m not sure why I’m so drawn to it at first. To look through the cloudy glass of the clock face, survey West End and whatever’s beyond? To turn and seek out the visage of this inner tower—the closest thing I’ve ever had to a home?

To reach beneath the mattress and pull out Sy’s journal?

I settle against the pillows, flipping through, settling on some more recent entries—wanting to see myself through his lens.

: Made an agreement to work on our mutual weaknesses together. Her lack of physical ability. My lack of sexual competence. It’s a strange arrangement, tense. Humiliating. Enlightening. I’ll continue to document our successes and failures as we proceed.Journal Note

Then…

L: Subject gaining stamina. Able to go on longer runs and has mastered simple defense techniques. Can’t say the same for myself. Pre-ejaculating seems to be the norm. At least L can get in a few strokes before I blow. Progress, I guess. L seems frustrated during lessons. Increasingly agitated and pushy. Her impatience makes me impatient and everything falls apart.

I pull my knee to my chest and skip to the next one.

L: Snapped is the only word to describe it. Pressured me to pleasure her. She directed me to touch her chest, demanding and pushing me to orally stimulate her nipples. Her skin turned a shade of pink and as a result a damp heat spread in her vaginal area. Her reaction caused my own, unprecedented urge. Pro: Brought L to orgasm. Con: Another early ejaculation.

Until I reach the last page Sy wrote before leaving.

I stare at it for a long time, the ink dark in the grooves of the paper, as if they’d been pressed with certainty and conviction—tattooed. I stare at it for so long, and so intensely, that I don’t even hear the footsteps up the staircase. I feel him though, his weight dipping the mattress as he drops down beside me. I feel his eyes, too, as he tips to the side to catch a peek of what I’m reading.

Nick hangs there, back pressed into the pillows behind us, elbows resting on his bent knees, until he finally says, “Sy?”

Nodding, I run my fingers over the ink.

The page only has two words.

I’m sorry.

“Do you…” When Nick pauses, I turn to catch the careful, pensive expression he’s wearing. He meets my gaze. “You miss him.”

I move my gaze back to the words. I’m sorry. Sy has this very particular way he writes his ‘S’s and I always find myself fixated with them. “Yeah.” It’s easy to admit. To Nick. To myself. The harder part is the smile I plaster on—some twisted purse of my lips that feels oddly broken. “Weird, isn’t it? We’re such jerks to each other. But…”

But he’s Sy.

He’s the only person who ever looked me in the eye and told me to be better, and then taught me how. I find myself missing the most unexpected things, like the way he fixes my plates in the mornings, as if he’s feeding a linebacker instead of a petite Duchess. I miss the way he’d pace around here at night, anxious to go to bed. I miss the way he’d feel next to me as I slept. The warmth of his skin when I woke in the mornings curled against his side. The softness in his eyes before he got too awake to realize he was holding me back.

I’m not sure what my face is doing, but it prompts Nick to reach over, grabbing the journal and closing it up. Placing it on the bed, he says, “Hey,” and touches my chin, turning me to the still, dark intensity of his stare. “He didn’t really want to hurt you.”

I look into his eyes, the same blue as his brothers, and wonder which man we’re talking about.

My answer is the same for both.

“I know.”

Nick searches my eyes, and for a second I see it—that same unbearable softness that’s been missing in my mornings. “Are you going to forgive him?”

It pulls me like the wake of a wave, the way Nick looks at me. There’s always the same longing. Sometimes it’s aggressive and too intense, but other times…

Other times, it’s like a physical ache to turn away from it.

“I’m the Duchess.” My eyes take in the shadows carved into his face. The tattoo on his temple. The smoothness of the jaw he’s been diligent about shaving daily. His lips—the same lips that once kissed me in this very loft, traded for the luxury of a book. “Starting to seem like the main part of the job.”

“And fighting,” he says, thumb sweeping against my chin. “You’re good at that.”

I look up into his eyes, drowning in the softness of the blue. “What if I don’t want to fight anymore?”

His mouth flattens into a grim line, but it doesn’t last long.

I twist to press my mouth to his, but I pause—just like he does for me—to look into his eyes, to give him the chance to—

Nick clears the distance instantly, capturing my lips in a slow, cautious kiss. His fingertips tickle the skin below my ear as he cradles my cheek, and it spurs me forward, turning to climb into his lap, straddling his hips.

The look on his face when I tip back is some mixture of shock and dread. “Don’t tease me, Little Bird,” he whispers, voice hard as gravel.

Captivated by the reflection of the string lights in his eyes, I touch his jaw, my words emerging on a trembled breath. “Tell me again.”

His hands find my hips. If I thought for one second I’d need to explain what I want, then I’d be wrong, because he stares at me, unblinking, unflinching, as aggressively as a man staring down the sights of a gun.

“I love you.”

It’s not the first time I’ve heard it, but it’s the first time I’ve let myself feel the weight of it. The first time I’ve taken it into myself. The first time I’ve looked back into Nick’s eyes and seen a man with a heart.

When I dive forward to capture his mouth, he meets me with a fervor that makes me gasp, his hands wrenching my hips into the curve of his body. I understand precisely what I’m dealing with here. A loaded weapon, a lit fuse, an accelerator with no brake.

I rock my hips into his hardness, shuddering at the harsh rumble against my tongue.

Nick abandons my mouth to push hard, wet, sucking kisses down my jaw. Every nerve in my body glows alight at the sensation, head tilting to give him access, and I thread my fingers into his hair just to clutch him close, but it’s futile.

He’s everywhere.

Hands on my hips, then my ass, then under my shirt, palming my back.

Lips on my neck, then my chest, then my jaw.

Fingers on my skin, then my lips, then tangled into my hair.

“What do you want?” he asks, voice rough with an undercurrent of desperation.

I go paralyzed at the thought of putting it into words.

Some of it’s a new selfishness, but some of it’s been there since the day I first saw him in that parking lot, two years ago.

I want to peel away this mask he wears and see the man beneath the armor. I want to experience Nick, just like this, soft and hopeful and eager. I want to spend a single genuine moment of passion with someone who wants me back. I want to keep these last two weeks of aching want for Nick Bruin and discard the shame of them. I want to be shown that the way he’s looking at me right now dwarfs the memory of the hurt he’s caused. I want to kiss someone and know, all the way to my marrow, that he’d never want to kiss anyone more.

But most of all, I want this:

“Show me,” I plead into the crease of his mouth, reaching between us to shuck up his shirt. “Make love to me.”

Nick takes this big, steeling breath, grabbing my shoulders to peel me away from his mouth. “Remember what I told you that night you let me out of the cage?” His eyes are heavy and glazed as they bore into mine, and despite having been the one to end the kiss, he’s also the one leaning back in. “I said I wasn’t sure I could go back to the person I was before I met you.” At my nod, he watches me closely, words deep and full of weight. “If we do this, I won’t be able to go back to the person I am right now.”

Not very long ago, I would have interpreted those words as a threat. A warning. A promise. But I see it now for what it is. He’s already mine. He’s always been mine. I’ve just been so wrapped up in the trauma and pain of my past, the never ending fight to survive, that I couldn’t grasp the gravity of it.

“I’m ready.” I stroke his hair, pushing it off his forehead, and my hand trembles with the nervousness of giving this to him. “I’m ready to be yours.”

Nick has always been exceptional at maintaining his frame, holding his mask, hiding an expression. But right now, a million emotions flicker through his eyes, too fast for me to parse as he hooks an arm around my back, bucks, and spins, dropping me against the mattress.

“Fuck,” he whispers, hovering above me as his eyes take me in. His brows drop low, carving shadows in the hollows of his eyes. To someone else, he might look angry, but I know better. I feel the reverence in his touch as he palms the outside of my thigh, bending down to kiss me.

It’s bruising, searing, the weight of him between my legs solid and sure. This time when I shuck up his shirt, he backs far enough away to let me pull it over his head. I’ve looked at Nick a lot these past years, and in the last couple of months, I’ve had more than one opportunity to feel his skin.

This is the first time I do it like this—slow, indulgent, appreciative—feeling the ladder of his abs beneath my fingertips. Nick watches me with a slackness in his jaw that I’m not used to seeing, but I’m too busy admiring his body to question it. I linger over a scar on his side, thin and pale, and remember the night it was put there—last Christmas. He’d come to my motel room to hide out for a few hours, stone-faced and injured—superficially.

“Remember that night?” He’s almost as stony now, placing his hand over mine, pushing my palm into his side.

Swallowing, I nod, widening my thighs for his hips. “You killed someone.”

He thrusts against my center, and even through our layers of clothes, it’s like an electric shock. “Every time I’d leave you in that motel room, I’d wait outside in my car,” he says, ducking down to press a soft, sucking kiss to my neck. “I’d jack off, thinking of this. Dreaming of what you’d taste like.” His hand slides beneath the hem of my tank top, rucking it up. “Sometimes when Daniel was busy, I’d watch you on his monitor.” He pulls the top over the swell of my breasts, my arms rising as he tugs it off. Then he slides down to kiss the skin, his tongue licking out to meet my peaked nipple.

I arch into his mouth, confessing what just may be my darkest secret. “Sometimes, I’d think of you, too.”

Nick stills, lip catching against my breast as he meets my gaze. “Yeah?” I know the question is in mind. Why, then? Why did I fight him so hard? If I wanted him, why not just have him? But I can tell from the way he breathes, deep and bracing, the tip of his nose dragging against the valley between my breasts as he palms them up into peaks, that he already has the answer.

Back then, he wasn’t Nick. He was an extension of Daniel. Of my father. Of Forsyth. He was another man with the keys, locking me away. He was sexy and gorgeous and brutal, and—maybe this is actually my darkest secret, “You were fucking terrifying.” A shudder rolls down my spine at the darkness in his eyes, because that hasn’t changed.

I can feel the restraint when he squeezes my tits, but it’s still devouring, his mouth sucking hot kisses all over them. “I don’t have to be like that, Little Bird.” His blue eyes blaze as he unbuttons my shorts. “I know it’s our thing. The push and the shove. We both like a good fight—it’s why we belong here.” I’m lifting my hips before he even has me unzipped, letting him push them, panties and all, over my hips. His voice rumbles as he descends, palms burning a path down my thighs. “But I can make you feel good.” He pauses right between my legs, hands shoving my thighs open as he gazes up my body. “I could fucking worship you.”

He licks a hot, aggressive path up my slit.

I’m not sure what’s more electrifying: the slick pressure of his tongue or the fact he never breaks my gaze, blue eyes piercing right through me as I keen, toes curling. His hands are forcing my thighs apart, but it’s laughably unnecessary. I spread them wide, sinking my fingers into his hair as I buck up against his mouth.

He closes his lips over my clit, and despite all the talk about worship, the look in his eyes borders on threatening, as if forcing me to feel the full breadth of his tongue is something he’s expecting a fight about.

Nick licks my pussy like he’s wielding a gun: my clit the trigger, his tongue the bullet, my eyes the pleading victim.

And his marksmanship is impeccable.

I struggle not to writhe beneath him, the flame in my center roaring into an inferno under the force of his tongue. Even if I wanted to break his gaze, I couldn’t. He holds me there, pinned like an insect, thighs spread as he mounts his assault.

But when I get the telltale tug in my gut that approaches a coming tide, I gasp, “Stop, stop, stop.” He jolts back, eyes heavy and hard, and I rush to explain, “I want you inside when I—”

That blank, angry look crumbles from his face in an instant, and then he’s tearing at the buckle of his belt, muscles shifting artfully beneath his inked flesh. His voice is husky and breathless as his fingers find me, wet and waiting. “Has it been long enough? Are you…” he pauses, eyes darting down to my pussy, “better?”

“Yeah,” I assure, trying not to laugh at the awkwardness in the words. For a second, he seems so much like his brother that my stomach twists.

But then Nick’s pushing down his jeans, buckle rattling noisily as his cock springs free, and all I can think about as he stands is his body, so cut and defined into this savage piece of art. In the soft glow of the fairy lights, the tattoos Remy’s inked into his flesh look intricate and sinister, and I’m struck with this notion that all three of them are as entwined as ivy, with their tangled roots and crawling vines.

No one could love just one of them.

It comes to me like a parting of clouds as he kicks off his jeans. Wordlessly, I get to my knees, watching him freeze, the tension in his muscles obvious as I rise to press a kiss to the center of his chest.

Maybe it’s not that I was so terrified of Nick before. Maybe it’s not even because I didn’t know how to be loved, although both of those are categorically true. Maybe I couldn’t accept Nick because I could only see the wilted leaves, so untangled from the other pieces of himself that some part of me recognized he wasn’t whole.

Just like me.

I kiss his stomach, the ridges of his hard abs, and then lower to that tight cut of the ‘V’ beside his hips. But when my mouth follows the fine, blond trail of hair that arrows down to his cock, his hands find my head, stilling me.

“Lavinia.” When I look up, Nick’s eyes are glazed and wild, a lot like Remy’s had been earlier. He gently thumbs my cheeks, saying, “You don’t have to.”

And I give him the most precious thing I have to offer. “I know.”