“It’s a dark road to travel down, and I’m not sure it’s one I could ever come back from.” It was the lingering sadness in his voice that made my heart break for him and made me not want to press him further. “But it’s a worst case scenario, so I’ll cross that bridge when and if it comes down to it.” King looked at me thoughtfully. “For now, I’m going to kick the granny thing in high gear and see what we can come up with.”
“Let me know if you need my help. I’ll do anything.”
“I’ll remember you said that,” King said, pulling me onto his lap.
“I mean it.”
“So did I,” King replied, squeezing me tighter. He buried his nose in my neck. “I might need you to stay with Grace a while.”
“Why, is she okay? I mean…you know.” I stammered.
“Grace is fine for now, but we might have some shit going down here soon, and I need you far away from it.”
“The Isaac thing?” I asked.
“Yeah, the Isaac thing. But don’t worry about it. Just know that when I say you need to go to Grace’s that’s where you need to be. No questions asked. No arguing bullshit. You got me?”
“I got you.”
“Can we talk more later, Pup? I feel like a fucking chick right now, spilling my guts to you.” King laughed.
“Yeah, we can talk more later,” I said.
I wrapped my arms around King’s neck and looked over the water. The bird that was the inspiration for my sketch sat on top of a crab trap buoy in the middle of the bay. His beak was down, searching in the water for his next meal.
“So what now?” I asked, turning back to King.
“Now? Now, we need to go upstairs, and I need to get you in my bed because I’m not even fucking close to being done with you tonight.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Doe
“Get up,” King said.
He took me by the hand and lifted me off the mattress. I was still half asleep. Knocked into a sex coma after King proved that when he said he wasn’t nearly done with me, he wasn’t lying.
Heat coursed from his hand into mine and shot directly into my erratically beating heart, causing my breath to hitch in my throat.
“Where are we going?” I managed to squeak out as I pulled on a tank top and my underwear.
Looking down into my eyes, King slowly tucked an unruly strand of hair behind my ear, allowing the very tips of his fingers to brush against my skin.
“Pup,” he said, his voice almost hoarse, “it’s time for you to stop living for who you might’ve been and start living for who you are now.”
“I thought that’s what I was doing,” I said with a yawn. King’s grip tightened around my palm. He dragged me down the hall into his tattoo studio and switched on the light.
“Sit,” he commanded, releasing my hand and gesturing to the chair in the middle of the room.
“Why?” I asked becoming more aware as I slowly woke up.
My palms started to sweat. “You want me in THAT chair?” I asked.
King walked over to the iPod docking station, and with his back to me, he flipped through the songs. After a few minutes, the sounds of Florida Georgia Line’s STAY filled the room.
When King turned back around and noticed I was still standing by the door, he narrowed his gaze and again pointed to the chair. “Sit, or I will come over there, pick you up, and toss you onto it.”
His tone did not imply that I had another option. I reluctantly moved over to the chair and tentatively perched myself on the edge.
“Take off your shirt.” His voice so suddenly strained, he had to clear his throat. King sat down on his rolling stool and opened the bottom drawer of his tool box. He started sorting out materials just as if he were getting ready to tattoo a client, just like I’d seen him do many times over the past few weeks.
“What? Why? What are you doing?” I asked, unable to hide the panic in my voice.
“Because, Pup, it will be very hard to do this fucking tattoo with your shirt on. So, take the goddamn thing off, yeah?” King was demanding, but his tone hinted at a softness that wasn’t there when I’d first met him.
“I already told you. I can’t,” I said. “You just don’t get it. I may want one, but I just can’t. I’ve told you this.” Then, another thought crossed my mind.
He wouldn’t tattoo me against my will, would he?
King stood from his stool and slowly approached. A menacing look in his eyes. He pushed my knees apart and settled his large frame between my thighs. He rested his forehead against mine in a gesture that was both intimate and new.
“How many times do I need to tell you? You need to learn to do what you are told, Pup,” he growled, his cool breath floating across the skin on my cheek and neck.
In one fluid movement, he yanked my tank top over my head and tossed it onto his toolbox. “You’re mine now. In every way. And I need you to know that if you regain your memory and remember who you are, you’re still going to be mine. If you have a boyfriend out there waiting for you? You’re still mine.” He paused. “And if you ever leave me to go back to your old life, just know that no matter who you are with, every inch of this beautiful body of yours will always belong to me.”
Braless and feeling very exposed in every way, I made a move to cover my breasts with my hand. I looked down to the floor to avoid eye contact. I could feel his gaze on my body. The hair on my arms stood on end. My nipples hardened.
King’s lips curled upward in a wicked smile. He leaned back into me and placed his hands over mine, removing them from my breasts, fully exposing me to his hungry gaze. He blew out a long-held breath. His tongue darted out, licking his bottom lip before sucking it into his mouth. After what seemed like a lifetime, he shook his head and lightly chuckled.
“This isn’t about me right now,” he said. I got the feeling he was talking to himself rather than to me. “Lay on your stomach.” He snapped on a pair of black latex gloves.
“You can’t. I can’t,” I argued.
He sat down on his stool and rolled it toward me with his feet. “You said you wanted a tattoo, right?”
“Yes, I did, and I do. But I can’t. I can’t because what if—”
“No. Let me guess, you can’t because it may be what you want, but it may not be what SHE wants?” He didn’t wait for me to answer. Probably because he knew that was exactly what I was going to say. “But what you aren’t understanding is that you are her!” King roared, standing up so abruptly his stool slid back and hit wall behind him. “Don’t you see? You can’t second guess everything you want because you are afraid of remembering another life!”
He paced the room and wrung out his hands, cracking his knuckles.
“Fuck who you were!” King screamed, the veins in his neck pulsing with each of his ragged breaths. “Be you, this fantastic, amazing, fucking beautiful…” His tone softened, and he stopped pacing, lifting his eyes to meet mine. “We’re not just going to have a life, remember? We’re going to live.”
He slowly approached me. Again, he moved my hands away from my breasts. He pressed his chest into mine. His hands circled around my lower back, his hardness to my softness.
“I fucking love who you are, Pup, and it’s about damn time you learned to love her, too,” he said, placing a soft kiss on the edge of my mouth, igniting a sensation deep within that caused my entire body to shake.
LOVE?
I started to protest again, but the fog of desire wouldn’t lift, and instead, I just sat there with my mouth open, waiting for King to make the next move.
Much to my disappointment, he sat back onto his stool and opened another drawer of his toolbox. He took out a sheet of paper that was almost see-through with colorful lines already drawn onto the page.
“Here.” He passed me the paper, averting his gaze to the floor. “I made this for you.”
I reached for the paper. It took me a minute to figure out what it was. The lines were all colorful, deep purples, pinks, and blues. The design was ornate, and at first, it just looked like beautiful vine work, but when you looked closely, hidden in the design was…me.
Concealed in the design was a book opened to the middle with wings protruding out the sides as it perched upon a pink pair of brass knuckles. Further down and off to the side was a quote woven into vines, ‘I don’t want to repeat my innocence. I want the pleasure of losing it all over again.’
My breath hitched in my throat, and I couldn’t form the words. It was completely me.
I had to have it.
Suddenly, nothing mattered anymore because this man knew exactly who I was. Not who I used to be, not some girl I was waiting for to return while putting my current life on hold in the process.
I was tired of standing still. I wanted to move forward. All that mattered was what I wanted now, and what I wanted was right in front of me.
“Where?” I asked, unable to tear my eyes away from it.
“Do you trust me?” King asked.
“Yes,” I said without hesitation. Because it was true.
“Good. Then, lay down.” King took the paper from me, and with one hand on my shoulder, he pressed me down onto the table, placing his knee on the outside of my thigh. His face hovered just inches above mine. “Now, be a good girl,” he whispered on my neck, “and roll the fuck over.” A crooked smile on his lips.
“Yes, sir,” I said, no longer able to contain my own smile, my belly doing flips as I thought back to where those beautiful lips had been not long before.
“Good girl. Now, you’re learning,” King praised me, sealing his compliment with a smack on my ass as I did what I was told and rolled over.
He shuffled around, preparing his tools. The tattoo needle started to hum, and shortly after he applied the template, I felt the first sharp sting on my skin, followed by a scratching sensation.
It didn’t hurt as bad as I thought it would. In an odd way, I welcomed the pain. I closed my eyes and lost myself in the sensation of the needle across my skin.
The sensation of taking over my life and making it my own.
The needle stung and scraped its way across my back and shoulders. At the same time, I said a silent goodbye to the girl I’d been protecting for months.
I wasn’t going to miss her.
As King branded my skin, I embraced the girl whose life was just beginning. I embraced life.
My life.
King filled me so completely. Not just my body. My heart. My soul. My life. I didn’t give a shit if I ever got my memory back.
Because with King, I knew exactly who I was.
I was his.
Chapter Twenty-Three
King
Tattooing Doe was the single most erotic moment of my life. Marking her perfect, pale skin with a tattoo I’d designed for her made me so fucking hard I had to adjust myself every thirty seconds in order to concentrate on my work.
When I was done, I handed her the hand mirror, and she walked over to the full-sized mirror that hung on the back of the door, like she’d seen dozens of my other clients do before. When she held up the hand mirror, she gasped.
“What?” I asked in a panic, hoping she didn’t already see what I’d hidden in the tattoo. I was an asshole for putting it there. I was an asshole for tattooing her in the first place.
I was just an asshole.
But I couldn’t help myself. My name needed to be on her. It wasn’t enough just to call her mine. I needed to mark her as well. So hidden in the vine work under the quote I found that I thought was perfect for her, was my name.
KING was woven into the design. In order to see it you had to tilt your head or otherwise you wouldn’t notice it. But it was there.
I would tell her eventually, of course, but I wanted it to be my secret for a while. She’d stopped being my possession a while ago, a lot longer before I cared to admit it, but I still felt the need to mark her as mine.
I still liked the idea of owning her.
Only now, she owned me, too.
She didn’t notice the name. Tears filled her eyes. She stood there staring at the hand mirror in just her panties. Little cheeky ones where her ass hung out of the bottoms. Her tits were only inches from my face. Her tears of happiness made my dick twitch. Although her sad tears evoked the same response.
My dick wasn’t partial to which kind of tears he liked.
I took the mirror from her hand and lifted her up onto the counter. “You like it?” I asked, pushing her panties down her legs.
“I love it,” she panted, wrapping her legs around me, drawing me close. Her wetness soaking my boxers. I pushed them down with one hand. I’d been hard for three hours, the entire time I’d been working on her, and couldn’t wait any longer. I pushed inside her tight, wet heat.
We both moaned at the contact.
“You love it?” I asked, needing to hear her say it again.
“Yes, I love it!” she said as I thrust up into her, hard. “I love it. So much. I love you.”
I froze when I heard the words, and when I did, her eyes flung open.
“I didn’t mean—”
“Shut the fuck up.”
“Oh my god, I have that word vomit thing. I’m sorry. Shit, I just meant that—”
“Shut the fuck up!” I demanded, thrusting hard to get her attention. She closed her eyes, and her head fell back. “That’s fucking better. Now, keep that pretty mouth of yours shut while I fuck you.”
“Okay,” she whispered, breathless.
“Shut up,” I said again, and she closed her mouth. “Shut up so I can fuck you…and show you how much I love you.”
She nodded and although her eyes stayed shut, a tear rolled down her cheek. I sucked it off her chin before it could fall to the floor.
Then, I fucked her.
Hard.
I showed her how much I loved her until I couldn’t tell where I started and she began. Until all that was in that room was me and her and the thing between us that kept pulling us together like magnets. Until we were lost in sensations and orgasms.
And in each other.
I fucked her until we were one person, and in a way we were, because I’d lost myself along the way, and I found myself again in the most unlikely place.
I’d found myself again in the haunted eyes of a girl who was just as lost as I was.
Or maybe, we didn’t find each other at all.
Maybe, we just decided to be lost together.
Chapter Twenty-Four
King
Doe and I were lying in bed on a Saturday afternoon, watching Demolition Man. Her idea. Not mine. Out of all the DVDs in my collection, that was the one she’s watched the most in the past few days. She also liked Disney movies, but every time she watched them, I thought about Max and a pain formed in my chest thinking that she might never be around to watch them with us.
Or Max might be around, and Doe might be gone.
I was going to do everything I could to get them both under one roof with me. Although as the days went by, the reality of putting together the money for the payoff seemed less and less likely.
Disney princess movies may have just been a bunch of fairy tales, but the idea of the three of us together—four if you count Preppy—was my idea of happily ever after.
“All restaurants are now Taco Bell,” Doe said in sync with Sandra Bullock’s character. She knew every line. It was downright adorable. Besides, we were naked, and I had one hand on her tit and the other was cupping her pussy, so I had no complaints. “Why is the house half-painted?” She turned to me abruptly, propping her head on my chest.
“Cause when Preppy and I first moved in, it was already an old house, but we kind of trashed it with all the parties and didn’t think much of fixing it up. Then, I asked Preppy to fix it up a bit because I expected to bring Tricia and Max here.
“But why did he stop?”
“Because I went to prison, and the house being painted didn’t seem to matter to either of us anymore. There wasn’t a chance in hell they’d let me have her at that point. Besides, Preppy may be able to cook, and he’s a killer mechanic, but he’s a shit handyman. So, the place kind of went to hell while I was gone.”
“Well,” she said, stretching her arms over her head. Her perky tits bounced as she yawned and hooked her leg over my thigh. “You better get to painting again because we’re going to get the money, and she’s going to come home.”
“Yeah, baby. We’re going to get her back.” I was unsure if I was speaking to her or trying to convince myself. The truth was that each and every day that passed by, Max was slipping further and further away.
Preppy opened the door, and Doe sat up quickly, pulling the sheet over her bare chest.
“Dude, fucking knock much?” I asked.
Preppy ignored me and hopped up onto the bed, settling himself between me and Doe. He slung an arm around each of us.
“I just love you guys,” he said, squeezing the three of us together like we were one big, fat, odd-as-fuck family.
“Is there a purpose to this love fest?” Doe asked, giggling as Preppy leaned in to tickle her.
It should’ve pissed me off that he was even touching her, but there was nothing sexual about their connection. Although I often found myself jealous of their easy friendship. I had to work my ass off to get Pup to like me, and even then, I was shit at it.
But, Preppy wore both his crazy and his heart on his sleeve, and I was always a little envious of how easy it was to be around him.
All of us together just made sense. Doe could read bedtime stories to Max as she fell asleep at night. Uncle Preppy could teach her how to make pancakes. Those were the kind of images that made it all come together for me. It was clear. I had to do whatever it was going to take to make this shit work.
Max had to come home.
Pup had to stay.
I’d told her I was a selfish prick, and I’d meant it. I just didn’t think she realized how true that statement really was. I guarantee that she had no clue that I was hiding the truth about her past from her.
I didn’t plan to fall for her, but I did. Now, she wasn’t just a pawn I was going to use to get Max back. Now, she was a part of my life.
A part I wasn’t willing to give back.
Even if that means keeping the truth about who she really is a secret until I’m rotting in the ground.
“As a matter of fact, there is a point. So glad you asked!” Preppy turned to me, and his face went serious. “Bear wants us to come to the compound tonight.