Page 30 of Venomous King
I stand from the chair and move towards Santiago’s defeated form. Diego grabs my elbow before I can reach him, and pulls me into his embrace. His lips meet mine in a frenzied kiss that sears through me, lighting a fire, and laying waste to all my senses. He pulls back, his expression grave. “If you do this, I will attempt to forgive you,Princesa. I still will never let you go, but there will be peace between us.”
My eyes close, as a tear slides from underneath my lashes, and Diego’s lips kiss it away. “You are my queen, Isabella Stratford, the mother of my child, and the future of this cartel, and I will always be your venomous king, ready to destroy the world, and place its ashes at your feet.”
His words should fill me with dread, after all, what woman craves the destruction of others by one of the men she loves? What woman would ever want the life that he is bestowing on me, as the queen of a cartel? Yet, as I stare into his eyes, I know now that I can never leave him. Even if he were to release me in this instance, I don’t think my heart would allow me to turn from him and walk away. The truth is, he’s already seeped beneath my skin like a vicious virus, corrupting and working its way through my blood. I have never been able to resist the madness of him. Toxic or not, he is mine just like I am his. What does that mean for my future, and that of my daughter? What does that mean for Kai? I can’t let him go, either.
I lean into him, inhaling his rich, spicy scent and allowing it to fill me with the strength and determination to carry this out. “I will stop fighting you and attempting to escape, Diego. I will even consent to stay at your side and be your queen, if you accept Kai as your equal, and you both share me. No more attempts to hurt or murder him, no more using him against me, or vice versa.” My fingers trail across his scarred cheek, and he inhales deeply, closing his eyes at my touch. “You will both be mine, my lovers, and Julia’s fathers. I can’t and won’t let either of you go.”
At the center of all our chaos, it comes down to this one answer. Will he choose me, or his need for control? His green eyes open, and he stares into the depths of my soul. I hope he witnesses the validity of my words. I will never choose between them, and I am tired of fighting this losing battle with him. I never truly wanted to leave him. If he hadn’t behaved like an unhinged psychopath, I might have remained in that jungle with him forever. I’m glad I didn’t, despite everything that has happened.
Leaving him, and dealing with all the hardships that came after, has strengthened me. Before, it was always as if an overwhelming weight, a millstone, was tied around my neck, pressing down on me, and constricting and dulling the world around me. I felt helpless, lost, and useless, but now that has all changed. Leaving Diego has allowed me to shed the skin of that weak girl who never truly knew, or trusted herself, and I have been reborn as this woman who will battle anyone who tries to hurt her family.
“Seal your words in blood,Princesa,and you will have my agreement to your demands.”
“Isabella, you will not do this! I will not fucking share you. You’re my wife, the mother of my child.” Kai’s furious glare meets my eyes over Diego’s shoulder. He makes a move towards me, and Manuel places himself in his path.
“You will lose me, Kai. Is that what you want? Do you want to walk away from me, from Julia? Don’t you understand? This is the only way forward for all of us?”
I don’t wait to hear his response, and I won’t have my decision altered. I clutch the blade tighter in my grip, moving away from Diego, and heading to where Santiago awaits his fate. “I am sorry, Santiago, but I have to protect my family. Place your hand on the table, close your eyes, and look away.”
“I will meet my fate with my eyes wide open, Isabella Stratford. In this moment, I realize I may have been wrong about you, and you might just be what that boy needs after all,” he replies in a hushed voice, his dark brown eyes meeting mine, and steeling himself for the grim task ahead.
Fuck you, fate, here you go, you miserable bitch.Here is your sacrifice paid in blood. I bear down and slice through the first finger with the sharp blade, as Manuel grasps Santiago and holds him firmly in the chair, as his screams fill the room. The smell of iron, sweat, and pain permeates the space, but it doesn’t dissuade me from my grim task.
This is just another layer of skin to shed until I am once again reborn. Perhaps I was always destined to be the queen of serpents.
Chapter twenty
Kai
“Truth is everybody is going to hurt you:you just gotta find the ones worth suffering for.”
Bob Marley
Manuel assists a stoic Santiago from the room, after I have just had the displeasure of wrapping his fingerless hand, in an attempt to stem the bleeding, after Isabella completed her gruesome task. One filled with violence that I didn’t ever believe she was capable of. The smell of iron and desperation is still heavy in the air, as is the sense of wrathful energy.
Have I been wrong about the woman I love all along? I feel like I don’t even know this Isabella. Yet, at the same time, she’s still the woman I’ve spent years in love with, the woman I want to spend eternity with. How could she have demanded that of him, without us even having a discussion? Does she not care for my feelings on the matter? Am I less than he is, in her affections? She has tied Diego Cabano to us forever, we will never be free of the psycho now.
That’s not exactly true. He was always tied to us, one way or another. He was the constant dark shadow we kept running and hiding from, the monster in the night that hindered our complete happiness.It seems there will be no more running now. Now, I am to share her, like lions in the wild sharing a mate. I never saw myself in a polyandry relationship, but it’s out of my hands now, and I’ll have to adapt if I want to keep her. The truth is I understand Diego Cabano; I, too, can’t let her go.
I approach her, as she desperately wipes at her bloody hands with the throw blanket Diego ripped off the sofa and provided to her. I’m acutely aware that the fucker is just standing there watching our interaction. What I wouldn’t give to throat punch him right now, for all the unnecessary distress he’s caused her.
I trail my finger down her soft cheek, wiping away the flecks of blood from its surface, and meeting those dark sapphire eyes I adore; the ones that symbolize my home and my future. She is my everything. How could she think, even for a moment, that I would ever turn my back on her, no matter how gruesome the act, no matter how hard what she’s demanding of me is?“Isabella, if you still don’t know how important you are to me, how you and Julia are my whole world, then I haven’t done a great enough job of showing you, and I’ll need to rectify that immediately.”
I allow my knuckles to trail down her jaw until I reach her neck’s soft, thin column, then wrap my fingers around the fragile organ as her breath hitches. “My beautiful rose, you are everything my heart desires. You are pure madness inside of my mind and soul. There is nothing that I wouldn’t do for you, for our family. How could you doubt me?” I tighten my grip, as my other hand slides up her abdomen and cups her breast, squeezing the firm globe until a moan of pain and pleasure leaves her. There has been so much violence today, so much pain. All I want to do now is bring her rapture, and wipe away the hardship of her dark deed. I want to cleanse both of us of all this darkness.
“Do you want this, little rose? Do you want the two of us to share you, and use you like a toy between us?” My fingers wrap around her hard nipple that’s pushing against the fabric of her thin sweater, and the thought that she’s wearing too many clothes enters my mind. I want to see all her creamy skin laid bare before me. I desire to leave my marks on its perfection, and then I need to feast at her altar, like a starving man who has been deprived of nourishment for too long. Then, and only then, do I want to pray like a sinner on my knees to the only goddess that I will ever worship;my Isabella. My wife. My whore. My everything.
Her eyes close, and she moves closer, rubbing her stomach against my hard erection in an attempt to turn the tables on me, and force me to lose my precarious hold on my control.Fuck.I tighten my hold on her neck until her eyes re-open and widen, and her face begins to flush, the air becoming trapped in herlungs. “Naughty little rose, I asked you a question, and you will answer me.”
My eyes meet Diego’s, as he stands a few feet away from her, his fists and jaw clenched.Watching. Waiting.The hunger in his gaze as he watches me choke her causes my hard cock to twitch between Isabella and me. I’ve never been attracted to men before, and I don’t plan to start now, but something in his expression calls to me, turning up the inferno inside of me to an almost unmanageable level.Hunger.It’s there in every rough line of his body. He hungers for her.
I loosen my grip slightly so she can take in some air, but never break the connection between me and Diego. I want him to witness that he is not the only one who has control over her. I’m not an unhinged and bloodthirsty psychopath like he is, but I, too, have dark desires that Isabella enjoys fulfilling. Excitement pools in the pit of my stomach at the thought of watching Isabella act the whore for us both.
I can admit to myself that I enjoyed watching him with her, and that I want to see so much more. I want to experience her overcome with lust, and filled with both our cocks, and our cum dripping out of her.“Yes,”the moaned word escapes her lips, and has me finally breaking the connection between the savage fucker and myself. “Share me, use me,please.”
“Our girl begs so prettily, doesn’t she?” Diego takes a step closer, pushing his body against her back, and a loud groan departs Isabella as she attempts to reach behind her and pull him even closer, as he grinds his cock into her ass.Damn, that’s sexy.
“Our?” I question with a raised brow and amusement. How quickly he’s changed his tune, and is willing to take his fill of her with me.