Page 51 of Hearts on Fire
He strolled toward me with the collar in his hand.
I stepped away from him as he approached. If he put the collar on me, the sunset no longer mattered. He would finish in the morning anything I might manage to prevent him from doing tonight.
“N-n…” The word “no” stuck in my throat.
“Come here, my pet,” the king cooed. “And I’ll make you the queen.”
“The queen of what?”
He laughed so loud and so suddenly, I jumped, startled.
“Not the real queen, of course,” he mused. “Lady Amree will have that title soon enough.” He rubbed his chin in thought. “I’ll have to make sure to put you elsewhere once she arrives. You can’t stay in my rooms with my wife present. The lady has a temper. She’s maimed quite a few of her maids in anger.”
He laughed again as if there was anything funny about his bride hurting her servants. So much for my hopes that his future wife would be able to inspire him to change for the better. These two seemed to be very much alike.
I kept walking away from him, backwards, and he stalked toward me, holding the collar, like a hunter with a snare in his hands.
“She’ll bear me a son,” he boasted. “So I’ll have to put up with her, at least for the time being. But until Lady Amree arrives, you’ll be the queen of my bedroom, my rare find. You’ll be the only one allowed to bestow pleasure on me. Come now, be a good little pet, and I won’t punish you.”
I leaped to the doors. He moved after me. The chain snapped, stretched to the limit. It yanked the collar out of his hands. One of the sharp peaks nicked his finger. The king growled in pain, shaking his hand.
“Get over here. Now!” he roared, launching after me.
I slammed my back against the locked doors. There was nowhere to run. Twisting to avoid his hands grabbing for me, I sprinted across the room.
My toe hit the platform with the perch, making me stumble. The king caught me by my shirt. The flimsy material tore in his fingers like paper, leaving me only in my transparent, lace-trimmed underwear.
With a shove on my back, the king tossed me onto the perch. I sank into the mountain of furs and silk bedding. Frantic to get free of them, I flailed my arms and kicked my legs.
The heavy weight of the king’s body crashed on top of me, shoving me back into the suffocating pile of bedding.
“You want to fight me? You human brat!” the king growled, pawing at me through the silk of the sheets. “You dare defy me? You know what happens to those who do? Fight me, and you’ll end up dead. Unlike the venomous ones, you’re not even worth keeping in the dungeon.”
He grabbed my hair, pressing my face into a pillow. I managed to turn my head just enough to gasp in a breath of air.
He hiked up his long caftan, rummaging through its folds for the closure of his pants.
“I’ll fuck you until the sun goes down.” Words left his mouth with rugged breaths, strangled by anger. “And when it does, I’ll leave my cock in. You’ll spend the night pinned with my stone-hard cock to this perch. So that I can fuck you again first thing in the morning.”
I fought against his hands that pried my legs open. But he was so much stronger than me. He swatted my hands away like annoying flies.
“Fight me, wretched human,” he gritted through his teeth. “See how long I’ll let you live if you land but a single blow.”
Hopelessness suffocated me more effectively than the silk cushions. Tears streamed down my face, soaking the bedding under me.
I closed my eyes, sending my thoughts to my one and only happy place—Elex. I tried to imagine being with him, hidden from the cruelties of the world in the safety of his arms and wings.
If I shut my mind from what my body was about to go through, maybe I could survive it?
A loud crash thundered through the room. Pieces of wood, large and small, flew everywhere. Some shot up to the ceiling and sent a rain of crystals down.
The king leaped off me.
The crystals kept raining from the ceiling as I rolled off the bed, on the opposite side from where the king was.
He grew in size. His clothes ripped to pieces, replaced by golden-red scales. His crown turned into horns. The rings on his fingers merged with his claws as the king transformed into a dragon.
Another dragon had burst through the window. He gripped the windowsill with his black, curved claws. The crimson glow of the sunset glistened off his black shiny scales. Scarlet-hot rage burned in his eyes like flames of fire.