King’s Captive Read online

  King’s Captive

  By Amber Bardan

  For three years, I’ve belonged to Julius King.

  Some people would think being stuck on a private island is heaven, but this is my hell.

  Because I’m not here as a guest. Not even close. I’m a prisoner. I’m his.

  Julius King. Powerful. Wealthy. Dangerous.

  There are parts of me he wants that I can’t give him. When he looks at me, there are times I swear he sees someone else. And the scary part is that sometimes, when he touches me, I think he may be someone else, too.

  Though my body might be tempted, and he might control everything else, I can’t let him have any piece of my heart. I won’t. But every day, the fight gets harder, and Julius manages to slip past my defenses in the most unexpected ways.

  I have to find out the truth about Julius King. Even if it destroys me.

  This book is approximately 81,000 words

  Dear Reader,

  I’m practically cackling and rubbing my hands with glee at the amazing books we have in store for you this month. You’re going to fall in love with the newest additions to the Carina Press author lineup while enjoying the very best of our returning authors. Forgive me for saying it but...whee! Read on for the goodness...

  This month Lucy Parker brings us her much anticipated sequel to contemporary romance Act Like It. Pretty Face returns readers to the highly acclaimed world of the London stage with laugh-out-loud wit and plenty of drama. Iconic director Luc Savage is in for a surprise with his new show—not to mention a May-December romance with its feisty star!

  New-to-Carina-Press author Rhenna Morgan kicks off her new super-sexy contemporary romance series with Rough & Tumble. With his badass don’t-take-no-for-an-answer approach to life, Jace Kennedy is everything Vivienne Moore swore she never wanted in a man—especially after the rough lifestyle she grew up in. But Jace sees the hidden wild side in Vivienne, and he won’t give up until he shows her the safest place is in the arms of a dangerous man. By the way, Jace might be a badass, but he’s no alphahole. This is a guy every inch in love with his lady and willing to treat her like gold.

  We return to Lauren Dane’s Cascadia Wolves series with Wolf Unbound. We meet Tegan—a Pack Enforcer who, after the death of her mate, thought she’d be alone forever. Until she meets Ben, handsome, dominant...and human.

  Amber Bardan returns with a stunning new stand-alone sultry contemporary romance in King’s Captive. In Julius’s world, on his island, he is King. Money and power mean he rules all around him—including her.

  In fan-favorite A.M. Arthur’s newest male/male romance, As I Am, scarred shut-in Taz finally braves the outside world for intensely shy Will, but secrets from both of their pasts could destroy their fragile new love.

  Fans of Scott Hildreth’s The Gun Runner be prepared! Michael Tripp is back and as bad as ever in The Game Changer. Tripp and Terra are moving toward their happily-ever-after, but first they have to overcome the secrets they’re still keeping from each other—and her mafia family’s inexorable determination to pull Tripp into la famiglia.

  We’re introducing three debut authors this month. First, join Agents Irish & Whiskey in Single Malt, Layla Reyne’s debut male/male romantic suspense. Widowed FBI agent and Irish ex-pat Aidan Talley falls hard for his handsome younger partner, Jameson “Whiskey” Walker, as they investigate cybercrimes and the murder of Aidan’s late husband.

  In Mark of the Moon, a hookup with a vampire goes wrong when Dana Markovitz is scratched by a jealous were-cat. You won’t want to miss this sexy new urban fantasy series from debut author Beth Dranoff.

  From debut author Sarah Hawthorne comes Enforcer’s Price, book one in the Demon Horde series. In this romantic motorcycle club romance, Colt is just starting to trust again, but Krista is hiding something big. Can he still love her when she reveals sex and money go hand in hand for her?

  Don’t miss this amazing lineup of new and returning authors, and look for their next books in the upcoming months!

  Next month: Don’t miss Shannon Stacey’s return to the world of everyone’s favorite blue-collar family, the Kowalskis, with a heart-warming and funny all-new romance that also reunites you with all your favorite Kowalskis.

  As always, until next month, my fellow book lovers, here’s wishing you a wonderful month of books you love, remember and recommend.

  Happy reading!

  Angela James

  Editorial Director, Carina Press

  Dedication

  To my readers, thank you for making it possible to do what I love.

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Epilogue

  Excerpt from Didn't I Warn You by Amber Bardan

  Acknowledgments

  Also by Amber Bardan

  About the Author

  Prologue

  Bloody Birthday

  3:00 p.m.

  “Drink your tea, baby. Don’t want it getting cold.”

  My teeth chatter, yet the sun heats my scalp as though there’s a magnifying glass held at the back of my head.

  I lift the delicate china teacup. My favorite—teal on the outside, white on the inside with a rose painted at the bottom.

  Today there’s something dripping off the teal. Something red, something sticky. A coppery tang I already taste.

  A few drops made it inside the cup.

  Crimson blossoms in amber tea. I’ll never think of cold the same.

  I hold the cup with both hands and drink. I drink the cool tea, blood and all. When I’m done, only dregs remain. The taste is floral with notes of carnage but I swallow it down. I’m playing a game I can’t afford to lose.

  We’re playing with life and death.

  He brings a cream puff to his too-wide lips and devours it, watching me with vibrant blue eyes. They’re odd on his face, those eyes. You could almost think they were pure. The pretty trill of a bird echoes over the limestone paving. No one will hear its song but us. Just as no one outside this garden heard the screaming.

  Not here on my father’s two-hundred-acre estate.

  I’m still hearing the screams, though. In the back of my head like an alarm, or a siren.

  He wipes his mouth with a napkin.

  W
hy bother, the napkin’s spattered the same as my cup.

  “See, I knew we could get along.”

  I rest the cup back on the saucer with matching painted flowers.

  He speaks like a friend.

  That’s the worst part.

  He smiles at me as though he’s any other guest at my eighteenth birthday party. As though we’re not having tea amongst corpses.

  As though the ground’s not littered with bodies.

  As though on the other side of the table, my father’s not bound and gagged. I glance at Dad.

  His eyes strain wide.

  Not me, though. I’m not bound or gagged or hurt or dead. I’m the guest of honor. The birthday girl.

  I’m special.

  He slides his own teacup aside.

  So civilized.

  “You do want to get along with me, don’t you?”

  He acts civilized in his beautiful gray suit, and expensive watch with its bold numerals.

  I nod.

  “Pardon?” He cocks his head. The open mouth of the snake tattoo on the base of his neck points to me, fangs flashing.

  He’s horrific.

  “Yes—I want to get along with you.”

  “Good.” He smiles again.

  With dimples, no less.

  Good teeth and dimples on a monster.

  He’s no less frightening. There’s something too brutal about his features for any kind of smile, even a devastatingly dimpled one, to make him look kind.

  There’s no suit on earth expensive enough to hide what he is. He’s built like a fighter. Two knuckles on the hand resting on the table, sunken in. They’ve been broken, most likely on some sorry bastard’s face.

  “Then do one last thing for me, will you, baby?”

  I shiver. He’s called me baby since he got here. Baby. Makes me want to gag. Even if in that one first moment he arrived—before the blood—I’d found him attractive.

  Now endearments from his lips just make my insides crawl.

  “What?”

  He places his fingers over the silver handgun resting next to his buttered scone.

  “Don’t scream.”

  My chest freezes.

  Not frozen immobile—frozen and shattering.

  He raises the gun.

  My pulse bursts back into function. I watch the barrel, heart thudding out of its cavity as though it can reject the bullet coming by beating it out.

  The gun swings—doesn’t fix on me—keeps moving.

  The barrel veers toward Dad.

  My eyes close.

  Sound resonates through the garden and vibrates all the way to my teeth.

  I don’t scream.

  Chapter One

  He’s coming.

  A twig creaks. I jerk upright in the swing seat, where that day has been rolling through my mind like a snippet of a movie reel that’s been hacked to pieces, then glued back together.

  Him—the reason I’ve spent the last three years in this tropical Caribbean prison.

  Leaves crunch. He wants me to hear him coming. Julius enjoys anticipation.

  I brush my dress over my knees. Pale blue chiffon picks up with the breeze. “Hello, Julius.”

  “Good morning, baby.” He reaches my side and bends down and plants his lips on my cheek.

  My eyes close for an instant. His kiss is deceptively warm, but then, hell is warm, no surprise the devil should be too.

  “I’ve brought you something.”

  The bitterness of his cologne coats my breaths. Like everything about him it’s a bit too much.

  “Thank you.”

  He leans closer, his watch right by my face.

  Tick, tick, tick.

  One tick to every two of my heartbeats.

  He lays a rolled-up newspaper in my lap. I don’t open the paper.

  “Have dinner with me tonight.”

  Not a question, but then, nothing he says ever is.

  My gaze collides with his. It’s like looking into the wind, makes me want to blink and look away.

  “We’re having guests.” The corners of his eyes wrinkle. “I’m trusting you’ll be polite company.”

  “Have I ever been anything else?”

  He smiles his serpent smile and takes my chin between his thumb and forefinger. “No, you’re perfect.”

  I’d bite him, but he has a nice firm grip on my lady-balls, and he knows it.

  Leverage. He has it—I don’t.

  It’s the reason why, even if I could escape, even if he didn’t control all transport on and off the island, I’d still stay.

  Everything here is in his control, even me.

  Except for one thing.

  I smile back at him, a real smile. There’s something I have that he doesn’t. Something that makes me want to gloat. Captivity has made me petty.

  “Thanks.” I keep that satisfaction inside.

  There’s a reason visitors make me giddy. There’s one thing I know that Julius doesn’t. There’s something that gives me hope.

  “Dinner’s at five.” He releases my chin.

  His sharp gaze disappears under the aviator sunglasses he slides over the bridge of his nose. I watch him leave, and wait until he’s rounded the corner to the house.

  Only when he’s completely out of sight, I unwind the newspaper. He gives me many gifts, and on Fridays it’s always this. A weekly recap of a world moving along without me. It’s been rolled for too long and tries to curl back in on itself. I scan the headlines, flicking through the features and articles. Royals got married. A celebrity named their baby something that’ll plague the poor kid for the rest of eternity. Politicians broke election promises and sports happened. I circle back through the paper, trying to suck in this one taste of the outside world I ever get.

  I scan one more time, pausing over my horoscope. “Do you really require the messages your forecast reveals? You have all the answers the cosmos can provide. Connect with your intuitive—”

  I sigh and turn the page. What happened to the days when I could rely on the little strip in the back of the paper to tell me something useful, or at least hopeful—like to expect a tall dark stranger to sweep me off my feet? Please bring back that astrologer now. As much as I like my feet rooted in the dirt, I’ve spent the last three years praying for the stranger.

  For anything.

  Some small clue.

  Now not even my fortune can be bothered pretending to reveal a sign. I close the paper, and fold it in half. Run my finger over the date.

  The date...

  My finger stills. I can’t move it from the number. I don’t want to see. Math was never my subject but I get this math right away.

  I drag my finger aside.

  One month.

  I have exactly one month left until the first of October. The ticking in my head clicks louder than his watch had.

  I’m almost out of time.

  * * *

  For a man with a fully staffed private island, it’s surprising the things Julius insists on doing himself. He likes to cook. More specifically, he likes to barbecue. Fat hisses on the grill. My tongue moistens despite myself. The empty plate in front of me seems bigger, somehow more empty. No one does meat like Julius.

  He’s a master of flesh.

  I’ve seen him butcher a calf himself. Make his own sausage, hang and cure charcuterie. I’ve watched him massage salt into a whole pig with his hands—impale lambs for the spit.

  Today his table is full. So the barbecue will be too.

  Unfortunately, I know all the faces crowding the twelve-seat outdoor setting. None of them are ones I care to see. Next to me, Dan pops the lid on a beer. His third. Don’t
know why he bothers, it’s nonalcoholic. Not that Dan doesn’t enjoy his drink. I’ve seen the man stumble back to the table with piss on his jeans when he’s “off duty,” which isn’t often. Even off duty, Julius’s Men are always Julius’s Men.

  And Julius likes his men and his muscle sober.

  That’s Dan—muscle.

  I glance at him briefly. He’s so big it’s heinous. Yet, for a guy who occasionally pisses on himself, I’ve seen those thick arms move quick enough to shoot a glass out of a person’s hands as they’re drinking. Unlike Julius, this snake doesn’t cover its scales. He wears jeans, and T-shirts that leave enough skin bare to let everyone know exactly how much time he’s done. Some days, if he’s had to stay over unexpectedly, when he lifts his arm to take a swig of his nonalcoholic beer, the odor alone is enough to knock a person dead.

  No disguises, he’s a thug.

  Julius lifts a T-bone with the prongs of his meat fork, then drops it onto the grill. A wave of smoke drifts over us. I wave my hand in front of my face, then reach for a glass of orange juice. The tang cleanses my palate. Sweet, and full of pulp I have to chew. Fresh-squeezed by Pa, the elderly man sitting two seats from me on the left. The seat between Pa and me remains empty. I set the juice next to the glass of wine beside my plate, untouched as always.

  “Potato?” Dan hands me the stainless-steel bowl filled to the brim with potato salad. I take the bowl but pass it past Pa, who I know full well doesn’t believe in mayonnaise, to Leo.

  Leo, Julian’s younger muscle, takes the potato salad without looking. He knows his eyes don’t belong on me. All of them do.

  Almost all of them.

  Julius joins us at the table with a platter full of meat. He serves his guests first. Jack Connelly and his five “brothers.” Then me. He lays a steak on my plate. Rib eye. Meat of the day is T-bone, but I have rib eye. My favorite, cooked medium how I like it. He’s never asked me to choose a cut, never asked me how well I prefer meat cooked, but he knows.

  He had my tastes figured out in the first month. I can’t begin to think what he’s learned about me in three years.

  “Thank you,” I say.

  I give him only detached politeness. Formality. While he figures out my personal tastes, I figure out how little I can give him before he feels the need to reel me closer.