The Skull King Read online

  Lucian split his bacon with me and set a pancake on the extra plate next to my breakfast. Like nothing had happened, he sipped his coffee and pulled out his phone from his pocket. He set it on the table beside him.

  I actually preferred his coldness to his generosity. The nicer he was to me, the clingier he became. Now when we had sex, I would have to force myself not to think about Balto to get through it. I got too wet, and Lucian assumed that wetness was all for him.

  Couldn’t be more wrong.

  Now this man paid attention to me, wanted me to share his bed with him more often, and didn’t mind if I gained a few pounds because he saw me as more than a piece of ass.

  “I’ll be gone until Tuesday,” Lucian said. “I have a meeting in Turkey.”

  Good. That gave me a long vacation. I’d be fucking Balto’s brains out since I wouldn’t see him for another week.

  “Come with me.” He held his fork as he stared at me, expecting my eyes to light up with joy.

  Following him around at his meetings and being eye candy sounded terrible. I would be bored out of my mind, and I would have to witness criminal activities happening right under my nose. I knew Lucian was a terrible criminal with little value for human life, and if I thought about it too deeply, it only terrified me. He didn’t care about killing innocent people, and eventually, someone would want to kill him. I’d be one of the first people to get a bullet in the back of the head.

  At least this hell would be over.

  “I’ve never been to Turkey.” I couldn’t shut him down right away, and I couldn’t lie and say I was sick either. If Maria told him I was out every night while I claimed to have a cold, that would be a red flag. I had to play games.

  “It’s beautiful. You would like it.”

  “I already live in Italy—and there’s no place more beautiful.”

  “No. But it’s comparable.”

  “And what will I do while you work?”

  He took a few bites of his food, his hair as oily as ever. I hated running my fingers through it because they became sticky. It wasn’t sexy at all, not like Balto’s short hair. He didn’t do anything to it, and his carelessness only made him sexier. He was gorgeous without doing a single thing to enhance his appearance. Lucian finished chewing before he answered. “Lie by the pool. Read. Nothing that you don’t do here.”

  “Then why don’t I just stay here?”

  “Because you can’t keep my bed warm at night if you’re here.”

  I masked my disappointment with a very insincere smile. He had prostitutes to entertain him while he was away, and if he preferred me to them, then I was in deeper trouble. I looked forward to the weekends he was away because it seemed like I had my old life back, that I could spend time with my brothers and explore the city without my husband looking over my shoulder. And I could watch porn on my laptop every night and pretend he didn’t exist at all. “True. But I can also distract you all day while you’re working. And when a man brings his wife…it’s not exactly a power statement.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” He set down his fork.

  “You bring your wife to dinners and events. But when it comes to work…that’s work. You show off your personal life, and it becomes a liability. If anyone wants to be your enemy, they’ll know I mean something to you. I’ll be the first causality.”

  “Beautiful.” His eyes fell in sadness. “I would never let anything happen to you.”

  “You never know. They could wait until you’re on your next business trip and then make their move. You’ll be too far away.”

  “My men will take care of you.”

  I shrugged. “I just think it’s easier if I’m not in the picture. I don’t want anyone to think I’m a way to get to you. If you really want me to come, I’ll be there. But if someone were to capture me and torture me…I don’t think I’d be strong enough to keep my mouth shut. Maybe I’m being paranoid, but those are the things I worry about.” I pulled out every excuse from my ass, anything that would let me stay in Florence while he was away. There was only one place I wanted to be while he was gone—in Balto’s bed. I wanted that heavy, sweaty man on top of me all night long. I didn’t want the condom to separate us. I wanted to feel his come inside me. Anytime Lucian released, I pictured Balto instead. It made me crave the real thing.

  Balto bought my bullshit. “Alright. But the two of us will have to take a trip soon. Maybe in the fall when the tourists return home.”

  “Yes, that would be nice.” No, that would be terrible. Just spending the day with him in Siena was too much. Now I feared he wasn’t screwing whores on these business trips anymore. He seemed horny the second he came home, like he couldn’t fuck me quick enough because his dick had been dry for too long.

  “How about Mykonos?”

  I’d never been to Greece. “That sounds lovely.”

  “We’ll take my yacht and stay there for a while.”

  “Quite a vacation.”

  He smiled whenever he thought I was impressed by him. “I’ll plan it out.”

  “Sounds good.”

  He turned back to his breakfast then scrolled through emails on his phone.

  I took a bite of the pancake, finally getting a carb into my system. But the taste was bitter because of my situation with Lucian. My husband actually liked me, actually wanted me. And this was entirely Balto’s fault.

  If only I hadn’t eye-fucked him in that bar.

  If I hadn’t sucked that olive into my mouth like it was one of his balls.

  If I hadn’t fucked his enormous cock and screamed at the top of my lungs.

  15

  Balto

  I sat on the couch with Heath beside me. We were in his living room because I’d stopped by for a visit. The biggest commonality my brother and I shared was our love of booze. We skipped the beer and went straight to the good stuff—scotch, gin, vodka, and rum.

  Our glasses were on the coffee table while the football game was on the TV.

  “How’d it go with Purple Dress?” I asked, my eyes on the screen without really watching it.

  “Very good,” he said with a grin. “She could barely walk the next day.”

  “She didn’t have a good time, but at least you did.”

  “What are you talking about?” He turned to me, leaning against the cushion of the couch. “A woman wants to be sore the next day. That’s how she knows she got fucked right. And she was here all night long…and didn’t want to leave the next morning.”

  “Then you must still be good in bed because you’re definitely poor company.”

  “I am definitely poor company—but I know how to fuck. It’s something you’re born with sometimes.”

  No, I didn’t know how to fuck when I was two. It was decades of experience that made me understand a woman’s body, all of her hidden buttons and the correct pressure it took to ignite them. Each woman was unique, but at their core, they were all the same. Same was true of Cassini, except she was a woman on a spiritual journey as she reconnected with her sexuality.

  I hadn’t heard from her since I sent that dirty picture. I’d better hear from her soon. Otherwise, I would track her down and shoot her husband between the eyes for hogging her too much.

  Knowing she was sleeping with someone else during the week before she came to me should bother me, but it didn’t. She didn’t want to be with him, only submitted because she had to. And every time she opened her legs for him, she was thinking of me. I was just her dirty secret, the man bedding another man’s wife because I didn’t give damn. I got to have all the fun, and he got to play the fool. He would find out eventually because these things never stayed a secret, and I looked forward to the day he confronted me.

  We’d have a good time.

  My phone rang, and I pulled it out of my pocket—to see the number I’d been hoping to see.

  Cassini.

  I took the call and stepped away from the couch. “Took you long enough, baby.”

 
; “He took forever to leave.” She sighed into the phone. “Tried to convince me to come with him to Turkey. Had to make an excuse to get out of it.”

  “Does he usually take you along to places?”

  “No…but he’s becoming more obsessed with me.”

  “Can’t blame him.” I stood next to the dining room table and looked out the window. The sun was going down earlier because the end of summer was approaching. I looked at the mixture of colors along the skyline while the phone stayed pressed to my ear.

  “I miss his indifference. I’m afraid he’s going to forget his whores and focus on me…and that really will be torture.”

  “Then you need to stop thinking about me when you fuck him.”

  “Easier said than done.” Her deep voice was sexy, even when she was irritated and talking about screwing her husband. “You’re the only thing that makes it bearable.”

  I grinned at the compliment to my ego. “Come over.”

  “I was planning on it—if you don’t already have plans.”

  I spent most of my nights at the Underground and my afternoons keeping all my clients in line. For a man in charge, I worked a lot. I handled everything, a lot of situations that people knew nothing about. But that was the sign of a great leader—he made everything look easy. “For you, I’m free.”

  “I’m sure I’m sharing you…so I don’t want to overstep my boundary.”

  I’d rather she not know she was the only woman in my bed. Might make her draw the wrong conclusions. Might make her think she actually meant something to me when she didn’t mean anything. “Get your ass over here.” I hung up.

  Heath didn’t turn around to look at me. He continued to face the TV with his glass in his hand. “Your mistress?”

  I came back to the couch and finished my gin. No way I was letting that go to waste.

  Heath continued to stare at me. “We talk about Purple Dress but not this woman?”

  I changed the subject. “What’s her name, anyway?”

  “I don’t give a shit. What’s yours?”

  I set down my empty glass. “Doesn’t matter.”

  “You seem smitten with her.”

  “She’s gorgeous.”

  “They’re all gorgeous. Any decent woman with a wet pussy is gorgeous to me.”

  “Well, I haven’t been in prison for six months, so my standards are a bit higher.”

  “Pussy is pussy. What’s the point of standards? It doesn’t matter how hot a woman is when she’s giving head. She’s either good or not good. Period.”

  I didn’t have a lot of time on my hands, and since I was picky about how I spent my free time, I wanted to be selective. I wanted a woman who really made my back tighten. I’d spent my twenties fucking anything that moved, but I was too old for that shit. If I really needed a lay and I was in a hurry, I just dropped a few thousand euros for the best call girl in the city.

  “You gonna tell me her name or what?”

  “Stay away from her. Come to my floor, and I’ll slit your throat.” Whether we were blood-related or not, I would kill anyone who crossed my boundaries.

  He grinned. “Afraid I’ll take her away from you? A threesome with twins might turn her on.”

  I only shot him a glare in response.

  “Or maybe when you run out of gas, I could finish her off.”

  I slammed the bottle of vodka on the table so it turned into shards. “I’ll shove this up your ass and bleed you from the inside out.”

  Heath only looked amused. “You’re awfully possessive of a woman who already belongs to someone else.”

  “She doesn’t belong to him. She’s just his prisoner.”

  “Prisoner, huh?” he asked. “He bought her from the Underground?”

  If she had been on sale at the Underground, I would have bought her for myself. “No. I don’t know the full story, but he was going to execute her boyfriend. The only way she could save him was by agreeing to marry him. Her boyfriend married someone else and has a kid. But she’s stuck.”

  “Wow…what a fucking asshole.”

  “Which one?” I set the shattered bottle on the table so he could clean it up later.

  “Both. But definitely the boyfriend.”

  I wouldn’t mind shoving that broken bottle down his throat and watching him bleed to death. It was despicable that he’d allowed that to happen, but more despicable that he’d moved on so quickly afterward. Now she was serving a life sentence for falling for a man who never deserved her.

  “The husband was just taking advantage of a good situation. Can’t say I blame him.”

  “I disagree. A lifetime commitment is harsh for a woman who was just trying to save someone else.”

  He shrugged. “If this woman is as beautiful as I suspect she is, it doesn’t surprise me that a man would play dirty to keep her. And you sell women at the Underground, so I’m surprised you would say that.”

  “I don’t sell them. It’s been a tradition long before I came into the picture.”

  “You’re the face of the Skull Kings—so you’re responsible for everything. You can’t pick and choose, man.”

  The auction continued to exist because it was so lucrative. It’d been happening for decades, since I was a child. It was easy money, and it was untouchable. Our men snatched the women, then sold them off like livestock. It was one of the commodities the Skull Kings were best known for. Even if I wanted to reject it, they would fight me every step of the way—not that I cared to stop it. There were a lot of terrible things out there, and trafficking was only one of them. It would exist until there were no humans left on the earth.

  “So you really aren’t going to tell me her name?”

  “You aren’t going to meet her, so what’s the point?”

  “You want me to keep calling her your mistress?” he asked, his eyebrow raised. “Or I can think of a few nicknames that would be more suitable—”

  “Cassini.” My brother would start with the most disgusting names and only make them dirtier.

  “Cassini…pretty.”

  It was a sexy name on the tip of my tongue. Women had such ordinary names that it seemed like I’d already said most of them in bed. But I definitely hadn’t said the name Cassini ever before. And it was a name I would never forget.

  “You aren’t going to introduce her to your twin?”

  “No.”

  “Come on, we’re family.”

  “Doesn’t matter. She’s just some woman I’m sleeping with.”

  “Then you shouldn’t care about introducing me.” He waggled his eyebrows. “I want to match the name Cassini to a face.”

  I rose from the couch and left my glass and the bottle shards behind. “Mind your own business or find a new place to live.” I walked to the elevator, my breath smelling like all the booze I’d just inhaled.

  “Maybe I could move in with Cassini. Getting rid of her husband should be easy.”

  I hit the button on the panel.

  “Who’s her husband anyway?”

  “No idea. She won’t tell me.”

  “He’s got to be rich and powerful to keep her on a leash.”

  He had guards all over his complex and people watching her when he was gone, so he definitely ran some kind of successful and illegal business. “Not more rich and powerful than me.”

  “Then maybe you should get her off that leash.” He stood up and faced me from behind the couch.

  I stepped inside the elevator and waited for the doors to close. “She’s not my problem.”

  He grinned. “Sure…”

  16

  Balto

  I watched her black Bugatti pull into my compound and park in the designated spot where it couldn’t be seen from the gate. The men stood back with their guns lowered because they’d been expecting her.

  I waited for her in the entryway, my hands in my pockets so I wouldn’t seem too eager. Unfortunately, Heath probably had looked out the front window to check to see who had come
onto the property—and he would see how beautiful she was when she stepped out of the car.

  She was definitely beautiful—in a tight black dress with heels.

  I’d only seen her in black—and it was definitely her color.

  With her hair in slight curls, that same red lipstick on her mouth, and confidence in her step, she was every inch of the woman that’d become my dick’s obsession. Just looking at her now made him hard in my jeans.

  My men were smart enough not to stare—because I would take one of their guns and execute them all.

  The sound of her heels grew louder as she approached me, the constant tap matching the sway of her hips. Her eyes settled on me, a distant spark that showed how much she’d looked forward to seeing me again. A slow smile spread across her lips, the happiness filling her eyes, and when she reached me, she rose on her tiptoes, cupped the back of my head, and kissed me.

  Kissed me like she owned me.

  My hand moved under her hair along her neck, and I pulled her closer to me, kissing her like I was the only man between her legs. My fingers held on to her as my arm wrapped around her slender waist. I squeezed her against me as my lips took her softly, hinting at all the things I planned to do to her once we got upstairs.

  It’d been five days and five nights since I’d had her last.

  That asshole got to enjoy her, while my dick had to enjoy my hand.

  But now, she was mine again—even if it was just for a few hours.

  With my arm still around her waist, I guided her inside the elevator and to my floor.

  She turned into me and kissed my neck as we rose the four floors, like waiting a full minute was just too long. Her lips moved to my ear, and she kissed my earlobe. “I liked your picture…”

  The one where my come dripped down my dick like a volcanic explosion had just taken place. I’d never jerked off so fast, but that picture she sent drove me wild. Nothing had ever turned me on so quickly.

  Her lips caressed my ear as she spoke. “Now I want to taste you…”

  The elevator doors opened to my floor, but I didn’t step into the living room. I was momentarily paralyzed by what she’d just said—and how much she meant it. I found my footing and escorted her inside.