Empire of Lust: An Enemies with Benefits Romance

My attempts to prevent myself from breaching the rage category are proving to be an astounding failure.

I pace the length of the room where Aspen lies on the bed like a broken beauty.

I’ve opened and closed my Zippo so many times and with zero gentleness that I’m surprised the thing doesn’t break.

The light coming from the window forces me to stop and stare out at the garden and the multicolored leaves falling to their death.

Fuck. I’ve been at this the entire night.

Pacing, punching a wall—or two—and contemplating the best way to commit murder.

I shouldn’t.

Because as my week-old thoughts stated, I don’t fucking commit violence for women. There’s only one reason for violence—release. For me, myself, and my dick.

And yet, there’s always that error in the matrix. The exception to the rules. The fish in the Dead Sea.

It all happened when I came back from my evening jog, suppressing the need to commit arson on Susan’s house, and saw Aspen hobbling by the front gate in a state that would give zombies a run for their money.

Since then, I haven’t thought about my stepmother’s ruin or her provocations in court yesterday about how weak my mother was.

She likes to remind me why I rejected the very idea of growing up into a replica of my mother.

Liliana Shaw was as delicate as her name, and while I was human enough to love my mother, I knew early on that she was the type to be protected, never the type to protect others.

She was the type to be treated with kid gloves, flower-scented like her favorite perfume.

And because fucking Susan’s words ring a bell every damn time I see her, I usually put myself on self-exhaustion mode until I collapse by the end of the day.

It’s not a secret that I become neurotic, high-functioning, and a special flavor of dick whenever I meet the plastic monster in court.

Couple that with a teenage-level sexual frustration, and by the time I got home, I wasn’t to be approached by any human who valued their life, property, and dignity.

So imagine my surprise when the woman behind said frustration was playing an apocalypse survivor by my front gate.

The doctor, a family one who’s always just a call away, showed up to examine her last night and said she was physically assaulted.

“No shit, Sherlock. I can see that,” I told Dr. Werner, running a hand through my hair and being colossally irritable due to two facts.

One. Aspen was beaten.

Two. The doctor was touching her.

Maybe the family doctor needs to be a woman.

But even that option didn’t sit very comfortably at the base of my revolted stomach.

“Was she sexually assaulted?” I asked, my chest squeezing for the first time since…Gwen fell from her bike and hit her knee when she was fucking ten.

“Nothing indicates that from the outside, but I can’t tell for certain until she wakes up and gives me permission to examine her.”

“At least take care of her injuries.”

“Can you step out?”

“Why do you need me to step out for that? You’ll do that while I’m here.”

“Mr. Shaw, I understand your distress, but from what I’ve gathered, you’re not next of kin to Ms. Leblanc and, therefore, shouldn’t be present during any medical examinations.”

“I’ve decided that I will be here. Now, do your job or I’ll get you blacklisted from the city.”

The threat was enough to propel him to action, which in turn made me burn hotter than the room’s temperature. And while he confirmed the absence of serious injuries, I was still two seconds away from bashing his head against the nearest object and cutting off the gloved fingers he clinically examined her with.

There’s no rhyme or reason to the raging possessiveness I feel toward this woman. A possessiveness that up to now, I’ve only held toward the wellbeing of my legacy, Gwen, and the need for Susan’s inevitable destruction.

And the worst part? This feeling is completely different from all of the above, irrevocably illogical, and it burns like acid.

Dr. Werner left after I opted to dress her wounds myself and kicked him out. If he’d touched her one more time, he’d be floating in the pool as we speak. Besides, I’ve been constantly getting cut, bruised, and bloodied in one way or another since I was a teenager, so the task wasn’t foreign.

I put ointment on Aspen’s skin, covering the galaxy of bruises on her face and shoulder and a slight red mark on her upper chest. Not to mention the black eye that was the size of City Hall and just as grim.

That was ten hours ago.

Ten hours of pacing, then watching surveillance camera footage of her movements after I called in favors with detectives to track her from when she left her apartment.

I didn’t miss that Mateo entered her building minutes before she went out dressed in casual clothes. Then she went into a boutique and came out empty-handed but with a girlish smile. The assault happened after she wandered into a non-surveilled alley, because five minutes later, she limped out, hugging a wall, and sporting a map of bruises.

The only suspicious thing I noticed was a black van with tinted windows that was caught by a ring door camera near that location. It kept away from the surveillance cameras like a pro, so it captured no license plate and definitely no faces.

It could have been Mateo’s men, for all I know, but I already made sure they were still acting as their boss’s watchdogs during the time that she was being beaten.

My gaze fixates on her form—sleeping, her brows knit, her skin marked in a grotesque way.

I know how her fair flesh looks when bitten, sucked on, and pleasurably sated. I remember putting all those marks and more on her twenty-one years ago and leaving a path with my teeth, tongue, and lips.

And although she kept that damn mask on, I recall the feeling, the possessiveness, and the illogical urge to do it all over again.

But that image and this one are as opposite as day and night. While Dr. Werner assured me the injuries are superficial and will heal, it still sits fucking wrong with me.

From the part of her being followed, to how she was beaten, and eventually, to how she ended up here.

That last tidbit fills me with an emotion that I vehemently refuse to put a name to.

A moan rips from her lips and it resembles a dying person’s last plea for mercy.

This woman is stronger than the universe and its aliens, a fact that has always infuriated me yet fascinated me in equal measure, so to see her battered is weird.

Forget weird.

It’s rage-inducing in a way that I’ve never experienced before.

She shifts in her sleep, blinks her non-swollen eye once…twice, and then she springs up into a sitting position, immediately staring down at her flimsy cotton dress.

I threw away the sweater—it was dirty, bloody and had a hole the shape of my fist in it.

The dress is bloody, too, but the chances of removing it and remaining sane were below zero. So I left it intact.

“Kingsley,” she whispers, then winces, probably due to the double size of her lips and the cut.

“Morning, sunshine,” I say with no warmth whatsoever, flipping my Zippo open. “Now that you’re out of your Sleeping Beauty phase, mind telling me what, and I can’t stress this enough, the fuck happened?”

“I…” She blinks the mucus that’s gathered in her eyes, despite my attention to cleaning the shit out of those fuckers, then inspects her surroundings. “Wait…where am I?”

“In my house, previously known as Black Valley Manor before I sued the state to have the liberty of stripping the pretentious name and won, obviously. You showed up here with bruises the size of Texas, remember?”

She opens her swollen lips, closes them, and opens them again in a poor imitation of a goldfish. “I…didn’t mean to come here.”

With crab-like movements, she attempts to stand, winces, then falls back with the grace of a broken feather. But since she’s more stubborn than an Italian-made leather shoe, she attempts to stand again.

This time, I push her back down with a firm yet gentle hand. “You’re not in a position to sit, let alone stand, so unless you plan to bleed on my floor and personally scrub it, stay the fuck down.”

“What a charmer.” She sucks in a pained breath.

“Charming you is the last thing that I’m after, and I don’t give jack shit whether you meant to come here or not. You did anyway, and you still didn’t answer my question.”

She looks at my hand that’s casually resting on her shoulder. Again, not hard, so as not to hurt her, but it’s firm enough to let her know there will be no escaping my hold.

“Do you mind?” she croaks.

“Not at all.” I sit beside her without removing my hand and she releases a sound that resembles an injured animal’s growl.

She doesn’t put up a fight, though, probably in too much pain to care. She stares at the opposite wall, at paintings done by breaking black glass, because chaos is the only form of beauty I approve of. “I was attacked.”

“I have enough deduction skills to figure that out on my own. Who, where, why, and how are the questions I’d like the answers to.”

“I don’t know.” She swallows and winces.

“Were you sexually assaulted?”

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

She glares at me with her one good eye. “What do you mean am I sure?”

“No need to get defensive. I’m only looking at it from all angles here to form a mental picture.”

“What’s there to form about no, I wasn’t sexually assaulted?”

“The fact that you could’ve lost consciousness.”

“I didn’t. Drop it.”

“Fine. Did you recognize who did it?”

“No. Could have been anyone.”

“You have that many enemies, huh?”

She glares at me with her one good eye and it holds more punch than the seven billion pairs of them scattered around the earth. “You’re one to know, considering your track record.”

“Let’s not go down the throwing jabs route, because I’ll crush you easily and you’re in no state to verbally spar with me until you lose your breath. Now, let’s make our time useful and narrow it down to the known suspects. Who might have a beef with you lately, aside from me and your psycho father?”

Her eye widens and her lips tremble.

Fuck.

“It’s your father?” I ask, adding a needless question mark.

“I…don’t know.”

“Oh, but you do know. It’s obvious.”

She avoids my gaze again, this time pulling the sheet over her face and knocking away my hand in the process. “Maybe it’s you, asshole.”

I slide the sheet down, resisting the urge to yank it and possibly hurt her in the process. If softness and I had a one-on-one meeting, I would drive her to wrap a rope around her fragile neck. But I still find myself trying not to cause Aspen more discomfort.

“I’m many things, but a woman-beater is not on the list. My battles with you are exclusively mental with no physical violence involved—unless they’re sexual in nature, of course. Besides, if you really believed I hurt you, would you have come to me, of all people?”

“I meant to go to Nate,” she mumbles under her breath and I nearly forget why I shouldn’t be wrapping my fingers around her throat and choking the shit out of her.

“And yet, you’re here because you had nowhere else to go, as you so eloquently told me, remember? Such a lonely little thing.”

Her lips part, then close before she hisses, “Fuck you.”

“Gladly. But we need to wait for the bruises to heal because this scene is oddly similar to a snuff movie and I’m not a fan.”

“You’ll be a fan of my tongue when it’s healed enough to chew you out. Or my teeth when I bite your dick off, asshole.”

I chuckle and that takes her aback since she stares at me as if I’ve grown a third red horn.

Fuck me.

Or her.

I don’t care which at this point.

Well, at least she’s back.

I reach to the bedside table and point at a bowl of oatmeal that’s been kept in a heated container. I had my housekeeper, Martha, make it and three flavors of herbal tea for her.

“Eat this, then take the painkillers and rest. If you need anything, ask Martha and she’ll get it for you.”

“I don’t eat breakfast. Besides, why are you talking as if I’m staying here? I’m going to work.”

“You’ll eat breakfast today, and there’s no way in fuck you’re going to the firm looking like a poor imitation of a zombie.”

“But I have meetings!”

“That your assistant will reschedule.”

“But…”

“That’s final, Aspen. No work in your state. Don’t be a baby.”

“I’m not a baby.”

“You’re throwing a tantrum like one.”

“I just want to do my job!”

“And as your boss, I’m putting you on a vacation. Mandatory, not optional.”

And with that, I leave the room, her frustrated groan the last thing I hear before I close the door. I remain there for a few minutes, then I steal a peek inside. The stubborn little shit loses the battle and falls back to sleep.

Martha, a kind middle-aged woman with a plump figure, who helped me raise Gwen, hands me my briefcase. “Any special instructions?”

“Give her food, some of Gwen’s clothes, and assist her in showering if she needs to. She’s prideful and won’t ask for help, so offer it instead. Don’t let her out under any circumstances. You’re allowed to use any methods necessary to ensure that—locking her inside is one of them.”

She nods and points at a phone that’s dancing on the table. “That one has been vibrating for a few hours.”

Aspen’s.

I tossed it and her wallet somewhere in the entrance when I carried her inside and haven’t checked it since. Correction. I haven’t left her side since, except when Martha came along and I took a quick shower and changed my clothes.

Grabbing the surprisingly intact phone, I find the name “My Ride or Die” surrounded by ten hearts, flashing on the screen.

No kidding. Fucking ten sparkly red hearts.

Logically, I know Aspen isn’t the heart type of person and would rather be eaten by a shark than be affectionate. It’s one of the few traits we have in common.

Illogically, however, the thought that she has a man in her life who’s the exception to her no-emotions rule burns in my veins like cheap whiskey.

I answer it, fully intending to wield my dick card in a glamorous swing.

The shrill voice that greets me from the other end puts a not-so-glamorous halt to my plan. “Aspennnn! Where have you been? I’ve been calling you for hours and seriously contemplated going to the police and shit. And that would be for two different reasons. Your disappearance and Mateo’s one thousand percent chances of committing mass murder. He knows about the jerk Della Roma hitting me, and his battery charges will look like a joke in front of his ‘I’ll murder him and his entire family’ charges. I tried stopping him and keeping him with me, but he left first thing this morning while I was asleep.”

“You should’ve tried harder then. Now, I have to clean up your mess.”

There’s a long pause on the other end before who I’m sure is Caroline Luciano whispers, “Kingsley?”

“The one and only.”

“Hi! I’m Caroline.”

“No shit. I assume you’re the one with enough audacity to save her name as My Ride or Die with a disgusting amount of hearts.”

“Shhh. Don’t tell Aspen.” Her humor disappears. “Wait, she didn’t change it back? Where is she and what have you done to her?”

“She’s hurt and asleep. Don’t bother her until tomorrow.”

“What—”

I hang up before she can finish her sentence and head out with plans for my favorite dish.

Revenge.