All Hail Read online

  I can’t kill him.

  He blows out a breath and tips his head back to look up at the ceiling. I think he’s seen the resolve in my face and assumed I’ve prepared myself to stab him through the heart. He obviously doesn’t know me because there’s no way I’d kill my family and he got our votes.

  Killing him would be a betrayal of what we’ve built and I won’t do it just to get out of being forced to have sex with him.

  There’s still a choice here and I’m making it.

  We’re obviously taking too long to make a move because the Jackal pushes off from the far wall and stalks over to where I’m tied to the chair, lifting a knife and slicing the straps of my camisole cleanly until the fabric falls away from my chest.

  I’m wearing a bralette underneath so there’s barely anything covering me, my nipples peeking through the black lace. Aodhan’s eyes stay firmly away from me and instead he glares at the Jackal like he can kill him with the pure loathing he’s throwing at him instead.

  I’ve been tormented by monsters my entire life, so I know exactly what to do.

  I know how to slow down my heartbeat, to keep my breaths long and even and slow, and I know exactly how to keep my face blank.

  There’s a reason I became the ice queen that Illi always calls me, Senior and Joey both forced me to learn to give away nothing for them to use against Ash. Everything I do is to protect him, it’s always been that way, and for once I’m thankful for that.

  But that doesn’t mean I don’t want Senior dead still.

  He deserves to die screaming, not me and definitely not Aodhan.

  “How boring, you’re going to just kill him then? I should have known the little Beaumont cunt would happily slit his throat to save her own. You’d do the same to the Wolf, wouldn’t you? You told my little Starbright that you love her and want to protect her but you’re lying. Rich cunts like you don’t care about Mounty sluts like her.”

  Ah.

  So now she’s a slut because she’s fucked someone who isn’t him? Typical male bullshit. It’s pathetic really, totally pathetic that he thinks and acts so predictably while thinking he’s some sort of criminal genius.

  He leans down so we’re face-to-face, his breath fanning out over my cheek until I want to gag but my poker face is unmatched.

  He lifts the necklace away from my chest, the little blue diamond in the cage that Lips had given me for Christmas and his lip curls at the sight of it. His fists tightens around it before he yanks it hard, snapping the chain, and of everything that has happened so far, this might be the thing that breaks me.

  He slips the broken necklace into his pocket and then he slices the straps of my bralette until my entire chest is bared. I stare at Aodhan’s face, unblinking and unfeeling, and he keeps his eyes unwaveringly on the Jackal. It’s like we’ve come to some agreement to get through this, that I’ll ignore it all and he’ll seethe at the Jackal until he can kill him for doing this to us both.

  I just need to hold out until Ash and Lips find me.

  I won’t think about Atticus because my heart is still too raw over him and if I let his face enter my mind, I’ll break open. I never think about him when I need to stay blank.

  The Jackal chuckles but I keep my eyes steady on Aodhan. “O’Cronin doesn’t seem to like you all that much, does he? Fuck, he doesn’t even want to look at all of this skin you’re showing. How does that feel? To know that you might be the richest little cunt in all of the country but some gutter trash Mounty doesn’t want to fuck you. How about this, little Beaumont? How about you fuck him, or I fuck you? Either way, someone is being fucked tonight.”

  Aodhan’s eyes finally snap to mine but I look away almost immediately, finally looking up at the Jackal. “I guess you’ll have to untie me then, won’t you, because I can’t fuck anyone while I’m strapped to a chair.”

  A smirk stretches across his lips and from the corner of my eyes I see Aodhan trying to fight against the restraints again. We both ignore him.

  “And here I was thinking you were too prim and proper to get the job done. I was hoping that either way you’d be sobbing on someone’s cock. It’s not fun if you’re enjoying it too.”

  I tip my head back so I’m not looking up to him, smirking back at him because I’ve been trained by Lips and I know exactly how to manipulate this man. “If you want a show, then untie me.”

  He thinks he’s calling my bluff, it’s clear when he smiles at me and leans down until our lips are nearly touching. “Are you sure you don’t want me to fuck you? Because if I take these ropes off and you try to attack me, I’ll slit your throat and then fuck the wound. Either way I’ll enjoy it, I guess you just need to pick your poison.”

  I stare him down. I choose my words just as carefully as I always do but I’m also very aware that he’s an unstable psychopath and this all could be for nothing.

  Just hold out for my family to come for me.

  “I’ll fuck Aodhan. If you need someone to be unwilling here then it’s not going to be me.”

  He leans forward and his lips touch mine as he slices the ropes binding my hands together. I stop breathing altogether while I run through every option I have to fight him off if he’s the one who’s actually bluffing here.

  Aodhan grunts as he struggles but I keep my eyes on the Jackal, not once wavering away from the challenge there.

  A slow smirk stretches across his lips and his hand snaps out to grab my jaw in a bruising grip. “Maybe you’re more my type than I thought, Beaumont. Maybe I’ll fuck you raw after you’re done with O’Cronin.”

  My heart clenches in my chest.

  There’s a loud bang and then the ground rumbles underneath us, rubble and sand falling from the ceiling like it’s about to cave in on us. I stumble a little and fight to hold back the wince at the pain shooting up my legs from my feet but it’s a relief to get some distance from my captor.

  The Jackal curses viciously under his breath and then stalks over to open the door. There’re guards waiting there and both of them smirk at the sight of me but I shift my eyes over to look back at Aodhan. I’d almost forgotten that I’m naked from the waist up but I don’t move to cover myself, no matter how badly I want to.

  I can’t show weakness right now.

  “Get me the collar.”

  My eyes snap back over to the Jackal.

  There is absolutely no fucking way I’m letting that man put a collar on me.

  Relief floods through my veins when the Jackal’s man walks over to Aodhan, a thick black strap of leather dangling from his hands, and I take a deep breath. I feel just a little guilty for being glad it’s not me being collared but I’m sure I’m the only one with a history that makes it abhorrent.

  My father collars women.

  Aodhan sneers at the guy and the Jackal chuckles at him. “Wanna know what it does, Stag?”

  His words drip with sarcasm and I swear I could choke on the male bullshit in the room. Then there’s the crackling sound of an electric current and the man holding the collar lets out a yell, his body jerking and falling to the ground. He jerks there for a few seconds and then stops.

  He doesn’t move again.

  Aodhan meets my eye from across the room, my heart in my throat. There’s no way out of this.

  The Jackal smirks as he stoops down to grab the strap, buckling it around Aodhan’s throat and pulling it tight so that it’s pressing into his skin firmly. We’ll be lucky if he doesn’t pass out before our little show is over.

  The Jackal flicks open his cupboard of horrors and pulls out a camera, setting it up and I try to discreetly shake out my hands where he can’t see to stop them from trembling.

  “I’ll be watching. If you don’t fuck him, I’ll kill him. If you try to escape or take the collar off, I’ll kill him. And Beaumont if you enjoy it too much, I’ll fucking kill him.”

  I refuse to acknowledge him or the snickering men still standing with him. I can’t look at the dead guy either because my m
ind will just break and I need to be strong right now to get through this. The door swings shut behind him and I take a deep breath.

  I can do this, right?

  Of course, I can.

  If Lips can run through a forest with a bullet wound in her shoulder and a crazed Irish shooter chasing her, I can fuck Aodhan to save his life.

  I’ll just repeat that mantra in my head until I get through this because when I finally glance over at Aodhan the Jackal is right, he doesn’t look at all willing and that means that technically I’ll be the predator here.

  “Don’t even think about it, Beaumont. The explosion means the cavalry's here so just sit down and wait it out.”

  I might not be able to look at it but I can gesture down to the dead body. “I know you’re not blind but are you suicidal? I think we both know that the Jackal won’t hesitate in killing you here and I don’t like to lose.”

  My voice sounds far more confident than I feel but I’m an expert at faking it. There’s a clear path from where I’m standing to where Aodhan is strapped to the chair so I can close my eyes and take four long steps to him. Right as I start to walk there’s another explosion somewhere above us and I stumble a little, catching myself on his legs before I climb up to sit on his lap.

  Atticus was the last man I kissed but I haven’t been on top of anyone like this since Rory and I do not want to think about him right now.

  “Avery, he’s gone. You don’t have to do this.”

  I stare down at him. “You have a shock collar around your neck and a camera pointed at us both. I’m not going to kill you. It’s not such a big deal now he’s not in here narrating just hurry up and kiss me, O’Cronin.”

  He huffs and strains against the leather straps around his arms again. They have more give now. He’s getting closer to breaking them but for now they’re holding firm.

  I lean forward and kiss him, closing my eyes because I don’t want to see just how much he doesn’t want to do this. I’m trying to save his life but I still have limits to what I can take.

  He stays completely still for a second but when I press up closer into his chest, he finally kisses me back, hesitant until my tongue sweeps over his and then he’s giving as good as he’s taking. I hook my arms around his neck and I try to lose myself in the kiss, to forget about the fact that we’re being forced into this by my best friend’s psychotic stalker and the fact that there’s a dead fucking body two feet away from us.

  I don’t know a lot about Aodhan except that he loves Harley enough to come for me when I was taken. He killed every man in his family that had ever laid hands on the women so I guess that’s something else I know… something else that either makes this situation better or worse.

  I’m fucking a man who won’t hurt me.

  Or, I could be raping a decent man if he really doesn’t want to play along here.

  Stop thinking the word rape, Beaumont, for fuck’s sake. Consequences are for later, right now you need him alive.

  I very purposely roll my hips down onto him because while I’m a virgin I’m not completely clueless and I know that I can’t do this without his dick being onboard for the sex even if his mind isn’t into it.

  He grunts into the kiss and then groans when I let myself get really into the kiss, moving my hips to ride the beginnings of the erection until his dick is pushing up into my pussy through the layers of clothing between us. That was easier than I thought it would be, thank God, and even when I shift off of his lap to strip off my yoga pants, I keep kissing him. It’s a little awkward but there’s something about his lips on mine that makes this all so much less scary.

  I unzip his jeans and of course, of fucking course his dick is the biggest one I’ve ever seen in person. It’s thicker than my wrist and if I wasn’t already worried about how the hell I’m going to do this without crying I am now.

  Instead of letting myself panic, I just turn my brain off and move on autopilot for a minute until I can lower my heart rate. I wrap my hand around the girth of him and stroke him for a few pumps until I’m sure he’s hard enough for me to do this. If anything, his dick gets even bigger and I try not to wince. Deep breath, I keep one hand on his dick and hold his shoulder with the other to keep myself steady. Then I raise my hips and lower myself slowly down until the head of his cock is parting my lips, pushing inside me just enough to feel the resistance there.

  His eyes widen and he opens his mouth but there’s no freaking way I want the Jackal knowing I was a virgin, not with the obsession he had with Lips’ untouched state so I kiss him again, biting his lip as though he’d be able to understand what the hell I’m doing here but there’s no way he could.

  He doesn’t know me well enough, he doesn’t really know me at all, except that we both would do anything to keep Harley safe and that’s why we’re stuck here in this little room together.

  It hurts.

  I can feel the second he tears through the barrier and sinks deep inside me, my breath squeezing out of my chest and choking me. I just sit there for a second, focusing on my breathing and trying not to panic, but Aodhan’s chest is heaving.

  I don’t know if he’s trying not to move and jostle me or if he’s worried about hurting me, but he raises his hips just a little until I’m more secure in his lap and then he wrenches his arms until the restraints finally break.

  I tense, sure that he’s going to throw me from his lap and rage the hell out, but he doesn’t. It’s almost worse than that. He lifts a large, scarred hand up to my face and cups my cheek, pulling my face into his lips.

  “I’ll fucking gut him for this, Queenie,” he murmurs against my lips before he kisses me, cradling me close like I really am some precious girl to him. I refuse to get weepy about this situation, I’ve fought too hard for this to be about me making the smartest decisions here without emotions or worthless dreams.

  “I told you, I decided what I wanted. I’m not going to cry about this.” My voice is a little rough but I tell myself it’s because of all of the screaming I did while the Jackal was cutting my feet up. It has nothing to do with his hands cradling my face and whispering to me like I’m something more than what I really am to him.

  It feels weird to be talking like this, his dick is inside me and my blood is dripping down his legs, but his dick is still throbbing inside me and when I shift, he groans.

  I huff and force a laugh. “Well? Are you going to make me do all of the work here?”

  The challenge lights him up but he’s still fucking careful as he hooks his arms around my legs and lifts me, my arms winding around his neck to hold on as he slowly thrusts his hips.

  “Fuck, fuck, tell me this is okay,” he grunts and I huff at him again.

  I don’t want to admit how okay this really is.

  I should not be enjoying this but now that the pain has subsided the thick length of his dick inside me feels good in all of the most unexpected ways and now that he’s onboard there not much that I have to do except take it and with the way he’s holding me all I can do is take it.

  He grunts like he’s frustrated and my heart drops a little at the sound and then he lowers my legs back down until I’m straddling him again, one hand on my ass moving me how he wants and the other slipping between our bodies to my clit.

  I thought guys were supposed to have more trouble finding it than that?

  My breath catches in my throat as my pussy clenches around him at the feeling and I choke out, “I’m not supposed to enjoy it.”

  He grunts and pulls me in closer with the hand on my ass. “Fuck what he wants. I’m not coming until you do.”

  His mouth is hot and demanding on mine, nothing like the gentle and careful actions of his hands. He treats me like glass until a groan rips out of my throat.

  He loses his head at the sound.

  His hips surge up until my breath is knocked out of me, his fingers pressing and circling over my clit until I break apart, his mouth pressed against mine muffing the scream that tears out
of me as I come apart in his arms.

  His hands move to my hips and he pushes me down until he’s grinding up into me, desperate for me to take in every inch of him. I can’t catch my breath, my heart is racing and when hips jerk up into me one last time as he comes with a grunt, his hands grip my ass until I’m sure there’ll be bruises imprinted into my skin forever.

  There was no condom so everything just feels… wet.

  Somewhere, far off in my brain, I start to panic about that but mostly my brain is fixating on the hollow of Aodhan’s throat below the collar where I can see the vein there pulsing with his blood and I can measure his heartbeat. With his head tipped back like it is I almost want to kiss him there but now that we’ve both come I feel… I feel like I can’t touch him at all.

  I think the panic might be setting in.

  The door swings open and I tense but Aodhan’s arms tighten around me. His legs are still tied to the chair so he can’t just jump up and kill whoever the hell has just walked in here.

  Fuck.

  Don’t let it be Ash.

  “Holy shit. No, fuck, holy fuck.”

  I glance up and it’s not Ash but it’s not much better than Ash.

  Luca stalks into the room and then turns back around to snap the door shut. “Avery, fuck, are you hurt?”

  I take a gulping breath and then say, as evenly as I can, “No but I need help. The Stag has one of the Jackal’s shock collars on and I don’t know how to take it off without killing him, do you know how?”

  He starts cursing up a storm, muttering as he strips out of his jacket. Aodhan pushes me carefully until I’m sitting up in his lap and I cross my arms over my chest. I feel weirdly self-conscious about Luca seeing me like this.

  Aodhan pulls his shirt off and tugs it over my head until I’m covered. When Luca moves to stand behind him, I finally look down to find Aodhan’s dick still out and my blood is all over him.