Steel Princess (Royal Elite #2) by Rina Kent

“Are you coming?” Levi asks.

“Uh… yeah, sure.”

I remove my jacket and remain in my shirt. It’s too warm inside for a jacket.

Levi steps into the room as I place the jacket near the backpack.

“How is it with him?” he asks.

No idea how to answer that.

Good would be a lie. Bad would be a lie, too.

“It’s complicated,” I tell the truth.

“Well, he’s the complicated type.” Levi laughs. “You didn’t listen to my warning, so you reap what you sow.”

I face him. “Your warning?”

“At Ronan’s party, I told you that you should stay away from Aiden for your own sake, not his.”

Right. He did tell me that.

Does that mean Levi knows something about what happened to change Aiden into who he is?

Now, I have to ask without sounding too obvious.

“It’s not like I had a choice.” I shrug. “You know him better than anyone.”

“No one actually knows Aiden. We can only try.” He smiles a little. “But I’m glad you’re taking a chance on getting to know him, too.”

“A chance?”

“He’s not conventional.”

I nod once. Of course, Levi recognises Aiden’s true nature. They grew up together in the same house.

“This change happened somewhere in his childhood, right?”

He nods. “He was a quiet child by nature, but that incident changed everything.”

“You mean Alicia’s death.”

“Yes, that one was the icing on the cake, but it’s not —”

“Breakfast.”

Both Levi and I startle at Aiden’s voice. I was so focused on what Levi was saying that I didn’t notice him come in.

“How about you make a sound, you fucking creep?” Levi scoffs.

“How about you leave?” Aiden shoots back.

“Dream on.” He winks at me. “Come on. Let’s eat.”

I start to follow him out.

A strong hand clutches me by the arm and wrenches me back. “What the fuck were you talking about with Lev?”

His eyes are darkening by the second.

It’s then I notice that possessive streak. I don’t know if he overhead, but he seems more concerned about Levi more than anything.

“The usual. Arsenal and football.” I try to tease. “I can see who’s the talker in the family.”

“Elsa,” he growls in my ear. “Don’t push me. You know I go fucking crazy at the thought of you with another man.”

“Levi included?”

“Every last fucking one of them.”

He’s incurable.

And because I don’t want to antagonise him more, I say, “Levi might be the talker in the family, but he’s not the king on my board.”

A charming smile tilts his lips, and I find myself staring at it longer than needed.

He threads his fingers in mine. “Good save.”

We walk down the hall when I ask, “Where did you go this morning?”

“To buy gluten-free grocery.” He grunts. “Let’s get this breakfast over with so they’ll leave.”

“Why do you not want me around them?”

“I don’t want you around anyone, sweetheart.” He chances a brief glance at me. “Especially my family.”

But why?

What’s so wrong with his family?

Levi was on the verge of saying that maybe it’s not only Alicia’s death that caused Aiden’s change.

If it’s not his mother, then what made him who he is today?





21





Elsa





Ten days pass.

Day after day, Aiden only tells me mundane things from his ‘story’ and never jumps to what I want to know.

Day after day, I expect him to tell me the grand finale.

I should’ve known better.

He’s still pissed off that I put a limit on sex.

Not only is he pissed off, but he also manipulates his way into touching me every chance he gets.

The other day, he said, “Those two friends had a bet.”

One sentence. That’s it.

Then he fucked me against the wall in the locker room.

When I tried to argue, he said that my condition was ‘If you tell me a tidbit, you get to fuck me.’ I never specified how long the tidbit needs to be.

Dickhead.

Even when I thought I have any resemblance of control over the situation, he throws it out of the window. He smashes any hope I have and crushes it to bloody pieces.

But even with his mind games and tactics, I still got my say in this. If it were up to him, we’d go back to how we were before; I stay in the dark and he knows everything.

It won’t be that way anymore. Even if I have to compromise with sex.

Since that night at the Meet Up, Aiden has been fucking me rough and hard as if he’s teaching me a lesson.

I come every time.

Hell, sometimes, he tortures me like that night and exhausts my body until I can barely breathe anymore.

Is it a punishment if I crave it?

It’s fruitless to fight him in the physical department. However, I’m not going to sit there and wait for him to feed me crumbs about hypothetical friends. He didn’t even tell me their names, and while I suspect they have something to do with the mystery, I’m still not sure what is it all about.