Twisted Kingdom (Royal Elite #3) by Rina Kent

However, I bite my tongue. Confrontation will only give him leverage over me.

Instead of giving him what he wants, I go slack in his hold and lower my gaze, cutting off eye contact.

I erase him and his metal gaze, sinister features, and tousled hair.

“Look at me.”

I don’t.

He watches me in the quiet of the bathroom. I feel it like needles at the top of my skull about to cut it open.

The silent war goes on for minutes or hours. I just stand there, watching my black shoes and filling my head with Sun Tzu philosophical tactics.

The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.

Silence is my only weapon and I’ll use it until the very end. No matter how suffocating that silence is.

In the quiet, Aiden releases my mouth. I don’t scream. I keep the sacred silence as if my life depends on it.

He grips my jaw with two rough fingers and forces my head up. “Fucking look at me.”

I stare at the ceiling with its white lights.

“Elsa,” he growls, the sound echoing around us like a dark promise. “Don’t push me.”

“Show me your worst,” I say with a levelled tone.

His lips crush to mine. I keep my mouth clamped shut. He’ll have to bite my lips off if he wants to kiss me.

He grunts against my mouth and nibbles on the tender skin.

I don’t open up.

I don’t give him a way in.

I hold on to the anger and pain. Anger and pain allow me to ignore my body’s reaction to him.

Anger and pain turn me numb to his touch.

Aiden pulls back but doesn’t release my wrists. “Are you sure you want to play that game with me?”

I say nothing.

I’m safely tucked in a numb halo right now. If I say anything, I’ll lose the shelter this place offers.

Aiden yanks my skirt up. Air hits my bare thighs and goosebumps cover my skin. His strong palm grips my pussy over my boy shorts.

My breathing hitches, chest rising and falling like I just finished a hundred-metre run. My toes curl in my shoes. I stare at an imaginary dot on the wall beyond Aiden’s head.

He lied to you.

He has a fiancé.

You are the other woman.

He slips two lean fingers under my boy shorts and rubs them over my folds.

“Hmm, you’re not wet.” His dark voice reaches my ears through my chanting. “Is this a challenge, Frozen? Do you want to bet how long it’ll take for me to make you wet?”

I continue staring at the invisible dot, silently repeating the mantra.

He doesn’t deserve my words. He doesn’t deserve anything.

Aiden circles my clit, slowly teasing the swollen nub. If I don’t focus on it, I’ll feel nothing.

Nothing at all.

“You’ll be wet,” he rumbles near my ear, the sound shooting straight to my core. “You’ll be soaking my dick when I fuck the defiance out of you.”

“Or you can rape me and use the blood as a lubricant.”

Aiden stops, his fingers freezing over my folds.

He leans back and watches me closely. Intently. Like a stone.

This time, I meet his gaze. I meet those cloudy, sinister eyes that sometimes seem like an endless void. A place where you go and never return.

I want him to see my expression. No idea what it looks like right now, but I hope it’s filled with anger and hate. I hope he sees he did this to us.

He broke us.

Broke me.

He told me he chose me, but he never did.

Not really.

His choice has always been a barbie doll with ‘Queens’ as her last name.

“You think I’d do that to you?” He enunciates his question, almost as if he’s angry.

“You’ve done worse. Being mentally and emotionally raped is worse than being physically raped.”

I mean it. If he shows me his worst, I’ll be able to hate him once and for all. I’ll stop dreaming about him and his touch and his damn freaking scent.

As if reading my mind, and deciding to go against it — as usual — Aiden releases my sex and my wrists. My arms drop on either side of me like lifeless body parts.

I don’t move from the door. Not even when he steps back further.

His face remains impassive, but when he speaks, his voice hits me like thunder in a winter night. “Well played, Elsa. Well fucking played.”

“Are you done?”

He smiles, but it’s neither mocking nor in triumph. It's a challenge at its purest form. “I just got started.”

“You can use my body all you like, but I’ll never forgive you, Aiden.”

“Then I won’t touch you.”

My eyes widen.

Perhaps my ears are damaged because I could swear I just heard Aiden say he won’t touch me.

His strongest weapon has always been physical intimidation. Hell, except for today, I’ve always become a wanton mess in his hands.

I narrow my eyes. “Is that a promise? Not touching me, I mean.”

“Until you forgive me, I won’t fuck you.”

“Which means never.”

“Believe me, sweetheart. When you know the truth, you’ll beg for it.”





Dinner with Aunt and Uncle never felt so awkward.

Aunt is walking on eggshells around me and Uncle seems as if he doesn’t know what to say to dissipate the tension.