Vicious Prince (Royal Elite #5) by Rina Kent

“What is it?” she asks.

“If I tell you, are you going to tell me about your nightmares?”

She swallows and I expect her to refuse, to wear her armour and hide behind her walls, but her head bobs up and down in a nod.

I plaster a smile on my face as I speak. “My nightmare starts in a dark, long street. I’m the only person there, and I’m a child. It’s a bit haunting, a bit too silent, a bit too dark. I run down that street over and over again like a mouse trapped in a maze. I always end up on the same street with the same darkness and the same loneliness. I call for my parents, but neither of them answers. I don’t stop running or calling them, though. I say, ‘Mother. Father. I’m here. You forgot me here.’ They never come. I only wake up when one person comes.”

“Who?” she whispers, her voice almost spooked.

“Lars.” I grin, chasing away the remnants of those images. “He’s the one who wakes me every morning. I always ignore my alarms.”

She glares up at me. “Stop doing that.”

“Doing what?”

“Smiling while you’re saying painful things. You shouldn’t be smiling about that.”

“Well, some philosopher Cole reads about says you can fight pain with smiles.”

“You can’t. You’re only camouflaging it, and sooner or later it’ll come back and bite you.” Her teeth sink into her bottom lip. “I don’t like it when you put a mask on in front of me, Ronan. In fact, I hate it, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Yeah, okay — what do you want? Some sort of a contract?” I tease.

She huffs. “You don’t have to be a smartarse.”

“Your turn, belle.”

A long sigh slips through her lips. “My nightmares also start like yours.”

“Like mine?”

“In the dark. It’s always so black. Everything is.” She stops and doesn’t seem to plan on going on.

“And?”

“It’s just that, dark. I can’t move or speak, and sometimes, I wish I couldn’t feel either. If I didn’t, it’d just go away, you know?”

“But it never goes away.”

“It never does,” she murmurs in reply, even though it wasn’t a question.

We share something, a feeling, a trauma. It’s there in the way she shakes but tries to smother it, the way she bites her lower lip so she doesn’t blurt it out.

One day she will, and one day, I’ll be there to hear it all.

“Does your nightmare have something to do with how you like hurting me?” she asks, her huge eyes staring up at me as if I hold the answers to the world’s problems in the palm of my hands.

I never thought I would want someone to look at me like that until her.

“What makes you think that?” I ask.

“You said you won’t make love to me, won’t whisper French words as you do with the other girls.”

I raise an eyebrow. “You want me to whisper French words to you?”

“That’s not the point.” Her cheeks flush. “Just answer my question. Does it have something to do with your reoccurring nightmare?”

“Maybe.” I pause. “Do you like being hurt because of your nightmare?”

She juts her chin. “Maybe.”

The stubborn damn girl.

Time for a change of tactic. I grip her by the arm and stand up as I flip her to her stomach. An excited squeal leaves her lips as she stares back at me over her shoulder. “W-What are you doing?”

“Bad things, trésor.”

“R-Ronan, don’t.”

“Don’t what, mon petit coeur adoré?”

Her breathing hitches as her eyes widen until they nearly fill her tiny face. I place a hand under her stomach and pull her up so she’s on her knees.

“Didn’t you want me to speak French to you, belle?”

“Not like this,” she murmurs, even though she doesn’t make a move to fight me.

“Not like what? This?” I run my hard dick up and down her wetness, and a shiver goes through her entire body.

“Ronan…”

“I don’t have another condom, but you’re on the shot, aren’t you? It was in that club resume.” I grab her by the hip and slam inside her in one go.

We groan at the same time as we join. There’s something about owning Teal, about being with her.

Greed. Fucking greed.

When it’s combined with lust, there’s absolutely no stopping it.

“Jesus,” she grunts.

“I told you — not him. Me.” I lean over and grab a handful of her hair to pull her by it. The angle must be uncomfortable, but if she feels it, she’s not saying anything. I run my tongue over her ear then bite. “You want French, belle? You think I’m in the right state of mind to think in French when I’m fucking you?”

She moans as she clenches around me. I fuck her fast and dirty like she’s my salvation, like she’s the only one I can have before the end of the fucking world.

Maybe she’s right. Maybe it’s because of the nightmare. Otherwise, why the fuck would I want to keep her when I’ve never wanted to keep anyone?

At that thought, my pace turns ferocious, animalistic even. I pound into her until she falls apart, screaming, then she bites her lip so hard blood coats her pearly white teeth.