King of Pride (Kings of Sin #2) by Ana Huang

A sympathetic Alessandra gave me the day off. She’d gotten ahold of Dominic and somehow convinced him to get me access to Valhalla, where I knew Kai was boxing with Dante.

I didn’t know what to do or how I could help, but I just wanted to be here for him.

“Maybe it’s a mistake,” I ventured. I’d rushed here as soon as I could and hadn’t read the article in its entirety. “Maybe they—”

“It’s not a mistake.” Kai sounded eerily calm. He looked up, his skin stretched tight over his cheekbones. The uneven rise and fall of his chest betrayed his masked emotions.

My heart wrenched. “Kai—”

He crushed the rest of my words between our mouths. The kiss was so sudden, so unexpected, that I stumbled back a step before I caught myself.

We’d kissed before, many times. Sweet, scorching, hungry, languorous…the nature of our embraces ebbed and flowed depending on our moods, but he’d never kissed me like this. Hands tangling in my hair, teeth scraping across my lips, muscles vibrating with coiled energy. Desperate and feverish, like he was drowning and I was his only lifeline.

Pieces of his stony mask clattered to the floor around us. Emotions poured through the jagged cracks, dragging my hands to his shoulders, his teeth down my neck, and his fist around the hem of my skirt.

Kai yanked it up and backed me against the boxing ring at the same time. A tear of silk, a rustle of clothing, and then he was inside me, fucking me with an intensity that had me gasping for breath. My body shook with the force of each thrust, and I scrabbled for a hold on something, anything, that could ground me while we worked out his anger together.

A symphony of grunts, cries, and the slap of flesh against flesh echoed in the otherwise empty room. One hand fisted his hair while the other clutched at the ring ropes above me. We’d had rough sex before, but this wasn’t sex. It was a catharsis.

Hard. Urgent. Unforgiving.

Still, it didn’t take long before pleasure overtook my senses. One more thrust, and my orgasm detonated, rippling through my body in a series of shudders and aftershocks.

Kai came soon after me, biting out a harsh “Fuck” as his cum dripped down my thigh.

We held each other for a moment, our breaths ragged in the silence. Languid warmth flooded my veins, but it was tempered by the knot in my throat.

When Kai lifted his head again, his eyes were filled with remorse. The knot tightened. “Isa…”

I didn’t have to ask for the reason behind his guilt.

“It’s okay,” I reassured him. “I’m on the pill.” He wasn’t the only one who’d gotten carried away. The thought of condoms hadn’t even crossed my mind until now.

“I shouldn’t have… I didn’t…” He wiped a hand over his face. “Fuck,” he repeated. His gaze swept over me, lingering on my neck and chest. I looked down and winced when I saw the hickeys marking my skin. “Are you okay?”

“More than okay, if my orgasm was anything to go by,” I quipped, hoping to erase his frown. It didn’t work. My mouth softened with fresh worry. Now that my post-sex high was fading, the severity of the situation returned in full force. “I should ask you the same question.”

It was a stupid question because of course he wasn’t okay. He’d just lost control of his family’s company. But I had no experience dealing with issues like that, and I would rather he talk about it than pretend everything was fine. I’d learned from experience that bottling things up only led to more problems in the future.

Kai’s throat bobbed. “Russell Burton.”

My heart split at the numb disbelief in his voice. “Yeah,” I said softly.

I didn’t know who Russell was, but I hated him more than anything else in the world right now. No, correction: I hated the voting committee more than anything else. I hope they all choked on their bad decisions and ugly corporate pens.

Kai didn’t cry, shout, or say another word, but when he buried his face in my neck and my arms wrapped around his back, I felt the intensity of his pain like it was my own. It reverberated through my body, strangling my lungs and stinging my eyes. He was always so cool and composed that seeing him break apart, even a little, ignited a raw ache that punched me straight through the heart.

I wished I had the power to turn back time or knock some sense into the voting committee. Since I couldn’t and there was nothing I could say that would make things better, I simply held him and let him grieve.





CHAPTER 34


Kai



I lost.

The phrase looped in my mind so many times it no longer had shape or meaning. However, its impact didn’t change.

Every time it echoed in my head, it triggered the same gut punch. Released the same dark, oily sensation that slithered through my veins and formed a bottomless pit in my stomach.

It was the feeling of losing, which was infinitely worse than the word itself.

I tossed back my scotch. It didn’t erase the bitterness coating my throat, but it did insulate me from the stares and whispers. To an extent, anyway.

Three days had passed since the CEO election results. In that time, I’d carried out my job per usual. I took meetings, congratulated Russell, and fielded endless calls, emails, and messages. At night, I went to Isabella’s house, or she came to mine, because now that the vote was over, I didn’t care who saw us together.