“I’m going to fuck you now,” Kingsley whispered in her ear as he opened his pants and let his cock rub against her naked bottom. He let her feel it, let her feel the length and the width and the hardness against her like a threat. Behind her with his back still pressed to her, he rolled on a condom. “And you have one job to do while I’m fucking you.”

“What is my order?”

“Try to stop me.”

Kingsley grabbed the back of her neck with his left hand. With his right arm he wrapped it around her waist and dragged her toward the bed. Juliette dug in her heels and pushed back against him. She was strong but he was stronger. His fingers dug into her soft skin. No matter how she twisted and turned in his arms, she couldn’t get away. He threw her onto the bed and she landed on her back. Before he could get on top of her she had hands up and she pushed hard against his chest.

Blood surged in his veins as he caught her wrists in an iron grasp and forced them down onto either side of her head. She gave a cry of rage and he’d never heard a sound so electrifying. She tried to kick at him but he’d already got a knee between her thighs and was forcing them open. He pressed his full weight onto her, onto her wrists and her thighs. With a burst of sudden strength she jerked under him, nearly succeeding in throwing him off her. But he tightened his grip to the point of pain and beyond.

At last her will to fight back was broken. She went slack underneath him, surrendering. He pulled her wrists together and trapped them in one hand above her head. With his free hand he claimed her body, squeezing her breasts, pinching her nipples, thrusting his fingers inside her wet body until she groaned with unwanted ecstasy. He caught a nipple between his lips and pulled it deep into his mouth. The struggle had made him wild with desire. He shoved his cock inside her and Juliette arched underneath him so hard her back bowed. All around his thrusting length, her vagina pulsed wildly with her orgasm. He kept thrusting, harder and harder, slamming into her with all his might. Sex became fucking became rutting became something else he didn’t know because he was too lost in the unbearable pounding pleasure of it.

This woman...this incredible woman...Kingsley couldn’t get enough of her, using her, ramming into her until every thrust hurt him as much as it hurt her. And yet the pain was as sweet as white wine and it drugged him like no intoxicant he’d ever taken. And he forgot...everything. Inside her body he forgot his anger at Søren, his anger at himself, the women he’d lost—Marie-Laure, Sam, Charlie, Elle... He forgot everything and everyone but Juliette, whoever she was. He didn’t care. She was his. Right now, this moment, she was his. His property, his body, his lover, his treasure.

He’d come to Haiti to drink, to sleep, to forget everything that had happened. By accident he’d stumbled into a dragon’s treasure room and found a jewel, rare and priceless. He held a fortune in his hands. Endless wealth. If only he could claim and keep it, he’d be the richest man in the world. How could he walk away from such a treasure? No man could. It would be like walking away from a pile of diamonds, a chest of gold. He’d no more leave Juliette in Haiti than he’d leave an emerald on the ground, a pearl on the beach.

“My Jules...” he whispered into her ear when he came inside her, his semen pouring out of him in aching bursts. “My jewel.”

A second climax overtook her and she writhed and shivered underneath him.

“Listen to me,” he said between kisses. She was still trapped by his arms and his knees. But the struggle was over and their bodies were still joined. “You belong in my kingdom. You always have. But you were lost to us, and now I’ve found you again. Your king has found you and I will bring you home where you belong.”

“Mon roi,” she said in her exhaustion as she went limp against the sweating sheets. My king. “I want to tell you something.”

“Don’t say it.”

He felt her laugh more than heard it. “You don’t know what it is,” she said.

“I know.”

“You know I’m in love with you?” she asked.

“Oui. But don’t say it.”

“Why not?”

“Because I can’t have you. I can’t keep you. You aren’t mine.”

“Then I don’t love you,” she said, tracing the old and faded scar on his chest with her fingertips. “I don’t love you with all my heart and with every inch of my body. I don’t love you now and always.”

“I will never love you, either,” Kingsley said, closing his eyes.

“I don’t know about your priest, but my priest says it’s a sin to lie,” Juliette said, looking down on him. He rested his hand against the side of her face. “The Devil is a murderer and the Father of Lies. When we lie we are like the Devil, killing the truth.”

“God will absolve us,” Kingsley said. “He knows our lying isn’t murder.”

“What is it then?”

“Self-defense.”

24

Upstate New York

THEY KISSED FOR a long time, Elle and Kyrie. Nothing but kisses, gentle and sleepy. Elle had forgotten how pleasurable, how sensual, the simple act of kissing could be. She wasn’t designed for chastity. She needed a body in her bed other than her own. She needed to touch and be touched. And she needed this girl, this beautiful fragile little girl in her arms as she needed air and water and food.

“Do you want me to touch you?” Kyrie asked between kisses. “I mean, like you touched me?”