Filthy Kings (Ch 11) [The Devil or the Angel]

Character Pronunciation Guide

Đavolice — DJAH-voh-lee-tseh (Four syllables; “đ” is a soft “j”; “ce” = “tseh”; stress on the first syllable; means “little devil”)

Anđele — AHN-djeh-leh (Three syllables; the “đ” is a soft “j” like in “jeans”; stress on the first syllable; means “angel”)

 

 

 

Chapter 11

The Devil or the Angel

Zara

 

Consciousness arrived before Zara was ready for it.

First came the hum—low, constant, the particular vibration of a private aircraft at altitude.

Then the warmth of fur against her bare skin. Under her body and over it.

Luxurious and soft.

The silken pelt stroked against her exposed shoulder blades, sending tiny shivers down the vulnerable curve of her spine. It whispered across the backs of her thighs.

Comforting and unsettling.

With each breath, the fur shifted against her nipples, her stomach, the sensitive hollow between her hipbones—intimate places that should have been covered by clothing but now lay defenseless against this decadent embrace.

Why am I naked?!

Smell hit her too—leather and expensive cologne.

Next, the full awareness that she was naked, her wrists were restrained, and she had absolutely no idea how long she had been unconscious.

She blinked open her eyes.

The cabin was dim, warm, and obscenely well-appointed. The bed beneath her was wide, dressed in dark furs.

Above her, recessed lighting burned low.

Her right wrist was cuffed to a chain connected to the right bedpost. Her left to the left. The cuffs were steel, thick, and correctly fitted. The work of someone who had done this before and understood the difference between restraint and injury.

She tested them anyway.

Both wrists. Full weight. She twisted, pulled, changed the angle, and tried again.

Nothing.

A small movement sounded from across the room.

She snapped her view there and spotted the guard. He sat next to the door.

Muscular.

Serbian.

The left half of his face was a map of old burn damage—the ear gone to scar tissue, the eye socket pulled tight, the skin shining and colorless where it had healed wrong. He had lived through something catastrophic and come out the other side still willing to do this kind of work. That told her everything.

This man will do anything for Lazar. . .even die for him. Fuck.

She gritted her teeth, looked to the left and saw the room’s only window. It was this single oval of reinforced glass that revealed nothing but starry darkness.

Where am I?

Zara turned more toward the window. The movement cost her—skull throbbing, stomach tilting—but she held her gaze on the darkness outside.

Wait a minute. . .

Below the stars red light blinked on a long, swept-back wing.

We’re on a fucking plane!!

Her stomach dropped before her brain finished the thought.

Lazar, you really are suicidal. If I don’t skin you, Beresha surely will.

She knew that Lazar owned three planes. The first was a Falcon 7X, stripped lean for speed. The second was a converted 737, fitted for his soldiers and product. She’d actually helped him attain that one.

The third was this. She knew it by the width of the cabin, the quality of the silence, the particular darkness of the furs.

We’re on the Bombardier Global 8000.

The most expensive private aircraft in production with the range enough to cross any ocean without stopping.

She looked to the right.

A low table sat within arm's reach.

Someone had arranged it with the meticulous care of a predator who understood that anticipation was the cruelest form of seduction. Each item was placed precisely to heighten her awareness of what was to come.

A wide bowl of golden honey with a silver spoon resting across its lip. Dark chocolate in a separate bowl, melted, still warm enough to hold its sheen. A ceramic pot of caramel so thick it moved slowly when the plane shifted, amber and molten, catching the low light like something alive. Two smaller bowls she didn't yet identify.

A tray of fruit—figs split open to show their red centers, big juicy strawberries, red grapes still on the stem, sliced mango arranged in overlapping fans. Bananas and several pomegranates sat at the edge of the arrangement, whole and untouched.

Lazar thinks we are going to have a date?

She sneered at the three crystal wine glasses next to bottles of expensive champagne and wine.

Then her eyes found the box. The fitted case. Black interior. Three slots with three glass vials of blue liquid.

No.

Terror hit her.

Veritrex.

She did not expect to see the Russian compound next to romantic items. After ninety seconds of being injected, the person shifted to full involuntary disclosure that lasted for twenty-four hours.

No. No.

She yanked at the handcuffs.

Zara was ready to deal with almost anything—torture, rape, even her oncoming death. But what she did not want to do was spill every secret she held close to her heart.

Her bottom lip quivered.

Three medical needles lay beside the empty case, uncapped, and fully prepared.

Why three? What’s going on?

Her stomach twisted.

Lazar, you are a monster!

He yearned to know the things she had never said out loud. The things she had spent twenty years learning not to say. The lies she had worn so long they had fused to her skin and become indistinguishable from truth.

Ninety seconds and all of it would come out.

Her pulse hammered.

She directed her gaze back to the guard and cleared her throat.

He watched her.

She spoke Serbian, "Listen.”

He blinked as if shocked that Zara knew his language.

She held his gaze. "What do you need? I have access to people and things that—"

"Silence." He pulled out his phone and began texting.

"No. Don’t message him. You are making a mistake."

The guard didn't look up from the phone.

“Idiot.” She turned her face back to the ceiling, breathed, and could come to no conclusions that were useful to her current situation. The cuffs were not coming off. The guard was not negotiating. The plane was at altitude and going somewhere she had not chosen.

For the first time in longer than she could remember, Zara Cross had no move and hated it with every cell in her body.

Three minutes passed.

Then footsteps sounded.

Two sets.

She went still.

The door opened.

The guard rose and left.

Lazar is coming.

She had told herself she was prepared. She had composed her face, arranged her breathing, and decided exactly what expression she would be wearing when they walked in. She was Zara Cross. She had held her composure in front of heads of state, arms dealers, men who had pointed guns at her from distances that should have been fatal.

Still. . .she was not prepared.

Lazar came through the door and the cabin shrank.

He was not dressed in his signature black designer suits.

Tonight, he was bare feet and wore black silk pajama pants with nothing above the waist except ink and skin. Six feet six inches of a brutally beautiful muscular body.

She swallowed as her nipples tightened under the fur blanket.

The Orthodox cross climbed his throat. Cyrillic script wrapped his left forearm. Black thorns coiled up his right shoulder and spread across the broad shelf of his sculpted chest.

His head was shaved, his chiseled jaw set and his deadly cold eyes were on her face, full of lust and desire.

Her breath caught.

Then to her complete shock, Miloš came through the door behind him.

What? Why is he here?

Her body heated.

The son was two inches taller than his father, twenty years younger, and his long black hair was loose around his shoulders.

An Orthodox cross covered his entire chest —the full muscular breadth of it. The ink sat dark against his skin.

Shirtless just like his father, he walked in with his huge hands easy at his sides and his black silk pants hanging low on his sculpted hips and he was looking at her like he’d already decided to devour her pussy.

Both half-naked? What do they think is going to happen here? They’re both. . .crazy.

Even more. . .she could see the shape of both of their cocks swinging against their silk. Hard thick lengths bobbing against the fabric and eager to get out.

She blinked as her thighs pressed together under the fur.

Lazar sat on the edge of the bed.

The mattress shifted under his weight.

Careful. Be patient. There’s got to be a way out of this. Figure it out and you’ll be free.

Lazar looked at Zara. All of her. Then he reached out and took the edge of the fur between two fingers and pulled it down slowly to her waist, exposing her breasts.

Miloš stood on her right and went still.

Lazar's gaze moved from her throat to her collarbones to the full weight of her breasts and back up to her lips, unhurried and taking inventory of what he clearly thought already belonged to him.

I’m going to kill him first.

Her skin rose in goosebumps under his gaze and she hated her body for it.

Then he reached out and dragged his palm slowly across her left breast, cupping its weight for one deliberate moment before his thumb grazed her nipple.

She pursed her lips and held in a soft moan, wishing she could get out of the handcuffs and stop him.

The nipple went stiffer against his touch.

Heat blazed across her skin so fast it reached her face.

Get control.

She turned her head to the side and bit her bottom lip.

You have the power. Not him. Figure out how to regain it.

Yet, Lazar watched her and did it again—his thumb circled the stiffened peak with pure decadent patience.

Mmmm.

A sound built in the back of her throat that she swallowed before it could escape.

Miloš had not moved. His gaze was on the breast that his father played with. His jaw was tight and the shape of his cock got bigger and pushed more through the silk.

Both of her nipples were hard now. The air of the cabin against her bare skin, the heat of Lazar's hand, and the weight of both their gazes on her body was doing things she absolutely refused to name.

She didn’t want to admit that she wanted this. In fact. . .she wanted it badly enough that her thighs were pressing together against a heat that had nothing to do with the fur or the ambient warmth of the cabin, and she hated herself for it with a thoroughness that only made the wanting worse.

And the worst part wasn't the wanting. The worst part was that some locked room deep inside her—the one she kept reinforcing whenever he was near—had recognized Lazar and easily opened to him against her will.

Lazar reached out and put two fingers under her chin and tilted her face back toward him. "Good evening, Đavolice."

Little devil.

She moved her face away from his hand. "You call me a little devil?”

Lazar smirked.

“You're the devil.”

“How?”

“You kidnapped me.”

“I took you away on a special adventure.”

“You ruined my hundredth auction."

Nothing in his face changed. "How do you think you got to one hundred, Đavolice?"

She raised her eyebrows.

"Can you even comprehend how many people I've killed when I've sniffed that they wanted to rob your past auctions?"

“Lies.”

“Thirty men over six years."

“I. . .don’t believe you.” She moved her chin away from his hand.

He took her face in his large, rough hand, spread his fingers across her jaw, and tightened his grip. "Do not move from me again."

Her pulse doubled. "Take off these handcuffs, and then say that again."

A dark chuckle left Miloš. "Tata, she is not a Đavolice."

Lazar’s smirk deepened. “Then, what is she, son?”

Miloš pushed off the wall and walked toward the table. "She is an anđele."

Angel.

Something passed between father and son then—wordless, practiced, the particular shorthand of two people who were brutally loyal to each other.

She filed that away.

It was useful and also terrifying.

She cut her eyes to him. "I expected your father to be here, but. . .why are you here?”

“We are going to share you.”

She widened her eyes. “Your father may be past sanity, but you are young and smarter than this. If you help me out of this, I will not kill you."

Miloš shrugged. “Your killing me wouldn’t be a bad thing. I might like it if I cum too.”

What?

Lazar released her jaw and his fingers slipped slowly across her chin as they left. Lust moved down through her chest and settled low in her belly.

She did her best to fight against it.

Lazar began, "I’m sorry. I never gave you a proper introduction. This is my son—"

"I know who he is." She looked at Lazar. "I've been nice enough to not kill him as you tried to dig into my past."

“You could have tried to kill him.” Lazar tilted his head. His fingers came back to her jaw and gripped it—softer this time. Slowly, he caressed the line of it from her ear to her chin with one fingertip. "You never tried. Why were you so nice to me, Đavolice?"

She shivered. "I didn't want you to become an unnecessary enemy."

Laughing, Lazar pulled his hand back and looked at his son. "Do it, Miloš."

Ice surged through her chest. "Do what?"

Miloš stopped at the table, picked up the needle, and then grabbed one of the vials of blue liquid.

“Wait.” She shook her head. Her wrists pulled at the cuffs without her deciding to pull them. "What are you doing? This is unnecessary."

Lazar licked his lips.

She shivered again. "What do you want from me, Lazar? I will give it to you. Just don’t put that in me."

"You will give me anything?"

"Yes. What do you want?"

His gaze dropped to her breasts. "I want you and not for one night, week, month, or year.”

She went still.

“I want you to be absolutely mine." His voice dropped. "Moja kraljica."

My queen.

The words vibrated through her body like a current. She hated herself for it, hated the way hot, possessive lust blazed through her veins and how her already stiffened nipples tightened further under his gaze.

She had been wanted by men her entire adult life and had never once lost her footing over it.

This was different.

She forced her eyes away from him and back to Miloš. “And you?”

“I believe my father will share you from time to time, if I am not too greedy.” He drew the blue liquid into the needle with slow, steady pressure. His eyes were on the vial. His hands were completely steady. The sight of those hands—big, unhurried, covered to the wrist in ink—made her stomach clench in a way that had nothing to do with fear.

Father and son sharing her. In some ways that didn’t sound like the worst possible fate of her evening. But still. . .she returned to Lazar. “I. . .need you to. . .think clearly about this.”

He slipped his hand down to her breasts and played with her nipple again.

She bit her lip and her pulse betrayed her entirely.

Lazar toyed with the nipple some more. "Look at how her nipples tighten.”

Miloš groaned. “Her breasts are so perfect.”

“They are son.”

“I can’t wait to fuck them with my cock.”

Lazar groaned too. “That will be quite a sight, son.”

She widened her eyes and her pussy moistened.

Yes. They are both insane.

Lazar wagged one finger. “You would never let my men get close enough to find information, so I had to be creative.”

He put that finger back on the nipple. “I had a good spy follow Beresha."

She tried to move her breast from his hand, but there was no escape.

Lazar watched her face. "And we got lucky. Do you know why?"

“Lazar, stop.”

He squeezed the nipple.

She closed her eyes and moaned.

"Beresha wanted to get a special present for you. A beautiful heart-shaped locket. With a picture in it."

No.

She opened her eyes and thought about that damn photograph of her and her family long ago.

Lazar moved his hands away from her breasts and went to her hair, unpinning the curls so that they fell past her shoulders. "And that picture, Đavolice. It was the clue I needed."

Her jaw was tight. She could hear Billie Holiday coming from somewhere very far and she could feel the pressure of years of carefully constructed distance between herself and everything that photograph contained.

Her eyes watered.

Miloš held the needle out and walked over to her.

“P-please. . .don’t do t-this. . .”

The needle was ready.

Miloš looked down at her and his expression was more complicated than cruel. Hunger and apology fighting for the same expression and losing to both.

"Don't. I-I will tell you what you want to know. You don't need that."

“Now who is lying?” Lazar reached out and put his hand flat against the side of her neck. His palm covered her pulse entirely. He held it there— warm, still, the full weight of his hand against her skin—and said nothing for three seconds. Her body responded to that hand with a heat so immediate and so specific that she moaned.

"Do you want me, Đavolice?"

She looked at him and refused to answer.

“I want to know the truth.” He slipped his gaze along her breasts. “We will inject you and I will ask again.”

She frowned. “And if I say no?”

“Then, I will let you go.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Do you think I need to force a woman to fuck me, Đavolice?”

She scowled.

Miloš spoke, “But if you say yes. . .especially to both of us. . .”

“Then, you will only know pleasure this evening.” Lazar winked. “And some delicious pain.”

“The answer is no. There’s no need for the Veritrex.”

“We’ll see, Đavolice.”

Miloš leaned down.

“Don’t.” Then, she felt the cool sharp tip of the needle against the side of her arm. She closed her eyes and her hands pulled at the cuffs one last time as she thought about her father in his chair with his newspaper, his whiskey, and Billie Holiday playing from somewhere in the house, and the girl who had sat on the floor below him playing with her dolls and had never once imagined that one day she would be here.

The needle slid into her flesh with a sharp pinch, and as the blue liquid emptied into her vein, a cold rush spread up her arm like frost climbing a window.

Within seconds, her thoughts began to blur at the edges, colors intensified, and her skin hummed with heightened sensitivity.

The truth serum was already dismantling her carefully constructed walls.

Fuck!