Page 77 of Uncrowned

“That’s right. Did you miss me?” I rocked forward on my knees, nuzzling my face against the blood oozing from the brunette’s thigh. She hung from the ceiling in my basement room, bound by cuffs at her wrists. Her ankles were also secured, keeping her legs spread wide.

I sunk my teeth into her muscle, tugging back enough to make her sob and cry out again. “I asked you a question.”

“Y-Yes.” A sob left her as I lifted, flicking my tongue over her clit.

“So say it, then,” I snapped.

“I’ve m-missed you. I have.”

I smiled, going back to trace my tongue along the length of her pussy. The brunette moaned, immediately sniffling. I sucked against the top of her slit, pulling back to trace the tip of my cane over one of her welted and bleeding legs.

“You haven’t told me how much you like this.” I tsked, shaking my head as I looked up to meet blue eyes. Not her eyes. Penelope’s were a brighter blue, but it was close enough.

“I love this, Your Majesty. You a-always know how to make me feel good.”

My lids narrowed, and I stood, reaching to rub my fingers over the wetness between her legs.

“And what else?”

The woman’s lips parted as she searched for words. My free hand left her pussy as I latched around her throat, pulling her in just shy of my lips. I flicked my wrist, striking the cane against the back of her thigh, twice.

“Ahh!”

“How about how honored you are that I chose you? Are you not grateful that I’m showing you such attention?”

“I’m so grateful, Your Majesty. H-Honored. Yes.”

My lip peeled back as I glared into her eyes.

Eyes that feared me.

Eyes… I may keep.

“I don’t believe you, but we have all the time in the world. I’m going to fuck you, and you’re going to prove it to me.” My hand squeezed against her throat so tight her face turned red. “For your sake, you better be convincing.”

CHAPTER 26

Penelope

Was there a difference between conditioning and acclimatizing? Between routine and repetition?

I used to think definitions were cut and dry until I realized the difference between like and love. Between… crazy and psychotic.

Nothing was the same, and everything was vast. Life was hard. Living it was harder.

I went through the motions of what I was supposed to do. I behaved how I thought I needed to. When you spent your life not having a voice, finding it in extreme situations was like looking for a needle in a haystack.

How could I be someone as important as a queen when I didn’t even know who I was as an individual?

I tried to keep my head high. To fight and learn like Vaughn wanted me to. For weeks I put one hundred percent of myself into his lessons. I learned to defend myself. I learned how to strike and when to do it. I even mostly mastered getting out of restraints.

It was hard to feel proud when the man I was fighting for kept withdrawing further away from me. Sometimes a day would pass before he came home. Sometimes two. Sometimes three. I wasn’t in the cuffs anymore, but that didn’t matter. Escape was impossible. I had everything I needed in my underground room. Everything but Vaughn. Oddly, I was okay with that.

Maybe he was giving me time to adjust to what happened. It’s not like he didn’t attempt to talk to me about it. He had. But it’d been so new that I became a mess when the words began to come out.

I thought participating in the quartering would help erase what was done. All handling those body parts did was open my eyes to a darkness that teased the edges of my fragile, little world. I could give. I could fight. I could kill. And maybe I could enjoy it. A part of me felt like it could.

It’s what scared me the most. As much as I didn’t want to remember what happened to me—I sure lived through the torture in my mind far more often than I should. And not because I was scared. No. I was altered. Evolving.