Bound To You: Chapter 13
Chapter Thirteen
Henry
Contrary to popular belief, oblivion doesn’t exist at the bottom of a bottle.
Which reaffirms what I’ve always thought: there’s no goddamn justice in the world.
So, the scotch burns down my throat and the memories continue their assault. Perspiration dots my forehead, and I feel his slick body moving against mine. The organ in my chest thuds wildly, and I’m wrenched back in time to when my hands shook and trembled, my desire for him an unleashed beast that hardened my cock and heated my blood. There was no chance in hell of me catching my breath, then, not with his calloused hands framing my face for the very first time and definitely not when he dragged his lips over mine in a sensual glide that I’d dreamt of for fucking years.
And now . . .
And now—
The bottle shatters against the far wall.
Scotch and shards of glass rain down, drenching my clothes and biting my flesh. With my elbows planted on the rickety kitchen table, I open and close my fists for no other reason than that I’m teetering on the edge of no return. If I don’t hold onto something—anything at all—the crash will surely kill me.
Nostrils flaring, I shove back my chair and stumble to the cabinets beside the refrigerator. The old hinges squeal open. With an impersonal glance at the labels, I snag a bottle of Clan MacGregor and pull it from the shelf. No need for a mixer. No want for any ice. I unscrew the cap, tossing it onto the counter, and throw back a mouthful of wretched, cheap scotch.
Christ.
With a shudder, I down another swallow.
Bile swirls in my gut.
Heat blooms in my veins.
Slamming the bottle down on the counter, my shoulders creak as I lean my weight forward on my flattened palms. I drag in a deep breath through my nose. It doesn’t stop the room around me from spinning and spinning and spinning. I want to hurl. No, I want to scrub these last six months from my memory. And if that doesn’t work, then I want to carve them from my soul so that I’m not forced to relive every moment where John was mine.
Every graze of his fingers on my flesh.
Every velvet-smooth chuckle that fell from his lips and quickened my pulse.
Obsessive bastard that I am, I reveled in the throaty groans that he couldn’t stifle, and I collected every searching glance he threw my way, when he thought my attention was elsewhere, like they were rare jewels to be tucked away for safekeeping.
Like a fool, I allowed myself to dream.
Because it’s not me who he’ll be fucking tonight, on his wedding night, and it won’t be me who he’ll be reaching for in the morning.
I’m a spy.
A bodyguard.
The castoff who softened my heart for the one man with the power to destroy me.
Pressure builds behind my nose. Anguish, I think. Maybe something worse—whatever can be worse that feeling as though you’ve been gutted and hollowed out with a serrated blade, that is. Not that it matters how I feel because John made his choice, and Blanche is—
Beautiful.
Headstrong.
A ferocious little tiger who’ll know the full weight of John’s desire for the rest of her life.
This time, the scotch is accompanied by a swift bite of bitterness. I’ve barely swallowed before insistent knocking comes on the door. Turning slightly, I peer over my shoulder and study the solid-oak frame in the dim lighting, the bottle of Clan MacGregor poised at my lips.
Hope bleeds inside me.
The damned emotion begs me to put one foot in front of the other on the grounds of what-if. What if he changed his mind? What if, what if, what if. All it takes is the idea of John standing outside my flat to have me abandoning the scotch on the counter and striding across the kitchen. The chair scrapes against the tiled floor as I knock into it, my equilibrium shot from too much alcohol. I shove it back into place with a single hand.
The room blurs.
The swaying floor threatens to send me sprawling onto my hands and knees.
The doorknob is my only saving grace as I grip it, firmly, and yank the door open with too much force. I’m too fucking greedy to wait. I want my eyes on his handsome face, my hands on his tight arse, my tongue all over his—
Small, feminine hands land on my chest, driving me back into my flat with single-minded purpose, and fuck, fuck, fuck. I catch her wrists in one hand and force my feet to come to a complete halt. “Phillipa,” I mutter, the word slurred, “you shouldn’t be here.”
“Of course, I have to be here,” Phillipa Lancaster replies, her button nose climbing into the air like she’s smelled something rank. Considering how much scotch I’ve had to drink in the last two hours alone, it stands to reason that I’m the source of that something rank. Her blue eyes scan the scotch-stained floor. “We both know how hard today is for you.”
I open my mouth, prepared to tell her to go to hell, but she prods a finger into my chest and inches me backward. The kitchen turns topsy turvy and I reach out a hand to steady my unbalanced, inebriated weight—only, there’s nothing close enough to save me from my inevitable downfall.
Broken glass cuts my palms open as I land on the floor.
A grunt breaks from my lips and then Phillipa is lowering to her haunches before me, her hands finding my denim-clad thighs. Her black hair has been scraped back from her face, and the length of it flicks over her shoulder as she cranes her head closer like a cat seeking affection. “Henry,” she says, dejection ripe in her posh London accent, “you made me a promise.”
Those hands slide upward.
The urge to hurl returns with a vengeance.
“He married someone else.” The words are uttered solemnly and yet I receive them like jagged knives slicing me open. Already, blood spills across my palms. “He wants,” Phillipa continues with a squeeze of her hands around my upper thighs, “someone else. And that someone isn’t you.”
Do not react.
Do not react.
Do not react.
I put a bloodied hand to hers, ending her lecherous march toward my cock. “The only promise I made was to talk to my father about you taking Holyrood’s oath, and I did. His answer was no, and it won’t change no matter how many times you bring it up.”
“Because I’m a woman?”
Christ, I can’t be having this conversation right now. Not when her words are running together, and my ears feel like they’ve been stuffed with cotton. Releasing her hand, I press my thumb and forefinger to the bridge of my nose. “Like I’ve told you before, it wouldn’t be a good fit.”
“It wouldn’t be a good fit because of what’s between my legs. Don’t bother denying it, and don’t you dare lie to my face.”
“You failed every preliminary test.”
“So, train me!”
“It ought to be instinctual.” I drop my hand to my knee, curling my fingers into a fist and welcoming the bite of pain from the glass. “You whisper secrets meant for no one else’s ears but your own, Phillipa. You chose to protect yourself over the safety of the other recruits, including the wellbeing of your own brother. Whatever fairy tales Alexander told you about Holyrood are just that, fairy tales. You’d take us all down with you and it’s only out of respect for Xander that we haven’t sent you to the same fate as every other failed recruit.”
“You mean, you haven’t killed me.”
I lower my voice. “Lose the attitude and be fucking grateful that you’re still breathing.”
“Perhaps.” Her hand slips back onto my thigh. “Or perhaps I’m still breathing for an entirely different reason. Maybe,” she says sweetly, “just maybe, Henry, I’m still breathing because you’ve come to realize that nothing will ever happen with the prince. Meanwhile, I kneel right here before you.”
A coward would close his eyes and pretend that this is all a dream.
I close my eyes mainly because I’m praying that I’ve had too much to drink and Phillipa’s presence in my flat is a total nightmare that I’m bound to wake from eventually. Xander Lancaster is newer to Holyrood, but it didn’t take long for his younger sister to begin shadowing his every move. And it took even less time than that for her to catch sight of me at the British Museum, on one of my rare days off, and sink her sharp claws into my flesh.
We haven’t fucked.
Never even kissed.
But Phillipa . . . she has a way of climbing into your head and manipulating every thread of doubt until you’ve become knotted with a worry that’ll never untangle. A skill that she levels on me even now as she crawls closer on her knees and skims her hands up to grip my hips. “Do you really think that he’s thought of you even once since he left Westminster Abbey this morning?” she asks, her breath hot on the shell of my ear. “Do you think he lowered his pretty new bride over his cock and thought about the man he left in the shadows?”
Each question arrows into my chest with crippling accuracy.
I press a hand to my heart and rub the muscle there in small, half-circles. “You’ve no idea what you’re talking about.”
“No?” She tips her head to the side and the slight gesture has her lips brushing over my jawline. “All the world saw you today, Henry. They may not know your name and they might know who you are to the prince, but when the cameras panned past you while Lady Blanche walked down the aisle, there was no missing the heartbreak written all over your face.”
Stop.
Stop, stop, stop.
“Poor Henry Godwin,” she whispers in that achingly sweet tone that reeks of self-entitlement, “how you must have felt standing there, watching the love of your life wed someone else.”
A small palm lands on my groin, then squeezes my flaccid cock.
“You wanted to object.” Another kiss to my jaw, this one matched by the sting of her teeth cutting across my flesh. “I could see it your expression, that split-second battle of sprinting forward to claim him. But you didn’t, did you? You hung back and said nothing and now the prince surely has his princess down on her knees while he feeds her his knob. And you, Henry . . .”
This time, I squeeze my eyes shut to block out the visual she’s painted for me. God help me, but I can’t stop imagining the two of them together, John so dark and Blanche so fair. Her amber eyes would spit fire, no doubt, but John would get off on the challenge of bending her defiance to his will. He’d fist all that moonbeam hair and drag her closer, urging her lips over the swollen head of his cock. He’d make those breathy grunts that have been the soundtrack to my wildest fantasies for ten years now.
He’d make her come with just the sound of his voice, and—
Phillipa’s hand rubs over my thickening erection, like she knows what she’s done to me. And I hate her for it.
“You’ve let the future king use you . . . break you . . . as if you aren’t Holyrood’s heir, a fucking king in your own right. How does it feel to know that you’ve fallen? How does it feel to know that the rest of your brotherhood is fully aware of—”
“Don’t say another word,” I growl.
“—how pathetic you are? That you’re drinking your sorrows away like a good for nothing bastard while you pine for a man who was never going to be yours—”
I pin her to the ground.
Wrists strained above her head.
Legs locked beneath the heavy weight of mine.
Jutting my face to hers, I snarl, “Say it again. I dare you.”
Her blue eyes hold no fear, no revulsion. Only a blistering satisfaction that rings liking warning bells in my ears, just before her voice slips into the narrow space between us: “Love is for pathetic fools and you, Henry Godwin, are the most foolish of them all.”
Pathetic fool that I am, I don’t roll away to lick my wounds in private. I fall into Phillipa Lancaster’s trap with my eyes wide open. I punish her with lashes of my tongue, I exact my revenge with the sting of my palm against her arse, and I break her until she’s a mirror image of the darkness lurking beneath my ever-stoic façade:
A heart that aches.
A soul that yearns for its mate.
A love that will never be requited, not today, not tomorrow.
John was never mine to claim, but that doesn’t stop me from wanting him anyway. To have, to hold, to cherish. A vow made by only one. I come with his name as a silent roar on my tongue, bound to him in ways that will drive me to straight to the edge of ruin.
I’ve never hated him more.
______________
Is anyone else silently screaming right now at being in Henry’s head? Just me? I. Am. Not. Okay! And I just want to give him a big ol’ hug.
I can’t wait to share Chapter Fourteen with you because ALL of the things are going to happen. Until then, feel free to leave a comment below or drop a line in BBA with spoiler alert added. I am here for you!