Ruined Castles (The Elite King's Club 8)

This is an open letter to you.

Good luck.

Mads

Xo

PAIN. I MEAN REAL PAIN. The kind that harrows its claws into your heart and rips the organ straight from your chest. At least, that’s how I feel as I look down at the bright city lights below. Our apartment is everything I ever wanted while we waited for our home to be built in Riverside, yet there’s an air of pain that lingers through the walls of this building.

Maybe it’s the emptiness.

Or maybe it’s the fact that right now, he and I should be happy. The expectation of having a happily ever after after you’ve just fought for a relationship by the fangs of your teeth seems like a fight that you shouldn’t have to fight. We did the fighting. Right now, happiness seems like an illusion. Like wilted expectations that should have died in every fairy tale we were told as children.

The secrets. They’re like an STD that just won’t fuck off. I know he’s hiding them. You don’t fall in love with someone without picking up their habits. I know Bishop better than anyone. I clawed my way into his cold, dead heart until he bled right into mine. I have the battle scars to prove it.

The front door opens, and then closes, but I keep my eyes on the city below. On the glowing lights and bright archway of the bridge in the far distance. It’s not until the warmth of his tattooed hand sprawls over my flat belly that my eyes close and I release a pent-up sigh.

His lips graze the nape of my neck. “Baby. How was your day?”

“It was good.” I smile without turning to face him. Afraid that he’d be able to see every shrill anxiety that won’t stop screaming inside my head. Secrets are a dangerous weapon in a marriage or a relationship, especially if you start using them as weapons. I often think back to the days when we were in high school and everything seemed fun. I caught the unattainable Bishop Vincent Hayes, who didn’t give me butterflies, but a herd of fucking crows squawking wildly in my stomach. I never had cute flutters with Bishop. I’d bleed from the talons of crows that tore at the inside lining in my gut, and then after? I’d ride the high of euphoria every time he’d lick my wounds better. It was a toxic addiction, one I’d surely die from one day, but it was mine to keep.

I turn to face him, wrapping my arms around his neck. “What did you all do today?” The fireplace burns in the center of the family room and every now and then I want to lose myself in the flames. Maybe move closer to them until I feel their heat on my cheek because for so long, all I have felt are the claws of sadness scrape over my bones.

“Oh you know…” Bishop murmurs over my lips. Heat shoots straight between my thighs and I have to bite down on my lower lip to stop from moaning. “Trying to stop Tillie and Nate from killing each other.”

“Mmm, that used to be us, you know?” I say, one raised brow. “No judging.”

“Fuck that. We were at least fun about it. Those two are just straight-up indecisive.”

I run my finger down the center of his chest, flicking off the first button until I uncover all of his tattoos.

I lean forward and press a kiss onto the swan over his neck. “I love you.” There’s one thing absolute, and that’s my love for Bishop. Even through the shadows of my melancholy, the love I have for him is untamed. Wild and loyal.

He unties my silk robe and it falls to a pool at my feet as his arm tightens around my waist when he lifts me from the ground. Wrapping my legs around him, I tilt my head back as he carries me through the apartment and to our bedroom upstairs. “I love you too.” Before he can finish his next sentence, I’m flying through the air and landing with a bounce on our bed.

Rolling onto my stomach, I sink my palms into the soft mattress, arching my ass into the air. “Wanna play?”

He wraps his fingers around his leather belt, tearing it from around his waist before crawling up the bed on his knees. Leaning over my back, he snaps the belt around the front of my throat before pulling it tight. Using the slack, he tugs on the lead and my head tilts backward as he looks down on me from above. “It’s cute how you think that’s even a question, Kitty.”

I reach for the edge of his belt, flexing my fingers between the space before I die of suffocation. Damn Bishop. Sucking in a deep breath when it loosens, I laugh around my coughs. “You’re going to kill me one day.”