King of Lies (Empire of Lies 1)

I repeat my words a little louder this time.

“Question,” he says as he veers the car onto a bridge. “Let’s assume that you could have anything in the world right now, that I had the power to give it to you. What do you think that would be?”

Even if I could answer, I wouldn’t.

I shut my eyes in protest and ignore him.

Without a doubt, I already know how the rest of the night will unfold. Half an hour from now, he’ll let me out of the car and lead me through the terrace. He’ll let me roam freely in the abandoned mansion, the gilded prison where no windows unlock, no doors open from the inside. He’ll be more careful this time when the housekeeping worker arrives; I won’t be able to sneak into the bed of her flower truck to get away again.

And then he’ll feed me more lies. My heart will hang onto every word he says, my body will react to seeing him in any way it can, and I’ll have to fight like hell to hold onto the truth.

The man I married no longer exists. The king of my heart is long gone, and he wears a new name. He’s the king of lies.

“There’s really nothing you would want right now, Meredith?” The deep sound of his voice makes my eyes flutter open, and I realize we’re at the mansion. He peels the duct tape from my mouth. “Nothing at all?”

I say nothing, even though there is one thing I’d want above everything else.

I just want things to go back to how they were before.

How ‘we’ were before…

Meredith

Before

I’m getting exactly what I deserve right now…

I lay back on the bed and stared at the ceiling, counting down from twenty for the last time. The man I brought home from the bar—my first one night stand in years, was currently having a conversation with his cock. Literally.

“Come on, little buddy.” He patted his thighs. “We can do this. We can get this stroking done.”

Thirteen seconds.

“You were hard when you saw this woman at dinner earlier…You can get hard again and pound her pussy.”

I held back a groan as he continued. I should’ve known that my expectations were way too high, that his promises of “making you come more than you ever have in your life” were far too much for him to deliver. He also repeatedly mentioned that I was “uppity” and “a little smarter than expected” throughout the night. He’d followed up those sugarcoated insults with, “Uppity girls tend to have super high expectations in bed. They’re not as patient, and they don’t believe in enjoying all the motions I have to offer before the climax.”

“It’s two weeks before the new year, man. It’s time to score big.” He now sounded like a football coach. “We’re going to wear a condom since we got gonorrhea the last time, I swear.”

What the hell? I sat up and looked over at him, shaking my head as he cradled his manhood. Half of me was curious to know if this pep talk would end with him kissing his own shaft.

“Um, Scott?” I cleared my throat. “I just remembered that I have to be up for work early in the morning, so—”

“Can you give us a second, please?” He scoffed, looking up at me. “I’m trying to fix this, so we can fuck you tonight.”

I wasn’t even sure how to respond to that, and he didn’t give me a chance. He looked down again, rendering me invisible to their conversation once more.

Rolling off the mattress, I left the room and pulled the door shut behind me. I grabbed my phone from the kitchen counter and slipped into the bathroom.

Scrolling down my ‘recent calls’ list until I reached my best friend Gillian’s number, I let out a deep breath before hitting call.

Please pick up, Gillian…Please pick up…

“Hey, there!” Her voicemail greeted me after six rings. “You’ve reached my personal line, but I can’t come to the phone right now. I’m currently in flight with Jake or taking our little one on a play date. Leave me a message, and I’ll do my best to get back to you when I can!”

Beep!

“So…” I sighed. “You know how years ago—back when I had a sex life, when I used to rate cocks on a scale of one to five? How even though the goal was a 5 star, that a 3.5 star was great, if it’d been a while?” I paused. “Well, I’m currently in the middle of not receiving a 1-star cock and I can’t believe that he’s been in my place for—”

“Oh my god, Meredith!” She answered the phone mid-sentence, laughing. “Seriously? It’s three o’clock in the morning.”

“Were you purposely ignoring my call?”

“No. Little Jake grabbed it before I could answer it. Your message came on via the speaker system, by the way. So, I’m sure his next word to ask his Daddy about will be the c-word since, thanks to you, his vocabulary already includes the p-word.”