The Skull King (Skull 1)

Balto joined me, his muscled mass looking sexy as the beads of water fell down his fair skin. His skin tone was much paler than mine, like fresh snow on the front lawn. He had a light tan that indicated he was outside once in a while, but he probably did his business under the cover of his darkness, so he rarely came into contact with the sun’s rays. I spent most of my time by the pool, so all I ever got was sun.

He tipped his head back and let the water soak his short hair.

I watched him, noting the way he was so sexy and masculine without even trying. My hair was pulled back in a hair tie so the water could run down my shoulders without getting my hair wet, but as I watched him, I stopped caring about keeping my hair dry.

His eyes focused on me. “Look who has a staring problem now.”

“I like what I see.” My hand reached to the bottom of his sternum, where the origin of his abs was located. Slowly, my finger dragged down, following the river until I found his thin happy trail. He didn’t have a hairy chest like Lucian, and he was built like a brick house. Lucian was skinny but fat at the same time, with loose skin and no muscle tone. He was fifteen years older than me so it wasn’t surprising, but I could tell Balto was older than me too. “How old are you?”

He grabbed a bar of soap and rubbed it across his chest. “Thirty-two. You?”

“Twenty-five.” There were few questions I could ask him without delving too deeply into his personal life. There weren’t a lot of questions he could ask me either. But I wanted to know this man deeper, especially when I knew this would be over very soon.

He rubbed the soap up and down his arms and his stomach before he handed it to me.

I did the same, washing the smell of sex from my skin. My need to be clean didn’t outweigh my need to be close to him. I just wanted to look at him, to admire this sexy man. “You fuck a lot of women in the ass?”

The corner of his mouth rose in a smile as he lathered the soap into his skin. “Jealous?”

“Curious.”

“Yes,” he said without shame. “I fuck a lot of women in the ass.”

And they probably all enjoyed it—because he was gorgeous.

“But I usually pay for it.”

I did a double take at his admission. “Pay for it?”

“Yes. I pay for sex.” As if he hadn’t just said something shocking, he stepped under the water and rinsed the soap away.

I couldn’t hide my surprise because it was so surprising. Lucian was slimy and gross, so of course, he had to pay for pussy. He had to force me to be his wife. But this man…didn’t need to pay for anything. He could get ass and pussy on his own—without paying a single euro. “Why?”

“Why does any man pay for sex? It’s convenient.”

“But you don’t need to pay for sex. Look at you…”

His grin widened. “I know I don’t. But like I said, it’s convenient. Sometimes picking up a woman feels like too much work. All the talking, all the attachment. The random texts in the middle of the night. When you pay a woman, she leaves the second you’re finished. She understands her place and runs off to her next client.”

I knew this man made his living dishonorably. I knew he was a creature of the night. He was sleeping with a married woman and didn’t bat an eye over it. He had a small army outside his compound at all times. Paying for sex was probably the least of his crimes. But I was still surprised because he was the most handsome man I’d ever seen. The second I spotted him in that bar, my thighs squeezed together tightly, and my pussy clenched like he was already inside me.

“You judge me.” He stood under the shower for a moment, the water cascading through his grooves of muscle in rivers.

“No. Just surprised. When I saw you in that bar…all I wanted to do was fuck you. That doesn’t happen to me very often…if ever.” I’d never laid eyes on a man I wanted more, even when I was in love with Evan. He was unremarkable compared to the beast standing in front of me.

“And that’s exactly where the problem is. Women get obsessed. Women get clingy.”

“I never said I was obsessed or clingy.”

“I know. But most women are. You’re married, so that’ll never happen.”

Now I understood why he kept sleeping with me instead of growing tired of me. I was never going to become a bigger problem. I would never ask him for more than he could give. I had an enormous rock on my finger and a multimillion-euro car parked in his parking lot. Another man owned me. “Now it all makes sense…”