One thing you should never do on campus – get on the radar of the Heathen Kings, as much as you crave a piece of them.

They’re golden campus boys by day and warlords by night.

Cruel rulers of the world.

Set to marry virgin heiresses and use lesser mortals, like me, for their dirty pleasures.

Sade Royales? He’s a mouthwatering bastard with a sadistic streak that’s always fascinated me–safely, from afar.

But now I’ve done something that’s drawn his attention, and my life will never be the same.

Now, he’s out to haunt me.

Use me for his perverted desires.

Judging by his reputation, he’ll discard me afterward and take pictures of the mess.

Yet when the police come sniffing about the disappearance of my ex-boyfriend, he steps in for me. He swears to protect me. But there’s a deeper plot behind his actions, and soon I start discovering my place in Sade’s wicked plans. One thing is for sure – if he’s going to hell, he’s taking me with him. The question is, do I even want to fight it?

NOTE: This is a dark romance. It contains dub-con, degradation, and a twisted, dark love. Proceed at your peril.

***

MASKED MAN SCENE

The good news is that I’m not insane.

The bad news is that I have a stalker on my tracks.

The masked man is real, and he can do things that would give a ghost a run for its money. Like breaking through closed doors and dissolving into thin fucking air.

I run breathlessly down the stairs, only the moonlight guiding me. I should scream, draw the guards’ attention, but what if that psycho kills whoever happens in his path? I can’t be sure whose face hides behind the mask, but I’m positive he’s one of the Kings or the wannabes they initiate and train as their acolytes. They have the sickest skills, and they’re pretty freaking low on morals. 

Dogg Wilson alone, whose unwavering gaze from the car the other night still haunts me, can do some serious shit. If I hadn’t been so obsessed with working Sade out of my system, I would have spent my last few nights tossing and turning about Dogg’s intentions. 

My chest burns with every inhale I take by the time I reach the bottom of the stairs. The double doors leading out onto the front patio are just across the hall, at the end of a dark hallway. A shadow crosses in front of the glass panes, framed by the outline of combat gear–one of the guards. I can hear muffled laughs, him talking into his phone, oblivious to the fact that there’s an intruder inside the house.

I throw myself in the direction of the light. I’ll tell him about the masked man, and beg him not to look for him but just go, get us all out of here. I may not survive the dark forest surrounding this house alone, and the guards surely wouldn’t survive the masked man, but together we stand a chance. I can almost reach out and grab the door knob, a whimper trembling on my lips, when a shadow whips through my field of vision.

“Jesus Christ,” I shriek. It was so close, the movement ruffled my hair.

Sweat breaks out all over me, the empty house chilling me to the bone. 

No, I can’t stop now, not when I’m so close to salvation.

But when I take the next step, something pierces my naked foot. I yelp, stepping away and looking down. In the faint light filtering from the outside, I make out the drops of blood dotting the wooden floor–my blood, from the thorns that broke through my skin. There are multiple roses scattered at my feet. Under them lies another one of my crumpled poems, words written across it in dripping red.

You can run, but you can’t hide, pretty poet.

Just as I pull in a deep breath to shout, a large presence spreads out behind me like a splash of ink. I feel him before his breath touches my ear, and his deep voice reaches me.

“Scream, and their blood will be on your hands.”

Definitely one of the Kings. 

Even though his voice is distorted, as if Mr. Hyde had replaced whoever he is during the day, there’s a deadly edge specific to the way they all speak. Maybe I’d recognize him by the shape of his body, his height or the color of his eyes but, for that, I’d need to turn around. 

An exhale trembles on my lips before I take another breath, hoping to recognize him by his scent. I’m good with scents. Roses and smoke. Sade is clean linen and fall spice, Micah is leather and dark chocolate, Carlton all ocean and dew, but this one? 

“Trying to recognize me by my scent, pretty poet?” A low, quiet laugh. “A good stalker knows how to mask everything about himself, including his scent. Haven’t you read that in your books?”

A body as hard as concrete brushes my shoulder blades. He’s large, broad, crushing. My brain starts frantically calculating possibilities. No doubt he’ll make good on his promise and hurt the guards if they intervene. Those men don’t expect anything to go wrong tonight when the house is presumably empty. They’ll be caught off guard. They have families waiting for them at home, and if a father doesn’t make it back to his kids, it’ll be on me. 

I’m trapped. 

Nausea flares up from my stomach, and I hunch over, gripping my waist and retching over the roses and poems scattered at my feet. Maybe it will disgust him, and he’ll abandon his pursuit. But the universe isn’t feeling merciful tonight. Nothing comes out, and the masked man chuckles again, sleek like a lake where corpses lie.

“You have a strong sense of responsibility. Be a good girl, and no one will get hurt tonight.”

“No one?”  I manage breathlessly.

“No one,” comes the flat answer. 

I slowly come back up to a standing position, my eyes fixed on the light ahead. It’s so close, it’s painful. I could just lunge across the hall and grab the doorknob. But the masked man has me in a chokehold without even touching me.

I lick my parched lips. “You’re enjoying this, huh? Making someone much smaller than you fear for their life?”

“Why would you fear for your life? I brought flowers.”

“You also brought letters written in blood.”

He’s now closer, inhaling the scent of my hair. My fingers dig into my arms. It’s all the protection I have against him. Useless, pointless, but I need the illusion. 

“They’re freshly written, inspired by your poems,” he murmurs in my ear. My blood drains from my limbs. The poems in which I called Sade by name. 

Verses without much depth, but of piercing sincerity. I thought that I would be safe to explore those feelings within the safety of these walls, unlike at the mansion or on campus.

“Why don’t you take off the mask now?” I manage. “I mean, it’s clear you’re one of the Kings. Or that they sent you.”

A chuckle, so close that I’m sure he must have somehow gotten inside my head just like he broke into the house. Like a freaking ghost.

“How do you know I’m even wearing a mask?”

“I know you’re the same man who broke into Mel’s bathroom the first night I was here.” I pause, wishing I remembered the glimpse I got of him in more detail. “I know it in my bones.”

“See, we are bound on such deep levels.”

“How did you even pull that off, the first night?”

“Magician’s secret.”

“Who are you?” My words leave on a trembling breath.

“Who do you suspect that I am?”

“Please don’t play with me.”

“I just enjoy seeing you do the guesswork.”

“I’d prefer it if you saved me the torture.”

“Yes, I imagine it would be hard to choose. Considering how many men Dean’s videos fired up for you. Dogg Wilson, for example. He’s been obsessed with you since that night at the party, when you ground yourself against two men.”

I swallow hard at the threat in his voice. It bothers him. Still, what he saw that night inspired him to track me down here and set up this entire nightmare. 

“Or Carlton Wilde?” he continues. “He was pretty loud about how much he enjoyed what he saw in that group chat.”

The knot in my throat feels like a jagged pill. Carlton is a big guy, the muscle on whom the Kings’ society at Norton King’s relies to do their dirty work when someone needs a painful lesson. Some people whisper he’s their hitman. It’s definitely not out of the question that he could be the one standing behind me. 

But if it’s Sade–

My mind freezes before I fully acknowledge that possibility. It would mean that he saw into my mind tonight when he read my verses and knows all about the dirty, preposterous, boundless perversities I want him to do to me. I shudder, even though I’m wrapped in a cocoon of unbearable heat coming from his presence, making it a struggle to breathe. 

“What do you want? Why are you here?” I croak.

A gloved hand slithers around my neck from behind. 

“You didn’t go back home that night. You have no idea what that did to me.” His fingers press into the sides of my neck, enough to obstruct the flow of blood through my jugular. “I should have monitored you every step of the way. The torturous hours before I tracked you down, thinking that you might have–”

He doesn’t finish the sentence, but I know what he means. Despite the fact that I’m going lightheaded, I understand the psycho was worried I might have caused myself irreparable harm. But does that mean my life is precious to him, and he won’t attempt to take it himself? The energy coming from him is dark and barely contained, and there’s a killer in the vibrations of his voice. His fingers curl into my flesh, possessive like a claw.

He pulls me back into his large body that feels rock-solid against my back. Yet his energy is a swirling black hole, ready to suck me in. 

“Relax, princess,” he purrs while that gloved hand claims more of my air supply, forcing me to abandon my weight against his body. “You’re in better company than you imagine. I’m a fellow poet myself, you see, and I wrote something for you. I’m curious what you think.”

He reaches into a pocket to produce another piece of my scribbling and holds it in front of my eyes. I should be relieved it’s not a knife he’s holding, but the red writing across it, trumping my own lines as if it owns them, fills me with terror. If I had a sliver of a doubt it was blood, it dissipates into thin air. My pounding pulse must tell the masked man exactly how I’m feeling because a laugh rumbles against my back. The bastard is amused.

“You can rejoice, pretty poet. The words are written in the blood of a man who deeply grieved you. Come on, read them out loud for me. But careful. Not loud enough to draw attention.” His mouth is now touching my ear, I can feel his hot breath through the mask. “We wouldn’t want to get the guards in trouble now, would we?”

My eyes fall to the words, tiny rivulets of red darkening the parchment-like paper. I didn’t even realize he led me back towards the stairs while we talked. We are now close to the windows on the back side of the house. There are no lamp posts here, just hedges and rose bushes all the way to the wrought iron fence that separates the property from the black forest beyond.

I try to make sense of the words in the moonlight, but my brain just won’t work with me. The masked man hums in understanding.

“All right, let me help you then. I’ll start by reading your own lines first.”

“No!” It’s a knee-jerk reaction. The prospect of hearing the explicit things I wrote about Sade, from this guy’s mouth, makes my blood curdle. I’d rather face his twisted desires than the realization that he knows my own. I put my attention on the red words. 

“Then you read my own verses to me, little poet.” His voice is almost dreamy as he says it. This bastard takes serious pleasure from tormenting me.

My tongue flicks over my parched lips, my throat constricting, not wanting to produce the words. I force myself through it. 

“Stepping on petals of sin, A death rider brought to ruin, Locks you in his soul–an iron maiden, And makes of you his hellish haven.” The dark walls swallow my strained voice. My throat bobs under his gloved hand, so large that it completely covers my neck from base to chin. There’s so much strength in those fingers that a single squeeze would kill me. 

“Doesn’t it sound romantic?” he says. 

“I see only despair,” I whisper, staring at our verses’ twisted embrace like it’s a work of art. 

He breathes in, his dark presence wrapping around me like a cocoon, his hand tighter around my throat. 

“It’s a violation, you know,” I manage, my voice a ghostly whisper. “Reading someone’s poetry without their permission is the same as reading their diary.”

“Ah, princess, you surely understand by now that I’m not someone who is easily held back by morals. For example, that beautiful red color of the verses I wrote for you. Like I said, it’s acquired from a man that grieved you.” His mouth touches my cheek through the mask, and I shut my eyes tightly as if that could keep the information at bay. But his whispers trickle into my brain. “One of the men who exposed you at that party. Who tainted your dignity and took away from you everything you believed you were.”

“Everything I believed I was,” I retort, my voice as low as his, “or who you wanted me to be?”

He keeps quiet, only that broad chest moving behind me. Unfazed, waiting for me to continue. 

“Maybe I was never the innocent girl the world saw. There was always more to me than just a poet’s soul.”

“Hmmm,” he rumbles softly. “A poet’s soul as captivating as those big hazel eyes. I knew your soul before I even spoke to you. Oh, how it hurt to watch you betray your muse like that.”

My head spins as if I were tipsy. An effect of his steady grip on my throat. 

“You see, Justine, it’s not that I expected your being to be reduced to the poet. I just didn’t expect you to cheat on your dreams. To give yourself to anyone other than your muse.”

Sade. His name fills my head. It’s him, oh, dear Lord, it’s him.

“Did you think about me, little poet?” he murmurs, confirming my suspicion. “While Posh Boy pounded your p***y and you held on to that headboard, did you imagine it was me doing it?”

“Jesus Chris, Sade, why are you doing this?” I croak.

He releases my throat, and I instinctively pull in a deep breath. The oxygen hits too hard, making me reel on my feet and eventually find balance against his hard body. He removes a leather glove, and I recognize the back of his hand. The heads of snakes with jaws opened towards every one of his knuckles. 

Fucking Flying Dutchman, it is him. And he knows exactly what I’ve been fantasizing about all this time. He flexes his fingers, reddish bruises stretching over that fist that can punch its way through walls.

“You shouldn’t have chosen him over me, Justine. Now, we are both going to hell.” He turns his palm to face me. I gasp.

Blood is smeared over the large plane of his hand, crusted over deep, mean cuts. A sharp feeling shoots straight between my legs. 

“What the hell?” The words whoosh out of my chest.

“I told you–I wrote the words in blood.” His voice goes even lower. “My blood.”

I’m speechless, staring at what he did to himself. Those cuts will leave scars, his hand is almost maimed.

“Do you want to see what else I wrote for you in my own blood, pretty poet? The kind of feelings that you ignite in me?”

God knows the answer is yes. I want to know everything about every feeling he might have for me, but I don’t dare ask, still fearing that this might be a trap.

Holding the piece of paper with one hand, he produces a Zippo with the other and lights up a flame. He holds it at the corner of the paper until the flame catches, leaving a trail of crumpling black in its wake.

“There’s no purification like verse and fire,” he muses. “When the pain gets unbearable, they do more for us than a hundred hours of therapy. They bring healing. Give respite. They banish the demons that haunt us, even if only for a little while.”

“You are the only demon that haunts me,” I whisper, the flame playing in my eyes, hypnotizing me. 

He’s quiet for a moment, only the sound of burning paper filling the hollow darkness around us. The fire reaches his fingers, and my stomach tightens, waiting for him to let it drop. He doesn’t, just watching the flames licking their way dangerously close to his fingers.

“You may have given your virginity to another man, but make no mistake, Justine Pracht. You’re mine. You encourage another guy’s advances again, and there will be casualties.” 

Still holding the burning paper in one hand, he lets the other one slip down my body, snaking over the red silk robe toward the apex of my thighs. I look down, watching that large hand with those tattooed snakes slithering down my robe that shines ruby red in the flames. The moonlight flickers, and my head whips up. A shadow just crossed in front of the window, and now another. Shit, the flames must have drawn their attention.

“The guards,” I whisper breathlessly, my heart beating harder. I’m not sure whether I’m reacting to the prospect of being caught or of the masked man stopping what he’s doing to deal with the nuisance.

“You better hope they don’t come in here, pretty poet, or you may have to write their obituaries next. I’m sure you’d make eloquent work of it.” His hand slides lower, but at least he lets the paper drop and taps out the fire with his foot. 

I resist his touch, even if my thighs are squirming. 

“Please, don’t,” I whisper, my eyelids fluttering as I keep my eyes on the window.

Sade doesn’t reply. He just waits, his hand now hovering just above my womb. I can feel the wetness seeping into my panties, this fucked up situation turning on the wanton inside me like there’s no tomorrow. But I can’t. 

There’s a truth here I can’t ignore–If I do this, I’ll lose myself to him. It’s the point of no return. If I let Sade Royales f**l me with his d**k, he will take my soul like a real-life demon. The energy surrounding him, dark like spreading ink, is ravenous for my soul, ready to fill the entire canvas of it, and that treacherous canvas is dying to soak it in. 

And then? It’s not like Sade Royales and I actually have a future. 

“We can’t do this, Sade,” I whisper. “So you take this from me, and then what? What happens to me when you marry your virgin heiress and go on with your life?” I shake my head, not even wanting to imagine it. I’d rather not taste something so good only to be denied the flavor for the rest of my days.

But by the way his gloved hand slithers around my throat again, Sade isn’t ready to take no for an answer. 

“You’re asking too much.” My voice trembles, but I manage to bring some spine to my tone. I won’t go down tonight without a fight. If I give in to his wicked lure, I won’t ever recover. “What happened the other night with you and Dean, it changed me. Things will never be the same for me on campus, even if your attention gives me some sort of protection.”

“Some sort of protection?” 

“Okay, real protection. But I’m still a sl*t in everyone’s eyes.” I pause, swallowing at the uncomfortable pressure he puts on my throat. “Including yours.”

His grip turns into a leathery caress that could become deadly any second. 

“I see you’ve already decided what everyone’s thinking. Including me. But if you’re honest, can you blame me? You let a man run his money through your account and his d**k through your p***y and your mouth. You let him film you while at it, too. You are a sl*t.”

I laugh, the sound disturbing. “After all the poet soul talk, this is what you give me?”

“This is what you’ll have of me. Also, despite the fancy way you put it, you are trying to ditch me.” The hand on my throat turns harder while the one on my front dips, parting the sides of my robe. I’d protest, but his squeeze now makes it impossible. My naked feet thrash to gain a footing, but I don’t stand a chance as he drags me back towards the stairs, the floor slippery under my feet. 

“I’m going to finger you with the same hand from which I drew blood, Justine, just so you understand that you belong to me.” His voice gains a different inflection. If sex demons existed, I’m sure this is what they’d sound like. “Then, I’ll have my way with you in front of a mirror, so you get a perfect view of yourself being used like the dirty little w***e you like to be. If that’s what you’re into, that’s what I’m gonna give you. Ah, look at this p***y, dripping wet already. Does it turn you on, the prospect of being forced to fulfill a masked man’s fantasies? To be used for his perversions?” He drags me up the stairs, the mask scraping my cheek as his lips touch me through it. “Does it even matter who is behind the mask when it comes to that particular fantasy?”

I thrash harder, but my feet just skid on the ground, my entire body weight sustained by his grip on my throat, his other hand deep in my panties. My eyes bulge, my hands clawing at his black-clad wrist, but it’s like fighting the fucking Terminator. We’re almost at the top of the stairs when he loosens his grip a little, just as his naked hand pushes two fingers into my p***y, making it hurt. 

“On second thought, how about we film it, too? That way you’ll have something you’ll actually enjoy watching later on. I’ll be keeping my mask on, too. Imagine how wet you’ll get every time you remember.”

I should ask him whether he’ll be in bed with his wife while I do that, spitting poison at him. Instead, I croak, “I wonder how many guys in your group chat will be doing just the same.”

His grip gives out a little more, as if my words hit him in the gut. 

It’s now or never. 

I bend forward, and crash an elbow into his exposed side. But it’s not like in the movies. I hit a wall of muscles, causing my captor nothing but a moment of amused wonder. As if he can’t believe what I just decided to do, and the stupidity of said decision. 

I spin around, facing the huge masked shadow for the first time before I sprint through the hall. He doesn’t follow, nothing but his dark laugh chasing me. As if he’s giving me some leeway only to increase his own fun, to make this more exciting. 

“My pretty poet likes adrenaline,” his voice sounds down the hall. “By all means, as long as it pleases you, but it’s good to know when to give up. Remember, you can run, but you can’t hide.” 

Reaching the next flight of stairs, I grip onto the banister to haul myself up, my thighs burning. 

“I must say, your words hurt me.” He’s closer now. A force of evil speaking from the walls, reaching for my sanity. “You thinking that I would share footage of you with anyone. Haven’t I made it clear that I wanted you entirely for myself? I want your beautiful mind, your precious soul, and I want your soaked p***y.” 

I pant, the end of the next flight of stairs hovering within sight. It’s so dark up there that I can hardly make out the outline of the last step. 

He laughs, and it’s a punishing sound, because he’s gaining on me by the second. “You want to be ill-used on the stairs, I see. It will be my pleasure to comply.” 

I’m dying to look back, gauge how long until he catches up, but I force myself not to. I have to stay focused on the task, which is reaching the attic door. There, I’ll pull a string so that the trap door falls open. If I can get in fast enough, and pull the string back up with me before I shut the door, he won’t be able to get me anymore. There’s only one small round window to the outside in that room, and there’s no way he can get in through it, no matter how sick his skills are. There, I wouldn’t have to scream and alert the guards. I just have to keep hidden until morning, and–

“The faster you understand you’re not getting rid of me, the better.” His voice is so close now, it’s in the very air I breathe. I gasp as a large hand wraps around my ankle, yanking me down so I fall with my front on the stairs. He drags me back mercilessly–his punishment for my trying to run away. The bastard wasn’t kidding. He is hurt. 

A hand covers my mouth, muffling my cry.

“Now, now, we don’t want to alert the guards, remember?” he murmurs. I can feel the weight of his body hovering over me, his fingers grazing the back of my thigh. 

“You know this scenario well,” he says. “It was a nightmare you had. One from which you woke up aroused.” He tsks, his fingers bypassing my lace panties and grazing the lips of my p***y. 

I claw at the stairs in front of me, using all of my strength to try and drag myself up from under him. 

“Ah, look at how much this p***y wants me.” Satisfaction is unmistakable in his voice. He allows some of his weight to press onto my back, trapping me against the stairs. Enough that I can still breathe through my nose over his leather-clad fingers, but also enough to rob me of the strength to keep fighting. 

At least having to work for air takes my focus away from how my body betrayed me. He’s going to render me a mess, ready to serve him. 

I cry out into his hand, and reach up with curled fingers, desperate to save myself from succumbing to him like to a disease. He presses that impossibly large chest harder on me, rendering any further attempt futile. 

“Now what was the first thing the masked man did to you in your nightmare?” He chuckles in my ear, the sound almost spectral, creating a sweet pool of terror in my womb. “I know there was a part where he caught you on the stairs, knocked you down and ripped off your panties while you thrashed under him. He rammed a large c**k into your pussy, a hand on your mouth so you couldn’t scream. You woke up ashamed and disgusted with how hard you came on his c**k.”

My eyelids flutter shut. His words cause me more than just shame or disgust. The voice he uses is inhuman and blood-curdling, the voice of a god forged in war. One seeking solace from the horrors he witnessed, endured and was forced to perpetrate. I always had a knack for the deeper frequencies in people’s voices, and his voice tells a story that envelops my brain in a fog of feelings that are beyond the human experience.

“But I won’t do that to you, little poet,” he murmurs. 

I remain still under his weight. The scent of roses and smoke now mingles with the scent of clean linen, as if the Hyde were now merging back with his human form. “Still, you’ll end up begging me to use you.”

***

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