King of Me (The King Trilogy #3)(57)
Author: Mimi Jean Pamfiloff

He grinned and dipped his head in a way that indicated he might make me pay for that little comment. I was really looking forward to it.

EPILOGUE

Six months later.

My beautiful king and I were married on an unusually warm winter day, standing over the same spot where we’d first made love roughly three thousand years earlier, near his home in Crete. At first, I wondered why he’d insisted on this location—after all, we were busy making new memories now. But he’d simply said it was the one memory he would never replace: the moment he fell in love.

No woman in her right mind could argue with that.

It was a simple, quiet ceremony with a minister, my mother and father as witnesses, and Becca acting as both maid of honor and best man as Mack was…well, I didn’t know where, and King wouldn’t talk about it. Yes, more secrets. But I’d learned I would have to accept that about King. He wasn’t evil anymore, but he was still King. The man would always have his secrets.

Anyway, despite the obvious absence of both our brothers, the event marked a new chapter in our lives, one filled with a quiet joy that we’d made it.

As for the Spiros family, King had not wiped them off the face of the earth as I’d thought, but I didn’t doubt King had shown no mercy to Stefanos or his brother. I didn’t know what to think about it, but King assured me that the family was no longer a threat. I’d simply have to trust him on that.

As for the 10 Club, King had decided to come clean the night after he’d found me in the club. He was, in fact, the man behind the giant smoke screen, the wizard secretly pulling all of the strings. I suspected that the psycho Vaughn had figured it out and that was what he’d meant to say before I killed him.

“But why in the world did you start something like that?” I’d asked King.

“It began after I tried to kill you in Athens,” he’d explained. “You disappeared, and I needed to find a way back to you. I needed a cure for this curse.”

I cried after hearing that news, but it was what it was. The silver lining was that King was in a position to slowly dismantle the Club and “deal” with the members. I suspected, however, that his monster-slash-curse had created a monster of its own that would never go away entirely. Corrupt people like that, with more money and power than they knew what to do with, would exist whether he charged a membership fee or not.

But, again, it was what it was.

As for facing all of the lies and deceptions cursed-King had orchestrated around me during his quest for the Artifact, there were simply too many to count, and it was now a moot point. King, my King, simply explained it as such, “I loved you, and when he was in control, I never wanted him to know how much you meant. But every step of the way, I did what I could to show you, to tell you I was there. I hoped you’d see past his evil and see me. Waiting for you. Waiting for the chance to end him.”

King also explained that had I surrendered to my own darkness and demons, I might have ended up loving the cursed King more than him. If that had happened, the monster would have come to life in his place. Thankfully, I’d fallen in love with the right King, for the right reasons.

After that revelation, we made a promise to put the past in the past. I knew, however, that King still carried a tremendous amount of guilt for everything he’d done, despite knowing he’d not been in control. Anyway, that became my unspoken quest: to help him forget and fill that arrogant, sexy, cocky head of his with new, beautiful memories.

So, that left us where we are today: our extended honeymoon. Six months traveling around the world on a five-hundred-and-thirty-foot yacht. Turns out that King did own one, something he’d denied once. And it was a floating slice of heaven, staffed with a gourmet chef, three butlers, an eight-person crew, one Ypirétria, and a helicopter pilot. Yeah, it was really, really over-the-top extravagant, but I wasn’t going to complain. I needed some serious pampering.

“Mia? Are you coming or not, woman?” King screamed from the aft deck, his voice pouring into our suite above through the open balcony doors.

I smiled and finished tying up my too-tiny white bikini and then strolled outside onto the private terrace. There, standing shirtless in black board shorts—too cute—was the most beautiful man in the world. He was also loyal, determined, loving, and dangerous as hell. Yeah, like I suspected, removing the curse only made the damned man that much more powerful. I wasn’t going to complain. His powerful side—now not so evil—gave me a sort of comfort that allowed me to feel safe, allowed me to lick my own wounds and heal.

I sighed and beamed down at him.

He lifted a pair of diving flippers and jiggled them at me as if to say, “I’m waiting.”

We were anchored in the Bahamas this week, and he’d promised to teach me to dive today.

“Almost ready!” I held up my index finger, watching as his smile melted into a look of pure irritation.

I turned away from him, stopped at the foot of the bed, and untied my top, grinning like a fiend as I lay down in the bed. One, two, three, four, five, six—

The bedroom door burst open, and there was King, his broad, bare chest heaving, his eyes completely furious.

I smiled up at him. “You are so predictable.” He hated to be kept waiting.

The moment he registered my topless body, br**sts waiting with perky hard ni**les, his look once again shifted. This time into lust. Pure and simple lust. Topped with a heaping helping of love.

His beautiful blue eyes narrowed, and he cracked a wicked little smile. “That was a dirty trick.”

I shrugged and grinned.

“I might have to punish you for that.”

“I kinda hoped you would,” I said.

King was on me like a hungry wolf, tearing his c**k free from his trunks. He positioned himself between my thighs and tugged on the side string of my bikini bottom, effectively removing the barrier between us. Gazing into my eyes, he gripped his long, hard, thick shaft in his hand and watched with erotic fascination as he slowly guided himself into my ready entrance.

I flung my head back on the pillow and savored the sensation of his stiff hot flesh entering my body. Inch by inch he fed himself into me until he could go no further.

Still arching over me, he pillared his arms to either side of my head and gazed into my eyes. “I will never get enough of you.”

“You have no idea how sexy you are, do you, King?” His large lean frame was every woman’s sexual fantasy. He f**king rocked my world in bed. And as long as I wore the ring and he wore his, the one he’d had made—yes, in hopes that this day would come—we’d never grow old. We’d never die.