Zedekiah libra king dark.., p.1
Zedekiah: Libra King: Dark BWWM Romance (Zodiac Small Town Romance), page 1
zedekiah: libra king
Dark BWWM Romance
Zodiac Small Town Romance
Book Nine
jamila jasper
contents
Zedekiah: Libra King
Chapter 1
ZEDEKIAH
Chapter 2
NICOL
Chapter 3
Zed
Chapter 4
Nicol
Chapter 5
Zed
Chapter 6
Nicol
Chapter 7
Zed
Chapter 8
Nicol
Chapter 9
Zed
Chapter 10
Nicol
Chapter 11
Zed
Chapter 12
Nicol
Chapter 13
Zed
About Jamila Jasper
Patreon
Thank You Kindly
A sudden, violent snowstorm and an arranged marriage gone wrong sends Nicol careening into the arms of a grumpy, violent ex-convict hiding from his past deep in the Alaskan wilderness.
Zedekiah "Zed" Strangeway hasn’t touched a woman in years.
He can't allow himself another life-ruining entanglement.
He prefers life on his own in the deep woods and the deep winter.
Most women can’t handle Zed's presence.
He’s too gruff…
Too possessive of his women.
Too addicted to taking angels to bed and breaking them.
Most women want a safer bet.
When vulnerable Nicol lands on his doorstep with torn clothing and her elderly husband from an arranged marriage hot on her heels, Zed can choose to save her, or throw her to the polar bears.
If Zed rescues her, all he can promise Nicol is a dark and twisted night that will permanently bind her to his will.
A Libra man is chivalrous, charming and athletic in the bedroom. He is absolutely programmed to love and can become deeply obsessive with pleasing his lover. A Libra man will always pursue adventure with his lover and leave her wanting more.
They are masters of slow teasing and seduction. In the bedroom, a Libra man won’t disappoint, especially not in this story. Discover the twisted side of the zodiac in this dark & twisted black woman/white man romance.
zedekiah: libra king
Zedekiah
A Hebrew name meaning God is just.
A dark romance.
A Dark Mountain Man Romance
Thank you to my patron Nicol for your support and being the namesake of our female main character. This is one of the benefits offered to $10+ patrons, so thank you for your support. I hope you enjoy the story. Again, thank you for the support!
www.patreon.com/jamilajasper
Now Zedekiah rebelled against the king of Babylon.
Jeremiah 52:3
one
ZEDEKIAH
I was taught to love three things, God, guns and my country.
When I was sixteen, I left our town, left my Mennonite home, our country town, and moved in with my aunt in a small town in the middle of nowhere called McGraw, NY. It’s a shithole, honestly, but my aunt tried to do a good job of raising us up when we knew nothing of the world. Before my aunt, I grew up on a farm far away from civilization and my accent sounds so damn country that you could mistake me for being from West Virginia.
When the boys in high school bullied me for my accent as well as my funny name, from the Bible and when I came home covered in bruises after fighting off bullies, my aunt suggested I shorten it to Zed, which is what I did.
Leaving New York was the second best thing I ever did aside from leaving my family farm and my family’s beliefs, although nobody understands why I chose Alaska. Fuck, I don’t even understand sometimes. I guess I enjoy being alone. I needed to get far away from every aspect of my past. Every dark thought. Every temptation to hurt and act on my family’s teachings.
Alaska is exactly where I deserve to be – far away from anyone I might hurt. Nights like this, when the snow comes down in large flurries, I occupy myself by cleaning my firearms. I have a small collection compared to most people. I had to leave many of my guns behind in New York when I moved. I couldn’t fit them all in the truck.
Tonight, I clean out my favorite recent purchase – an M400 Tread Predator from Sig Sauer. My gun-cleaning ritual that pairs well with George Strait and bourbon. My dog, a mutt named Sharpie that I rescued from a nearby Alaskan Native reservation, sleeps nearby as I sing along to the music and clean. The fire crackles in the background, breaking up the silence of another Alaskan night. They say we’re gonna have snowstorms for a while up here. I don’t mind.
You appreciate quiet like this when you grow up in a family as big as mine was back in New York. Even my aunt’s house was a zoo half the time. Hm. This is the real America, though. The untouched, untamed, and completely wild America. This is the perfect place for a man with a natural instinct for conquering the land and bending it to his will. There’s enough hunting, fishing, trapping and shooting to keep any man occupied. I stay busy running the house and looking after the dog. Too busy to worry about being alone.
For a few weeks in summer you can even take the four-wheeler out and explore every inch of bare wilderness as far as the eye can see. Fucking gorgeous.
I love the snow, since it means another peaceful night without so much as a coyote howling outside and riling up the mutt. I wish I was in the mood for more drinking to be frank. But I’ll keep my head on.
I’ll clean my gun, I’ll fold my flag hanging above the mantle according to code, I’ll pray and then I’ll head to bed. My sister Melodeigh would have called the routine boring, but I find staying trapped in our life with our ways far more frustrating than living out here on my own.
You miss having a family around you sometimes. No point lying about that. But I’m not like some of the other men around here who will sleep with anything that walks and has a cunt. I don’t like prostitutes or gold diggers. I wasn’t raised like that. So I deal with the loneliness and the grim reality that I have chosen a life where I will never meet a woman or have a family of my own.
I left the only family I knew behind because I had to and I don’t think there’s a soul out here who would understand what I came from or why I had to leave it all behind.
Just when I’m thinking about the one thing I’m missing out here, a blood-curdling scream pierces through the silence all around me.
There ain’t much out here, so the scream could be coming from anywhere, but it sounds like a woman screaming and it sounds close. Fuck. Even if I’d rather avoid any interruptions, I can’t help my instincts. I leave the gun parts all over the table and grab the shotgun at the door.
Sharpie’s ears prick up and he barks three times before joining me at the door. I slide into my short Carhartt boots and fling the door open without bothering to put on a jacket. There ain’t a damn thing around my property for at least a ¼ mile, so I see the source of the scream, the second I open my door.
My dog sees it and hears it too. The damn dog loses his senses. His tail straightens behind him as Sharpie takes off like a bullet, galloping through the freshly fallen snow with pure excitement.
“Sharpie, NO!”
Fuck. I can tell it’s a woman, not just because of the screaming, but because of the long, dark hair bouncing behind her and the way her body looks even from a distance. Women are softer than men and this one looks plenty soft and plenty curvy. But her presence surprises me and unnerves me to my core. What the hell is a woman doing out here?
I whistle loud and Sharpie stops in his tracks, but the woman stops too and she stares at me across the snow as she stands in place.
“Hello, ma’am!” I call out, but she still freezes in place. What the fuck? She might be scared. Hell, most women would be scared seeing me for the first time. I’ve never been able to really attract a normal woman on account of that. I don’t know. My personality might be the problem. She clearly needs help so I don’t want her to run. I have to try to look non-threatening, which has historically been pretty hard for me.
Just don’t run into the snow, woman. You’re gonna die out there…
I scowl, already upset that a woman would do something so foolish as to run out in weather like this screaming her head off. Something might be wrong or something might be wrong with her. She doesn’t look like a junkie, though. Even without getting too close, I can tell.
I command Sharpie to stay, hoping he obeys for a damn change, and jog all the way over to the woman. Holy shit. That woman is dark. I freeze myself three feet away from her. It’s been years since I’ve seen a woman who looks like this. Her long hair is in dreadlocks, I think. My chest tightens and I don’t know what to say. A black lady in Alaska? How the hell did she get here?
Her gaze slowly meets mine and her lower lip trembles. One simple word escapes the woman’s lips.
“Help…”
My gut tells me not to help her. For all I know, she could be a left wing terrorist on the run from the FBI. She also looks at my gun as if she doesn’t think I have a right to have it. I hold my weapon tighter against my body, but I don’t move in a way that might scare her.
“Who are you and what are you doing on my property?”
“I want a divorce,” she says with a shaky voice. “They sent me to the wrong house and I want a divorce.”
The woman looks like a wild witch and her body is the kind that would be lewd no matter what she wore. Curves everywhere. Tits. Ass. But the woman must be out of her fucking mind. I still don’t think she looks like a junkie, but maybe she’s on something else.
“What the hell are you talking about?” I yell at her, fighting my initial thoughts about her and staying focused on the fact that this woman might be crazy and I would have no real way of knowing it.
“We have to go. Please! He’s after me,” she screams both panicked and out of breath.
She isn’t making any sense. I grab her by the forearm and gesture towards my house.
“I’m bringing your ass inside and you’re gonna start making sense. I swear if this is some kind of trick, I’ll slaughter you clean,” I say to her sternly. I don’t want to mess with any troublesome woman or play games with a lying hooker looking to scam me for money. She has all the teeth in her mouth and she doesn’t have the typical worn-down look you might see on the faces of the local hookers. She ain’t an Indian either. Hm…
Her breath hitches, but she doesn’t break my gaze. She’s chattering from the cold, I think. Because she doesn’t look scared. She nods and I lead her towards the house. Sharpie follows us into the house. The dog doesn’t appear to phase her in the slightest, which is a good sign. I couldn’t get along with a woman who carries on too much.
Once we’re inside the cabin and I shut the door behind us, I get the closest blanket from my sofa and wrap it around her shoulders.
“Sit down by the fire, ma’am and I’ll make you some coffee. My name is Zed.”
She’s still chattering too much to answer, but the woman does as I ask and sits on the sofa. I maybe took it a little far with the slaughter comment, but I didn’t want her making any trouble, and it seems to have worked. My dog makes no effort to appear intimidating. He wants to make friends with everybody.
Sharpie runs up to her sniffing away and wagging his tail. It’s painfully quiet as I wait for the water to boil on the electric stove. The black woman stays wrapped in the blanket.
My father would lose his mind if he knew I had a woman like her sitting on my couch. He always taught me to be polite to them, but he made it clear I wasn’t ever to bring a girl like her home. My uncle and aunt weren’t any different. Their beliefs might not have been as extreme as my birth family, but they believed that white people were better off separate too.
The woman has stopped chattering when I approach her with the coffee and her lips have more of a dark, rosy mauve color to them instead of bluish gray. She slides the blanket down over her head and takes the cup of coffee from me. Her lips are very nice. They’re bigger than I’m used to but they look soft too.
“Thank you,” she whispers. I can’t take my eyes off her. My staring clearly makes her uncomfortable. She shivers a little and then draws the coffee to her lips. I can think of something else I’d love to do with her sweet ass lips.
“You’re welcome,” I grunt, fighting the semi-hard erection already building in my pants. There’s no way this woman can get anywhere on the roads today, so I’ll probably have to keep her overnight. Sharpie sleeps on the couch and I only have one bed.
The intruding thought only makes my semi-erect cock harder to control.
“My name is Nicol,” she replies. Her voice is deeper than I expect but very pretty. She sounds like a jazz singer.
“Pretty name,” I grunt. The whole fucking package is pretty, but I don’t want to scare her anymore than I have already and I don’t want to put certain shit on the table that I should stay far away from.
She seems jumpy. Maybe I should stop looking at her, especially because my gaze wanders instinctively down to her tits and man, they look large. Nice, sexy bouncy globes that I can imagine burying my face in.
I clear my throat and fight back my craving for her.
“I’ll get some coffee and join you,” I say to her, pouring myself a cup of coffee and standing across from Nicol, watching her at a safe distance. I just want to observe her.
It’s definitely my staring making her nervous.
“Do I have something written on my forehead?” Nicol asks in a voice so soft that I could almost have missed the sassiness in her tone. I don’t feel embarrassed. She’s pretty and I wanted to see all of her. Still, I don’t want to scare her, just appreciate the first woman I’ve seen in a long time with nice soft skin and a pretty face. With teeth.
“Sorry. I don’t meet a lot of strangers up here,” I mumble awkwardly.
“You might meet one soon,” she says, never breaking her gaze away from mine. She has pretty eyes for a woman with brown eyes. I don’t mean to be offensive, I just have never quite seen brown eyes like hers. They’re deep and they match her dark skin a bit, which I find a little pretty, though that feeling makes me uneasy too.
Fuck, it’s been too long since I’ve seen another human. Who am I kidding? It’s not just that she’s a human. It’s that she fits a very specific urge that I have gone out of my way to suppress for the safety of the people around me. It’s a test. It has to be a test.
“There aren’t angry strangers in this part of the country. I know everyone who lives around here. Ten miles one way, there’s Augustine Lockwood and about five or ten miles past him, there’s Jim Mulligan’s place.”
A visible flicker of recognition crosses over her face as I mention Jim Mulligan. Something ain’t all the way right here…
Before I can probe this strange and very young looking woman for more information, Sharpie starts barking like crazy. Nicol looks terrified. I still have my shotgun in hand ready for all hell to break loose. Nothing ever happens up here, but of course, shit hits the fan today when we’re about to have another freak snowstorm.
I don’t want to deal with this bullshit.
“You stay right here, Nicol.”
BANG BANG BANG.
Fists pound into my front door. No avoiding it now. I have to deal with my company. So much for a quiet, stormy night.
two
NICOL
I know it’s my husband Jim at the door. The wrong husband. My body reacts viscerally as I recall his scraggly lips dragging over my skin as he tried to convince me to sleep with him, even if he received the wrong girl from the mail-order-bride service.
Jim made it clear when I walked through that door that he bought a Polish woman, not a black woman. I made it clear that I thought I was heading to a completely different man’s house.
The company that brokered the student loan marriage deal between us won’t help us. They want us to make it work and I want a divorce. Jim wants to have sex and he apparently bought enough horse Viagra from Amazon to give him a four-day long boner.
I told him I didn’t want to sleep with a man older than my father, but I could tell he wouldn’t let it go. I mean, he couldn’t. The boner was just out there. My body tenses at the terror I felt living with that man and his weapon. I hope Zed doesn’t send me back. He certainly doesn’t look like a saint. He looks like a cruel beast, but he can’t be worse than Jim Mulligan.
Stupid ass Jim is more than twice my age and I have zero attraction to him. He’s not the guy I signed up to marry. I don’t know how the hell to explain my entire crazy ass life story to a grizzled, gigantic lumberjack looking guy, so I just let him strut to the door with his big ass gun and avoid staring at his ass. The man has the type of ass that could distract you from trauma.
I try to keep my thinking straight. Zed can’t be an innocent guy judging by his big meaty arms and how he looks so damn comfortable holding that weapon. The strange, large-eyed man has a very odd way of looking at me, like I’m a zoo animal or something, and he looks like a freak of nature with those serial-killer blue eyes.
