The Queen

by Skye Warren

  I look down at her clothes, the same black shirt and blazer, the same utilitarian jeans and black boots. She will fit into this crowd of glitz and glamour about as well me.

  My Smith College T-shirt and black yoga pants are variations of what I packed in my suitcase. There aren’t any party dresses or slinky skirts.

  Walking downstairs feels a little like being Cinderella, except without the fairy godmother. I’m showing up in rags and chimney soot. Bare feet instead of a golden-white carriage.

  People stop their conversation when they see me. They stop laughing.

  Which is ironic, because I probably look pretty funny.

  When I reach the ground floor, there’s actually a little crowd formed, waiting for me. They show no intention of moving, openly gawking, blocking my path. Until Hiro steps behind me. Whatever expression she wears on her face, it makes everyone take a step back. Then another.

  That’s how I plow a path between people, to where Damon’s makeshift throne was the first night. Sure enough he’s holding court there again, reclined in a large leather armchair while women and men dance around him. No matter that they’re beautiful. Damon looks almost bored.

  Until he sees me at the other end of the room. Then his expression turns anticipatory. That’s never a good thing when you’re dealing with a man like him. Nothing he looks forward to will be good for me.

  If I’m a broke-down version of Cinderella, Damon is a very dark prince.

  “Come here,” he says with a crook of his finger.

  Of course I was coming to see him anyway. Now it’s like he ordered me to do it. I take a step closer, wondering if I’m crazy for confronting him. Hiding in my room won’t very well help either. I have to do something. Hiro melts into the crowd, and I’m on my own.

  I keep going until I’m a foot away from him, all the people hushed around us.

  “What are you doing?” I demand.

  “Enjoying myself,” he says with a little smile.

  I’ve seen him leaning over me for a kiss. I’ve seen him peruse my body with a hungry gaze. That’s what Damon Scott looks like when he’s having a good time. This is something else. He’s not enjoying himself while he knows Avery is in his father’s grip. “That’s a lie.”

  He grasps my wrist before I realize he’s reaching for me, and I tumble into his lap. “It’s a little better now that you’re here. And now that you’re close.”

  My muscles are tense, stiff, as I control my natural instinct to fight him. I want to slap him for touching me. No, I want to slap him for touching me in front of these strangers. For turning the terrible, irrepressible attraction between us into a public affair.

  That would prove that it matters to me. That he matters to me.

  I lean back in his arms, pretending I’m unconcerned with my yoga pants and my bare feet. Pretending I’m as comfortable with my sexuality as the people watching us with betrayal and envy. “I don’t think you’re enjoying yourself at all. I think you’re pretending. Which is interesting.”

  “That’s not interesting. I’m much more interested in what brought you downstairs. Is there something you wanted to see, sweet girl? Something you want to try?”

  “How about honesty?”

  A low laugh. “Honestly, you’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”

  The words make a mockery of my request. They make of a mockery of me, a regular girl surrounded by women that belong on magazine covers. One of them gives a delicate little snort.

  I want to pretend like he hasn’t hurt me, but my cheeks heat. “We should be going to find Avery.”

  “You could argue that she brought this on herself. She’s the one who wanted him to live.”

  “How dare you? No one asks for that.” In the second that passes we’re no longer talking about Avery but about me. About what his father did to me. I still feel his hands on my skin, bruises like brands.

  Damon tenses underneath me, but his voice sounds casual as he says, “Avery made her bed. Now let her lie in it. Meanwhile you can lie in my bed.”

  Now I do struggle against him, but his arm is like iron across my lap. “Let me go.”

  A commotion from the front door disrupts the crowd, and Damon tightens his hold even farther. Gabriel Miller is always in control, always in charge, a businessman with an air of danger and more money than God. Now he looks haggard as he pushes through the crowd.

  “You,” he says on a snarl.

  Damon sets me upright before I realize what’s happening, standing and pushing me behind him in one smooth move. “Oh, did you get the text message? How nice of you to join us.”

  “Don’t do this,” Gabriel says, his voice low and a little desperate.

  “I’m not doing anything,” Damon says, almost playful as he objects.

  “This is Avery we’re talking about. She’s—” The large man breaks off, his golden eyes glinting with danger and emotion.

  “Avery can take care of herself. Probably.”

  “I could fucking kill you right now. Not one person here would stop me.”

  Damon’s voice is wry. “Of course not. It would be the best entertainment they’ve had all year.”

  “I should do it,” Gabriel says on a rumble that sends chills through me. For a breathless moment violence flashes in his golden eyes. It passes in a rush, leaving only desolation.

  “Then do it,” Damon says softly. “Kill me if you have to, but don’t come here and talk to me like you have any right. That’s what you lost. That’s what you gave up for her.”

  He strides past us, and everyone returns to their dancing and their sex. The show is over, except for a desperate Gabriel. “Talk to him,” he says.

  My eyes widen. “He doesn’t listen to me.”

  “He does. You’re the only one.” His laugh is thick with grief.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Go there myself, of course. But Damon was right when he said no place can hold his father. And that means we’ll need him. One way or another he has to come.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Ordinary people are a puzzle, but Damon is the only one who’s ever interested me. The only one I wish I could solve. And never more than right now, as the darkness sets in.

  It takes me a few days to realize that he’s serious about not going. I think I actually go through the first two stages of grief—denial, when I’m sure he’s secretly packing his bags and heading to the airport. Anger, when I consider dumping the eggs benedict that appears outside my door on his sleepy, beautiful body where it reclines in bed.

  Then I get to bargaining, and it feels like more than a stage. It feels like the answer.

  This is what Damon understands in his bones, the way other children know about love or security. He understands the value of the gamble. The value of pushing your chips in.

  And that’s what he wants from me.

  For me to put something in the center of the table. Otherwise you don’t get to play. He’s not going to see Avery until I do something. Until I offer him something.

  It’s the third night that I emerge from the room, once he’s turned off the light and gone to bed. The glow from a tablet lights him in bed. He masks his surprise quickly, setting the tablet aside. “What are you doing awake?”

  I don’t answer him. I’m not sure I have the nerve to speak right now. I couldn’t say I’ll trade my body for the chance to save Avery. Couldn’t say, you can have sex with me if you go see your father. There’s only exactly enough nerve to stand at the foot of the bed.

  It’s like I’ve been waiting for him my entire life, since I was that six-year-old girl.

  He’s here, sitting in front of me.

  And not here, his mind still held captive by the years that came before.

  The lamp on my desk casts a spotlight on him, on his tattoos with their tragic story and his body with its terrible beauty. I see the endless lines of ink etched into him. Monsters with only one eye. A wild woman with snakes for
hair. And waves for miles of muscle.

  Already he’s seen me naked. Worse than that, he’s seen me broken and bleeding. Somehow it’s still painful to reach for the hem of my shirt. Excruciating to lift enough to reveal the thin band of my stomach. Heartbreaking to watch him study me with cold desire.

  I hesitate when it’s halfway up my body, suddenly afraid.

  Does he know what’s at stake? Of course he does.

  “Tomorrow?” I ask, hating how much my voice trembles.

  Tomorrow we’ll go see Jonathan Scott. We’ll answer the summons, the cipher. Tomorrow we try to find Avery. Damon doesn’t exactly agree. Nothing as bland as yes or it’s a deal.

  “Come here,” he says instead.

  How many times has he asked that of me? When he was lying in that bed or when he reclined in the chair downstairs. I never did come. Not the way I do now, hitching my leg onto the bed, pulling my T-shirt off all the way. It lands in an unceremonious heap on the crisp white sheets.

  I’m kneeling beside him, unsteady on the solid mattress.

  He could fall on me. It would make this easier, but Damon Scott doesn’t do easy.

  My bra is plain and cotton the way all my bras are. I buy them in packs at the big box store. They’re all the same, all boring, all completely unsexy. They should be a turn-off after the sequins and lace he’s seen downstairs, but I think I’ve solved this part of the puzzle.

  Lingerie and high heels, perfectly pouting lips—they’re an invitation. What sane man would turn them down? Except Damon Scott isn’t sane. He’s perverse, and he wants this. A chaste white bra that no other man has seen. Pale white skin that no light has touched.

  I fumble in my nervousness. The clasp is a needle and a thread, my hands as large as tree trunks.

  Damon watches me with unerring patience. It’s part of my payment, his patience. My hands behind my back, working, working. Making me embarrass myself for him, a far deeper cost than pleasuring him.

  The clasp unlocks in the back. The cups fall forward, leaning away from my breasts.

  As if that unlocks him, he reaches a hand out. One finger down the center of my chest. He tugs the bra away completely. The cool air touches my nipples, turns them tight.

  He traces the plump circle of my breast with light fingertips. His hand looks massive in front of me. Or maybe that’s just that I’m small. It’s like he’s measuring me—and I already know I’ll come up short. That’s the point. That’s the payment, but I find myself stuttering.

  “I’m—I’m not—”

  He doesn’t pause in his light perusal. “You’re not what?”

  “Sexy.”

  My high school boyfriend liked that I never demanded anything from him. Dr. Stanhope likes that I’m clever. Maybe I should be satisfied with those things, but they aren’t passion. They aren’t hunger.

  Silver flashes through Damon’s dark eyes. “Who told you that?”

  In the end it’s not Brennan or Dr. Stanhope who made me afraid of sex. It’s the man we’re going to see tomorrow. Green tiles and black soil. Deep roots that I can never escape. “I’m just saying, you don’t have to touch me. I don’t know exactly what to do, but if you tell me, I’ll do it.”

  “You think I don’t want to touch you,” he says flatly.

  “I don’t want you to pretend.”

  He flips me over on the bed, so I’m looking up at him. “Let me make this very clear. No other woman has been in this bed. You’re the only one here. The only one I’ve ever wanted here.”

  I know my eyes widen, know my breath stutters out of me, but he doesn’t acknowledge my shock. Doesn’t seem to care as he leans forward to press a kiss on the side of my neck.

  There’s a switch in that inch of skin; that’s what I realize as my body arches in sudden tension. He doesn’t acknowledge that either. It’s with grim determination that he maps every inch of my chest with his mouth, that he feels me before he tastes. That he closes his mouth over my nipple. Flicks his tongue until I make a keening sound.

  Damon isn’t the kind of man to tell me false platitudes, but if I doubted the truth of his words, he proves them with the thoroughness he shows my breasts—as if he could stay here all night, kissing me, biting me. Making my body writhe. It’s minutes, hours, an eternity later that I realize my body is moving in a specific rhythm. The same way I move my hand between my legs at night.

  When he hooks his hand into the waistband of my pants and pulls them down, it’s an unspeakable relief. The heat is too much, the friction incendiary. Only, he leaves my panties on. White and plain. From the same metal rack as my bras. He presses kisses along the cheap seam, across my stomach and down my thighs. With a rough hand he shoves my legs apart, pressing his face against my dampness.

  “Does this feel like pretending?” he asks, his voice dark.

  It takes me a moment to realize what he means. My words. “No,” I whisper.

  “Good,” he says, levering himself to look at me. “No lies between us. Not tonight.”

  Complete honesty. I don’t think I’m ready for that. He definitely isn’t, no matter what he thinks. There are things floating in my head that would send him running. I’m afraid. Don’t hurt me. I love you.

  It’s not only words that have truth. It’s touch. I cup his cheek in my hand, feeling his bristly jaw against my palm, taking his tension into my body. Then I curve my hand around his neck and draw him down.

  A kiss. Is it possible to lie with your lips and tongue pressed together?

  Is it possible to stand apart with your heartbeats attuned to one?

  I’m not experienced enough to know, but the way he leans down to meet me, the way my body instinctively cradles his, it feels like a truth so deep I’m uncovering it instead of saying it.

  He rears back, tugging my panties down my legs. He has no mercy when he spreads my legs—wide. Very wide. Is this normal? The way he studies me, as if trying to memorize every pink and every shadow?

  I move my hands to cover myself. “Damon.”

  “Penny.” It’s a plea that he ignores. Or maybe not ignores. One that he refuses, implacable, picking up my hands, pressing my wrists into the bed beside my body.

  “It’s too much.”

  “Why do you think I let you wait so long?”

  The question holds a thousand implications.

  It’s a patchwork I would need time to unravel, a cipher I need to study and decode, but he doesn’t give me time. He gives me his mouth against my sex, right up the center with the flat of his tongue. I make a squeak at the end, where he lingers at the peak of my body.

  “Wait,” I moan.

  That makes him laugh a little, a vibration I feel right against my clit. “What are we waiting for?” he asks, mocking. “For you to come? That won’t be long, sweet girl.”

  He touches me, one finger combined with his tongue. It’s enough to send ripples of pleasure through my body. Enough to give truth to his words. Disproving the terrible secret I couldn’t admit, even to myself—that I didn’t know truth could feel good.

  I want to touch him. To run my hands along the terrain of him—to feel the unlikely smoothness where ink hasn’t left a mark, to touch the silver-white scars that have. He shakes his head slowly, pressing my hands into the mattress. “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because we’re doing truth tonight.”

  Any other night he would give me that arrogant half smile. He would invite me into his bed with complete unconcern, as if women climb in every night instead of never.

  “Okay.” It’s the hardest thing I’ve had to do, keeping my hands against the mattress.

  He could make a joke of this submission, but he’s strangely grave. “Thank you.”

  Then he presses his mouth to my core, making me squirm and scream. His tongue knows every magic secret place on my body; his lips guide the way. His teeth glance my tender spots, making fear spark behind my eyelids. My body bows up toward him; it squirms away. I’m a pupp
et, his talented fingers my string. And God, he pulls and pulls.

  A sheen of sweat covers me. Between my legs it’s slick from my own juices and his mouth. It’s indecent, the way I’m spread out. Unthinkable, the way I want to stay here.

  When he pulls away for the millionth time, I make a frustrated sound.

  From his knowing laugh I can tell he’s doing it on purpose. Deprivation. Torture. A physical ache so real and so acute my body squirms and pants even when he’s not touching me. Especially then.

  “Please, Damon.” The words burst out of me, shaming me. There’s no such thing as dignity beneath his mouth and hands and benevolent gaze.

  “You can leave anytime,” he says, challenge in his tone.

  He wants me to run away, to undo the deal I made with him, the very devil. That he would help Avery for the price of my body. Probably this was his plan all along, as he watched me take off my T-shirt. When he waited for me to fumble with the bra clasp. He knew he would make me burn. That he’d make me beg.

  “I’m not going anywhere,” I promise, breathless.

  “Good,” he murmurs, lowering his mouth to my stomach and down, down. “Because now I’ve had a taste. If you run, I’ll chase you.”

  His mouth descends on me again, licking deep inside me, his tongue so soft it hurts. It’s suffering, being made to lie open and vulnerable while he’s coated in armor. The clothes don’t matter now. His armor comes from his tattoos and his scars. It comes from the way he controls my body, moving me, pleasuring me, bending me to his will.

  He finds my clit with his eyes closed in pleasure, as if he prefers to move by touch rather than sight. He makes me jump. “Too much,” I gasp.

  It seems to be the signal he was waiting for, because he does it again. And again. The point of his tongue sweeping circles around my clit, tighter and tighter. Spiraling toward the center until I’m beyond begging, past words. There’s only the urgent rhythm of my body, humping his mouth upward in a desperate plea for friction, for release, for anything.

  His finger pushes inside me, then another, twisting in a way that makes me pant. There’s not enough air in the large room, in the Den, only smoke and sounds and twisted promises.