The Queen

by Skye Warren

  “Go to sleep. Get some rest. You’re going to need it.”

  I turn to face him. “You aren’t going to leave tonight, are you? Promise me.”

  He flashes a quick smile. “Would you believe a promise from me? I’m a notorious liar. A criminal. I’m not a good person, sweetheart. You know that best of all.”

  “I believe you,” I say solemnly.

  He looks away, studying a clock shaped like a heart on the mantel. “I don’t know why I’m even considering letting you come with me.”

  In some ways it might be crazy that I want to come, but it feels right. Deep in my bones, it feels more than right. It feels necessary. “Because you believe in me,” I say softly.

  “Of course I do,” he says sadly. “It’s not you that’s the problem. It never has been. My father likes tests. He likes mind games. He likes moving people around on his own personal chessboard.”

  I try to make my voice light. “So you should definitely bring me. I love tests.”

  Dark eyes flash. “And if we get slowed down, if we fail, those soldiers are going to blast the asylum into a pile of rubble. With both of us inside. Understand? They’re the failsafe. I can’t risk him escaping. That’s the one variable that can’t change.”

  “Then we’ll have to be quick.”

  “God,” he mutters. “You drive me insane.”

  The word rings in the air, heavy now that we’re faced with going to an actual asylum. That’s where Jonathan Scott was tortured as a child, part of what made him twisted. Or would he have turned out that way no matter what? He tried to make his son a monster, but he failed. No matter what Damon Scott believes about himself, he’s a good man.

  I take a step closer to him. “Then punish me,” I whisper.

  Except I know he won’t. He flinches away from the words, which only proves how much he wants that. Dominance and desire vibrate from him, almost tangible in the air. Did that come from his dark past or would Damon have been this way no matter what? People aren’t equations. I thought I was the one who misunderstood, but it’s Damon who thinks people are the sum of their past.

  “Go to bed,” he says, his voice harsh.

  “Come with me,” I counter, my chin high. Inside I’m terrified, but I know better than to let him see that. “You don’t need to go downstairs. You only wanted to get away from me.”

  He makes a growling sound. “Don’t test me.”

  “That’s exactly what I’m doing,” I say softly, because I’m tired of watching Damon deny himself.

  Reaching for the hem of my shirt, I pull it over my head. My jeans come off next. And the entire time I’m undressing my gaze doesn’t leave his, trying to convey both threat and warning. Trying to convey the same malice he sends me. I’m going to make him feel good, feel safe, for once in his godforsaken life.

  He swallows hard. “Stop. Don’t.”

  I have to smile, because even his protests feel half-hearted. The way he’s looking at my body… I know he wants me. He more than wants me. He’s dying for me, eating me up with his eyes.

  When his lips part, I know he’s remembering licking me, thinking he’s going to do it again.

  Instead I drop to my knees on the hardwood floor, looking up at him in only my bra and my panties. It took heavy courage to get to this point, so maybe that’s why I’m suddenly feeling weak. “You can tell me if I’m doing it wrong.”

  “Christ,” he mutters. “You don’t want to do this. Not for me. Not for any man.”

  “Why not?” I ask, working the placket of his slacks. Already he’s hard beneath my touch. The backs of my fingers brush his rigid length as I pull down the zipper, making it flex inside.

  He speaks between gritted teeth, as if I’m hurting him—and maybe I am. He’s so twisted up, as if pain is pleasure and pleasure is pain. “Because we’re selfish. We’ll use you and hurt you and get so deep inside you just so we can feel good.”

  I don’t know if he’s talking about me or him. My darker suspicion is that he’s talking about his father.

  With his slacks open, there’s only black briefs cupping his erection. I run my palm over the warm cotton. He sucks in a breath. There’s a sense of power as I stroke him through the fabric. A sense of pride as I make him buck into my hand.

  “Don’t deserve it,” he gasps as I mouth him through the briefs. “We don’t fucking—God, sweetheart. I don’t fucking deserve you, and I definitely don’t deserve this.”

  He pushes back against the closed door, slamming his fists against it, making the whole wall shudder. It’s a denial, but not for me. For himself. He looks like some kind of dream, his head thrown back, his slacks open to reveal a thick erection. He would be the very picture of masculine sexuality except I don’t think most men are so tormented about it. I don’t think most men fight themselves.

  I curl my fingers into the waistband of his briefs, tugging downward. His cock springs forward, even larger once it’s released from its confines. My throat feels thick at the sight of it. The dark head and the smeared wetness at the tip. The vein running along the smooth length.

  The scent of him makes me lightheaded—salt and faint sweat. I turn liquid inside. For once my mind falls silent from its calculations and its worry. There’s only his maleness, his beautiful selfishness.

  There’s only making him feel good.

  Grasping him at the base, I tilt his cock toward me. And press a single kiss to the tip.

  He makes a startled sound, like he didn’t expect this. Couldn’t have predicted this. And maybe that’s true. He’s pushed me away so hard and so often that maybe I should have gone. Except for the way his hips push out, reaching for my mouth even as his back presses against the door.

  “Tell me if I’m doing it wrong,” I whisper again.

  His breath shifts. “I’m going to hurt you, sweetheart. Don’t let me hurt you.”

  But it doesn’t hurt to slick my tongue over the tip. It doesn’t hurt to wrap my mouth around the thick knob of him, to stretch my jaw to take him deeper. It isn’t quite pleasure either, nothing like when he forced my thighs apart and made me cry out. This is something different, the act of service, the feeling of surrender as I use my body to please his. Selfish, selfish, and how is that a good thing? How is that sexy and alluring? I don’t know the math behind it, but that’s okay. My body understands. It makes me warm and hot at my core. It makes me clench my thighs in helpless anticipation.

  I take him into my mouth again and again, using the same rhythm he used on me, feeling it in every throb of my body. A small spurt of saltiness appears on my tongue, slicking the way as he pushes in deeper. “Fuck,” he says. “No. I can’t. I shouldn’t.”

  It suddenly seems like the worst kind of tragedy. Not even every scar on his body, as terrible as they are. It’s this, the way he can’t let himself feel pleasure. The way he can’t even undress in a room full of undulating bodies, the way he can’t let one of them touch him.

  A sense of urgency overcomes me, and I put my other fist on his cock. They’re both there, holding the part of him that’s too far down for me to reach with my mouth. Even with both hands around him, there’s enough of his cock to fill my mouth. To bump gently against the back of my throat.

  My throat convulses, and the sound of my gag fills the room. My eyes water. Humiliation sweeps up my chest, for not being able to do this right, for being so bad at it, but he makes a helpless groan.

  He wants that, I realize with a soft exhalation. Those fists against the door. They aren’t about protecting himself from pleasure. They’re about protecting me from pain.

  Don’t let me hurt you.

  I lean back until he’s not in my mouth, until my lips rest against the silk-smooth tip. And then my hands fall to my side, loose and defenseless.

  “Hurt me,” I whisper.

  He stares down at me, struggling with himself. With his impulses. His past.

  And then he grabs me in a sudden, terrifying rush. He turns me so that it’s
my back against to the door. My fists against the wood. Somehow I keep from pushing him away from me, even when he presses his cock to my lips. He probably expects me to do that. He probably would stop if I did.

  Instead I open to him, letting him press into my mouth harder and faster and deeper than I ever would have done it myself. He goes far enough that I’m gagging on the very first thrust, the back of my head knocking gently against the door.

  One of his hands cups my jaw, holding me steady so that he can pull out and push back in.

  There’s no exploration like before, not tasting him or feeling him with my tongue. It happens too fast for that, too forcefully. I can only stare up at him with wide eyes, struggling to breathe.

  “Is this what you wanted?” he says, sounding breathless. Sounding angry. “You wanted me to push my cock between your gorgeous, fuckable lips? You want me to make you choke?”

  My eyes widen, but there’s no time to protest. No time to do anything but suck in a breath as he pushes in deep enough that it feels like he’s splitting open my throat, stretching tender flesh beyond its boundaries. Blocking the only path to air. My lungs burn, but nothing happens until he decides to pull out again. I’m completely at his mercy.

  When he pushes back inside, I brace himself for another hard invasion.

  Instead he holds himself in my mouth, enough to make me feel full but still with room to breathe. Still able to move my tongue. And that’s what I do, flicking lightly along the ridge I can feel.

  He swears softly. “That’s beautiful. I’m going to take you deeper. Do you think you can take it?”

  Deeper? God, I don’t know if I can. The question is a course of electricity through my body. And the answer has to be yes. However it will fit. However it will feel—yes.

  All I can do is nod, my lips still stretched around him.

  He nods, his eyes intense, a dark sky with flashing lightning. He pushes in again, slowly, inexorably. Breaching a barrier I didn’t know existed. My body revolts against the intrusion, bucking on its own. It doesn’t make him flinch, my fight. He expected it. He accepts it, keeping his cock in my throat even as I convulse around him, reflexes trying to push him out.

  My hands are up around my head, pressing back against the door in tight fists. Slowly I unclench them. Even with Damon’s cock in my throat, I make my body relax.

  “That’s right,” he murmurs. “So beautiful like that. So beautiful, and you’re mine.”

  He grasps the base of his cock as he pulls away. With the heavy tip resting on my tongue, he strokes himself hard and fast. Once. Twice. And then he comes in large pulses, thick salt pushing against the back of my tongue, so intense it makes my eyes water. I swallow again and again, but there’s still more of him. The taste of him so deep inside me I’ll never forget it.

  I pant against the door as he pulls away and zips back up. I half expect him to walk away from me. To gently set me aside so he can leave like he wanted to do.

  Instead he crouches in front of me, his eyes knowing and sympathetic. He slips two fingers into my panties, reaching down until he finds the wet core of me. “You’re hurting, aren’t you?”

  And it’s true, I am. He said he would hurt me. My ache is sharp and relentless, only heightened by the calloused fingertips he rubs against my clit.

  “Too much,” I say, my hips rocking to get away, to get closer.

  He silences me with a kiss, sliding his tongue against mine. He must taste himself in my mouth. I can only taste him as he devours me. As he thrusts two fingers inside me and rubs his thumb against my clit, hard enough that it hurts—and still I don’t want him to stop.

  There are starbursts in my eyes as he pushes me over the edge. I gasp into his mouth, hoping he can understand the message of my body—the need and the relief. His touch carries me through a long and airless orgasm as he murmurs, “I know. I’m sorry. It’s over now.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  When I step out of the bed and breakfast, Damon is leaning against one of the black SUVs. There’s something incongruous about the sharp cut of his suit and the wide-open sky. About the shiny glint of metal set against a brownish rural expanse.

  His expression doesn’t change as I come outside and approach him.

  I’m wearing one of my old well-washed pair of jeans and a Smith College shirt this morning. I wish I had cargo pants like the mercenaries. Or at least fuck-you boots like Hiro wears. Instead I’ve got faded sneakers that are coming apart at the seams.

  “You waited for me,” I say, unable to hide my surprise.

  Without answering he steps away from the vehicle and holds the door open.

  I climb into the passenger seat, marveling at the chivalry. It’s a far cry from mocking me from the throne of a sex party. Then again maybe it’s not so different. Damon has always been a rare combination of refined depravity.

  He sits in the driver seat, pulling out of the dirt driveway in a smooth motion. I realize with a start that I’ve never seen him drive. Partly that’s because I’ve gone to see him at the Den. Even when we leave Damon has drivers. He has security. He has house cleaners and staff, the way only rich people do.

  No cook, though. That part he does himself, and I very much missed his cooking as I ate the oversweet muffins and stale coffee served in the floral dining room this morning.

  “How long is the drive?” I ask as the road levels out to a single lane each way.

  “Two hours and twelve minutes.”

  That’s very exact. “Have you been here before?”

  “No, but I’ve seen the schematics.”

  “Oh. Can I see them?”

  He gives me a sideways look. “They’re in the back.”

  I rummage through a black duffel bag before finding a roll of yellow paper with thick and thin lines. Wharton County Prison. My throat tightens. “I thought you said this was an asylum.”

  “It was decommissioned as a prison a long time ago. A private medical firm converted it to a mental institution for high-risk patients about five years ago.”

  The schematics show a large decagon, a shape with ten sides, built into a forest. The closest thing for miles is a small national park. I wonder how many hikers know what’s nearby? Cells are marked off along each side of the polygon. At the center there’s a hexagonal room marked Security Headquarters.

  “Why was it decommissioned?” I ask, wondering if anyone ever escaped.

  “The Quakers designed the prison to punish its inmates, basically creating solitary confinement for each of them. Unfortunately their idea of religious penance literally made men crazy.”

  I suck in a breath, imagining staring at the wall every single day. Alone. “Did they renovate it when they turned it into a mental institute?”

  “Possibly, but this is the last floor plan we can find.”

  Indignance rises in my throat. “It was considered too cruel and unusual for criminals. How could they keep patients here? This is supposed to be a place that helps people.”

  Agitation becomes a physical thing, my heart jolting and batting against my ribcage, nerves pinging around inside me. Hearing about this hospital only makes it worse. Only makes it real.

  His profile looks severe. “Private institutions aren’t subject to the same oversight that government-run prisons have. And with the amount of money this place charges, people aren’t likely to complain.”

  My eyebrows press together. “What does that have to do with it?

  He glances at me, dark humor lighting his black eyes. “Do you think celebrities don’t have a crazy uncle? Or that the top politicians never had anyone in their bloodline go insane? These people need to disappear. And death—well, that’s far too public.”

  Shock washes over me like ice water. “You’re saying these people are being held against their will.”

  “Aren’t all permanent residents of a mental hospital there against their will?”

  “This is different.”

  “I’m not sure wheth
er these people are a danger to themselves or to society. I’m not sure whether they’d walk out the door if it wasn’t locked. What I do know is that Gabriel Miller paid a great deal of money with the assurance that my father would never have access to personnel.”

  “So what happened?”

  “What happened is that it’s impossible to guarantee that. Someone has to bring food. Someone has to administer medicine and clean his cell.” His voice turns bitter. “And there are other inmates. Someone who thinks she’s just like him, someone who has no idea she’s a mouse living in a lion’s den.”

  “Maybe she did know,” I say softly. “Maybe she didn’t have a choice.”

  The way I didn’t have a choice when I worked at the diner for pennies. When I was forced to bring Jonathan Scott a piece of pie, even knowing that I was serving a predator.

  “A lot of good that did her,” Damon mutters.

  I stare at him, realizing he’s talking about someone specific. “Did you know one of the inmates?”

  He glances at me, eyes widening in a brief and unlikely moment of shock. Then he turns back to the road, the moment over—or maybe it never happened. “Not here.”

  A wooden sign battered by decades of storms and neglect. Weeds coming up around it. I can see the picture clearly in my mind, the place where Jonathan Scott took me.

  The place where his son rescued me.

  “Tanglewood Mental Hospital,” I say, a chill running through me.

  “Yes.” The word is hard. Almost a physical blow.

  The more he pushes me away, the more I’m sure that he’s where I need to go. That night is a blur to me, which is a small relief. I remember some parts clearly. I remember Jonathan telling me that he raised Damon in that terrible building, abandoned and dark and littered with torture devices they once thought might actually help.

  Had Damon had a friend there? Had there been some young nurse that he was friends with? The thoughts send a course of jealousy through me, which is wrong for so many reasons. Not the least of which Damon is almost ten years older than me. He would have naturally been with another woman before I was even an appropriate age for him.