The Queen

by Skye Warren

  I can’t hear anything, the sound of the shot loud enough to take away my hearing, but I can see Damon Scott’s lips moving. And I recognize the words, in that soul-deep way, because I feel them too. I love you, I love you, I love you.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  It takes twenty-four hours for my hearing to return, but in that time a lot changes.

  Damon makes the drive back to the bed-and-breakfast, on the phone most of the way. I watch his lips part of the time as he speaks to Hiro in brusque sentences about bringing in the FBI. A few minutes in I fall asleep, the shock and adrenaline overloading my system.

  When I wake up again, I’m covered in Damon’s jacket, leaning against the window. The SUV has stopped in the same place it was parked last night, the sun shining. It’s almost like the whole world hasn’t shifted on its axis, but I know different.

  There are five black and blue unmarked FBI sedans, two police cruisers, and an ambulance waiting in the dirt parking lot for us. Damon steers me to the ambulance and then disappears, leaving them to do tests on my hearing, tests for a concussion, a thorough physical documenting every cut from the glass, every dark bruise across my torso from the impact of Jonathan Scott pushing on top of me.

  It takes hours for Damon to deal with the FBI, and once he does, we’re on his private jet back to Tanglewood. I promptly fall asleep in the cushy leather seat, dozing for the entire three-hour flight.

  By the time we reach the private airfield outside the city, I long for the cot in my small room. I long for the trays of delicious food that appear outside my door, the safety of knowing that Damon Scott protects me with more than just his money or his weapons—he guards me with his body.

  But he doesn’t take me to the Den.

  We pull into the grounds I recognize as Gabriel Miller’s mansion.

  I think I’ve reached a state of numbness. The loss of hearing helps with that. Or makes it worse, depending on your perspective. I’m just fine not feeling anything.

  I would put off feeling forever if I could.

  Avery greets me at the door, tears darkening her hazel eyes. She pulls me close for a tight hug. The men are different from us, less emotional—on the outside. Less affectionate. But they still greet each other with what feels like both gratitude and apology, the source of their divide gone. The men disappear into Gabriel’s study to talk.

  I’m led to a comfortable sitting room with low couches covering most of the floor. Avery almost pulls me into her lap, clucking over my injuries and petting my hair. It feels strange to be fussed over. Even as a child when I got hurt, I found my own Band-Aids or went without.

  And I can’t deny that it feels good to be fussed over. To know someone cares.

  I can only hear her intermittently, everything still muted. “I’m so proud of you,” she says. “Damon told us what you did on the phone. How you were the one to bring him down.”

  Is that what happened? That isn’t how I would have said it. It’s Damon who brought us there, Damon who faced his own personal monster. And I helped. There is a kind of pride that I helped.

  I mumbled answers to the paramedics, nodded or shook my head to Damon on the way here. Only now do I find my voice to speak, woman to woman. “The nurses?”

  Her eyes turn cloudy. “They’re okay. Some of them more than others.”

  “Where are they?”

  “Most of them went home, if they had families to take care of them. The rest went to a women’s shelter who will help them heal and start over.”

  I don’t need to ask what Jonathan Scott did to them while he had the chance. I already know what he’s capable of. My body remembers the violation of it intimately. “And you?”

  She sighs. “I don’t know. I want to say that I’m fine. Especially seeing what the other women had to endure, it feels wrong to complain.”

  “Your journey is your own,” I whisper.

  Her eyes meet mine, clear again. “Yes. My journey hasn’t always been easy, but I have help. I have Gabriel, who hasn’t left my side for a moment since it happened. And I have you.”

  I lean my head against her shoulder, trying to imbue her with strength. “What about you?” she asks softly. “Do you have someone?”

  She isn’t asking about someone, though. She’s asking about Damon. And the truth is I don’t know how to answer that. He loves me. He’s said it, but the idea still seems far away. Detached. Maybe that’s because I’m still processing what happened, but I think it might be him. That he loves me in that abstract, unobtainable way that says we’ll never be together. That he can love me only from afar.

  And that seems to be confirmed when Gabriel finds us an hour later, telling us that Damon has left, that he isn’t coming back. That I’m free to stay there for as long as I need.

  Chapter Thirty

  The Den spills light and laughter onto the street. I step out of the cab knowing that I don’t have much hope of doing anything here, but I couldn’t bring myself to register for classes last week. Couldn’t return to Smith without going to Damon one last time. Without fighting for us.

  It’s been two weeks since he left me at Gabriel Miller’s sprawling modern castle.

  Two weeks of wondering if he would come back for me. He didn’t.

  Two bouncers built like linebackers ignore me as I step inside the house. There isn’t anyone having sex on the floor of the foyer, but I can see undulating bodies in the corner behind the stairs. Most people are dancing to a low and heavy beat. It’s the perfect rhythm for pressing legs together, for pushing tongues against each other.

  Everyone here ignores me as I squeeze past bare skin and leather and lace.

  I’m wearing something a little party-ish tonight, a sapphire-blue dress that I borrowed from Avery. The satin fabric hugs my body. I can’t help but feel exposed even with no one looking at me.

  Damon ignores me as I wind through the crowd. He doesn’t look up from his conversation even when I stand directly in front of him. But I feel his attention like a heat lamp, making me blush.

  “Damon,” I say.

  A man wearing only sparkly leather pants kneels beside Damon’s chair. His visible erection says he’d like to do a lot more than talk, but Damon reclines without any sense of urgency or interest. He has on slacks and a white dress shirt, rumpled but still dashing.

  “Excuse me,” I say louder.

  A hush comes over the conversation around us. The man with leather pants stops talking. Only then does Damon lift his head, his black eyes meeting mine. A spark of anticipation heats my body from the center spreading out.

  “What can I do for you?” he asks, his voice mocking.

  God, I knew better than to come here. I did, but here I am anyway. “Can I speak to you in private?”

  “Private,” he says, considering. “What’s the fun of doing things in private? Anything you want to do in a room we can do out here. Isn’t that right?”

  The question is posed to the crowd, who laugh and tell him yes, please, do.

  There won’t be any emotion between us. No relationship. There’s only this, mocking me in public, saving me in private, the hero who won’t let himself be happy.

  My throat burns. “Please don’t do this.”

  He smirks. “I’m not doing anything yet. Would you like something? You look delicious in that dress. Like a cupcake. Very sweet. Should I lick you and find out if you are?”

  There’s a part of me so in love with this man that I want to say yes. So desperate for any part of him that I’ll take this fake showman instead of the real person inside. “No.”

  “Or maybe you’d like to trade places. You could be queen of the Den, ruling from on high while I kneel in front of you.” His smile is taunting. “I could kiss your feet. Would you like that?”

  The people around me laugh, egging him on. They would watch him crawl for me, watch him debase himself with glee, but more than that, they want him to humiliate me.

  “Higher and higher,” he murmurs.
“I could kiss your pretty pink…lips.”

  Of course he’s not talking about my mouth.

  He’s talking about the place between my legs.

  What would Damon do if I started undressing in front of everyone? If I accepted his challenge and displayed myself here? I think he would stop me, but that would mean admitting that I matter.

  And anyway, that’s not what I want to do. I don’t want to force his hand. To challenge him into it. He doesn’t want me, or maybe he doesn’t want me enough.

  I still can’t help myself from asking one more time, from begging—even if that makes me a masochist. My love for this man ran so deep I almost didn’t recognize it myself. It’s like breathing or thinking. Like being. That won’t stop if he makes fun of me, if he sends me away, but I don’t want him to.

  My pride is a physical lump in my throat. I have to swallow it, force it down so I can get the words out. “Damon Scott, I want you. I think you want me too. But I need you to say it. I need you to be with me.” My voice cracks. “I can’t stand here alone anymore.”

  It’s all the courage I have in the world. All the dignity, which isn’t much. I’m not the honorable Avery James who can watch as the love of her life jets around the world in solitary danger.

  I’m the girl from the slums of Tanglewood, the broke-down Cinderella who never got her prince.

  The crowd watches me in breathless silence. Whatever happens next, I’m the best piece of entertainment they’ve seen in a while. Nakedness and sex are fine for depravity, but nothing compares to this—to baring my soul, my fears, my hopes to a man who doesn’t want them.

  Women look on with blatant jealousy. How much would they want Damon Scott kissing their feet?

  His dark eyes are hooded, his mouth set in a hard line.

  If his voice had been soft or hard, I could have had a chance. Instead it’s jovial, more the showman than ever before. “If you want me, you can have me, sweet girl. Anything you want. Money. Sex. I’m yours to command.”

  My breath hitches. Money. Sex. He left out the things I want most. He wants to worship me in this pretend way, to make a show of it instead of something private.

  “Fine,” I tell him. “Then get on your knees.”

  It’s like the room sucks in a breath. I can hear them gasp, feel the shift in the air.

  Damon’s eyes turn sharp as a blade. He studies me for long seconds, looking at my challenge from every angle, but this is what he wants. This is what he asked for.

  In a slow languid motion he moves to the floor in front of him, on his knees in his bespoke slacks, black hair in artful disarray, white dress shirt rumpled. He looks like a man well-sex and thoroughly debauched. The only thing he doesn’t seem is submissive.

  Like putting a wild jaguar on a leash. It’s only a matter of time until I get bitten.

  “What next?” he asks, his voice dangerously soft.

  “Kiss my feet.” I don’t know why I’m pushing him, don’t know what I hope to accomplish. Maybe that he’ll give me real emotion instead of this fake sexed up version.

  He bends down in a low mocking bow, all the way to the floor. The satin heels I’m wearing also came from Avery. They don’t belong to me anymore than this dress. Anymore than this man. I don’t feel victory as his lips touch my shoes. I’m too hollow for that, made of air and wanting. And a permanent desolation that this is all I’ll ever be.

  If this is all he can give me, why not take it?

  “Higher,” I tell him.

  He narrows his eyes. “You want me to taste you in front of everyone?”

  “No, you want that. Are you going to go back on your word?”

  His smile is pure challenge. Then he ducks his head to my ankle, pressing a gentle kiss on the outside. Another on my knee, an almost innocent peck. Strange how even two inches above that point becomes indecent. And another two inches—obscene.

  He ducks beneath the ruched hem, lifting it only enough to reach me. I’m mostly covered to the crowd who’s avidly watching, some whispering behind their hands, others openly pointing. Even so it feels unbearably intimate as a mouth brushes over my panties.

  Heat sparks in my sex from his soft kisses. Damon mocks me in front of a crowd, but underneath my dress he’s pure tenderness. In the dark where no one can see, he’s different. So gentle I almost can’t feel him, but the building tension inside my body proves that I can. This is what we could have together.

  “This is how it would be,” I whisper as he caresses the backs of my thighs.

  No one can hear me, though—not even him.

  If this is all he can give me, why not take it? Because now I know the sweetness I’ll never have, the love he can’t give. Except it’s more than ability. It’s his choice. Even while he nuzzles against my mound, inhaling deeply, raising goosebumps on my skin, he’s turning me away. By demanding that we do this here, now, instead of in private.

  There’s nothing here for me. Not safety. Love. Damon.

  Those things aren’t waiting for me at Smith College, either, but at least I don’t have to see him like this. Mathematics is a poor substitute for human touch, I’ve learned. It’s no longer the pinnacle for me. No longer the dream. Instead it’s a consolation prize.

  The solace I’ll find after the quiet sorrow of Damon’s refusal.

  I take a step back, letting my dress unveil him, disheveled and lust-dazed.

  “Very pretty,” I tell him, my voice harder than I feel. “But it’s not enough.”

  Even as I turn and walk out the door, I know that I won’t ever stop hoping for him. Won’t ever stop longing for the peace I found in his embrace. I used to think I understood numbers but not people, logic but not emotions. I know better now. We’re really just equations longing for that other half of us. I can walk away from Damon Scott because he wants me to, but I can’t stop loving him. It’s part of who I am, the logic as simple and undeniably sad as that.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  I wake up in the middle of the night, back in my room in the Emerald. On the far corner I can see my desk made of textbooks and a chopping block. A poster for Smith College chess club on the wall.

  For a moment I’m not sure why I woke up. Maybe because I know this will be my last night here. No more walking through manicured bushes and stately old buildings. No more small talk with trust fund babies. I came here for the mathematics, but more than that, I came here to escape. I still don’t know where I belong, but I no longer need to run.

  A shift in the air makes me hold my breath. I’m not alone in here. It’s such a small room, the door locked. There’s no way someone made it inside, especially without me noticing.

  “Ramsey problems,” comes a low and familiar voice.

  My heart speeds up, a thud thud thud in my ears. “What are you doing here?”

  “You really think you can solve poverty like a word problem?”

  When I sit up, I can see the large shadow sitting in the corner. He holds something in his hands. Not a textbook, but pieces of paper. “‘As a first step in this direction, we develop a lower bound on elasticity,’” he says.

  That’s when I realize he’s holding my research paper. “That’s private.”

  “Is it, though? If it’s going to be published in a professional journal? Congratulations, by the way.”

  The official name on the paper is Dr. Robert Stanhope, since no serious academic journal would consider publishing work by an undergraduate. I’m getting byline credit, which is still pretty cool.

  “I don’t know if I can solve poverty, but I’m going to try.”

  “You could try in Tanglewood. There’s still plenty of slums and addiction plaguing the city.”

  I had planned to go to Tanglewood, but only in a loose and tenuous way. It will always be my home, the city of my heart, but I wasn’t sure I could handle running into Damon Scott. Wasn’t sure I could handle having him mock me just to prove he didn’t care about anything or anyone.

  It’s been
months since I last set foot there. Months since I walked out of the Den, my head held high, my heart in pieces. Now that I’ve graduated, I want to go back.

  Bitterness seeps into my voice. “And sit in your lap? Have you kiss my feet?”

  A rough sound. “I’m sorry about what I said.”

  “Sorry,” I repeat dully.

  “Sorry that I was a bastard. Sorry that I’m not worthy of you.”

  “Don’t mock me,” I say sharply. “Not here. Not now when there’s only two of us.”

  “I’m not mocking you. I’m not worthy of you, Penny. Never have been.”

  “Then why are you sitting on the floor of my room, the same way you were when I was six years old.”

  “Because I’m the same person I was back then too—hungry and scared and so fucking lonely I would have done anything to be close to you.”

  Something fits into place in my heart, a proof that has an answer. I can’t quite trust it, though. Logic only takes me so far. There’s still enough hurt to cloud the answer. “And that makes me—what? The girl who found you by the lake? Someone who offers you a pillow?”

  “Yeah,” he says, his voice hoarse.

  “What about your parties? I’m sure someone there would bring you to their bed.”

  “I don’t want them. You know that. I never did.” He sets the papers down beside him. Runs a hand through his hair, ruffling it in that way that makes him not only handsome but devastating. “I never slept with anyone there.”

  “Never?” I ask, amused at the idea of Damon Scott as a monk.

  “I lost my virginity when I was eight,” he says, and my amusement turns to dust. “I’ve slept with a lot of people in my life. Some by choice. Some not. But when you were sixteen, I kissed you.”

  My breath catches, because I remember that kiss. I can’t forget that damned kiss.