Page 39 of Lethal Saint

I sucked in a breath all at once, my lungs expanding.My queen.He called me his queen. Not little queen or Vasilisa. My queen. And he was—he was on his knees. My hands shook harder.

“I’m so sorry, more than you could ever know. I’ve done a piss poor job of making you feel wanted and appreciated if you thought I’d flirt with someone else—on our wedding day.”

I flicked my tongue over my bottom lip, my mouth dry. “I’m sorry.”

“You’re not the one who needs to be sorry. I am. And I’ll stay on my knees until you forgive me. If that takes a day, a week, I’ll be here. I’ll earn your forgiveness.”

“You—didn’t do anything wrong,” I realised with a sigh, biting my bottom lip. “I didn’t see what I thought I saw, and I overreacted.”

“I’m your husband, Vasilisa. It’s your right to get angry when someone else shows an interest in what’s yours. In me. That didn’t happen today, but if it does in the future, getting angry is a natural reaction.” His head was still bowed, his hands resting on the knees of his fine suit. “But in future, you’ll know I’m yours, like you’re mine, and we’ll be secure. Everything is still so new.”

I bit my lip harder. That made sense. Except the me being his, him being mine part. My stomach did a strange swoop-twist thing.

“Are you mine?” I asked so quietly it was little more than a whisper.

He didn’t lift his head. I wanted him to look at me, I wanted to see his eyes, to read whatever emotion flickered in their inky depths. I only realised now I couldn’t see them how much feeling shone from his eyes.

“Undeniably and irreversibly yours,” he replied, a roughness to his voice that made me almost frantic to see his face.

I swallowed and asked, “Even if I don’t suit you?”

His hands flexed on his knees. “Why wouldn’t we be suited, my queen?”

My breath caught; that swoop-twist in my belly again. I glanced at the door, propped against the frame, and forced out, “You’re strong and dangerous and—confident. I’m not any of those things.”

“Confidence isn’t something inherited; it grows over long, long years. Even if you’re not confident now, you could be in a month, a year, a decade. You’re brave as hell—and you were strong enough to leave that ballroom with me, strong enough to get into my car and come here. Strong enough to marry me today. You vastly underestimate your own ability, Vasilisa. You’re so strong, you take my breath away.”

My own breath caught; a shiver moving across my shoulder blades. I didn’t know how he could see me that way but—it took guts for me to do all those things. Took serious nerve to walk down the aisle today when I was terrified. But then I met his eyes and the world, spinning dangerously, slowed. Stilled.

“As for dangerous, are you still wearing a gun at your thigh under that dress?”

“Yes,” I breathed, my stare drifting back to his bowed head, the prone form of him kneeling on the bathroom floor at my feet.

“You suit me perfectly, my queen,” he breathed, soft and fierce at once.

My heart cast itself at my ribcage over and over, and I lifted my shaking hand at the same time I took a step. Damien’s skin was warm against my fingertips. I grazed them down his cheek and beneath his chin, lifting his face.

Passion and rage and something still, frozen filled those eyes, an endless black sea. I swallowed. I wasn’t sure he breathed.

“Did you really buy a café?”

He nodded. Didn’t look away from me.

“For me?” I whispered.

Another nod.

“Just because—I love their brownies?”

“Yes,” he rasped.

Something expanded in my chest, like a bird had been curled up tight, suffocating inside the cage of my ribs, and now it shook out its feathers and stretched its wings wide.

“A café is extreme, Saint,” I breathed, a smile at the edge of my lips. I didn’t take my fingers off his jaw; he didn’t shake them loose. “You could have just bought a box of brownies, but—thank you.”

“I never do things by halves,” he said, his eyes never leaving me. “Not when it’s so important. When the stakes are so high.”

“The stakes…?”

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