Page 45 of Lethal Saint

“I’m supposed to have your cock inside me,” she muttered, scowling, so fucking cute.

I grinned, dropping a kiss on her head. “As much as I love the idea of fucking you in your wedding dress, it’s laced pretty tightly. I don’t want you trapped in it any longer.”

Her chocolate eyes warmed, and I knew I’d done something right again.

“Turn around, my queen,” I said, huskier than I intended when she obeyed before I’d even finished speaking. Fuck, she was responsive. Sweet and eager to please. I’d never met anyone quite as desperate to make their partner happy as I was. We were perfectly suited, and she thought we weren’t? I’d prove to her that we fit together, and I’d start by kissing every inch of her body until she was shivering for me.

I started at the nape of her neck, kissing every inch of pale skin that appeared as I slid down the zip of her dress, so glad thisthing had no buttons. She inhaled a quick breath when I kissed a spot near the base of her spine, almost on my knees for her again, and I thought it was because it was an especially sensitive spot so I moved to caress it again—and froze.

It wasn’t sensitive. It wastender.This was the first time I was properly seeing her, the first time I’d allowed myself to look at her, and my stomach knotted into a pit of nausea.

“Vasilisa…” I whispered, horror twisting a dagger in my chest. Fuck. Fuckingfuck,she was covered in scars and bruises. The bruises were yellowed and faint, almost unnoticeable unless you were looking for them. Now, I was looking for them.

Violent fury unspooled through me with every inch I unzipped, my wife oblivious to my emotions as she pulled her arms from the tight sleeves and pushed the bodice down. I barely noticed the pretty lace bra she wore, couldn’t see anything except the patchwork of yellow marks and white scars all over her back. I couldn’t fucking breathe, rage choking off my air.

My hands shook as I guided the skirt over her hips to pool on the chequered floor, following the trail of old scars down her thighs. There was no part of her spared pain, and I knew without looking that they continued around the front of her body.

No fucking prizes for guessing why the bruises were yellowed, weeks old. Her piece of shit father wouldn’t have wanted her black and blue when he handed her over to Olivier. I inhaled exceptionally slowly, trying to mask my fury. I brushed a kiss to the dimple at her lower back, the only part that might not hurt her.

Oh god, I’d been rough with her just now. I’d gripped her with possessiveness, out of control as my fingers pressed into her thighs, her ass.

“Damien?” she asked, hesitant when I didn’t speak, when I didn’t touch her.

I swallowed, opening my mouth, but no sound came out.

CHAPTER 17

DAMIEN

When she turned to face me, I saw every mark, every stain of yellowed skin that detailed a graphic story of violence across her body. She’d been hit over and over, every-fucking-where. On her stomach there was a bruise darker than the rest. Newer but still faint enough that it could be wilfully overlooked by a man only interested in her pussy.

She was watching me, afraid of my behaviour, and no fucking wonder if she’d been hurt this badly. Exhaling hard, I rose and brought her close, my hand curved around the back of her head and my arm across her back—gentle, careful. I cradled her to my body as if I could undo every bit of cruelty she’d endured, every second of brute force that had been unleashed on her.

No fucking wonder she said exactly what her father wanted to hear. No wonder she’d walked herself onto that dais and crawled onto the bed.

“Everyone,” I breathed, choking on the words until they twisted. I inhaled tightly, turning my face to kiss her templeand said, “Everyone who hurt you will die, Vasilisa. Every single one.”

“It’s fine, Damien,” she whispered.

Rage coursed through me, a shudder wracking me. Blood splashed behind my eyes, visions of everything I would do to the men who hurt her. I had her brother already locked up; he’d pay for what he let happen. Or did he inflict this on her, too? Wrath pumped through my veins in the place of blood.

“It is not—” I bit off the words, my voice too harsh. “No one hurts my wife. No one.”

Fingers brushed my sides, featherlight and tentative. “I don’t want anyone to die because of me.”

She did. Her reaction to the ballroom massacre proved that. I knew it was partly a trauma response, but she never once tried to run from me. Never kicked me in the balls and fled. Instead, she’d opened up to me like a flower blooming in sunlight, and strangely I got the sense that killing all those people was part of the reason she trusted me.

She did want them to die, she was just afraid to want it.

I tilted my face up, laying a lingering kiss on her forehead. The fluttering touches at my sides travelled around my back until she was nervously embracing me. It hit me right in the heart, like an arrow to the chest.

“Would they extend the same courtesy to you?” I asked quietly, finally removing my lips from her skin to look her in the eye.

Her brown eyes were conflicted and rife with pain. I felt like such a bastard for knocking her out of the furious haze of lust, but her bruises hit me like a baseball bat to the gut.

“No,” she admitted, glancing down. “They wouldn’t.”

I skimmed my lips up her cheek, kissing the indentation of a scar near her eye. “You deserve justice, Vasya. And they deserve to pay.”

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