Page 46 of Lethal Queen

I reached beneath his boxers and trousers for his cock, stroking him from base to tip and back down, smirking when it throbbed wildly in my palm.

“Oh, fuck,” he grunted, grabbing his keyboard and typing frantically.

I would take pity on him and unlock the cuff. Eventually. For now, I pumped his cock until his body tensed, increment by increment. His breathing sharpened, cutting off in his throat when I squeezed him in my hand. When he began to moan, unable to hold the sounds back, I reached under my dress, pulled my underwear aside, and sank down on him all the way.

Relief, bliss, possession—emotions filled me until my chest swelled to bursting. We’d be okay. It would be a constant struggle, but neither of us had expected this marriage to be easy. We’d be okay.

“Vasya,” he panted, clutching at my back, his dark work forgotten. “My queen. Please. I can’t take much more.”

“I love you so much,” I sighed, kissing him hard as I rode him, pleasure bursting like sparks with every deep thrust. “You can take everything I have to give you. I know you can. You’re my perfect fit, my soul mate.”

Damien dropped his head back against the chair, his teeth buried in his bottom lip, and surrendered.

CHAPTER 23

VASILISA

Iwoke twice in the night, each time to violent thrashing pulling the sheets off my body, cold pouring over me. The first time, I rolled over and smoothed hair back from Damien’s knotted brow, untangled the covers from his legs, murmured gentle reassurances. That had been enough for the nightmare to release its grip on him. I drifted back to sleep with my arm across his waist and my head on his shoulder.

The second time… Even feeling me close, hearing my voice, hadn’t soothed him. Damien’s breathing cut into sharp, choppy gasps, his neck strained, tendons standing out as he fought his subconscious.

He didn’t thrash this time; he struggled against his locked body, as if he was restrained in his sleep. What he’d said about his mum being forced to watch what was being done to her daughter, unable to stop it, had stuck with me all day and into the night. Was that what plagued his sleep?

“Not her, too,” he gasped, his knuckles white as he fought whatever held him trapped in his nightmare. “Not my Vasya.”

“I’m right here, Damien,” I said. “No one’s going to take me from you. I promise.”

Sweat dripped down his head and neck, his hands curling into fists. I sat up against the pillows, his head in my lap, and stroked his temples, his furrowed brow, his arched neck. I murmured soft promises, and then detailed all the ways I was going to hurt Finch when gentle reassurances didn’t work.

Damien eventually slipped into a deeper sleep around four a.m. but I woke every hour, unable to properly rest when I was so worried about him. In those dark hours of night, I felt like the only thing that stood between my husband and his demons.

Now with the sun streaming arrogantly through our curtains, I groaned and rolled over, my head pounding. I sought the warm solace of Damien beside me—and let out a noise of complaint when I found soft sheets and the cool slide of paper.

“Damien?” I murmured, the sound petulant. I woke up groggy and unrested and there was… a file in bed with me. “I want my husband,” I huffed, dropping my head back to the pillow before curiosity got the better of me and I slit an eye open.

Worry wove through my chest, pulling it tighter. What if Damien got out of bed because he was struggling with his past? What if trauma took over and he was having another episode? What if—

“What the hell…?” I breathed, having flipped open the file and read my name on the paper along with a business name that took a moment to compute. The café! These were papers confirming Damien really bought it for me. I was really, genuinely the owner of a bakery.

A smile spread across my face. Relief made me sag back into the pillows with a groan. If he’d done this in the hour and half since I last woke, he must have been okay.

I owned a café. I tried it out loud, just to see if it sounded any less ludicrous. “I own a café.”

A giddy rush of laughter bubbled up my throat, and I read the rest of the documents in a rush, unable to keep the smile off my face. I took them as a good omen that everything was going to be okay today. It wouldn’t be perfect, but I’d outgrown perfection.

I took a shower, ran product through my curly hair, and dressed in a dark crimson skater dress I’d been wanting to wear for a while. Apprehension tightened my belly as I grabbed the documents and went in search of my husband, but it evaporated like curls of steam when I stepped into the living room and saw what he’d done while I slept.

I covered my mouth with my hand, my eyes filling with surprise and wonder. “How…?”

Every spare inch of our home was full of easels and canvases—not blank but full of gorgeous, priceless art. Since our untimely visit to the gallery, I’d learned everything I could about art, artists, styles, periods, materials—everything. With each thing I learned, my heart filled with awe and I was hungry for more. I was a novice, but I knew enough to stare at one piece with my mouth hanging open.

I was so absorbed in gawking at what I was pretty sure was an original painting when Damien’s voice reached me from the kitchen. I turned, my heart filling even more when I saw him barefoot in a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up and black trousers that hung low on his hips. His burnished gold hair fell roguishly over his forehead, and there was a note of danger in his eyes that woke up my body.

“Well,find it,”he snapped into the phone at his ear, glaring at the hob where a pan of something sweet and cinnamon-y wafted into the air. “Find the house, find him, and kill him.”

Heat suffused my body. A low sound caught the back of my throat as I prowled closer, catching Damien’s attention. He tookone look at my face and his eyes filled with enough hunger to match mine.

“I want him dead by the end of the day,” he barked. “I’m sending Jonathan and Eli to get the job done. Call in anyone else you need. I don’t want that bastard on the same planet, let alone the same continent as my wife.”

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