Page 40 of Crowned

There’s everything here for me. Lilia commands my attention, and she’s going to have every last drop. She can’t do anything to stop me.

The diamonds… I don’t know what to do about the diamonds. She offered to trade herself for them once. As long as she does what I say from now on, I might consider the debt repaid.

“What happened tonight? Tell me everything,” I murmur, wiping her throat and arms. See, Lilia? I know how to be a husband. I can protect you. Cherish you.

I run the cloth down between her breasts. Desire you.

“Why?”

I want to get her under the shower and wash all this blood away, but she’ll close that door and shut me out. “Because I have to know, or I’ll lose my goddamn mind.”

“I stole from you. Don’t you want to rip my flesh from my body?”

“Where did he touch you? What did he do to you?”

“But the diamonds—”

“Shut up about the fucking diamonds!”

Lilia’s eyes widen as I breathe hard through my nose, struggling to control my temper. “I need to know what happened to you tonight, and you are going to tell me every. Single. Thing.”

Lilia purses her lips. “I don’t get you, Konstantin. For months you’ve been obsessing over those diamonds and chasing me all over the world to get them back. Now that I’m offering to tell you exactly what I did with them, you won’t listen to me.”

I throw the cloth down in the sink. “I haven’t decided what to do about the diamonds, but I have decided what to do about you. The child makes it obvious. You’re going to marry me.”

“But what if the baby is Elyah’s?”

I think on this for a moment. “Elyah is strong. I have no objection to raising his child as my own.”

Her mouth falls open. “You would just take his child from him?”

“Not take. Elyah isn’t going anywhere.”

Her eyebrows shoot up. “So, you’d be what? Co-fathers?”

I don’t have all the answers right now, and all these details are getting on my nerves. She doesn’t understand the main point.

I take her face between my hands, lower my head, and kiss her. I feel her sharp inhalation before my mouth seals hers, and her lips are softly crushed beneath mine.

She tastes even better than I anticipated. As I move my mouth over hers, I realize how vividly I’ve been imagining this between my darker fantasies of choking the goddamn life out of her.

Lilia moans against my mouth, sounding like a protest, but her slender fingers curl into the muscles of my shoulders. Sometime over these past few months, this became the fantasy.

Lilia.

All mine.

I break the kiss and slant my head the other way, claiming her mouth again. I can’t remember the last time I kissed a woman. I can’t remember it ever feeling like this.

“No one’s going to lay a finger on you from this moment on. You’re safe. You’re mine.” I feel drunk as I kiss her over and over again and her mouth opens beneath mine.

“The dagger in my handbag was for you,” she says breathlessly in between receiving my kisses. “I was going to drive it into your throat the next time I saw you.”

I taste her violent words with my tongue. My fingers thread through her heavy golden hair, which is tangled with blood. I always wanted a woman who would look good covered in blood.

“Whenever you’re near, you make me lose sight of everything but you,” I murmur, biting into her lower lip. “You’re dangerous and devious.”

“You’re worse. I don’t understand anything that you’re doing.” Lilia reaches up and touches my cheek. Her fingers brush my scarred flesh, and if it were any other woman, I’d jerk my head away and growl at her not to fucking touch me there.

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