Page 52 of Scorned Queen

I send the message and only then do I notice the unread message from Alana:You have no idea how much restraint I’ve shown not calling and texting.I need you.Please come home.

I plant my hand on the window, a streak of lightning in the distance, warning me that I’m the calm before the storm.My chin lowers to my chest with the punch of emotions I feel that only Alana can stir in me.She’s “home” waiting on me.It’s everything I have ever wanted.But I’m beginning to think it’s everything my father has ever wanted, too.

Chapter forty-three

Ientertheapartmentto the dim glow of a living room lamp, the sound of country music, and the sweet scent of perfume scenting the air, but Alana is nowhere in sight.I shrug out of my jacket and hang it on the coatrack, and then just stand there in the entryway a moment, allowing myself to drink in how damn good it feels to come home and know she’s here.After all the bullshit I’ve waded through this damnable night, this feeling—her presence in my life—makes the battle worth the scars.

That is, until I eye the dark bedroom, and there’s a punch in my gut with the idea that she’s not here at all.Adrenaline surges through me, and I’m across the room in less than a minute, standing inside the doorway and flipping on the light, only to find the bed tucked and the room empty.The realization guts me right here, where I stand.I turn and face the frame, pressing my hand over my head, chin dipping low with the impact of her leaving.Damn it, my father’s been leading her mother around like a pet he plans to put down.Ihadto get a read on Caleb.

I shove off the wall.I’m going to get her.No more running from each other.

I head for the door, and there’s a shift in the air—a soft whisper of a sound that halts me in my steps and draws my gaze toward the chairs.That’s when Alana shifts in the one she’s claimed, and I can see her there when moments before I could not.Relief floods my system with the intensity of a tsunami, and it actually takes me a minute to fully process that emotion.The idea of her being gone destroyed me.There was a time when I would have seen my reaction to her as weakness, because my father did.

Not anymore.

My father is a fool in a CEO chair he wears like a disguise of genius.

I will bleed for her.And he will, too, if that’s what it takes to protect her.

I cross the room and find her curled up in the same chair I’d been sitting in earlier.I kneel in front of her, drinking in the sweet image of her in slumber.Her long, dark lashes are wispy half-moons against her pale skin, her brown hair silk against the satin of a robe I can only assume she wore for me.She is beautiful, peaceful even, when I know she was feeling anything but when she fell asleep.And as much as I want to touch her in this moment, I do just what I did all those times as a teen when she’d fall asleep next to me in my family’s media room: I draw out the moment, watching her, savoring how damn beautiful she is, how perfect.But the difference between now and the past is that way back then, I’d hungered to make her mine, and now sheismine.

With gentle fingers, I caress her hair from her eyes.“Alana,” I murmur softly.

Her lashes flutter and lift.“Damion?”

Her voice is a delicate breeze washing away the heat of a day that all but burned me straight to hell.“Yes,” I say, a curve to my lips.“I hope you weren’t expecting someone else.”

She laughs and sits up, the pink silk of her gown tugging low, exposing the lush swell of her breasts, her nipples puckered beneath the thin material.She catches herself on the arm of the chair, and she groans.“I’m not very steady.”

I glance at the bottle with the amber line that’s decidedly lower than when I left and arch a brow at her.“Had a little to drink?”

“Yes,” she admits, pressing her hand to her face a moment before she lays it on my arm.Her touch is gentle, but there is nothing gentle about how badly I want her right now.“But,” she adds, “in my defense, it was the only way I could keep from calling you over and over again when that’s exactly what I wanted to do.And I know good and well if I would have been calling you, freaking out and worried, it would have driven home your need to act against your father.You were not in the headspace to do that tonight.”

She’s right on all points, and she is the only person in my life who has ever really understood me, and we’ve been apart for damn near a decade.Love for this woman swells inside me.“There’s a reason I said no one else could wear that ring and be believable.Because there was never anyone else who knew me like you, and never anyone else I’d give a ring to.”Before she can react and tell me to stop talking about such things, I push to my feet and take her with me, but not for long.I sit and pull her on top of me, her legs straddling my hips and her hands pressing to my chest.“Now, where were we?”I ease the silk of her robe aside, and kiss the delicate skin of her shoulder before glancing up at her.“Do you remember?”

“Tell me what happened tonight first.”

“More of the same, and that’s an absolute promise.”

She presses her hands to my face and she tilts my gaze to hers, searching my eyes, seeking the truth, and she’s the only person I believe could find it just this easily.“You should have stayed with me.”Her hands fall away and resettle on my shoulders.

“I do always seem to decide the answer is to leave you, don’t I?”

“Yes, and it scares me, Damion.I can’t get this invested and have you do that to me again.”

“I ran to try and fix things.I didn’t run away.”I slide my hand up her back, fingers splaying between her shoulder blades as I mold her close.“I’m done with that.You’re stuck with me now.”I caress her robe down her arms and tangle her hands in the silk.“You’re mine now, to do with what I please.”

“I’m your willing sex slave, Damion West,” she says, her voice and stare unwavering.“You don’t have to hold me prisoner.”

It’s a bold and playful statement in a way most wouldn’t expect of good-girl Alana, but we have a long history in which we’d said just about anything to each other.And this isn’t as playful as it seems, anyway.It’s about the many ways the past is a blade that cut us both and left us to bleed out, an ocean between us, and yet we’ve come together here, now, this night, the rest of this lifetime, more whole than either of us have been in a very long time.

My blood runs hot, my cock thick against the press of her sex to my zipper, and I tug her forward, her warm, soft curves settling against me.“Careful what you ask for, baby.”

“I thought we were done with careful,” she counters.

“Let’s find out how ready you really are,” I say, cupping her head and claiming her mouth, hunger in the way I kiss her, possession.She’s mine.She needs to know it, and so does everyone else.

Chapter forty-four

---