Page 11 of Scorned Queen

His eyes burn like blue fire before he kisses the hell out of me and then scoops me up and starts walking.

Chapter ten

Damion’sbediseverybit what you’d expect a king’s bed to be, larger than life, with towering posts I don’t remember really giving thought to until tonight.Because tonight, as he sets me on my feet, he leans me against that thick wooden surface and says, “This is where you belong.”One of his hands is on my hip, a possessive burn to that touch, while the other is on the wood above my head.“That ring—”

Everything in my head screams in rejection of what he might say next.I’ve officially turned this night into me playing the role of the desperate girl who wants to marry the guy who doesn’t want to get married.It’s embarrassing and not who I want to be.“No,” I say, my hand pressing to his chest, the act pausing his words, and I can feel his heart thundering beneath my palm.“Don’t talk about the ring.”I pull it from my hand and press it into his.“Now, can we just forget the ring and fuck already?”

His spine stiffens, and he stands ramrod still.He is stone, unmoving, his expression impenetrable, a tic in his jaw, and yet the sexual tension between us still crackles like electricity.Seconds pass, and the silence mixed with my boldness becomes my enemy, and just when I’m about to act or say something, anything, he catches my hand and slides the ring back into place.

And when his eyes meet mine, he says, “We can fuck all night long as long as this ring is on your finger.”

There’s no time for me to react or even assess what I feel right now.His hand slides under my hair, his palm to my neck, pulling my naked body flush to his.“You really have no idea how much I want you, or how much I have always wanted you, do you?”It’s a question filled with torment and self-hate, that I don’t quite understand.His mouth closes over on mine, his tongue stroking into my mouth, wicked and full of demand, the whiskey and power I’d tasted minutes before has transformed to torment, hunger, and need mixed with a possessiveness that says he believes he’s about to lose me.The truth is I’m his to lose.

I’m not really sure what that means for him or me, but my arms fold around him, and I offer myself to him, a shelter in the wildness of a storm I believe has raged in him far longer than I ever imagined.And right now, he needs someplace to put it all.He needs me.And I need him.But there must be something he tastes on my lips, in my reaction, in the way I’m responding to him, that undoes him, because he tears his mouth from mine.

He presses me against the bedpost again, a mix of dark passion and shadows in the depth of his eyes that I can only call haunting, but he says nothing.I say nothing.But then the time for words has long passed, and the burn of possession and the need for control radiates from him.The charge between us is a live wire, and when his gaze rakes over my naked breasts, my nipples pucker and my sex clenches.I ache to feel him press inside me, to fill me, and yet still he just stares at me, one second more.I reach for his shirt.He catches my wrist, his grip snug but not painful.

“One day you’ll run away just like you said you should in the living room.”

He’s afraid, I realize now.Afraid for me to see the truth of who he is, and that’s almost impossible for me to wrap my head around.This is me he fears, not some stranger, but I say the words I know he needs to hear, “What if I don’t?And will you ever know, if you keep pushing me away?”

“You think you can handle it.”

“I know I can.”

His eyes narrow, darken to almost black, and then he presses my hands to the post behind me and says, “Let’s see what you can really handle.Show me you trust me.Do what I say and nothing else.”

We’re back to his need for power, and my need to give it to him, which I’ll analyze in the morning.“Okay then,” I say.

He steps back from me, no longer touching me, the very act of him standing there, fully dressed, and me here naked, hugging a pole, and not him, as submissive and arousing as anything I’ve ever known.

My chin lifts.“Now what?”I whisper.

“Keep your hands right there.Understand?”

I wet my parched lips and nod, warm all over, my nipples rock-hard pebbles.“Yes,” I whisper.

“Good,” he replies, and I am rewarded for my compliance as he reaches for the buttons on his shirt.Finally, he will be naked with me, and true to that expectation and hope, a moment later his shirt is open enough that he’s tugging it over his head.He tosses it aside, the flex of muscle and man a delicious answer to my compliance.But just when I hope and hunger for him to fully undress, he closes the space between us.

Instinct has me reaching for him, and he catches my hands and presses them back against the bedpost.“I told you, baby,don’t move.”

Somehow there is a contrast of tenderness and command in his voice that is as arousing and confusing as everything else about Damion.“Or else what?”I ask, daring a bold question that pulls us deeper in this power play.

His hands settle on my waist, fire against my skin, and he leans in close, his warm breath a fan on my neck as he says, “I’ll be forced to punish you.”

For some odd reason, my belly trembles with this promise, and it’s all I can do not to touch him.I don’t know this part of Damion, but I’m not afraid as I suspect he thinks I will be.I’m not even a little afraid.“How?”I ask instead.

I can feel him smile against my skin a moment before he eases back and says, “I’ll spank you, Alana.And I’ll enjoy it, as will you.So feel free to break the rule.Move your hands.Give me a reason to turn you over my lap.”

Chapter eleven

Thelittlegirlinme that grew up next door to Damion wants to laugh at his promise to turn me over his lap, but he’s not laughing at all, and I have no idea why I’m suddenly ten times hotter than I was moments before.I’ve never done such a thing in my life.Never had a man touch me as he suggests he will or talk to me in such a way.I feel young and naïve and really quite vanilla when we are nearly the same age.But then, I remind myself that I was never really all in with anyone in my life,but Damion.

Either way, I don’t know what I feel right now, or what his intent is behind such an erotic statement, but it doesn’t feel as simple as it seems.

“Have you ever been spanked, Alana?”he asks, and it’s a question meant to push me, maybe scare me away even, if he were honest.In one breath, he says he wants me to stay.In another, he pushes me away, but I think of the torment I’ve tasted in his kiss and seen in his eyes, and I know he really wants me to stay.

But he needs to know I can see him for who he is, be it the boy next door, or the future king of Wall Street, and everything in between.This is all about his “you can’t handle it” declaration.

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