Page 32 of The Queen (Masterpiece Duet 2)
Chapter Twenty-One
Ordinary people are a puzzle, but Damon is the only one who’s ever interested me. The only one I wish I could solve. And never more than right now, as the darkness sets in.
It takes me a few days to realize that he’s serious about not going. I think I actually go through the first two stages of grief—denial, when I’m sure he’s secretly packing his bags and heading to the airport. Anger, when I consider dumping the eggs benedict that appears outside my door on his sleepy, beautiful body where it reclines in bed.
Then I get to bargaining, and it feels like more than a stage. It feels like the answer.
This is what Damon understands in his bones, the way other children know about love or security. He understands the value of the gamble. The value of pushing your chips in.
And that’s what he wants from me.
For me to put something in the center of the table. Otherwise you don’t get to play. He’s not going to see Avery until I do something. Until I offer him something.
It’s the third night that I emerge from the room, once he’s turned off the light and gone to bed. The glow from a tablet lights him in bed. He masks his surprise quickly, setting the tablet aside. “What are you doing awake?”
I don’t answer him. I’m not sure I have the nerve to speak right now. I couldn’t say I’ll trade my body for the chance to save Avery. Couldn’t say, you can have sex with me if you go see your father. There’s only exactly enough nerve to stand at the foot of the bed.
It’s like I’ve been waiting for him my entire life, since I was that six-year-old girl.
He’s here, sitting in front of me.
And not here, his mind still held captive by the years that came before.
The lamp on my desk casts a spotlight on him, on his tattoos with their tragic story and his body with its terrible beauty. I see the endless lines of ink etched into him. Monsters with only one eye. A wild woman with snakes for hair. And waves for miles of muscle.
Already he’s seen me naked. Worse than that, he’s seen me broken and bleeding. Somehow it’s still painful to reach for the hem of my shirt. Excruciating to lift enough to reveal the thin band of my stomach. Heartbreaking to watch him study me with cold desire.
I hesitate when it’s halfway up my body, suddenly afraid.
Does he know what’s at stake? Of course he does.
“Tomorrow?” I ask, hating how much my voice trembles.
Tomorrow we’ll go see Jonathan Scott. We’ll answer the summons, the cipher. Tomorrow we try to find Avery. Damon doesn’t exactly agree. Nothing as bland as yes or it’s a deal.
“Come here,” he says instead.
How many times has he asked that of me? When he was lying in that bed or when he reclined in the chair downstairs. I never did come. Not the way I do now, hitching my leg onto the bed, pulling my T-shirt off all the way. It lands in an unceremonious heap on the crisp white sheets.
I’m kneeling beside him, unsteady on the solid mattress.
He could fall on me. It would make this easier, but Damon Scott doesn’t do easy.
My bra is plain and cotton the way all my bras are. I buy them in packs at the big box store. They’re all the same, all boring, all completely unsexy. They should be a turn-off after the sequins and lace he’s seen downstairs, but I think I’ve solved this part of the puzzle.
Lingerie and high heels, perfectly pouting lips—they’re an invitation. What sane man would turn them down? Except Damon Scott isn’t sane. He’s perverse, and he wants this. A chaste white bra that no other man has seen. Pale white skin that no light has touched.
I fumble in my nervousness. The clasp is a needle and a thread, my hands as large as tree trunks.
Damon watches me with unerring patience. It’s part of my payment, his patience. My hands behind my back, working, working. Making me embarrass myself for him, a far deeper cost than pleasuring him.
The clasp unlocks in the back. The cups fall forward, leaning away from my breasts.
As if that unlocks him, he reaches a hand out. One finger down the center of my chest. He tugs the bra away completely. The cool air touches my nipples, turns them tight.
He traces the plump circle of my breast with light fingertips. His hand looks massive in front of me. Or maybe that’s just that I’m small. It’s like he’s measuring me—and I already know I’ll come up short. That’s the point. That’s the payment, but I find myself stuttering.
“I’m—I’m not—”
He doesn’t pause in his light perusal. “You’re not what?”
“Sexy.”
My high school boyfriend liked that I never demanded anything from him. Dr. Stanhope likes that I’m clever. Maybe I should be satisfied with those things, but they aren’t passion. They aren’t hunger.
