Page 32 of His Contract Queen

Anger flares inside me, immediately burning away the remnants of fear he brought into this room with him and leaves only defiance in its wake. “I couldn’t give a singlefuckabout your approval.”

His chuckle is low and husky, sliding down my spine like warm oil. His eyes brighten with a wicked, delighted spark that chases away the darkness as his grip tightens the barest fraction. He’s pleased. Thrilled, even. As if my anger is the exact offering he came here to collect.

“Is that so,” he drawls, voice dripping with dangerous amusement.

I should fight him.

I should shove him away, curse him out, remind him I am not some fragile little thing he can command or manipulate whenever boredom strikes or whenever the shadows of Moscow stop being entertaining for him.

I should… but I don’t.

Instead, my hands—traitorous things—grab the front of his shirt. I haul him toward me with more force than I thought I had left in me. His balance tips at the same time mine does. The mattress gives beneath us as I pull him down with me, my legs instinctively tightening around his waist, locking him into place before I can remember why I shouldn’t be doing any of this in the first place.

Surprise flashes across his face again in that rare, unguarded way that unsettles me. But it vanishes just as quickly, swallowed by something darker.

Desire.

His mouth crashes against mine in a kiss that feels more like a claim than anything resembling affection. It’s fierce, all-consuming as his hand slides back to cradle my head with unmistakable dominance, holding me exactly where he wants me.

I gasp into him and grind my hips up against his, shocking myself.

His kiss deepens instantly, coaxing and commanding all at once, testing how far I’ll bend before I break. It sparks through me like electricity, a rush of heat and something dangerously close to surrender convincing me to give in to his demands.

This isn’t what I prepared for.

I braced for cruelty, for punishment, for the ruthless enforcer I had come to fear in the hours leading up to now. This isn’t at all the monster I’d prepared myself to face once he finally came back to me.

The world narrows to the hot press of his mouth devouring mine, to the shocking dominance of his tongue as it forces past my lips and drags against mine with a possessive hunger I am completely unprepared for. In one single heartbeat, everything I thought I knew about him completely shatters.

It isn’t his violence I should have been afraid of.

I realize much too late that the thing I should have been most afraid of is how easily he could dismantle me without it.

9

ALEKSANDR

Reprimand.

Boundaries.

Control.

The words had looped repeatedly through my head the entire drive back.

I told myself on the drive that tonight would be different. That I would remind her that lines exist between us for a reason. Crossing them has consequences, even for the woman who has somehow managed to slip past every defense I’ve spent forty years building.

I’ve handled men twice her size with less thought than this. Broken defiance in boardrooms, back rooms, and on the floors of blood-soaked warehouses. Bent it, redirected it, turned it into something useful for me to wield when necessary. Power is simple when you understand its mechanics.

Yet the second I found myself slipping into her room, I should have known better. Her sitting up in bed with the sheets tangledaround her waist, silk nightgown slipping off one shoulder, hair a dark spill across pale skin, had every rehearsed word evaporating on my tongue.

She hadn’t flinched when she saw me. She had simply watched me with those too-perceptive eyes, chin tilting in that way of hers that told me she knew exactly what she was doing to me. There had been no fear reflecting back at me in those dark honey-brown eyes. Just a quiet, burning challenge I’d learned to crave.

All the carefully constructed discipline I rehearsed on the drive home vanished the moment she reached for me and pulled me closer.

Desire overrides judgment so quickly it almost feels almost like instinct. By the time my brain catches up with reality I’m already kissing her, hard and deep with one hand fisting in her hair to angle her head exactly where I want it, the other sliding around her waist, fingers splaying across the curve of her spine as I haul her against me to erase every inch of space she thought she had.

She moans into my mouth, the sound soft and needy.