Damaged Queen Read online

  “And why do you want oblivion?” he asked.

  “Why not? I mean, seriously, look around you. I was taken from my old life and forced out of it by your dad. It didn’t end there. Your father controlled me. He made me do things to satisfy his own ends. I had to take innocent people away from their lives and force them into servitude. To pose and to act all because of him. Yeah, yeah, I know, you totally don’t believe me. That’s fine. I don’t care. Then I went to my new life, and I’ve been living it the way I have to. Axel being the knight he is, comes and completely takes me from my life and tries to ruin me. I mean, that whipping post was not fun and games, you know. I guess a lot of people love being on the end of a whip, but not me. My back is killing me.” She took another drink, and he watched her.

  Her words stopped making a lot of sense, and she sighed after taking another long sip.

  “Here, you may as well drink, but keep all your judgments locked in a tiny ball away from me. I want nothing to do with them.”

  He took the bottle from her and smiled. Draven sipped from the bottle, knowing how gulping the stuff down didn’t help to appease the demons running around in his head.

  “I was going to have them fuck you, one by one. Even the women. Tillie is known for being a damn good fuck, even if she’s wearing a fake cock.”

  “How gross.”

  “Yes.”

  “What made you stop?”

  “I didn’t want them touching you.”

  She laughed. “Wow. You don’t want me, and you don’t want anyone else to want me. Cool.” She rested her head back against the bed.

  “I never said I didn’t want you.”

  “You don’t go around getting other people to fuck your women if you have feelings for them, Draven. That’s not the way it works.”

  “I never said it was.”

  “You really can’t have it your own way.” She drank some more. “I’m getting totally buzzed, and you’re ruining it by all your talking. Blah, blah, blah, blah.”

  “You get drunk, and I’ll make sure you don’t hurt yourself.”

  “You know I thought about you all the time that I was away.”

  “You did?”

  “Yep. Every single day I was curious as to what you were doing. If you were happy. I mean, how fucking crazy is that? I’d wonder if you had finally been able to bring your father down. Looking around me, I see you have, but he’s not gone. The memory and legacy of Alan Barries lives on.” She turned her head. “And when you have kids, he’ll continue to live on.”

  “I thought about you as well,” Draven said.

  “Ah, you thought of all the ways to kill me.” She held an imaginary noose around her neck, tilted her head to the side, and stuck her tongue out.

  He rolled his eyes. “Not like that.”

  “Then what did you think about?”

  Draven stared into her blue eyes. “I’m only going to tell you this because I know you won’t remember it come the morning.”

  “That’s the whole point, right? To not remember it. To completely forget about everything and anything,” she said.

  “I thought about running with you. I wanted to find you, and at first, I didn’t want to bring you back. I wanted to find you, stay with you, and never look back.”

  “That’s nice.”

  “Yeah, it is.”

  “But we can’t do that, can we? We can’t pretend that it didn’t happen. You never came looking for me, and in turn, I stayed alone, hoping for you.”

  “What were you hoping for?”

  “That you’d know the truth. I’d hoped your father didn’t have the hold on you that he seemed to have on everyone else, including me. He said jump and everyone always turned around and said, how high. They never considered asking why? Or if he’d jump first. I don’t know. I never liked your father. He gave me the creeps. Still does and I hope someone in hell has the luxury of pissing and shitting on him and beating the shit out of him. Ha. Yep, I’m getting the buzz.”

  He smiled. “I really did miss you.”

  She turned her head. “I fell in love with you, Draven, all those years ago. So long now. I mean, I’m twenty-eight years old. Not a lot by any means but enough to make me … feel it. Did you look for me all the time?”

  “My father was in charge of keeping an eye on you. His men gave us updates on what you were doing and who you were doing it with. You were not my responsibility. Dealing with the war, I was needed here, not chasing after a girl who’d betrayed me. Then I had to deal with taking over. Jett was the last of us to ever go looking for you. I still don’t know why he decided to, especially when we all knew you were gone and why.”

  “I wasn’t hiding from you, Draven.”

  “We’re not doing this now.”

  “But—”

  “No buts. I’ve told you, Alan dealt with you; I had more pressing issues.”

  “Then why keep me here? Why not let me go? Why have that bitch whip me, and allow those other … people to see? Don’t you care about me at all?”

  “You’re here for my pleasure only. I don’t have to answer to you.”

  “You don’t make any sense at all, Draven. You know that. You’re hot and cold, and you drive me crazy.” She ran a hand down her face. “I’m going to have a big motherfucking headache in the morning, and I don’t care.”

  He laughed. Sipping at more of the whiskey, he watched her. He’d missed just being able to watch her, to know that she was okay.

  Reaching out, he tucked some hair behind her ear, and she sighed, turning toward him. “That’s nice.”

  “I fell in love with you back then as well. More than I probably should have.”

  She opened her eyes. “Draven, I was with your friends to be with you. I cared about them, but I never loved them. I went through the initiation because I knew it was what you wanted. I sucked Axel’s cock to get information. For me, it has always been you.”

  Her eyes started to droop, but he wasn’t ready for her to be done just yet.

  “What about Ethan?”

  “I didn’t deserve him.”

  “Why not?”

  “He was a good man that wanted a lot of somethings I couldn’t give him. I couldn’t fall in love with him, or change. He wanted me to be the perfect wife with the kids and the life he wanted, but I couldn’t do it. I’m not like that. I need something more. I was going to marry him, and I knew I’d make his life miserable. You shouldn’t marry a man that even as you have sex with him, you’re thinking about another. It’s the man you’re thinking about that you should be with.”

  She fell asleep, the glass falling from her hand.

  The liquid spilled to the floor.

  He had cleaners for the mess. Sipping at the whiskey, he waited for her to rest against him. He moved up a little closer so she didn’t get a bad neck from her position.

  With her leaning against him, he closed his eyes, and let out a sigh. Even now, he wanted her.

  Buck and Jett were dead.

  The life he wanted was gone. He was carrying on his father’s legacy exactly how he wanted, even though he’d killed the son of a bitch.

  Shaking his head, he kept on drinking, hoping that he’d find the oblivion she’d found.

  ****

  There were some things in life Harper knew she never should try to do. Go bungee jumping off a bridge, eat undercooked chicken, and now, drink bottles of whiskey. She didn’t even get down half the bottle.

  She opened her eyes, and other than the cutting down of the whipping post and the conversation with Ian, she couldn’t remember anything else.

  Scrap that, she remembered the bottle of whiskey.

  Yep, no way she could forget that.

  Opening her eyes, she turned her head and froze.

  Draven was looking right at her.

  “Please tell me you’re awake and not one of those creepy people that sleep with their eyes open?” she asked.

  He smiled. “I’m awake. I find it
interesting that you’ve woken to me in your bed and yet all you care about is knowing if I’m awake or asleep because open eyes creep you out.”

  She shrugged. “Well, seeing as I don’t have to be freaked out anymore, why are we in the same bed?” She rolled over and was surprised to find she didn’t have a hangover, not even a headache. “I’m going to vomit soon, aren’t I?”

  “Oh, yes. Your entire guts.”

  “You spent a lot of time in the bottom of a whiskey bottle?”

  “Not a lot of time but enough to know it’s not fun coming up. It burns.”

  “Until that happens, want to tell me why you’re here?” she asked. “In my bed?”

  “It’s technically my bed.”

  “If you want to get technical, it’s Axel’s.”

  “It’s not. I own this house and the land, and everything that is on it.”

  “Including your best friend?” she asked.

  “I don’t own him. He can come and go as he pleases.”

  “The rest of us need permission.”

  “To get out of this house, yes.”

  She wished she remembered what happened last night. Staring at Draven, she knew they had to have talked.

  “Do you still hate me?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “It didn’t go well with your dad.”

  “Of course not. We’re not the same person, and he seems to think that blaming other people for his mistakes is okay. It’s really not okay.”

  Her stomach started to turn, and she placed a hand over her mouth, knowing she didn’t have long.

  “Go,” Draven said.

  She pushed the blankets off her, and only just made it in time to the toilet as she started to vomit.

  Draven was there, holding her hair back as she threw everything that she’d eaten and drank back up. The vomit kept coming, and throughout it, she felt Draven’s hand on her back, one hand in her hair, keeping it out of the way.

  “I don’t want to do this,” she said.

  “Just keep on being sick. I’m not cleaning vomit up.”

  She laughed. “As if I could go anywhere.”

  “Once you’ve done this, we’ll go and have some breakfast.”

  The thought of breakfast didn’t help her, and she kept on throwing up. Draven stayed with her for the next ten minutes until she finally stopped.

  He had a toothbrush ready for her, along with mouthwash. She took them from him gladly, brushing at her teeth.

  From her reflection, she saw it had been a bad couple of days. Beneath her eyes were shadows, and she looked exhausted.

  With Draven watching her every move she didn’t check out her back.

  He turned on the shower, and she stopped as he started to get undressed.

  She saw his heavily inked body. It hadn’t been so inked the last time she saw him. There had been more words and drawings added to his flesh.

  He removed his pants and boxers, and he stood in the shower. “Come on.”

  Every instinct inside her was screaming at her to run.

  In her mind, she saw the Draven from the past, and this new man. The deadly one. The one she knew she should fear and at the same time, screaming at her to take care of him.

  You’re fucking crazy.

  He had people whip you.

  She removed her clothes, aware of how naked she was as she stepped into the stall, and ignored it.

  Covering her chest, she tilted her head back and looked up at the water. It was warm, and Draven stood behind her.

  The space in the shower seemed to get smaller.

  She stared at his arms as they reached past her head and grabbed the soap. It wouldn’t take a lot to kill her, to squeeze the very breath from her body and to make her scream in pain.

  He’d done so before.

  The pain of the whip.

  Of his hands.

  Of his words.

  All of it adding up to where they were right now.

  In the shower, completely naked.

  “Can I have the soap?” she asked.

  He held the soap out for her to take and placed it in her hand.

  She took it, running her hands over it, lathering them. She put the block back in the dish and started to run her hands all over her body.

  She wondered if he saw her, if he liked how she was washing her body.

  She changed a glance behind her and saw him watching her, staring at her hands as she moved them down her neck, over her breasts, and then to her stomach.

  His cock stood out, long, thick, and proud.

  Rubbing her body, an answering heat filled her with shame. This man shouldn’t evoke any feeling from her body, and yet, he did.

  You can’t deny that you want him.

  She watched as he wrapped his fingers around his length. Her gaze locked on the action as he moved up and down. Each glide made liquid heat pool between her thighs.

  Would it be so wrong to watch him? To see him complete?

  “You want this?” he asked.

  She turned her back, not wanting to know the answer herself.

  When it came to Draven, her reactions scared her. She knew how she should react, and yet her body, it did different things. He stepped up close, banding his arms around her, stopping her from touching herself.

  His cock pressed against the base of her back, and the warmth of him surrounded her.

  “Are you wet for me right now?”

  She stayed silent.

  He chuckled against her flesh. “That’s okay, I don’t mind finding out for myself.”

  She didn’t put up a fight as he teased through her folds. His fingers found her clit, touching her. He didn’t linger there for long, and she whimpered as he thrust two fingers inside her cunt.

  “Now that is what I’m talking about.”

  She gasped as he added a third finger and made her take it. “Fuck my fingers, Harper. Take them.”

  Spreading her legs, she took them, doing exactly as he demanded and not complaining as he forced her to fuck them. He plunged inside her, over and over again.

  She whimpered his name, begging for more.

  As quickly as he built up her need for him, he took it away, pulling his fingers from her pussy. She watched him as he licked them, tasting her.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “You want to deny what I do to you, that’s fine. You’re not going to touch yourself all day. You can only touch yourself when you beg me to fuck you.”

  “That’s not going to happen. You can’t do that.”

  “I’ve got nothing better to do than babysit you all day. I’ll be sticking around to watch you.” He winked at her.

  She couldn’t believe it as he climbed out of the shower.

  “Where are you going?” she asked.

  “To get dressed. I suggest you do as well.”

  “Nothing can stop me doing this.” She put a hand between her thighs and stroked her clit.

  He grabbed her wrist, pulling her out of the shower stall. The wet tile caused her to slip, but Draven didn’t let her go, dragging her into the room.

  She fought him as he pulled her over his knee. His hands held her down, and she screamed as he slapped her ass.

  Not once.

  Not twice.

  Repeatedly until she was weeping and begging him to stop.

  He dropped her to the floor, and when she was on her knees facing him, he cupped her face. “I’ve got no problem playing this game with you. You don’t want to want me, fine. It doesn’t change the fact you do want me. You’ll always want me, and I know you can’t accept that.” He slammed his lips down on hers.

  The kiss was bruising, brutal, nearly to the point of breaking skin.

  “But don’t ever fucking think to test my strength like that again. You will lose, and next time, I won’t hold back.”

  Her ass was on fire. “That was you holding back?”

  “I don’t do anything by half, Harper. You should know that
by now. I’m all in or not at all. Now, I suggest you change. We need to get some breakfast inside you.”

  He let her go, and she watched as he pulled on some clothes.

  She wasn’t willing to test him for a second time that day. She rushed around getting dressed into the clothes available to her.

  “When will I be allowed my bag of clothes?” she asked. Harper missed her bras, her panties, her jeans, all of the clothes she had.

  “When I say so.”

  Draven left the bedroom, and she sat on the edge of the bed, shocked by what had happened. Her ass was still on fire, and she guessed there would be bruising there as well.

  He’d not held back, or at least, she didn’t think he had. Her ass burned.

  She didn’t have long for her pity party as one of the guards entered the room. He held a gun against his chest and didn’t even look at her.

  Draven wasn’t joking around.

  When he shot out threats, he intended to see them through.

  Running fingers through her damp hair, she was tempted to dry it before joining him. Her stomach rumbled, and she changed her mind. Food would be better, even if it did mean sitting opposite a man who had her blood boiling.

  She hated him and yet wanted him with what seemed like equal measure.

  Did she love him? What had they talked about last night? Why was he in her bed?

  So many questions that would remain unanswered because she had no intention of asking for them. Especially not from Draven.

  The only way to keep herself together with him was to be around him as little as possible. It wouldn’t be easy seeing as she was in effect, his prisoner, but for now, she was going to try.

  Of course, it meant sitting at the table with him.

  She made her way to the kitchen and found Draven at the counter, reading his paper and drinking coffee.

  He didn’t even look in her direction. She hated that he didn’t even care enough to give her a few seconds of his time.

  Fine.

  He wanted to play hardball. She could play this game.

  Only, she didn’t know how to play or what his endgame would be. They were no longer kids in high school, and she didn’t know what he wanted from her.

  Axel was nowhere in sight, and rather than ask, she stayed silent.

  She had to survive.