Page 86 of His Contract Queen

The room beyond glows with firelight. A large hearth burns along the far wall, flames crackling lazily as they cast warm orange reflections across pale walls and silk-upholstered furniture arranged in a carefully chosen layout. Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves line two sides of the room and are filled with leather-bound volumes and decorative pieces that look far too valuable to be casually displayed.

It’s the kind of room meant for deals made over drinks, or interrogations disguised as polite conversation.

Before I can even open my mouth to ask where Aleksandr is, he drops me right onto one of the couches beside the fire. The cushions bounce beneath me as I land, the sudden movement jarring enough to knock my focus back on him and not the volumes lining the walls.

My face immediately pulls into a scowl.

“You know,” I snap, sitting upright and brushing my hair out of my face, “you could be more polite.”

The man straightens slowly, rolling one shoulder as if tossing me around required no effort whatsoever. One dark brow lifts.

“For what purpose?” he asks blandly. “You’re not mine to impress.”

Fire ignites instantly in my veins. What an asshole.

“Maybe because I’m a guest?” I shoot back.

He mutters something under his breath that sounds suspiciously like a curse before dragging a hand across the side of his face right over the thin scratches my nails left earlier.

“You know, you’re right up Volkov’s alley because you’re just as fucking irritating as he is,” he mutters under his breath.

I stare at him for a moment.

Honestly, I don’t know what I expected. Certainly not hospitality, that’s for sure.

A man like him doesn’t seem remotely capable of that kind of care, especially for a stranger he had just been tasked to drag off the property of a military official like contraband. The way he stands across from me now with his arms loose at his sides, his posture relaxed but somehow still coiled with the kind of quiet violence that could snap into motion at any second, makes it clear he has no interest in pretending otherwise.

His presence fills the room in a way that would’ve set my teeth on edge weeks ago.

It seems the more I learn about the men inside this secret society, the clearer something becomes. Every one of them is a brute in his own particular way. Aleksandr is simply the least obvious version of it. His brutality has always been direct, wrapped up and disguised with lazy confidence and a possessiveness that makes no apologies for itself. When he walks into a room, people move on instinct because that little voice inside their head tells them they should.

The man standing in front of me now is much different from that. Quieter, but the same violence hums under his skin all the same.

It’s in the way his eyes watch everything at once. The way he holds himself like he has spent his life around people who would happily put a knife in his throat if he gave them half the chance. Even the casual way he holds himself carries the subtle tensionof someone who expects trouble no matter who is standing in front of him.

There’s no softness in him. No pretense of charm like Aleksandr.

It makes a strange kind of sense.

Men like Aleksandr don’t surround themselves with gentle company.

A soft gasp from the doorway draws our attention at the same time.

My head turns just as his does to a woman standing at the threshold of the room, frozen in place as if she hadn’t expected to walk in on anyone at all.

She looks around my age, maybe a year or two older. Her dark hair spills in loose waves over her shoulders, slightly mussed like she had been running her fingers through it in a nervous habit. Her eyes are wide with worry, focused solely on the man standing in front of me.

She’s dressed simply compared to the opulence of the room around her. A soft gray cashmere sweater is draped over fitted leggings, thick wool socks covering her feet. The outfit looks comfortable and domestic, like she had been curled up somewhere with a book when the sound of the front doors and unfamiliar voices pulled her from whatever quiet evening she had been having.

The moment she sees him, she moves.

She crosses the room without hesitation, reaching for him the instant she’s close enough. Her hands lift to his face, cupping his jaw as her fingers brush carefully over the marks I’d carved intohis cheek less than an hour ago. The scratches are darker now, the blood dried in thin lines along his skin.

Even from this distance, they look worse than I realized.

“What happened? Are you hurt?” Her voice cracks slightly.

He catches her wrists gently before she can examine the cuts further. The movement is instinctive. He brings one of her hands up and presses a kiss to the inside of her wrist.