Chapter 173: Devil’s Tender Kiss

​The air vanished from her lungs as she was hauled entirely off her feet, crashing hard against an immovable, iron wall of a chest. The impact knocked the breath from her throat, but she didn’t need to open her eyes to know whose grip had claimed her.

​She knew the suffocating heat of that frame. She knew the steady, thunderous beat of that heart, and the dark, familiar scent of cedar and smoke that lived permanently inside her lungs.

​A deafening crack echoed over the heavy bass as a massive fist drove straight into the stranger’s jaw, sending the man flying backward over a low glass table in an explosion of shattered crystal.

​A heavy, predatory arm locked like a vise around Ana’s ribs, crushing her flush against his side as Damian drew himself to his full, towering height. His obsidian eyes burned with lethal, unhinged fury, his gravelly roar cutting through the subterranean darkness like an executioner’s blade.

​"Stay the fuck away from my wife!"

The word wife hung in the thrumming air between them like a live wire.

​Ana blinked through the neon haze, the shock hitting her like a slap before cold, blinding fury rushed in to take its place. She planted her palms flat against the hard wall of Damian’s chest and shoved with everything she had left.

​"Stop lying!" she yelled, her voice trembling with liquor and raw venom. "I am not your wife! Remember? We’re divorced!"

​A lethal shadow crossed Damian’s features. The sheer audacity of her defiance... laid bare in front of the pathetic vulture crawling off the floor... sent his blood boiling. His arm snapped around her waist, hauling her violently back against his hip with bruising possessiveness.

​"Get the fuck out of my sight before I have you buried," Damian snarled at the man, his obsidian eyes burning with unadulterated murder.

​"No!" Ana shouted over the thumping bass, reaching toward the stranger. "Stay! Let’s finish what we started!"

​The man, wiping blood from his split lip, saw the woman fighting back against her captor. Mistaking her drunken desperation for an opening, he puffed out his chest. "You heard her, pal. Leave her alone. She doesn’t want you..."

​Damian simply raised an eyebrow, his expression dropping into pitch-black mockery.

​Before the idiot could finish the sentence, two mountain-sized men in black suits materialized from the shadows, seizing the stranger by his arms with bone-cracking efficiency.

The man panicked, his bravado instantly evaporating into frantic protests as the guards hauled him backward across the slick floor, literally dragging him out of the club and tossing him onto the pavement outside.

​Ana gasped, wholly beside herself. "Let go of me!"

​She thrashed in Damian’s iron hold, balling her fists and hammering them against his broad chest. Damian didn’t flinch. He absorbed the frantic, weak blows like stone, his jaw locked... until his gaze caught the sudden shimmer in her hazel eyes.

​Tears were spilling over her lashes, hot and broken, carving pale tracks down her flushed cheeks.

​His eyes softened, just a fraction, the murderous edge bleeding into something far darker and more troubled.

"Why the hell were you begging him to kiss you?"

Damian rasped, his grip shifting to anchor her closer, his voice dropping into a dangerous, gravelly rumble.

"Were you actually going to cheat on me under our contract, Anastasia? You know the rules. No man touches you. You know the punishment."

​Ana let out a bitter, jagged laugh that hitched in her throat. "Maybe I wanted the punishment," she choked out, looking right through him. "Because that’s all you ever know how to do. Force your dominance on me. Lock me in a cage."

​Damian smirked, dark and infuriatingly cocky, his breath hot against her temple. "The way you moan beneath me doesn’t sound like I’m forcing a damn thing, my doll."

​Heat rushed up Ana’s neck, burning crimson across her cheeks in sheer mortification. But then her shoulders slumped. The anger drained away, leaving her swaying, droopy, and hollow beneath the strobe lights.

​"I just wanted to feel loved," she whispered, the small, cracked confession cutting through the deafening music with unbearable weight. "I just wanted to know what it feels like to be kissed tenderly. Reverently. Like I actually matter. And he was going to give it to me."

​Damian scoffed, disgust curling his lip. "That bottom-feeder was going to drag you to a hotel and violate you."

​"I don’t care!" She cried, pulling against his grip as he tried to guide her toward the VIP exit. She planted her heels, refusing to budge. "I’m not leaving! I won’t go until someone here gives me a tender kiss! Punish me, fine me, lock me up, I don’t care! I want what I want!"

​Damian’s breath hitched in his throat.

​He stared down at her, momentarily paralyzed. He had seen her cold. He had seen her defiant, calculating, and unraveling in his bed. But he had never seen her plead for affection with such raw, petulant, desperate sincerity.

The alcohol had stripped away every layer of her armor, baring the wound he had spent years ignoring. He had always known what she starved for... and he had deliberately denied her, using possession to mask his own fear of losing control.

​Ana stumbled, spinning around to head back into the sea of bodies on the dance floor.

​Damian’s arm shot out, catching her by the waist and wrenching her back into his chest with overwhelming force. He spun her until she was caged against him, his large hand coming up to cup her jaw, his thumb wiping the tears from her burning skin.

​His dark eyes bore into hers, stripped entirely of arrogance, leaving behind a terrifying, burning intensity.

​"Then let me," Damian murmured, his voice low, rough, and trembling with an emotion he had never once dared to name. "Let me be the man to kiss you tenderly."

The chaotic roar of the club seemed to drop an octave, the heavy bass fading into a dull, distant thrum.

​Damian’s hand cradled the side of her face, his calloused thumb gently wiping away the remnants of her tears.

There was no punishing force in his grip, no bruising pressure meant to demand her surrender. His thumb drifted across the petal-soft swell of her lower lip, tracing its trembling contour with a slow, aching reverence that made Ana’s breath catch in her throat.

​Slowly, deliberately, Damian leaned down.

​His lips pressed first against the center of her forehead, warm and steady, holding the contact long enough for a soft shudder to run down her spine. He dipped lower, placing a whisper-soft kiss on the tip of her nose, coaxing a faint, confused gasp from her parted lips. His mouth trailed down to the sharp curve of her jaw, lingering there with delicate, unhurried warmth.

​"Look at me, Ana," he rasped, his voice thick with a vulnerability that terrified them both.

​When her heavy, glassy eyes fluttered open to meet his, his mouth finally found hers.

​It was unlike anything he had ever given her. There was no savagery, no furious claiming... just a gradual, breathtaking sweetness that dismantled every defense she had spent years constructing. His lips moved over hers with agonizing patience, coaxing, tasting, and worshiping the mouth he had so often bruised with fierce possession.

​His large palm slid slowly down the side of her neck, tracing the curve of her ribs through the soft knit of her dress before settling gently against the small of her waist, anchoring her frame against his heat. His other hand tangled softly into the thick hair at the nape of her neck, fingers cradling her head as if she were made of thin glass.

​Ana felt the ground disappear from beneath her heels.

​The cold emptiness inside her chest suddenly flooded with burning, liquid gold. A broken sigh slipped from her lips into his mouth, and she didn’t fight it.

Her hands came up, clutching the front of his unbuttoned linen shirt, her lips softening and moving against his with the exact tenderness she had starved for. She kissed him back without fear, without armor, pouring every scrap of unsaid longing into the quiet space they carved out of the neon dark.

​They stayed suspended there, breathing each other in, kissing with a slow, dizzying depth until the desperate need for air finally parted their mouths. Ana leaned her forehead against his chest, her heart hammering against her ribs, completely undone by the quiet mercy of his touch.

************

​Up in the darkened alcove of the mezzanine, Vivian Stark gripped the brass railing so violently the metal groans under the strain.

​Her knuckles were stark white, her chest heaving beneath her disguise with suffocating, venomous fury. In all the years she had watched Damian Sterling... in all the years she had plotted, lied, and murdered to tear them apart... she had never once seen the ruthless titan look at another living soul with anything resembling devotion.

​Seeing him cradle Anastasia with such gentle, unyielding reverence shattered whatever sanity Vivian had left. A low, twisted snarl curled her crimson lips as her fingers closed around the burner phone in her pocket, dialing her extraction team in the loading dock below.

​If Damian Sterling was finally capable of loving his little bird, Vivian was going to make sure he watched her bleed.