Damaged Queen (Darkness Within Duet 2)

Draven chuckled. “You should leave. Harper doesn’t want you here, and I certainly don’t. Get the fuck out of my house.”

“One day you’re going to have to deal with her. When that time comes, I hope you’re ready for the consequences.”

Draven was already leaving the room in search of Harper.

One of the guards let him know she’d headed upstairs. He went straight to his room and found her on the floor, leaning up against the bed, drinking from his expensive bottle of whiskey.

“Hello, Draven,” she said, holding up her glass.

He closed the door. She didn’t sound drunk yet, but it wouldn’t take much, not with this brand.

“Did you like my handiwork?” she asked.

“Yes.” He moved to sit beside her.

She put a hand close to her side and tutted. “This is for very special people. The kind that don’t order whips and stuff like that.” She laughed. “Whips. They hurt, you know.”

“I know.”

“Oh, that’s right. You were an abused little boy, and now you’re an abuser.” She forced out a laugh. “I guess you are like your father after all.”

He clenched his teeth together. One of the biggest insults he always faced was being compared to that man. He fucking hated Alan Barries, and he never, ever wanted to be referred to as his son.

She took a drink. “You know this stuff is nasty.”

“Why do you keep on drinking it?”

She found that incredibly funny. “It was only the good stuff that I knew would give me the total buzz I needed. I have to say, using an axe really does a number on the arms. I should totally work out using an axe. I’ll look like a badass bitch with cool arms.” She snorted.

He watched as she poured out another glass of whiskey, put the bottle down, and started to drink.

“It really is disgusting. It tastes like mold.”

“I’ve got better drinks.”

“This one is fine.” She shrugged. “I can’t be choosy in my choice of oblivion. It just has to get the job done.”

“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.