Chapter 9
Damien
Ican practically hear her plotting her escape, but my dramatic imagining of what awaits her gives her second thoughts.
I probably also put the idea in her head that those are my plans for her.
Not a chance. If any other man touches her, they will die a painful and early death.
There is no chance in hell I’m letting her escape.
Climbing into the car, I shut the door and lock it, disabling the unlock function.
She glares at me from the passenger seat with enough venom to drop a bull elephant.
Her chest heaves, her blonde hair is slightly wild from the manhandling, and the ratty black cardigan has slipped off one shoulder, revealing skin that catches the streetlight in a way I have no business noticing right now.
I start the engine. The Aston roars to life, and I pull out of Bruton Lane with more speed than the cobblestones appreciate.
“Seatbelt,” I say.
“Go to hell.”
“Seatbelt, Lidiya. I drive fast, and I’d rather not scrape you off my dashboard. The leather is Italian.”
She yanks the belt across her body and clicks it in with enough force to test the mechanism’s engineering limits.
Then she crosses her arms and stares straight ahead, vibrating with a fury so potent I can almost taste it.
Copper and adrenaline and something underneath that’s closer to fear than she’d ever admit.
Good. Fear keeps people alive.
I take the turn for Belgravia, heading home.
“You have no right,” she says. Her voice has dropped from a roar to something quieter and infinitely more dangerous. “You sit there in your fancy car, in your fancy suit, spending money like confetti, while your family bleeds me dry.”
“Debts are debts, solnyshko.”
Her lips are pressed so tightly, I’m surprised she manages to grit out, “Stop calling me that.”
“Why? It suits you. All that fire wrapped up in something small and blonde.”
“I’m not small. I’m five foot three.”
“Okay, you’re a giant… to pixies.”
She makes a sound that’s somewhere between a growl and a scream, muffled behind clenched teeth. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy it. There’s something about her fury that’s different from the fear I usually inspire. It’s alive. Reactive. She’s not cowering; she’s loading ammunition.
“Where are you taking me?” she asks again.
“Dinner.”
“Where?”
“Belgravia.” There is no need to tell her our destination yet. She will see in about five seconds.
The Aston swallows the distance between Mayfair and home in minutes, the engine purring through streets that grow quieter and more expensive with every turn. When I pull through the wrought-iron gates, and they slide shut behind us on their silent hydraulics, I hear her breath catch.
“This isn’t a restaurant,” she says.
“No.”
“This is a house.”
“Also correct. You’re on a roll.”
She turns to me, and in the dim glow of the dashboard lights, her eyes are enormous. Blue and furious and frightened. “You can’t do this.”
“The contract says dinner at a venue of the winning bidder’s choosing, within London. This is within London. And I have a kitchen.”
“You expect me to believe you cook?”
“I expect you to cook.” The frank stare I give her fuels the fire I just threw a match on. It’s a lie. I don’t expect her to cook. But watching her rage is a thing of beauty.
“How dare you?”
“Easily,” I say, cutting the engine. “I dare easily. It’s a gift.”
She unbuckles the seatbelt and tries the door handle. Nothing. She tries again, harder, as if brute force will override a system designed to keep people exactly where I want them.
“Unlock the door.”
“In a moment.”
“Now.”
I turn to face her fully. In the confined space of the car, the air between us is charged with something volatile.
She’s trembling again, but it’s not the same tremor I saw on the stage.
That was fear. This is rage held together by the thinnest possible thread, and I find myself genuinely curious about what happens when it snaps.
“Listen to me carefully,” I say, dropping my voice to the register I reserve for people I need to hear every word.
“A man in that room bid eighty million pounds for you. That isn’t dinner money, Lidiya.
That’s acquisition money. And men who spend that kind of money don’t accept no as a final answer—they escalate. ”
Her jaw tightens. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I know you don’t. That’s what worries me.”
“Nothing about me should worry you. I’m a waitress. I earn minimum wage. I pay debts I didn’t accrue. There is nothing about my life that warrants anyone’s interest.”
“And yet.”
My gaze drops to her mouth as her lips part. I reach out and brush my thumb lightly over the bottom one, wondering what noise she would make if I bit it.
It quivers. “And yet nothing.”
“Not nothing, solnyshko. You are something, and you should be thanking me for protecting you.”
She slaps my hand away. “Thanking you? Thanking you?”
“That is what I said. Are you hard of hearing, Lidiya? You seem to force me to repeat myself more regularly than I normally tolerate.”
“I am not hard of hearing,” she fires back. “I just can’t believe the audacity of the words coming out of your mouth, so my brain rejects them the first time.”
“Fascinating. A built-in filter for things you don’t want to hear. Evolution really did a number on you.”
Her hand flies up again, and this time I catch it before it connects, reaching out to clamp my free hand around her other wrist…
just in case. The proximity forces her back against the passenger door.
Her breath comes fast, her chest heaving.
Her eyes blaze into mine, and this close, I can see the gold flecks in the blue.
Like sparks in a fire that hasn’t decided whether to warm you or burn you alive.
“Let. Go.”
“You keep hitting me, I keep catching you. See how that works? Cause and effect. Very basic physics.”
“This isn’t physics. This is kidnapping.”
“It’s a dinner date.”
“I didn’t agree to this!”
“You agreed when you submitted that application form. You agreed when you stepped onto that stage. You agreed when Madam Orlov read you the rules, and you nodded like a good girl. The contract is signed, Lidiya. Two hours. Dinner. Conversation. That’s all.
After that… you decide what your next move is.
” Unless it’s the wrong move, and then I will decide.
Her breath hitches. The fight doesn’t leave her eyes, but something shifts beneath it—a fracture in the armour, hairline thin, that lets something else bleed through.
Not surrender. Recognition. The slow, awful understanding that she’s trapped in a situation with no good exits, only varying degrees of bad ones.
I release her wrists. Slowly. Deliberately. Giving her the choice back, even if the options are shit.
“Two hours,” I repeat.
She rubs her wrists, though I know I didn’t hurt her. It’s a reflex. A performance of injury meant to remind me—and herself—that she’s the victim here. I let her have it.
“Fine,” she says, and the word is a grenade with the pin still in. “Two hours. Not a minute more.”
I unlock the doors.
She doesn’t bolt. I note that. File it away.
We walk to the front door in silence, her heels clicking on the cobblestones, my stride shortened to match hers because I’m not a complete animal.
The house lights rise as we enter, and I hear the small intake of breath she tries to suppress when the hallway opens up around her.
Marble floors. The Basquiat screaming from the wall.
She doesn’t comment. That tells me more than any insult would. She’s taking it in, cataloguing it, measuring the distance between her world and mine in real time. The number she arrives at will either make her angrier or quieter. I’m betting on angrier.
I’m right.
“Must be nice to have been born with a silver spoon shoved up your arse,” she says.
“It is,” I say, because lying to her would be an insult we’d both feel. “Kitchen’s through here.”
I lead her through the open-plan living space and into the kitchen.
It’s ridiculous, and I know it. A space designed for a chef I don’t employ, fitted with equipment I barely use.
Black granite countertops, a six-burner range that could service a small restaurant, copper pans hanging from a rack like trophies.
She stops in the doorway and stares.
“You don’t cook,” she says. It’s not a question.
“I don’t need to. I have food delivered from an excellent restaurant five minutes away.”
“Every day?” Her scoff is her insult.
“Every day.” I pull out two meals from the fridge, one from yesterday that I didn’t bother eating and today’s. They are a mismatch in cuisine, but who gives a fuck? I doubt she will notice or care.
To my surprise, she notices. “What the hell is that meant to be?”
“Pad kra pao and ossobuco. Fusion dining. Very trendy.”
“That’s not fusion. That’s schizophrenia on a plate.”
I bark out a laugh before I can stop it. Genuine. Unexpected. She blinks at the sound like she didn’t think I was capable of it. Honestly, neither did I.
I slide both containers onto the granite and pop the lids.
The Thai is from today—still fragrant, basil and chilli cutting through the kitchen air.
The ossobuco is from yesterday, rich and heavy, the marrow still glistening in the bone.
I plate them both without ceremony, grabbing two forks and setting them on the island.
I set the oven to heat them and ask, “Which do you want?”
She baulks at me. “How must I know? I’ve never tried either of them. I don’t even understand the words.”
The look on her face is something between defiance and embarrassment, and the combination does something to my chest that I immediately choose to ignore.
“The pad kra pao is Thai,” I say, pointing to the one on the left. “Stir-fried pork with holy basil and chilli. Served over rice. It’s spicy.”
“And the other one?”
“Italian. Braised veal shank. Slow-cooked until the meat falls off the bone. The marrow is the best part.”
She stares at both plates like they might bite her.
Her jaw works, and I can see the internal war playing out behind her eyes—pride versus hunger.
Hunger is winning. She hasn’t eaten properly in God knows how long.
The sharp edges of her collarbone above the neckline of that dress tell me everything her mouth won’t.
“Both,” I say, and slide the plates into the oven before she can argue. “You’re having both.”
“I didn’t ask for both.”
“You didn’t ask for either. I’m making an executive decision.”
“You’re making a habit of that.”
“Runs in the family.”
She doesn’t sit down. She stands on the other side of the island like it’s a barricade, her arms folded, her cardigan pulled tight around her despite the warmth of the kitchen. She’s a fortress, and I want to breach every wall she’s built, not to destroy them, but to see what’s on the other side.
“Vodka?” I ask, reaching for the crystal decanter on the cart.
“No.”
“Water?”
“No.”
“Conversation?”
“Absolutely not.”
I pour myself a measure of Beluga Noble and take a sip, letting the silence do its work.
She’s studying the kitchen with the careful attention of someone who’s memorising escape routes.
Door to the hallway behind her. Window above the sink—locked, but she doesn’t know that.
The back door to the garden—also locked, but the key is in the drawer three feet from her left hand.
I don’t tell her any of this. Let her map the terrain. It’ll keep her occupied while the food heats.
“So,” I say, settling against the counter with my glass, “tell me about your parents.”
The temperature in the room drops by about ten degrees due to my truly awful choice of topic. Her eyes snap to mine, and the fury that had been simmering reignites into something white-hot.
“Don’t,” she says. “Don’t you dare.”
“I’m making conversation. That’s what dinner companions do.”
“Dinner companions don’t bring up dead parents. Dinner companions talk about the weather, or wine, or whatever vapid nonsense people with a hundred million pounds to burn discuss at their gold-plated dinner tables.”
“Gold-plated is tacky. I prefer marble.”
“Of course you do.” She unfolds her arms just long enough to grip the edge of the island, her knuckles blanching white.
“My parents are not a topic for you. Not now. Not ever. You don’t get to sit there sipping your fancy vodka in your fancy kitchen and ask me about the people whose debt you profit from. ”
She’s right. It was a shit question. I asked it deliberately because I wanted to see where the line was, and now I know. Her parents aren’t just grief—they’re the wound that everything else bleeds from. It all traces back to them, and she carries it like an open fracture she’s learned to walk on.
“Understood,” I say. No apology. She wouldn’t believe one anyway.
The oven timer beeps. I pull out both plates, the heat bleeding through the oven gloves, and set them on the island between us.
The Thai basil hits the air first, sharp and alive, followed by the deep, slow richness of the ossobuco.
The kitchen fills with it, and I see the exact moment her body betrays her—the involuntary swallow, the slight lean forward before she catches herself and straightens.
“Sit down, Lidiya.”
“I’ll stand.”
“You’ll eat standing up?”
“If that’s what it takes to maintain my dignity, yes.”
“Your dignity is intact. No one’s here but me, and I already know you taped that dress together. Sit down.”
Her chin lifts. The defiance is magnificent, truly, like watching someone brandish a butter knife at a tank.
But her body is telling a different story.
Her hands are shaking. Not from anger this time—from blood sugar so low it’s practically subterranean.
She hasn’t eaten today. Maybe not yesterday either.
She pulls out the barstool and sits. She does it like she’s doing me a favour, which is fine. Whatever narrative she needs to get food into her body, I’ll allow it.
I slide the pad kra pao towards her first. The rice is steaming, the basil wilted and fragrant, the chilli oil pooling in amber rivulets around the pork. She picks up the fork and stares at it like it’s asked her a difficult question.
Then she takes a bite.
Her eyes close. Just for a second. Just long enough for me to see the mask slip and something raw and involuntary cross her face—relief, pleasure, the simple animal gratitude of a body being fed after too long without.
She catches herself almost immediately, schools her expression back to neutral hostility, and takes another bite with studied indifference.
But I saw it. And it does something to me that I’m going to need to sit with later, preferably alone, or preferably while she bounces up and down on my cock.