Chapter 166: Anastasia’s Tease... Devil’s Claim (R18+)

​On the polished marble floor, Delgado drew her into the circling couples. His hand rested boldly at the bare curve of her lower spine, pulling her just close enough to defy high-society propriety.

​"You played Gilbert like a cheap violin," Delgado murmured, leaning down until his lips hovered a breath from the Sterling emeralds at her neck, his voice an intimate, conspiratorial hum against her skin.

"Forget Damian’s locked board. Hand me Sterling’s global ad algorithms for my autonomous platform, Anastasia, and I’ll buy out the remaining forty percent of the traitors’ shares tonight under a blind trust. Co-chaired by you. In the Vance name. Not his."

​Ana’s hazel eyes flashed with sharp amusement as they spun. "An audacious counter-offer, Mike. Damian might kill you before the song ends."

​"Let him try," Delgado chuckled softly against her hair. "A woman like you shouldn’t be negotiating from his shadows."

​When the music resolved into the final chord, Ana offered a poised, elegant curtsy and stepped back toward the private rotunda. Delgado caught Damian’s burning, murderous stare across the room and raised his glass with a mocking salute.

​The moment Ana stepped through the heavy velvet drapes of the alcove, away from the glittering crowd, iron clamped around her wrist.

​Damian yanked her deep into the secluded shadow of the marble pillar. He ignored the burning, vicious agony ripping across his freshly stitched flank, his sheer size cornering her entirely.

He slammed a broad palm against the cold stone beside her head, trapping her body against his chest, his dark eyes black with an untamed, feral rage that made the air in her lungs evaporate.

​"You let him put his hands on your bare skin," Damian rasped, his voice dropping into a guttural, jagged growl, his chest heaving heavily against hers. His fingers tangled violently in the hair at the nape of her neck, tilting her chin up with bruising, unyielding possession.

"You stood in the center of that floor, letting another man whisper in your ear while wearing my family’s jewels."

​Ana didn’t shrink. Her breath came fast, her cheeks flushed with the high of the kill, her hands coming up to press flat against his lapels, feeling the frantic, wounded hammer of his heart.

​"He offered me the final forty percent, Damian," Ana breathed, a wicked, defiant smirk playing upon her lips as she tilted her head back against his grip. "He offered me a seat at the table in my own name... Anastasia Vance. So don’t growl at me like I’m a possession to be locked in a cage. You wanted a show of power tonight... and I just secured your entire empire."

The air between them burned hotter than the chandeliers outside. Damian’s obsidian eyes darkened to pure, unadulterated pitch at her defiance. The mention of her maiden name, paired with Delgado’s brazen offer, stripped away the last veneer of his civilized billionaire facade.

​He didn’t give her room to breathe.

​Ignoring the tearing, hot agony screaming across his stitched flank, Damian crowded her further against the cold marble pillar. He seized her jaw with one broad, calloused hand, his fingers sinking into her soft skin to tilt her head back at an agonizingly sharp angle.

His other hand slid down the open expanse of her back, following the dip of her spine with bruising intent until he hoisted her slightly, forcing her hips flush against the hard, unmistakable ridge straining against his trousers.

​"Anastasia Vance," he rasped, his voice a low, gravelly vibration against her lips, thick with venom and suffocating lust. "You think securing forty percent gives you wings, my doll? You think an independent trust buys you a single inch of freedom from me?"

​Ana sucked in a sharp, ragged breath, her nails digging into the satin lapels of his tuxedo. The collision of the cold stone at her back and the furnace of his body against her front made her head spin, liquid heat pooling heavy and restless between her thighs.

​"I think," she whispered, her lips brushing his with fevered defiance, "that you’re terrified of what happens when the whole world sees I’m just as dangerous as you are."

​A dark, feral sound tore from Damian’s throat.

​He silenced her completely, crashing his mouth down onto hers in a savage, punishing kiss that tasted of vintage champagne and pure iron. It wasn’t a gentle caress; it was a brutal, overwhelming claim. His tongue thrust past her parted lips, sweeping inside to conquer her mouth with a raw intensity that stole the very oxygen from her lungs.

​Ana gasped into the kiss, a shiver racking her frame as she tangled both hands in the dark hair at his collar, pulling him closer even as the rough seam of his tuxedo pressed dangerously hard against her ribs.

​Under the sweeping, heavy velvet curtains that barely masked them from the hundreds of guests on the other side, Damian’s hand moved. His fingers caught the high slit of her midnight-silk gown, tearing the delicate stitching open another three inches with a muted rip.

​His bare palm seized the scorching skin of her inner thigh, shoving her leg up to rest firmly over his hip.

​Ana’s back arched, a muffled cry catching in her throat as his fingers slid higher, tracing the damp silk of her panties. Damian broke the kiss just enough to drag his lips down the column of her neck, his teeth sinking with punishing pressure into the soft hollow right above the emerald choker, marking her where the diamonds couldn’t hide it.

​"You are mine, Anastasia," he growled against her pulsing vein, his ragged breath scorching her bare skin while his fingers slipped beneath the damp lace, finding her swollen, weeping heat with an unapologetic, bruising stroke. "In this ballroom. In the boardroom. In the dark. Delgado can throw billions at your feet, but this belongs to me."

​Ana shuddered violently, her hips helplessly bucking against his hand as a streak of pure fire shot straight up her spine. "Damian... someone will see..."

​"Let them," he rasped against her ear, his thumb ruthlessly circling the sensitive bud of her center until her knees went weak, leaving her entirely suspended by his iron grip. "Let every vulture in this room hear how wet you are for your husband while you wear another man’s counter-offer."

The cold marble sent a sharp shock through Ana’s flattened palms, but the furnace at her back erased the chill in an instant. Damian’s hand tightened over her throat, his thumb resting right against the frantic kick of her pulse, keeping her head tilted back as he drove into her.

The heavy emerald choker bit into her skin, an exquisite collar anchoring her between his crushing strength and the polished stone.

​Every thrust was deep, sharp, and possessive, knocking the ragged breath from her lungs. Damian was deaf to the music floating through the heavy velvet drapes, deaf to the hundreds of circling guests and the fragile stitches pulling violently along his flank.

He leaned over her, his broad chest pinning her bare spine, his lips dragging along the sensitive crook of her neck, tasting salt and perfume.

​"Quiet, my doll," he rasped into her ear, the gravelly edge of his voice raw and frayed with a savage desperation. "Don’t let them hear how eagerly you take me."

​Ana clamped her teeth onto the inside of her cheek, tears pricking her lashes as a fresh wave of liquid heat surged through her veins. Her hips moved with his in a helpless, reckless rhythm, defying every shred of self-preservation she had left.

He was a tyrant, a monster who used contracts and family jewels to bend her to his will... and yet the sheer, terrifying weight of him filling her was the only thing keeping the world steady.

​His hand at her waist bruised the soft flesh, fingers digging deep to pull her harder against each impact, relentless and demanding until her knees threatened to buckle beneath the floor-length silk.

​"Damian..." she gasped against the stone, her voice a fractured, pleading breath that barely survived the suffocating tension in the alcove.

​"Look at what you do to me," he growled low, the sound rumbling directly against her shoulder blade as his rhythm turned fierce, driving her over the edge of a sharp, blinding release that left her shaking in his grip.

He followed her into the dark, his breath tearing from his chest in a ragged groan, holding her flush against him until the last violent shudder spent itself in the quiet shadow of the pillar.

The heavy velvet drape shifted aside, and the bright, amber warmth of the ballroom flooded back over them.

​Damian’s hand was already back at Ana’s waist, heavy and unyielding, smoothing the midnight silk over her trembling thigh as if he hadn’t just had her pinned against cold marble seconds earlier.

His breathing was dangerously even, the lethal mask of the untouchable CEO sliding back into place, though the raw, predatory fire in his obsidian eyes hadn’t cooled an inch.

​Standing not five paces away, leaning casually against a gilded stanchion with a tumbler of bourbon in hand, was Mike Delgado.

​The tech titan’s sharp gaze swept over Anastasia. He took in the high, feverish flush on her cheeks, the faint, swollen pout of her red lips, and the single, dark tendril of hair that had slipped from her intricate updo to brush the emeralds at her collarbone.

A slow, wolfish grin spread across Delgado’s face.

​"Well," Delgado murmured, tilting his glass in a lazy salute. "That didn’t take long. Though I suppose when one is trying to secure an empire, efficiency is everything."