Chapter 199: The Devil’s Woman Doesn’t Want His Warmth

Ana didn’t wait for his anger to boil over.

Without breaking eye contact with his darkened face, she picked up the three amber capsules resting beside her plate. Her pale hand didn’t shake. She placed them on her tongue and reached for the crystal water glass, intent on carrying out his command to the absolute letter.

She swallowed.

The pills barely scraped past her throat before a violent, burning spasm ripped through her abdomen.

Her weakened stomach, already battered by the hospital’s cocktail of steroids and antihistamines, violently rebelled against the heavy iron supplements. The room pitched sideways. A suffocating wave of bile and nausea rushed up her throat so fast the glass slipped from her numb fingers, shattering against the edge of the mahogany table, spilling cold water and shards across the linen.

Ana didn’t scream. She clamped a linen napkin hard against her mouth, a choked gasp tearing past her lips.

Her chair screeched brutally against the marble floor as she shoved herself up, stumbling blindly away from the dining table.

"Anastasia!" Victoria gasped, rising to her feet.

"Ana, wait—" Valerie cried, stepping forward.

"Stay back. Both of you," Damian snapped, the fury on his face shattering into raw, unvarnished panic in a single heartbeat.

He didn’t look at his mother. He lunged out of his seat and cleared the length of the dining room in three strides, following the sound of ragged, retching breaths down the private corridor and into the marble powder room.

Ana had collapsed onto the cold tiles, her knees curled beneath her against the porcelain basin. She was trembling violently, her chest heaving as dry, agonized heaves tore through her frail frame, her knuckles white where she gripped the edges of the bowl. Cold sweat drenched her neck, plastering her dark hair to her temples.

Damian was down on the floor beside her an instant later.

He didn’t care about the water soaking through his tailored trousers, nor the bitter, sharp scent of illness in the air. His broad hand came up behind her neck, lifting the heavy mass of her hair out of the way, while his other arm locked firmly around her shaking waist, bearing the dead weight of her torso against his chest so she wouldn’t strike her head against the stone.

"I’ve got you," he rasped, his voice rough, urgent, and stripped of every ounce of calculated control. "Let it out. Breathe, Anastasia."

Another shuddering wave racked her body, leaving her completely limp. Her forehead fell against his forearm, her breathing shallow, wheezing, and frail. She was burning hot to the touch, yet her skin was ashen, drained of every drop of color.

Her mind was a fog of exhaustion, but her hazel eyes drifted weakly up to his.

Even through the haze of sickness, she could see the crack in the stone. The ruthless, untouchable billionaire was gone. In his dark eyes, there was only the naked, suffocating terror of a man watching something infinitely fragile slip through his iron fingers.

"See...?" Ana whispered, her voice barely a thread, a faint, bitter curve touching her pale lips. "My body... rejects your poison... just like it rejects you."

Damian flinched as if struck. His jaw tightened so hard the bone seemed ready to shatter, but his grip around her waist didn’t loosen by a fraction of an inch. Instead, he pulled her closer, his heart hammering violently against her cheek as he cradled her against his chest on the cold marble floor.

Damian didn’t answer her cruel, fragile taunt.

Instead, he slid one arm beneath her shoulders and the other under her knees, lifting her effortlessly against his chest. Her head fell limp against the hollow of his throat, her shivering frame light as balsa wood.

He kicked open the bathroom door and carried her back down the corridor, his strides long, hurried, and determined.

Victoria and Valerie were still hovering near the shattered glass at the end of the dining room, their faces pale with concern. Victoria took an immediate step toward them, her hands reaching out. "Damian, let me—"

"No," he cut in, his voice raw, commanding, and brooking no argument. He didn’t even pause. "Mother, have the kitchen prepare something warm and simple. A clear broth, rice congee, whatever sits lightest on an inflamed stomach. She is not going the rest of the day on an empty stomach. Make sure it’s up in twenty minutes."

Victoria hesitated for a fraction of a second, reading the fierce, untamed panic in her son’s eyes, before nodding tersely. "I’ll see to it personally."

Damian didn’t wait to watch her turn. He carried Anastasia straight into the master suite, shutting the heavy double doors behind him with the heel of his shoe, sealing them both inside the cavernous silence.

He laid her down gently on the vast expanse of the bed.

Ana was shivering violently now, teeth chattering as chills tore through her fevered skin. Damian shed his damp, ruined black dress shirt, tossing it carelessly to the floor, leaving him only in his trousers and a thin undershirt. He pulled the thick down duvet up over her shoulders, but the tremors racking her body didn’t subside; her hands and feet were like ice.

Without a second thought, Damian slid beneath the heavy blankets beside her.

He reached out, his broad, powerful arms wrapping around her trembling waist, gathering her frail frame against the solid heat of his bare chest. He intended to drown the cold out of her bones with his own body heat, anchoring her against the shivering fog.

The moment she felt his skin press against hers, Ana fought back.

With every scrap of strength left in her battered body, she pushed her palms hard against his chest. Her small hands curled into fists against his collarbone, shoving weakly, desperately, trying to wrench herself free from his suffocating embrace.

"Don’t," Ana gasped out, her voice cracked, breathless, and choked with tears of frustration. "Get off me, Damian... don’t touch me."

"Be still, Anastasia," he ordered, his jaw clenching as he tightened his grip, refusing to yield an inch of ground. "You’re burning up and freezing to death at the same time. Stop fighting me."

"I don’t want you," she cried, a harsh sob ripping from her dry throat as she squirmed against his unrelenting hold, her heels digging uselessly into the mattress. "I don’t want your warmth. I don’t want your hands on me. Don’t act like you care now... don’t pretend!"

The sheer agony in her voice sliced straight through the iron armor he had worn for ten years.

Instead of snapping back, Damian trapped both of her flailing wrists in the tight, unbreakable band of one large hand, pinning them firmly against his chest. With his free hand, he cupped the back of her head, pulling her face down into the crook of his neck, burying her trembling mouth against his throat so she could no longer pull away.

"Hate me all you want, Ana," Damian rasped, his voice rough, ragged, and thick with an emotion he would never confess aloud. His heartbeat hammered hard and fast beneath her trapped hands, raw and undeniable. "Curse my name until you have no breath left. But you stay alive, and you let me keep you warm. Cry, scream, do whatever you need to do... but you will not pull away from me."

Her resistance didn’t last.

The fever and the brutal exhaustion finally dragged Ana under. Her furious sobs dwindled into ragged, uneven breaths, her small fists slackening against his chest until she lay completely limp in the circle of his arms, dead to the world.

Damian lay there for several agonizing minutes, listening to the shallow rattle in her lungs. Her skin against his neck was far too hot, burning like an untamed fire, while her fingers remained ice-cold.

The two-day timeline Victoria had preached—the caution, the obsession with press leaks and board meetings—rotted in his mind. He wasn’t going to sit in this bed for forty-eight hours watching the girl in his arms wither away into a ghost just to protect the Sterling name.

Carefully, shifting so as not to wake her, Damian slipped one arm out from beneath her shoulders. He reached across the nightstand, grabbed his encrypted phone, and brought it to his ear.

The line barely rang once.

"Sir?" Henry’s voice was crisp, immediate.

Damian didn’t bother with a greeting. His voice dropped into a lethal, razor-thin growl that vibrated with raw authority.

"Get in touch with Dr. Vance. Right now."

Henry paused on the other end, cautious. "Sir, Dr. Vance is still in Westchester managing the post-op protocols—"

"I don’t give a damn if she is performing open-heart surgery on the governor," Damian cut in, the edge in his tone sharp enough to draw blood. "Tell her she has until midnight to be standing in this penthouse with a full lab kit. Threaten her if you have to. Make it explicitly clear that if she isn’t under this roof before the sun rises, she will never treat a single elite patient in this city again. I will revoke her credentials, pull our foundation’s funding from her clinic, and bury her name so deep in legal red tape she won’t even be allowed to hand out aspirin."

A heavy silence fell over the line. Henry knew Damian was ruthless, but he had never heard him speak with this kind of unhinged, scorched-earth desperation.

"Sir..." Henry hesitated, his voice dipping with genuine concern. "Is Miss Vance alright? Did something happen to her?"

A dark vein pulsed violently at Damian’s temple. His fingers tightened on the sleek casing of the phone until the glass groaned under the pressure.

"Do what I asked and stop throwing questions at me, Henry," Damian snapped, a vicious, low rasp escaping his throat. "If it wasn’t urgent, would I even be making this call? Do your job. Get her here."