The master suite at Blackwood Castle was a study in controlled luxury—dark woods, midnight blue silk, and a fireplace large enough to burn half a forest. But it was the four-poster bed that dominated the room that made Seraphina's breath catch. Carved from what looked like ebony, draped in fabric that whispered secrets, it looked less like furniture and more like an altar to darker pleasures.
"Having second thoughts?" Damien asked, closing the door behind them with a soft click that sounded remarkably final.
"Third and fourth thoughts," Seraphina admitted, echoing their conversation from that morning. Had it really only been eighteen hours since she'd agreed to this marriage? It felt like a lifetime.
"But not about the marriage itself." His voice was certain, not a question.
She turned to face him, still wearing the wedding dress that had become her armor, her battle standard, her declaration of war against everyone who'd tried to destroy her. "No. Not about that."
Something shifted in his expression—relief, maybe, or satisfaction. He moved toward her with that predatory grace she was beginning to recognize, stopping just close enough that she could smell his cologne, feel the heat radiating from his skin.
"Then what?" he asked, reaching up to touch the Devil's Heart ruby at her throat. "The fact that seventy people want you dead? The private army I keep on retainer? The oil rig missiles?"
"The fact that I'm not afraid of any of it." The confession slipped out before she could stop it. "I should be terrified, Damien. I should be demanding you take me somewhere safe and normal. Instead, I'm standing here thinking about how satisfying it was to watch your missile turn that jet into fireworks."
His thumb traced along her collarbone, a touch that was both gentle and possessive. "And that frightens you?"
"It thrills me." The words hung between them like a confession of sin. "What does that make me?"
"Mine," he said simply, and claimed her mouth in a kiss that was nothing like the careful claiming at their wedding ceremony. This was hunger unleashed, control slipping, seventeen years of careful planning dissolving into pure need.
She kissed him back with equal desperation, her hands fisting in the soft cashmere of his sweater. He tasted like champagne and danger and promises that might destroy them both. When he backed her against the carved bedpost, she went willingly, arching into his touch as his hands mapped the curves hidden beneath silk and pearls.
"I need to tell you something," he said against her lips, his voice rough with want.
"Now?" She nipped at his lower lip, gratified when his hands tightened on her waist. "Really?"
"Before this goes any further." He pulled back just enough to meet her eyes, and something in his expression made her heart skip. "The contract your father signed... there was a clause he insisted on adding."
Seraphina's blood chilled. "What kind of clause?"
"If you ever wanted to leave—truly leave, not just in anger or fear—I had to let you go. No questions, no pursuit, no consequences." His hands framed her face, forcing her to hold his gaze. "The marriage would be dissolved, you'd receive enough money to disappear anywhere in the world, and I'd erase every trace of your existence from my records."
"He gave me an escape clause." The realization hit her like a physical blow. Even in his desperation, even facing death, her father had tried to protect her future.
"He did. And I want you to know that it's still valid." Damien's thumbs traced across her cheekbones with devastating gentleness. "Whatever happens between us tonight, tomorrow, or fifty years from now—if you want to leave, I'll honor his wishes."
"Even now? After everything we've been through?"
"Especially now." His voice was soft, vulnerable in a way she'd never heard before. "Because I need to know that you're choosing this. Choosing me. Not because you're trapped or afraid or honoring some contract you never signed."
Seraphina stared into his pale gray eyes and saw everything he was trying not to show her—fear that she would run, hope that she would stay, love that he was afraid to name. This dangerous, powerful man who commanded private armies and toppled governments was terrified that she might not want him.
"You stupid, beautiful fool," she whispered, rising on her tiptoes to kiss him again. "Don't you understand? I'm not here because of some contract my father signed. I'm here because you gave me back my name, my dignity, my father's honor. Because you turned our wedding into a trap for his killers and finished the ceremony while police dragged them away in handcuffs."
"Seraphina—"
"I'm here because when someone tried to shoot us out of the sky, you blew them up with missiles and then asked if I loved how insane you are." She kissed his jaw, his throat, the spot where his pulse hammered against his skin. "And the answer is yes. I love it. I love the danger, the power, the way you make me feel like I could conquer the world."
"And me?" The question was barely a whisper. "Do you love me?"
It would have been easy to say yes. Expected, even, on their wedding night in a room designed for seduction. But Seraphina had learned not to trust easy answers.
"Ask me again in a month," she said instead. "When the honeymoon phase wears off and we're not running from assassins. When you've seen me first thing in the morning and I've watched you eat cereal. When we're not caught up in revenge plots and missile strikes."
"Fair enough." His smile was crooked, endearing in a way that made her chest tight. "But I should warn you—I'm told I'm quite charming over breakfast."
"I'll be the judge of that." She tugged at his sweater, suddenly impatient with barriers. "Now, are you going to keep talking, or are you going to show your wife to her new bedroom?"
The word wife did something to him—she could see it in the way his pupils dilated, the way his hands tightened possessively on her hips. "Our bedroom," he corrected, and there was something primal in his voice that made heat pool low in her belly.
"Our bedroom," she agreed, and then his mouth was on hers again and there was no more room for words.
He undressed her with the reverence of a man unwrapping the world's most precious gift, each reveal of skin met with kisses that made her shiver. The wedding dress pooled at her feet like spilled moonlight, followed by silk stockings, delicate undergarments, until she stood before him wearing nothing but the Devil's Heart ruby and seventeen years of carefully controlled desire.
"Beautiful," he breathed, his hands mapping the curves of her body with wondering touches. "So goddamn beautiful."
She might have been embarrassed if not for the way he looked at her—like she was art and weapon and goddess all at once. Like she was everything he'd ever wanted and hadn't dared dream he could have.
When she reached for his sweater, he let her strip it away, revealing a chest marked with scars that spoke of a harder life than his privileged background suggested. She traced them with curious fingers, each one a story she wanted to hear.
"Later," he promised, reading her expression. "I'll tell you about all of them later. Right now..."
He lifted her easily, carrying her to the massive bed and laying her down on silk sheets that felt like liquid shadow against her skin. The firelight painted their bodies in gold and amber, turning the moment into something out of a Renaissance painting—beautiful and dark and slightly dangerous.
"I need you to know," he said, settling beside her, his hand tracing patterns on her bare stomach that made her arch beneath his touch, "this was never just about the contract. Not for me."
"I know." She pulled him down for another kiss, deeper this time, full of promise and need and the kind of desperate hunger that came from finding something you'd been looking for your whole life without knowing it.
Their first time was not gentle. It was fierce, desperate, marked by teeth and nails and the kind of claiming that left bruises in the shape of belonging. When he moved inside her, she thought she might die from the pleasure of it, from the way he watched her face like she was the most important thing in the world.
Afterwards, they lay tangled in silk sheets, her head on his chest, listening to his heartbeat slow to something resembling normal.
"So," she said, tracing lazy patterns on his skin, "about this meeting with Isabel tomorrow."
"Are we really going to discuss strategy while you're naked in my bed?" His voice was amused, fond, with an undercurrent of renewed desire.
"When else? You seem to do your best thinking when you're plotting revenge."
"Fair point." His hand stroked through her hair, catching on the ruby necklace she still wore. "What are you thinking?"
"I'm thinking Isabel Ashford is more dangerous than her father ever was. Edmund was driven by desperation and greed. Isabel is driven by something else—shame, maybe, or guilt over what she helped cover up. That makes her unpredictable."
"Agreed. Which is why we're not going alone."
Seraphina lifted her head to look at him. "What do you mean?"
"I mean MacLeod and her team will be in position around the estate. I mean we'll have satellite surveillance, electronic countermeasures, and enough firepower to level half of Surrey if necessary." His smile was sharp. "I don't take chances with things I can't afford to lose."
"Things?" She raised an eyebrow. "I'm a thing now?"
"You're everything," he said simply, and the honesty in his voice made her chest tight. "Which is why tomorrow night, Isabel Ashford is going to learn that threatening you was the last mistake she'll ever make."
Before Seraphina could respond, her phone buzzed on the nightstand. She reached for it, frowning at the unknown number.
"Don't answer," Damien said immediately, but she was already swiping to accept the call.
"Hello?" she said cautiously.
"Seraphina Kane." The voice was female, cultured, with just a hint of desperation underneath the polish. "Or should I say Mrs. Blackwood now?"
"Isabel." Seraphina sat up, pulling the sheet around her. Damien was instantly alert, reaching for his own phone. "How did you get this number?"
"I have my ways. We need to talk."
"We will. Tomorrow night, as arranged."
"No." Isabel's voice was sharp with fear. "You don't understand. They know about tomorrow. They're planning to kill all three of us—you, me, and your husband. The meeting was a trap, but not the way you think."
Seraphina's blood chilled. "What are you talking about?"
"The real power behind my father's operation. The people who've been pulling the strings all along." Isabel's voice dropped to a whisper. "They never intended to let any of us live long enough to expose them. Tomorrow was supposed to be a clean sweep—eliminate all the loose ends at once."
"Then why are you calling to warn us?"
"Because I'm tired of running. Tired of living with the guilt. And because..." Isabel's voice broke slightly. "Because I think they killed my brother. My real brother, not the boy who died with my mother. Michael survived that night, Seraphina. He's been hiding for seventeen years, and now he's missing."
The phone nearly slipped from Seraphina's nerveless fingers. "That's impossible. Your brother died with your mother."
"The boy who died was Michael's friend, a sleepover guest. My father let everyone believe it was Michael because it served his purposes. But Michael got away that night, and I've been secretly supporting him ever since." Isabel was crying now, her composure finally cracking. "Three days ago, he disappeared. I think they took him to ensure my cooperation."
Seraphina looked at Damien, seeing her own shock reflected in his face. If Isabel was telling the truth, then everything they thought they knew about the Ashford murders was wrong.
"Where are you now?" Seraphina asked.
"Safe house in Edinburgh. But I don't know for how long. They have resources you can't imagine, connections that go to the very top of—"
The line went dead.
Seraphina stared at the phone, her mind racing. "She hung up."
"No," Damien said grimly, his own phone already in his hand. "The call was terminated from her end. Forcibly." He was typing rapidly, calling up surveillance feeds and tracking programs. "MacLeod, I need a full tactical team to Edinburgh immediately. We have a potential hostage situation."
"Sir?" MacLeod's voice came through the phone's speaker, professional despite being woken in the middle of the night.
"Isabel Ashford may have been taken. I want the safe house she was using found and secured. And I want to know who terminated that phone call."
"On it, sir. ETA to Edinburgh is forty minutes."
"Make it thirty." Damien ended the call and turned to Seraphina, his expression grim. "Get dressed. We're going hunting."
"We?"
"You think I'm leaving you here while there are professional killers in play?" His smile was sharp as winter. "Besides, if Isabel was telling the truth about her brother, you might be the only person who can identify him."
Seraphina was already moving, pulling on clothes with military efficiency. "And if it's a trap?"
"Then we'll spring it on our terms." Damien was dressing as well, trading silk pajama pants for tactical gear that looked disturbingly familiar on his lean frame. "Either way, this ends tonight."
Twenty minutes later, they were airborne again, this time in a helicopter that looked more military than civilian. Seraphina watched the Scottish countryside blur beneath them, her mind churning with possibilities.
If Isabel was telling the truth, then Michael Ashford—the real Michael Ashford—had been hiding for seventeen years. He would have answers, information that could expose the entire conspiracy. But he would also be a target, a loose end that powerful people wanted eliminated.
"Penny for your thoughts?" Damien asked, his voice barely audible over the rotor noise.
"I'm thinking," Seraphina said, checking the pistol he'd insisted she carry, "that our honeymoon is turning out to be much more interesting than I expected."
His laugh was dark and rich. "Stick with me, Mrs. Blackwood. I promise you'll never be bored."
"I'm counting on it," she replied, and meant every word.
As Edinburgh's lights appeared on the horizon, Seraphina felt the familiar thrill of impending battle. Tomorrow—today, now—she would face enemies who had been hunting her family for seventeen years. She would fight beside the man who had given her back her name and her power.
And she would finally learn the truth about the night that changed everything.
The devil's heir had claimed his bride, but the real honeymoon was just beginning.