Page 26 of His Contract Queen

She hit me.

I glance into the rearview mirror, expecting to see the tight, controlled scowl I normally wear after being challenged. Instead, I find something far worse. My mouth has tugged upward. Not into a smirk, but into asmile.

Wider than any I’ve worn in years.

The realization actually unsettles me. A foreign sensation crawls down my spine, prickling under my skin in a way I haven’t felt since I was young and foolish enough to allow anyone the opportunity to surprise me. The only people who have ever looked me in the eye the way Katerina did, with that unflinching and furious fire in their eyes, have all wound up bleeding out at my feet.

Most people foldwhen they see me coming. They bargain or beg, they try to disappear quietly when it becomes clear there’s no other option. Very few have ever dared to meet my gaze and swing first. And if they have, they have never lived long once I recalibrated.

If I’m honest with myself, the audacity of it sends something dark and electric through me. This isn’t the tame, transactional kind of desire I’ve indulged in for years with pretty women who know their place and understand the rules of how I operate and leave before dawn with a generous envelope of cash and no illusions that the night before was anything but.

This is… different.

This is the slow burn of wanting something that fights back. Of someone who looks at me like I’m a problem to be handled, a man to be broken if necessary.

I exhale slowly through my nose, forcing my fingers to loosen on the steering wheel. The leather creaks under my grip. I hadn’t realized how hard I was holding it.

This is exactly the kind of complication I trained myself never to indulge in.

Binding myself to her legally had already been… rather impulsive in the grand scheme of things. A move that under any other circumstance, I would have mocked another man for.Stupid, one might argue.

I can practically hear the phantom voices of my colleagues already in the back of my mind, the ones who watch from their glass towers and pretend not to shit themselves whenever my name crosses their desks.

Volkov’s gone soft.

Volkov’s thinking with his cock.

Volkov’s letting a pretty piece of ass get under his skin.

The Iron Pact—those three sanctimonious bastards I am forced to call equals—would love nothing more than to see me stumble because of this. To prove that the great Aleksandr Volkov is not immune to human flaws that I preach so heavily against.

Anywoman becoming a liability, let alone a distraction, is a weakness they, namely Malyshko, would pounce on without hesitation and burn me for it.

My jaw flexes.

Truth be told, I expected resistance from Katerina. Theatrics… tears, maybe. Long, drawn-out defiance like what I’d witnessed the first day she arrived and not whatever strange demure façade she’s been hiding behind ever since.

What I didn’t expect was how quickly she signed those papers. With the pen steady in her hand, she’d signed her name on the dotted line next to mine with the obvious attitude of daring me to follow through with it. Like she was the one setting the terms and not the other way around.

That alone should have been warning enough.

Now I’m forced to grapple with the fact that I can’t get her out of my head. I want to peel back every layer she’s built around herself so carefully. Every practiced expression, every measured word that leaves that pretty mouth. I want to know what exists beneath the sharp tongue and controlled composure she presents to the world.

Whether the defiance is armor or instinct.

Whether she’s afraid or whether she truly believes she can survive me.

She fascinates me.

That, far more than the slap itself, is what leaves me the most unsettled. Fascination is a liability. It dulls instinct, slows decisions. It introduces hesitation where decisiveness should take precedent in the name of survival.

Men in my position do not indulge curiosity. They remove problems before they grow roots and become even bigger issues later down the line. I should already be deciding how tocorrect her behavior and reassert control to ensure tonight never repeats itself.

Instead, I’m thinking about the look in her eyes when she struck me.

I touch two fingers to the raised mark on my cheek. The skin is still warm, faintly swollen. The pain arrows straight down my spine, coiling low in my gut, and—fuck—settles heavily and insistently between my legs. My cock twitches to life, already half-hard, traitorously awakening from nothing more than the memory of her palm cracking against my face.

“Fuck,” I mutter.