Stripping For My Devil Ex Husband

Under Damian’s lethal, unblinking glare, Valerie visibly shrank, her hands trembling as she took a small step forward.

​”I… I thought I was helping her, Damian,” Valerie stammered, her voice cracking with guilt. “Ana was desperate to check on Clara. When Vivian sent that video and demanded she come alone, Ana panicked and bolted. I tried to follow the burner signal from the café, but Vivian’s team jammed the satellite relay within three blocks. The second I realized I lost her, I called you immediately. I’m so sorry, Damian… I never meant for you to walk into a kill zone.”

​Victoria stepped up beside her daughter, her aristocratic face tight with rare, solemn remorse.

​”The oversight falls on me as well,” Victoria stated calmly, though the weight in her voice was unmistakable. “I was resting in my suite and assumed the security detail at the gate was sufficient. I should have kept a tighter watch on both of them.”

“Mom, don’t blame yourself… they’re not children anymore that they’re unable to use their brains.” Damian said shifting slightly in his place, holding his wound.

​Victoria turned her sharp, assessing gaze onto Anastasia, her tone softening into an earnest, warning.

​”Anastasia, your loyalty to Clara is admirable, but running blindly into an armed trap is sheer recklessness. You cannot continue to let your heart make life or death decisions without logic. Damian tore through an entire federal perimeter to keep you breathing. You need to start trusting him to handle the monsters of this world.”

​Damian let out a low, humorless chuckle from the pillows, the sound rough and coated in bitter sarcasm.

​”Trust requires sensibility, Mother,” Damian rasped, his obsidian eyes locking onto Ana with cold, mocking arrogance. “And as Anastasia has so brilliantly demonstrated, sensible thought is entirely beyond her reach when she decides to play the saviour.”

​Ana’s jaw tightened, her hands curling into fists. She opened her mouth to fire back, but the sharp, dangerous tilt of Damian’s brow made her bite her tongue.

​Victoria glanced between the two of them, recognizing the thick, volatile atmosphere humming in the air.

​”Valerie, let’s go settle into the west wing,” Victoria said smoothly, placing a firm hand on her daughter’s shoulder. “Anastasia needs to tend to his dressings.”

​Once the heavy mahogany doors latched shut, leaving them in heavy, suffocating isolation, Ana exhaled a ragged breath. She walked over to the nightstand, washing her hands and opening the sterile surgical kit with practiced, mechanical precision to keep her mind from unraveling.

​”Sit up slightly,” Ana said, forcing her voice to remain completely detached as she brought the tray to the edge of the mattress. “I need to remove the top gauze.”

​Damian didn’t offer a single sarcastic remark. Slowly, with a low, controlled hiss of breath through his teeth, he braced his forearms against the mattress and shifted forward, allowing the dark linen sheets to pool around his waist.

​Ana leaned in to unclip the surgical compression wrap… and the breath completely vanished from her lungs.

​With the heavy bandages unfastened, his entire broad, sculpted torso was laid bare under the warm bedroom lights. Even pale, bruised, and marked with trauma, Damian looked ruthlessly, breathtakingly magnificent.

The sharp cut of his collarbones led down to wide, chiseled pectoral muscles, the faint shadow of dark hair tapering down his taut, ridged abdomen.

​Every single line of his physique radiated raw, masculine power… a lethal mix of aristocratic elegance and violent strength.

​Ana’s fingers hovered in the air, suddenly paralyzed. Her eyes, completely betraying her rational mind, traced the hard contours of his ribs, the golden warmth of his bare skin, and the sheer width of his shoulders.

She knew he was dangerous. She knew he viewed her as an asset bound by a ruthless contract.

​Yet being this close to him… surrounded by his distinct scent of cedar, clean linen, and raw heat… ignited a dangerous, dizzying pull in her chest that she was utterly powerless to fight.

​”Enjoying the view, Anastasia?”

​Damian’s gravelly voice shattered the silence like a dropped glass.

​Ana gasped softly, her dark eyes snapping upward to find Damian staring right at her. His obsidian gaze was heavy, hooded, and burning with a dark, mocking amusement that made a scalding blush rush up her throat, setting her cheeks on fire.

​”I was assessing the tissue trauma,” Ana stammered defensively, her voice tight as she grabbed the antiseptic sponge with violently shaking fingers.

​A slow, wicked smirk curled Damian’s lips. He leaned in an inch closer, his dark eyes locking onto her flushed face, his voice dropping into a dangerous, intimate murmur.

​”Liar. You couldn’t take your eyes off me.”

“If you must know, you look absolutely pathetic.”

​A low, raspy chuckle rumbled deep in Damian’s chest, causing a faint wince in his jaw that he quickly masked beneath a dangerous, mocking smirk.

​”Disgust wasn’t the look on your face, little bird,” he murmured, his obsidian eyes trailing slowly over her flushed features with maddening certainty. “Just give me a week to heal. I’ll gladly fulfill every single desire you’re currently imagining.”

​Ana’s brow furrowed in a deep, angry frown, her heart hammering wildly against her ribs. Refusing to give him the satisfaction of another reaction, she pressed the cold antiseptic sponge directly against the edge of his stitched wound with deliberate firmness.

​Damian’s jaw tightened, a sharp hiss escaping his teeth, but his unyielding gaze never left her face as she worked.

​With practiced, careful motions, Ana cleaned the jagged incisions, swabbed away the dried trace of blood, and applied fresh sterile gauze and compression tape across his shoulder and spine.

Her hands were gentle despite her anger, every touch careful not to aggravate the healing nerve bundle.

​Just as she finished taping down the final dressing, a firm knock sounded, and the door swung open.

​Walter entered the master suite, holding a secure federal tablet. “Boss, the preliminary digital sweep of the estate network is complete.”

​Damian leaned back against the headboard, his demeanor instantly hardening back into ruthlessness. He turned his cold gaze onto Anastasia.

​”Give Walter your phone,” Damian commanded, his voice devoid of any warmth.

​Ana froze, her hands hovering over the medical tray. “What? No! Why do you need my personal phone?”

​”Because you walked directly into an ambush planted through that device,” Damian replied coldly, his eyes narrowing. “I’m not in the mood to argue with you, Anastasia. As of this moment, I don’t trust you with a single connected device in this house.”

​”You have no right to strip me of everything!” Ana protested, her voice rising with furious disbelief. “It’s my phone, Damian!”

​”Hand it over, Anastasia. Or I’ll have Walter take it from your pocket.”

​Ana glared at him with pure venom, the humiliation and frustration boiling over. Ripping the phone out of her sweater pocket, she thrust it violently into Walter’s open palm, the device hitting his hand with a sharp clatter.

​With an indignant stomp of her heel, Ana turned on her heel and stormed out of the bedroom, slamming the heavy double doors behind her so hard the brass handles rattled.

​The room fell into absolute, heavy silence.

​Damian didn’t look toward the door. His obsidian eyes fixed directly onto Walter, his voice dropping into a lethal, low tone.

​”Run a forensic mirror image of the drive,” Damian ordered, every trace of exhaustion gone from his tone. “Inspect the firmware for zero-day spyware, track every localized relay from the past forty-eight hours, and extract the encrypted sender ID of that hostage video. I want that syndicate’s digital fingerprint on my desk by midnight.”