I remembered a moment, a small terrible moment, when he looked at me like he knew me, like he recognised something in me that I hadn’t even discovered yet, a whisper I barely heard, yet loud enough to make him pause and listen.
“Are you awake yet?” His voice echoed in the room, rough and sharp, tainted with sin, with darkness, with things I didn’t want, but bent to so willingly a while ago.
The sound of liquid pouring filled the room now, the smell of whiskey weaving into the air.
To be honest, I didn’t remember falling asleep. It was too early in the morning to be sleeping again. I just cracked my eyes open some moments ago and found myself naked, wrapped in a silk sheet, sprawled on the bed, alone.
Maybe I shut down from the onslaught of emotion, the fear, the confusion, the anger…the lust I had no memory of.
Maybe my body buckled under the darkness he poured into me, piece by piece, until my mind couldn’t hold anymore. Maybe, just maybe, he held me too tightly, so hard that the world slipped out of my grip. Maybe he killed me like he had promised to. But somehow, I didn’t die. He didn’t know that death didn’t want me as much as I often wanted him. I had tried it so many times, but never for once did his cold and bony hands reach for my soul that I offered to him on a platter stained with blood.
“I know you’re awake.” There was the echo of a body meeting leather as he sat down, perhaps. I squeezed my eyes tighter, clenching the sheet against my chest.
“I can hear your racing heart.” My pulse stumbled. “Which is rather disappointing giving the original plan. That heart wasn’t supposed to still be beating.”
He really did strangle me, I supposed.
“That one is on me, though,” he added, his tone laced with dark amusement. “I fucking got carried away with how good you felt. How addictive you tasted…” He took a short, ominous pause. “How you called me god…countlessly.”
I bit the inside of my cheek till it hurt, dug my nails into my palm, willing to draw blood. This moment was too shameful.How do I get out of this? Of here? How do I confront this monster that I didn’t know?
“Anyway, it might interest you to know,” he mused, voice smooth like the whiskey he was taking. “that while you passed out, I learned a lot about you. Uncovered your dirty, little secret.” There was a hint of wicked amusement in his voice.
With that information, I bolted upright, the sheet slipping from my body, baring my naked breast to the cool air.
“There it is.” His golden eyes gleamed of mischief, darkening when they flickered momentarily to my heaving chest. His lips curled in satisfaction. “I knew that would get your attention.”
My pulse thrummed, fast and erratic. Anxiety coiled tight in my stomach almost immediately. He liked this. He was a psychopath who loved unsettling someone. He loved when your heart picked up pace and went like a wild drumbeat. So he watched me, eyes dark and knowing…satisfied.
He lifted the wine glass to his lips, savoring a slow sip, enjoying how easily I reacted to his threat, getting a kick out of how my pulse thrummed, a vein or two bound to rupture.
I was naked, alright. But I had never truly felt more naked than I did now. He hadn’t said a thing yet, but he seemed to be peeling apart my skin, layer by layer.
What did he know? How much did he know? What did he plan to do with the information?
“Do you want to know what I know?” His lips curled into a sharp, mean grin, the same way a predator would smile at his prey.
I swallowed hard, my head moving without my mind as it bobbed only once.
Then leisurely, he swung his legs off the glass table, the leather of the chair groaning as he rose. He took another sip of whiskey, then swallowed, slow, and deliberate. My eyes trackedthe movement of his Adam’s apple, the way his throat worked as the amber liquid disappeared behind his smirking lips.
With excruciating slowness, he set the glass down on the table and began to move towards the bed…towardsme. I didn’t want him near me again. I didn’t want that unknowing hand that burnt me to touch me again. I didn’t want more of the darkness he spilled inside me. I didn’t want this thing before me.
I wanted Callan. Where was Callan?
Every step was unhurried, controlled, and intentional. And each one felt like a countdown, a quiet descent into something inevitable.
The air thickened, charged, and began to suffocate me. I felt like I was breathing through a straw.
On reaching the bed, he didn’t hesitate as he gripped the sheet, yanking it away, exposing me in one swift motion. A gasp scraped out of my throat.
I didn’t know why. It wasn’t my intention to. I wasn’t interested in him. Yet my nipples hardened, and my thighs clenched against the sudden ache pulsing between my legs.
At that moment, it felt like my body and mind were no longer mine. Like my soul and what was left of my heart were standing at the corner of the room, watching the parts of me I no longer controlled answer to the touch of a man I didn’t recognise, a shadow I didn’t want.
His weight pressed into the bed as he leaned over me, lips grazing the corner of my mouth. Just a breath, a whisper of warmth, and I trembled.
“The more time I spend with you, Elizabeth,” he murmured. “the more the pieces fall into place. The more it becomes…undeniable.”
