Page 7 of Take Me Darkly

In return, she had given me something infinitely more dangerous. She had given me hope.

I reached out, my fingers hovering over a stray lock of hair before gently tucking it behind her ear. Her dark lashes fluttered, and her eyes opened, instantly clear and striking.

The soft, raw vulnerability that had undone her under my touch last night was gone. In its place stood the survivor. The woman who met my gaze with an unflinching, steel-backed resolve.

“Morning,” she murmured, her voice rough and husky from sleep.

“Morning, princess.”

She shifted to stretch, but a sudden wince cut through her movement as her hand flew to her bandaged shoulder. Instinct slammed through me, my hand shooting out to hover over her, every protective urge I possessed flaring to life.

“I’m fine,” she said quickly, reading the tension written across my face.

“You’re pulling at your stitches,” I warned, my voice low and authoritative. “Don’t push it.”

A faint, humorless smile touched her lips. “If I followed all your rules, Anton, I’d never leave this bed.”

I almost let a grin slip, but the air between us was too charged, heavy with unspoken emotions and lingering heat. “Some rules are there for your protection.”

She sat up, pulling the sheet taut across her breasts, exposing the smooth curve of her back. “You call it protection. I call it control.”

She wasn’t wrong. Control was my armor, my religion, my survival. Without it, I was just a boy trapped in the dark with the ghosts of my past.

I swung my legs off the bed and stood, unashamed of my nakedness as I pulled on a pair of dark boxers. When I turned back, her gaze was tracking the lines of my body with a quiet, dangerous intensity that set my blood on fire.

“I need to see the rest of this place,” she announced, her tone leaving no room for debate. “Not because I want a tour, but because it’s time for me to understand it. I don’t know who’s working down there, or who’s standing guard. I won’t sit up here like a helpless trophy waiting for something to happen. I need to feel useful.”

Her eyes burned with a fierce, brilliant light that took my breath away. She had no idea how powerful she was, how her quiet strength ripped through my guilt and forced me to my knees.

“You want to see Club O,” I acknowledged quietly.

“I want to take back control of my life,” she corrected, her chin lifting.

I hesitated. Club O wasn’t a place you simply showed someone. It was a cathedral of indulgence designed to strip away inhibitions, layer by layer, until the masks fell off. She was asking for autonomy, and after everything I had taken from her, I couldn’t deny her this.

“Get dressed,” I said, pulling a black button-down from the dresser. “I’ll take you down.”

Surprise flickered across her face, expecting a fight, but she didn’t waste time questioning it. I turned my back to give her an illusion of privacy, though every nerve ending in my body was hyper-aware of the rustle of fabric behind me. She slipped into a loose black top that wouldn’t rub against her wound, paired with dark jeans that hugged her hips. Even in simple clothes, she carried herself with an effortless, regal grace that made my chest ache.

When we stepped out of the private quarters, the faint, sacred scent of old frankincense trapped in the ancient mortar met us. The high stone arches and exposed wooden beams had once framed sermons of salvation. Now, they sheltered my empire of sin and choice.

Our footsteps echoed off the flagstone as I led her down a shadowed alcove to a heavy oak door. What looked like a simple storage space was, in fact, the entrance to my private lift. It was one of the many modern retrofits I’d added during the renovation. The lock clicked, swinging open to reveal an ornate wrought-iron elevator cage framed in black steel.

I held the gate open for her. As I stepped inside beside her, the cage doors slid shut, locking us into the tight space. Her faint jasmine scent instantly filled the enclosure, making my throat go tight.

“I haven’t been downstairs yet, but already it’s all so strange,” she said softly, her eyes tracking the iron filigree. “You’ve taken something sacred and turned it into… this.”

“Your tone implies I destroyed it, when in fact, I just repurposed it. When I bought this place, it was a crumbling ruin. Long before me, it had belonged to French Evangelical priests. It changed hands a few times over the century before eventually becoming an underground brothel—a place of non-consensual filth and human trafficking. I purged it, and remade it into something where consent, power, and desire are respected.”

She looked up at me, her eyes searching mine. “Is this…is this where your mother, um…”

“Yes,” I answered flatly, refusing to hide the truth. “My mother and I lived here. I spent my childhood in these walls. I knew this place inside and out. I thought if I remade it, maybe I could bury its ugly past under something beautiful. But I also wanted to preserve what I could. For example, this lift was used to haul hymnals and choir robes up to the gallery.”

“And now it carries the devil,” she mused.

A sardonic grin cut across my mouth. I stepped into her personal space, trapping her between my body and the iron cage. “Your words, princess. Not mine.”

A spark of heat flashed in her eyes—half defiance, half surrender. I pulled the brass lever, and the lift descended into the depths of the building with a smooth, heavy hum.