Page 77 of Take Me Darkly

“Princess.” My voice didn’t sound like my own.

She rose, then sat on the sofa beside me. Her hand returned to mine and closed my fingers gently over the coin.

“I lied to you,” she confessed, her voice small but steady. “The night you offered the bargain at the Met Gala, you asked about the coin. It feels like a lifetime ago. But the reports you read were real. There was an Ides of March coin in the terracotta jug my father excavated. He gave it to me to protect.”

“I know.”

Her ocean blue eyes searched mine. “You knew?”

“I knew you were hiding something, but I couldn’t prove it. In the end, I wanted you infinitely more than the coin, so I let it go.” I turned my hand carefully so the coin lay face up in my palm again.

“It’s yours now. I want you to have it. It’s my way of saying thank you—for everything.”

I stared into her eyes. They were wet at the lower lashes but not spilling. The wrap she wore had slipped completely off one shoulder, exposing a line of flawless skin that practically begged for my mouth.

“Serena, you owe me nothing.”

She shook her head fiercely. “It isn’t a debt, Anton. It’s... it’s the only way I know how to show you what’s in my heart. I don’t have words big enough for it.”

Something in her tone made my heart pound. I closed my hand carefully around the coin. I’d been holding back, subconsciously denying my feelings for her, and now I suddenly knew why. I didn’t know how to make myself that vulnerable, and I needed her to say it first.

“Try. Tell me how you feel, princess.”

She didn’t answer right away. The hand resting on top of mine tightened. Her chest rose once on a long, unsteady inhale, and the color climbed across her cheekbones in a slow burn. The lower lip she had been worrying with her teeth slipped free, swollen and red. She lifted her eyes to mine. They were full of tears but not falling. I could see the weight of whatever she was carrying settle in her shoulders before she let it go.

“I love you, Anton Romano. I don’t know when it happened. It just seems to have always been there.”

The words landed somewhere low in my chest, and the air went out of me a second time tonight.

She watched my reaction, wide-eyed and breathless, panic flickering across her features as she realized the declaration was out in the open, impossible to claw back. Her composure shattered. Her lower lip trembled, her fingers flying to her throat as if to choke back the confession.

She stood abruptly and crossed to the window, pressing her palm flat against the glass. Her shoulders rose and fell on one hard, shaky breath, and then another. She turned and came partway back to me, trailing her hand along the edge of a side table as if it were the only thing keeping her upright.

“I had a whole speech prepared,” she choked out, a watery laugh breaking through her tears. “I’ve been practicing it in my head for weeks. About how I knew, and why, and what I’d say if I was ever brave enough. And the second I looked at you, every word evaporated. But the truth is, I fell for you long ago. Was it when you dared me to trustfall at the gala? Or the morning you forced me to eat in your kitchen? Or when you offered me your money? I didn’t want to love you. I fought it with everything I had. But then all the feelings burst wide open when you presented me with a glass studio… and later, when you brought my friends to see me despite all the risks.”

Her voice broke on a sob, but she lifted her chin, her eyes burning with pure, unadulterated fire.

“I don’t expect you to say it back,” she continued. “Saying it out loud makes it real, and real things can be taken away. But I am saying it to you anyway. I love you, Anton. I needed you to know it. And now you do.”

I was off the sofa before my brain could even process the movement, closing the distance between us in three long strides. The ancient silver coin was gripped tight in my fist, warm against my palm. I reached her, pulling her frame flush against mine until her heat melded with my own. Her breath hitched against my collarbone, her eyes fixed on the buttons of my shirt as if looking at me would undo her entirely.

“Look at me, princess,” I growled gently.

An ocean broke in her eyes, tears spilling over her lashes to trace hot paths down her cheeks. I caught them with the pad of my thumb, framing her jaw, holding her steady. The three words I had never spoken to another living soul hovered on the tip of my tongue, heavy and terrifying.

I could give them to her right now.

I could crush my mouth over hers and pour my soul into her. I could lay her down on the floor and brand her with my hands, my mouth, and my body until she never doubted me again.

But she didn’t know the whole truth.

The man she loved was the person I had spent over a decade constructing. There was still the boy underneath, the one who had grown up inside these walls and seen things Serena didn’t yet know to fear. She hadn’t truly met him yet—the boy who’d grown into a ruthless man. She’d only had a glimpse.

If she was going to yield her heart to me, she had to choose the monster, too.

I bent my forehead to hers, pressing my mouth to her soft lips. I tasted salt at the corner of her lip. Her vulnerability almost broke me.

“I heard you, princess. I heard every word you said.”