Page 54 of Take Me Darkly

I came awake violently, like breaking the surface of water after being under for too long. My lungs seized. My hands searched for something solid, and I was already gripping it, clutching the fabric of Anton’s shirt with both fists. He was there, his low, heavy baritone anchoring me against the panic.

“You’re okay. I’ve got you. You’re safe,” he murmured, his voice a steady, velvet purr near my ear.

My heart hammered wildly against my ribs, but the solid heat of his chest pressed against mine brought me back to reality. I let out a long, ragged exhale, grounding myself in his strength.

“I’m sorry,” I managed to rasp out, my throat raw.

“There’s nothing to apologize for.” He shifted, pulling back just enough to look into my eyes, his sharp features carved in the pale twilight of dawn. “Tell me about the dream.”

“It was the fire in Lucca,” I whispered, tears pricking the corners of my eyes as the memory of her shifting face cut through me. “And my father’s research... the serpents were burning it. I couldn’t reach her. I couldn’t hold onto her face, Anton. I’m starting to forget what she looked like.”

Anton remained silent, his dark gaze unblinking.

“I have them, too,” he said finally. “Dreams. Although they aren’t the same as yours, they rattle me all the same.”

I looked at him. He wasn’t looking at me—he was looking somewhere over my head, his jaw set in a hard, rigid line. I recognized that expression—it was the same dark, shuttered look he had worn weeks ago in a hotel room in Florence.

I remembered that night vividly. We had fallen asleep wrapped together, and in the dark hours of the morning, I had naturally turned toward his heat, fitting my body against his back, my hand resting between his shoulder blades.

Anton had awakened like a cornered predator.

In a fraction of a second, I had been pinned flat against the mattress, his forearm locked across my throat, his heavy weight immobilizing me. His onyx eyes had been wide open, but he hadn’t seen me—he had been trapped in some dark, violent memory. The man looking through me had looked younger, terrified, and dangerously feral.

Then recognition had flooded his eyes, and he had scrambled backward as if he’d been burned. I remembered the sound he made, and the way he’d pressed his hand to his face as if he could physically push the dream back inside himself. He had hated letting me see that crack in his armor. But I had seen enough to recognize the scars of a traumatized boy behind the formidable billionaire. In those brief seconds, I’d learned that Anton had demons I might never fully understand.

“Don’t come up behind me unexpectedly when I’m sleeping. I don’t want to risk hurting you again.”

I hadn’t touched him from behind since that night—both in sleep and during waking hours.

Your dreams,” I said now, my voice barely a breath against his collarbone. “What are they like?”

He stayed quiet for so long I thought he would refuse to answer.

“Different scenarios,” he murmured finally. “But always the same room. The same smell.”

He didn’t elaborate, and I didn’t press. I was more concerned with how he got past them—how he got past this fear and rage and agony I was currently feeling.

“What do you do when you wake up from them?”

He looked down curiously at me. His thumb traced once along my cheekbone, unhurried, and I felt the calluses on his hand, the slight roughness that always surprised me on someone whose life was defined by luxury.

“I get up. I find something real. Something I can hold.” The corner of his mouth moved. “If I can’t shake it, I’ll go to my office. I often find that seeing my coin collection brings me peace.”

Proof of survival.

I had seen him so clearly in that moment. Too clearly, maybe.

“Does it work?” I asked.

“Eventually.” He pressed his lips briefly to my forehead. “Go back to sleep, princess. It’s barely six in the morning.”

I didn’t want sleep. I wanted to stay wrapped in his heat. I wanted to tell him that I was falling irrevocably in love with him, that he held my heart in his hands. But the confession choked in my throat—I was terrified of the drop, terrified of revealing how completely he’d undone me without knowing if he would be there to catch me.

Instead, I pressed my face into the crook of his neck, breathing in his scent of sandalwood and leather. I listened to the steady, heavy thud of his heart, letting him become my anchor the way the coins had been his.

By the time I woke again, the space beside me was empty.

The rich aroma of dark espresso drifted through the open door, accompanied by the quiet sounds of Anton moving in the kitchen. I lay still for a moment, watching the morning light shift through the stained glass, painting the floor in shades of warm gold and crimson.