Page 6 of Take Me Darkly

I had started needing him.

I set my empty coffee mug on the table and caught my reflection in a small decorative mirror hanging on the wall. The person staring back wasn’t the sheltered archaeologist who had naively walked into the Met Gala weeks ago. That woman was dead. The person I’d become was darker and infinitely more dangerous, and so much like one of my hand-blown glass creations—forged in fire, made harder, and emerged stronger for it.

“I can’t keep fighting you and my grief at the same time,” I confessed, looking up into his onyx eyes. “I don’t have the strength.”

Relief, dark and potent, washed across his harsh features, replaced instantly by a desperate, hungry hope. “What do you need, Serena?”

“I need to stop thinking.” I held his gaze, my pulse skyrocketing as I voiced the forbidden desire for the man who had become my protector. “I need to forget that day—to forget everything. I need you to make the world go away, Anton. At least for a while. Touch me.”

“Serena...” The air between us charged with sudden electricity. His onyx eyes searched mine, almost as if he were seeking permission. Or perhaps it was absolution. When he spoke, his voice was rough with want and something deeper, and more desperate. “You’re still injured. And grieving, vulnerable, and⁠—”

“I’m not fragile,” I interrupted. “You can’t break something that’s already shattered. And I’m asking you—no, I’m telling you—to help me forget. Just for a little while.”

He stared down at me for a long, breathless moment, a fierce war raging behind his dark eyes. The protector was fighting the predator. The man trying to shield me was battling the dominant who desperately wanted to claim me.

Then, slowly, he dropped to his knees in front of the sofa.

His hands cupped my face, his touch reverent, almost sacred. His long thumbs gently wiped away the damp trails of my tears with exquisite tenderness, sending a shudder of anticipation cascading down my spine.

“If we do this,” he murmured, his dark eyes locking onto mine with absolute command, “you surrender complete control to me. Trustfall, princess... and I will make everything else disappear.”

A quiet voice emerged, telling me he wasn’t just talking about sex.

The warning bells in my head screamed at me to pull back, to run from the dangerous man holding my fate in his hands. But all I could feel was the scorching heat of his skin, the hypnotic pull of his voice, and the sweet, dark promise of oblivion waiting in his arms.

“Yes,” I whispered, leaning into his touch. “Make it go away, Anton. Please.”

His thumb dragged slowly across my lower lip, and I saw the exact moment his control snapped.

The disciplined, measured billionaire shattered, replaced by a raw, possessive predator. He leaned in, his mouth slamming over mine in a kiss that was devastating, primal, and absolute. It was a claiming—a dark promise meant to heal soul-deep wounds with wild, unbridled passion.

I gasped into his mouth, melting into his muscular frame as his tongue swept inside, taking everything I had to give. I buried my fingers in his thick hair, clinging to him like a lifeline, forgetting the fire, forgetting the blood, forgetting everything except the scorching, intoxicating heat of his touch. He kissed me like a dying man drinking air, possessive and ruthless.

When he finally pulled back a fraction, we were both gasping, our breaths mingling in the charged space between us. His forehead rested against mine, his dark eyes blazing with an intense, consuming fire that set my blood ablaze.

“Come with me, princess,” he commanded, his voice dropping into a low, velvet purr that turned my bones to liquid. “Let me take care of you.”

And despite the grief, the danger, and the terrifying realization of how completely he controlled my world, I let him take my hand. I let him lead me into the dark bedroom, toward the bed where he had allowed me to sleep alone just to give me space. But I didn’t want space anymore. I didn’t want to be alone with my ghosts. I needed him inside my darkness.

Because when your entire world burns to ash around you, the only sanity left is to throw yourself into the arms of the man willing to hold the embers.

Chapter Three

Anton

* * *

The morning light bled into the room, the stained-glass spilling ribbons of crimson, sapphire, and spun gold across the tangled silk sheets and onto the pale, perfect skin of the woman sleeping beside me.

Serena lay on her side, dark hair cascading across the white pillow, the faint rise and fall of her chest the only evidence that she still breathed.

For a long time, I didn’t move. I couldn’t. I just sat back against the headboard, watching the sunlight play across her silhouette. A thick white bandage covered her left shoulder—a stark, brutal reminder of how close I’d come to losing her. Every time I looked at that wound, my stomach twisted into a cold knot of failure.

Last night, she had begged me to make her forget. She had looked up at me with tears in those ocean-blue eyes and demanded oblivion.

And God help me, I’d given it to her.

I’d taken her with a raw, desperate intensity that bordered on feral—not to exert dominance or play out a fantasy, but to anchor her to the living world. I’d buried myself deep inside her heat, drinking in her shattered gasps, her nails digging into my shoulders, her soft pleas melting into tears of release against my throat. I had delivered the escape she sought.