Page 27 of Dark Soul (Tainted #1)

The building hums with the kind of broken quiet that only fatigue can hear.

I push open the glass doors of Finch and step out into the night, the air laced with static and the metallic scent of impending rain. My heels click down the concrete steps, steady despite the storm inside me. Gossip has bloomed like rot in the halls.

No one says my name aloud, but I see it on every parted mouth, every screen angled just out of my reach. Beth’s eyes have softened. Jay won’t look at me at all. The air has gone syrup-thick with insinuation.

I’m fraying. Not visibly. Not yet. But internally, I am a torn thread, unraveling with each breath.

My phone buzzes in my coat pocket from a muted notification of a new email. It's 2:24 a m.

Today’s meetings have been canceled. Every single one. Even the ones I created. I don’t check the sender. I don’t need to.

By the time I reach my apartment building, the lights in the lobby are flickering. The security guard isn’t at his post.

A yellow notice is taped sloppily to the wall: Scheduled Power Maintenance—11 p.m. to 3 a.m. Someone has scrawled a smiley face beneath it.

I check my phone, 3:37 a.m.

I mutter something bitter and take the stairs.

Each flight drags me upward, breathless. The lightbulb on the fourth-floor landing blinks twice and dies. My door waits, quiet and unchanged, but something still feels off. I hesitate. Turn the handle. It opens without protest.

Inside, the apartment is still. Too still.

The living room looks undisturbed. My books in the same neat pile. The faint scent of white musk from the reed diffuser still clinging to the air. But the hallway to my bedroom looms darker than usual, cloaked in shadows that don’t shift.

My fingers brush the wall for the light switch. Nothing.

“Right,” I mutter. “Power outage.”

I walk down the hall, my shoes suddenly too loud against the wood floor. When I reach my bedroom, my steps halt.

The door creaks open an inch further.

Moonlight filters through the curtain slit and pools onto the edge of the bed. That is where I see it, the silk. Midnight black. Glossy in the dim light. The same lingerie set from weeks ago that I hid in the back of my drawer. The one that hadn’t been there last time I checked.

Laid out. Carefully. Like a shrine. Or a challenge.

My chest tightens. For a beat, my body refuses to move.

I scan the room, nothing disturbed. No drawers open. No sign of forced entry. And yet…it’s there. Impossibly there.

Maybe I did leave it. Maybe I forgot.

But I know I hadn’t.

The lock on the front door had been untouched. Nothing smashed. Nothing stolen. The unease doesn’t come from what is there. It comes from how precise it all is.

The exact curve of the lace. The way the straps are arranged. As if someone studied my body. As if someone knew.

I back up, then stop. I turn back to the silk set, my breath catching in my throat. A strange heat blooms beneath my skin, shame, yes but something else, too. A prickling awareness that I’ve been seen. Desired. Hunted.

My gaze falls on the mirror.

It catches my reflection in pieces, jaw taut, blouse wrinkled, eyes red-rimmed with exhaustion. The reflection doesn’t look frightened.

It looks provoked.

“No,” I whisper.

But my hand reaches for the fabric anyway.

I pick up the bra first, then the slip of silk panties. My fingers tremble. Somewhere in the corner of my mind, I scream at myself to stop. To run or call someone. But the scream is drowned in something quieter, deeper, more dangerous.

If this is a game, I want to win. And if he’s watching, I want him to see.

“You want a show?” I whisper to no one. “Then watch.”

I undress slowly, methodically, peeling the day from my skin. The cold air touches my bare shoulders as I fasten the clasp behind my back. I slide the panties up my legs, one inch at a time, like a ritual. Then I stand straight before the mirror.

The silk clings to my curves like breath. It isn’t comfort. It’s defiance.

“I’m not afraid of you,” I say aloud. “Not tonight.”

But I don’t hear my own voice.

The shadows stretch across the bedroom as the emergency lighting flickers through the veiled windows. The air feels clingy, slightly warm, tasting of lingering musk and fear.

The power cut has erased modern boundaries, leaving my apartment in a soft twilight, where every shape could be ghost or threat.

My muscles tremble in the silk of the black lingerie, shiver and warmth converging, and I stay in place, caught between arousal and horror.

My chest flutters like caged wings, every breath shallow and ragged. The quake in my limbs isn’t just physical. It’s something deeper, something I hadn’t been prepared to feel again.

I thought I’d never walk this line again, and yet here I am—bait, dressed in black, alone. And waiting.

A moment later, I hear a subtle shift in the darkness. Something so quiet, no creak, no footfall, just a human silhouette stepping into my periphery. He is there before I understand it, framing my reflection in the soft glass.

I freeze.

A breath brushes my skin.

“You wore it.”

The words land like ice crystals erupting on my spine. I feel them as much as I hear them—electric, and final. My heart slams inside my ribcage, every nerve flaring. Ablaze.

My body locks. This time, the familiarity of his voice doesn’t bring comfort. It brings collision.

There is nowhere to run.

I hear him behind me walking with controlled footsteps. An exhale cuts through the heaviness of the room. My pulse jumps. I tremble.

I should run. I should scream. I should reach for the phone. I should call for help. Fight. Resist. But my body doesn’t obey.

“Show me,” he says softly. No breathing room between us. The words are quiet, but they carry: demand, intent, dominance.

His hand yanks the silk strap at my shoulder, a deliberate snag. He forces it down, one inch at a time, baring porcelain skin to moonlight.

I gasp as it slips. The sensation isn’t cold; it feels deliberate and invasive. But heavy with current.

His finger trails over the exposed ridge of my collarbone, another delay, then swallows the silk entirely, tracing the boundary between garments and flesh. I don’t jerk away. Each touch is a chord that I can’t avoid playing.

He presses my hips into his hand, pinning me still. My thigh brushes against his leg, clothed but not gentle.

The friction sparks as he takes that same spot and whispers, “Perfect.”

It is brilliant cruelty. Admiration and violation in the same breath.

I swallow hard and try to push back, but the muscles in my arms tremble. My throat locks. I can feel in his posture the force behind each word, each movement.

He dips his head.

The brush of his lips against the hollow of my neck is featherlight.

He pauses.

Then lets his mouth deepen into it, deliberate and devouring. I shudder. The sound I make is tiny and nearly drowned by his chest pressing into mine.

He moves again, reaching and pressing gently. His fingers dig between my silk and flesh. The cold moisture around me—air, rug, night—draws contrast to his heated touch.

Heat. Need. A muted ache that pulses behind my sternum.

I gasp again. I can’t tell if this is fear or desire. But when his fingers press deeper, circling and prodding with hunger mapped, I realize both.

He is filthy and kind in the same moment.

There is no consent. Yet my body answers if only because recoil felt like drowning. Resisting him would feel like sinking.

I whisper, “Stop.”

He doesn’t.

Instead, he chuckles against my throat, a low, satisfying rumble.

I press back, pushing into him. Touching him, needing him, even though all I know is that I shouldn’t.

His hands drift up my waist, over my ribs, tracing chest curves beneath the lace.

I lean back.

The heat of his body behind me seeps into my skin.

I feel lips graze the shell of my ear. They aren’t kissing my ears; they’re claiming them.

The silk is being pushed aside. His fingers, reverent and cruel, slip beneath the hem of the fabric.

Still, he doesn’t speak. He doesn’t need to.

My breath hitches. My thighs tremble. This is madness and violation.

I should scream. I moan instead.

He doesn’t undress me. He doesn’t take me. He just touches.

One slow drag of fingertips from my navel to the inside of my thigh.

My body arches into it, my lips parting in shameful relief. My reflection in the mirror stares back at me, flushed, glassy-eyed, and ruined.

My knees buckle again. He catches me and holds me there.

His hand suddenly descends and pauses at my pant line. He drags his fingers over the moist crease where lace meets skin and gently pushes it aside with his thumb.

A stressed moan escapes me as I’m harshly and sweetly broken into by his middle finger, followed by his forefinger.

He pauses there, then pushes deeper with two fingers pressing between silk folds. He presses, pulls, and circles.

Deliberate and calculated.

My thighs shake as my legs beg for more of him and recoil. My breasts press into the thin fabric of the bra, nipples lifting to the cool air now at my chest.

He lingers.

Another roll of breath past my ear. His pace increases as he draws smaller circles on my aching clit. My lashes flutter shut. My shoulders slump as my shivering reaches an apex, flame crashing into tinder.

And then I come unapologetically and suddenly, splintering under him. I arch, cling, and tremble as he holds me still.

I cry out with a passion that burns with pain, with shame, with a hunger I thought had died.

It doesn’t end when he withdraws. He pulls his hands free but leaves them painfully warm and trembling against the small of my back.

His fingers brush my spine one last time, a brush that speaks of possession and promise, and he lets go.

My vision swims. I stand torn between dizzy high and ash-chill arrival.

The silence is suffocating. And then, finally, he speaks.

“Say thank you.”

The voice is honey and razors.

My lips tremble. But I say it. “…thank you.”