Page 29 of Dark Soul (Tainted #1)

I stand in the foyer of my penthouse, chest rising and falling in silent prayer to the night’s rites. I wear only a cotton shirt, collar unbuttoned, my chest bare of scars yet heated in tension.

My skin still smells of her heat and silk and that odd ache in her scent. I don’t shower. I don’t want to wash it away. Let her linger.

I close the door behind me, the soft click echoing through the quiet. The penthouse is stark, high-ceilinged, glassed on every side, but tonight it feels smaller than any closet, because my obsession no longer lives in wires and screens. It lives in me.

I cross to the sound room, an anechoic chamber I’ve built under the guise of protecting client anonymity. Its steel door seals behind me like the mouth of a cave. Inside, walls are padded.

A single speaker and control panel sit at a desk. A recorder lies open, its tape reels still warm.

I press play.

A breath. A whisper. Then the sound—a moan redirected by silk.

I press again.

I curve my chest forward. The tape’s hiss and static press into the silence of the room like worship. I let it play again, embracing every breath she makes, every shift in tone.

The edge of pain wrapped around the edge of pleasure. Woven together, as I’ve woven her life into my own.

I close my eyes and let myself sink.

***

In darkness, I reach for myself. Fingers slick with sweat and memory, I stroke to her sound, to her gasp. It isn’t just arousal. It is devotion. A sound so intimately hers that hearing it makes me tremble. My breath catches. My body obeys.

Shame? Perhaps. But shame is secondary. Worship is primary.

I look up suddenly, unsettled by the sound of my own voice, quiet but alive. I adjust the tape pause and rewind, hearing her again.

***

I find myself having a flashback from ten years ago at the university theater basement

The smell of damp concrete and old stage makeup presses around me. I watch her, Vera, rehearsing lines under dim lights.

She is everything I will eventually own: posture, intellect, magnetism. Her ambition flickers like a beacon.

I pay a night-shift janitor with a crisp bill to snag her keycard imprint. I don’t know why I am so deliberate. It feels urgent, like someone dangling light before a moth.

Three days later, I have her university ID badge coded into the time logs of my first surveillance contract. I don’t care. I only want the echo of her life infiltrated by my presence.

***

Another flashback comes to mind. This time from five years ago.

I trace her address through credit applications, online leasing kiosks. I hire an installer to set up a camera above the rear exit, just to watch her come and go.

To learn the cadence of her routine. To know when she laughed alone in that tiny kitchen, making macaroni to warm her bones.

I watched her through pixelated angles. She smiled after an argument. She cried after a breakup. She dreamed in the afternoon light pouring through the window.

I’d memorized the shape of that light. Memorized the silhouette of her spine when she walked.

Tonight’s tape is just another layer of the tapestry.

***

I come back to the present, my heart pounding. I sit forward in my chair.

“You are mine.”

I whisper it into the empty room. Her breaths, the ones I recorded, are a prayer and a command. I press stop. The tape clicks are loud in the silent chamber.

I swallow hard.

***

I lift my gaze. In the rack, hundreds of recordings line up like lined notebooks. Every one holds memory, evidence, obsession.

I tap the nearest case: “Villa Rehearsal, 3 July 2025.” I remove it and slip it into the player.

Two months ago, I flew under a different name. I’d bribed local staff to let me into the villa where she was doing compliance workshops. She moved through stone halls with tensile grace.

At night, when she slept, I turned on a lamp I’d placed weeks earlier and captured the inhale of her first sleeper’s breath.

I cupped that sound as if it were holy. Now, the tape roars to life against the hush of the chamber. I press “play” and let it spill around me.

***

I reach for the recorder and click “pause.” My hand shakes.

I rise, leaving the tape running. It plays on. The static hums low. I leave it.

I walk out of the room.

My space is silent, bright with moonlight and screens. I sit before my command wall, a grid of feeds focused on her apartment, her office, her street. The tape’s ambient hum follows behind me like a ghost.

I try to push the sound away, but it trails me. My mind loops it with each inhale and sigh. Every flattening of her palm.

I gaze at the grid—a new feed pops up: Vera standing in her apartment, hair wet from the shower, the faint steam swirling around her collarbone.

I click the feed larger.

She shivers, opening a towel at her waist. I exhale. Some part of me recoils at how vulnerable she looks, yet another part delights in owning that vulnerability.

I touch the screen showing her image, and it curves to my palm in cold glass. Through the image, I feel her breath warm my hand.

***

A year ago, I watched her after she delivered the deposition that crippled the hedge fund. She walked into the balcony, jacket slung over her shoulder, face pale. I recorded every second, every quiet drink of water, every inhale.

Later, I uploaded the clip, isolated her breathing patterns—the same ones I’d scrape onto tonight’s tape. I saved them. Catalogued them. Then I zipped them closed into my vault—her sounds woven deeper into my holdings.

Back then, I told myself it was professional. Only evidence. Now, all that professional detachment is gone, eroded by the heat of her moans, her rhythm, her very presence.

***

I sink deeper into the chair. My head tilts back. The moonlight paints reflections on the glass wall behind me. Behind that glass is Manhattan’s skyline, oblivious to my emotional unraveling.

I feel dizzy and ruthless. I need distance but crave her nearness.

I push myself up. I walk to the couch, sit down, and shut my eyes.

A memory squeezes through my mind, none of it new, but urgent.

Four years ago, she was in a conference room. A junior consultant told a joke. She laughed unexpectedly, with a loud, bright, three-note laugh.

I’d planted a benign CCTV feed to capture it. I’d watched that entire night as her laughter echoed through empty corridors on my speakers.

I remembered the sound like a taste. Like salt on my tongue. I want to cultivate spices, dangers, ruin, and worship.

I awaken myself with a slap, hard enough to leave a phantom sting.

I stand.

I flick screens off. My tapes stop whirring. My penthouse resumes its muted hum.

I walk to the penthouse door but don’t leave.

I look down at my shirt that smells of her. I close my hand around the collar and inhale. One more taste of memory.

I put it away.

***

I replace the tape in the rack, adjusting a label:

“Vocal Worship. Her moans. 01-07-2025.”

I type: Next phase: Name ownership. She must be mine.

Then I move to the intercom.

I click open.

It lights up: “Operator.”

I (soft, steady): “Do not open the door for Ms. Calloway tomorrow. Let her enter only after 9 a.m. Tape the entrance. No exceptions.”

The operator responds as if in ritual.

I hang up and return to the sound room one last time. The tape lies idle. I click “play” again with just one breath.

I press “record.”

I speak, “Let me hear your next cry, Vera. Let me weave myself into it. Let it echo in both of us.”

The recorder ticks, buckets of data drip, and my breathing fills the room.

I press “stop.”

I walk out into the night, chest aching with sacrifice and ownership, and I close the penthouse door.

I don’t turn on the lights when I enter.

The penthouse is still steeped in the velvet hush of late night—the kind of silence that presses against the walls and makes even the hum of electronics sound like a confession.

I step in with the calmness of a man who has already buried the evidence, already mapped the next move. But beneath that curated composure, the air crackles with something more dangerous. Not guilt. Not fear.

Need.

Her scent is still on me.

It clings, feeling like soft jasmine, warm skin, and the ghost of silk. A whisper across my collar. Her moan still coils in my eardrums like a secret no one else will ever earn.

I don’t shower.

Instead, I move with precision through the minimalist steel corridors of my domain, bypassing the marble bar, the dead fireplace, the untouched bottle of scotch I used to drink when silence felt indulgent instead of necessary. I go straight to the sound room.

The door slides open with a pneumatic hiss.

Inside is isolation.

Soundproof panels absorb every breath. A recording console lines one wall, titanium brushed, military-grade. No screens. No mirrors. Just raw acoustic power. I built this room to decode human weakness. Every twitch of vocal tone. Every hesitation. Every lie.

But tonight, I’m not analyzing an enemy.

I lower myself onto the leather chaise, kick off my shoes, and unbutton my shirt halfway down. I’m still wearing the trousers from the gala, the fabric creased where her eyes once flicked. I close them, briefly, remembering.

The way she looked in the dark, silk clinging to her hips, shame blooming on her skin like petals scorched black. The way she gasped when I circled her clit, not a cry of terror, but recognition.

She knew.

I tell myself it is control. Strategy. Reinforcement. I tell myself this is still the plan.

I am lying.

I unbuckle my belt with one hand. The other hovers over the console.

Click.

The speakers purr to life.

Her breath. Just shallow, staggered, breath at first caught in the base of her throat like something sacred.

Then the first whimper.

I exhale, jaw flexing.

My cock pulses against the fabric.

I don’t imagine anyone else. Not past lovers, not archetypes of pleasure.

Just Vera, body bowed over the mirror, lips parted in horror and hunger. Her fingers tightening in the sheets. Her breath shattering when my voice broke the silence.

“You wore it.”

I wrap my hand around myself. Slow. Controlled. Punishing.

The recording continues. A gasp. A broken sob. Her voice when she whispered “please” didn’t sound rehearsed. It sounded born, raw, and pure.

“I warned you,” I murmur to the dark, my voice low, hoarse. “You walked into this.”

Another moan from the speakers.

She didn’t know I recorded it.

She didn’t know the moment she tilted her head back and let me touch her was the moment her fate was sealed.

I stroke myself harder now.

No fantasy. Just memory. The shape of her thighs. The curve of her spine. The tremor in her voice when shame tangled with desire.

I grit my teeth. I’m close.

I should stop. I should slow down. Draw it out. Analyze it. But for once, I don’t. I chase it.

Her voice rises. The recording catches the exact second her breath hitched and her legs went weak.

I spill into my hand with a violent, guttural sound—one I don’t recognize. Not from myself. Not from any version of me I’ve curated for the world.

For a long time, I don’t move.

The room is quiet again.

The only evidence of what I’ve done is the mess on my skin, the sharpness in my ribs, and the file still playing on loop—her voice like a wound that refuses to clot.

I reach over, kill the playback.

Silence returns.

But not peace.

I stare at the ceiling. Not blinking. My heart rate slows. My breath evens. The veneer of discipline slinks back into place like a mask.

Then I speak into the dark:

“I’m done pretending I don’t need you.”

It’s not a confession. It’s a decision.

I rise from the chaise, wipe myself with a cloth already waiting on the console shelf. I don’t bother to clean further. Her scent is still on my collar, and I’m not ready to lose it.

Back in the main room, I cross to the massive titanium desk beneath a ceiling-high window. City lights flicker across the glass, making the skyline look like a map of scattered stars.

I open my encrypted laptop.

A fresh document folder. Blank. Waiting.

I title it: Project Glass

Within seconds, lines of code appear. Digital diagrams. Shadow web link chains. Behavioral models. Surveillance timelines. Access credentials. A heat map of Vera’s recent emotional spikes, overlaid against trigger events.

But there’s more this time.

I don’t just log risk levels or track her movement. I add a column labeled Thresholds.

How far she bends before she breaks. How long she waits before she obeys. How hard she resists before she comes.

I’m not planning her destruction. I’m planning her arrival.

I type a final line at the bottom of the blueprint.

Final Phase: Full Surrender

Then I lock the file.

Not with the usual biometric scan.

But with a line of code only I understand of her birthday, encrypted backward, followed by a single word: mine.

The cursor blinks. Still. Waiting.

But the war has already started.

And I’m already winning.