Page 44 of Dark Soul (Tainted #1)

Beth’s apartment always smells faintly of lavender oil and caution. The kind of place where anxiety lingers like a polite guest—just quiet enough to ignore, just present enough to notice.

I sit on her couch, draped in soft lamplight, legs crossed, the slit in my black dress climbing high against my thigh. The material clings to my skin like sin, like a threat.

The heels are taller than I need them to be. The lipstick is blood-red, sharp against the fresh gloss of restraint I no longer wear. Everything tonight is intentional.

Beth hovers near the kitchen island, holding a half-empty wine glass and wearing that look that always precedes a lecture.

“You don’t have to do this,” she says, her voice softer than usual, wrapped in warning. “He’s going to show up. You know that, right?”

“That’s the point.”

She exhales through her nose and looks down into her glass. “You’re playing a game you don’t know the rules to.”

“No,” I say, standing and reaching for the coat draped over her dining chair, “I know exactly what the rules are. I just finally feel like breaking them.”

Beth doesn’t stop me. She knows better. And truthfully, it’s too late. The armor is already on—lipstick, thigh-slit, controlled fury masquerading as elegance. There is no backing out now.

***

The bar is built for men like Damien Strathmore. Chrome and velvet. Gold trims. Too much mood lighting. Every corner a mirror. It screams money and screams louder for attention.

He is already waiting in the private lounge when I arrive—seated like he owns the air around him.

Grey suit, no tie, collar undone. The fabric clings perfectly to broad shoulders and a chest that fills it out with practiced ease.

His hair is dark, swept back but not too neat, giving him the careless edge of someone who never has to try too hard.

A sharp jawline catches the glow of the low light, the kind that looks cut to intimidate.

His mouth curves in that faint, self-satisfied line of a man who has never been told no.

Even seated, he carries himself tall, his legs stretched out just enough to suggest dominance without saying a word.

Eyes the color of storm clouds watch me from across the room—steady, assessing, sure of what they see.

Damien Strathmore is clearly the kind of man who thinks himself irresistible because no one has bothered to correct him.

“Vera Calloway,” he says as I approach, standing just long enough to press a kiss to my knuckles. “Looking like sin wrapped in silk.”

“I prefer danger in heels,” I say, sliding into the seat across from him.

His laugh is too loud. His eyes linger too long. His drink is already half gone.

Perfect.

Let him touch me.

Let him lean in with his hand too high on my thigh.

Let him mistake this for a night of conquest.

Because none of it is about him.

I scan the room once, twice. He’ll already be here. Watching. Listening. Calculating.

The sensation slides over my skin like silk turned to wire—an invisible presence pressing in. I’ve worn this dress for Lucian. Worn this lipstick like a dare. And every breath I take feels like bait.

Damien’s hand grazes the top of my thigh again. He leans in closer, drunk on himself. “I’ve always wondered what kind of man could handle a woman like you,” he says, breath brushing my cheek.

I smile.

And then the room shifts. It’s subtle at first, like a silence that sucked all the oxygen out. Like gravity remembering itself.

A thud. Like a body slamming into the wall.

I blink once, and Damien is no longer seated. He is groaning, face pressed against the polished mirror, one arm twisted behind his back by a man in black.

Lucian.

No pretense or mask. Black coat, black gloves, and unmoving eyes. Possession carved into every line of his face.

The lounge stills. No one speaks or moves.

He doesn’t look at me. His focus is locked on Damien like he is filth, like he dirtied something precious.

“Get your hands off me—” Damien barks, trying to twist away.

Lucian’s voice is ice. “Touch her again, and I’ll break it off.”

“Lucian,” I snap, heart hammering in my chest. “What the fuck are you doing?”

His gaze flicks to me. Calm. Cold. Controlled rage. “Taking out the trash.”

Damien’s body hits the wall with a sickening thud that knocks over a sconce and shatters the hush like glass.

Lucian stands there.

He doesn’t look at me first. He looks at Damien like a problem that has finally irritated him enough to solve.

Wordlessly and mercilessly, he grabs Damien by the lapel, slams him again with a brutal precision that sends framed photos tilting on the wall.

Someone gasps. A server freezes. No one moves.

He yanks me by the wrist and pulls me through the lounge.

Gasps ripple through the room. Phones rise halfway then fall again.

No one stops him.

They wouldn’t dare.

I should’ve fought back. Screamed. Pulled away.

But I let him drag me out into the night like a storm he refuses to bottle.

The car door slams behind me. Silence.

Thick. Black-leather silence.

He sits beside me, one hand still coiled around my wrist like I’ll vanish without it. The city flickers past the windows in cold, disinterested streaks.

I find my voice first. “You’re insane.”

He doesn’t look at me.

“You’ve crossed every fucking line—”

His hand shifts fast and grips my jaw.

Not hard enough to bruise. But not soft, either.

“You want to play games?” he says, voice low, dangerous. “Then you play by my rules.”

My breath catches.

I hate him.

I hate how close he is. How warm his hand is despite the leather gloves. How I don’t pull away.

The car keeps moving. No one speaks. Not until I realize something worse.

We aren’t heading to my place.

I have no idea where he’s taking me. Somewhere neutral. Or maybe nowhere at all.

I swallow. Force my voice to stay steady. “You don’t own me.”

He doesn’t respond.

I turn to him. “You hear me, Lucian? I am not yours.”

That gets his attention.

Slowly, he looks at me. And for the first time since the bar, I see it—beneath the mask. The fracture. The crack in that impossible armor.

Not love. Not hate.

Need.

It gleams in his eyes like something feral.

I open my mouth. Shut it again.

The moment Damien’s hand slipped too far up my thigh, I hadn’t thought of boundaries. Or danger. I’d thought of him.

Of Lucian.

And I hate it.

Hate that my plan had worked.

Hate that I wanted it to.

I have crossed a line tonight. And he’s about to show me where it leads.

I don’t speak.

Not when the car turns toward the waterfront. Not when the silence between us turns feral.

Not even when his hand tightens over my thigh, not violently but with the slow insistence of someone who has already claimed the right.

Lucian doesn’t look at me. His eyes stay on the road, jaw ticking with restraint that looks like it hurts.

I should’ve felt victorious. I had baited the devil, and he’d shown his face. But I am not victorious.

I am shaking.

Not with fear. Not exactly. Something darker threads the tremor in my chest. Something humiliating.

I want him to look at me.

The black leather seat creaks beneath my shifting weight.

My hand, stupid traitor that it is, still tingles from where Damien had held it, his laugh still echoing against my eardrums like a taunt. But Lucian’s grip on my wrist erased everything before it. Like he could unmake moments by touch.

“Where are you taking me?” I ask, low.

His gaze doesn’t flicker. “You’ll know when we get there.”

“That’s not how this works.”

“Then stop pretending it’s a game,” he says, flat.

“You made it one.”

Lucian’s eyes dart to me then—brief, lethal. “You don’t get to say that after what you pulled tonight.”

I look back at him with all the defiance I can gather. “I needed to see what you’d do.”

“And now you know.”

My stomach twists.

“I wanted proof that I mattered to you,” I say. “Even if just enough to make you act like a monster.”

That earns me a scoff. “You think I needed a reason to be a monster?”

“No,” I whisper. “I think you’ve been waiting for one.”

The car turns into a private entrance—a ramp that slides us underground. Unmarked doors. Hidden floors. I recognize none of it.

The driver stops and cuts the engine, and Lucian turns toward me fully. The space between us is carved from silence, but it doesn’t feel empty.

It feels full of all the things we haven’t said since that rooftop, since that collar, since every line blurred.

“Get out,” he says.

I don’t move.

He doesn’t ask twice. He steps out, comes around, and opens my door with a calm so precise it might’ve been more dangerous than rage. I step out not because he told me to—but because something in my legs will give out if I stay sitting.

***

We step out of the penthouse elevator together. It is a world of its own.

Slate walls, smoked glass, and velvet furniture the color of sin. A single spotlight falls over a dark cherrywood table with a bottle of wine already opened—red, aged, bleeding elegance.

Two glasses. One file. A single silver box.

I know the game. This is another trap.

But it is beautiful.

“You created this for me?” I say, voice tight.

“I created it for the version of you who stops pretending she doesn’t want control handed to her in a prettier shape.”

My throat closes. “I don’t want control handed to me. I want it earned.”

“You want control that lets you feel like the victim while you still get to play god,” he says. “But you’re not the god here, Vera. You’re the offering.”

I should’ve slapped him. I should’ve screamed.

But I don’t. Because everything in the room—its design, its restraint, its seductive shadow—knows me. It anticipates me. And that terrifies me more than anything.

“Say what you want from me,” I say.

Lucian steps in closer, the heat of his presence wrapping around me like a shackle.

“I want you to stop pretending,” he says. “I want you to sit down, pour that wine, open the file, and look at what I know. I want you to see how far I’ve gone to protect you. I want you to understand that what you did tonight wasn’t brave. It was reckless.”

“You don’t get to define my boundaries—”

“I don’t care about your boundaries.” His hand catches my jaw, soft at first, then firmer. “I care about your safety. Which means I will cross every line if it keeps you breathing.”

“You think this is about safety?”

“No,” he says. “I think it’s about ownership. And I’m done pretending I don’t want that.”

My pulse pounds in my throat.

He kisses me.

It isn’t gentle. It isn’t cruel. It is possession made flesh—long, deliberate, and invasive in its intimacy.

His mouth finds the parts of mine that haven’t been touched in years, like he knows where every ache has taken root. My fists curl against his chest offering useless resistance.

My mind screams, but my body melts.

He pulls away.

Just enough to remind me who started this.

“I’m not sorry,” he says against my lips. “And I won’t stop. So if you want to run, you’d better do it now.”

I should’ve left.

I don’t.

He walks past me. Pours the wine and sits.

“I’ll give you five minutes,” he says. “If you’re still here after that, you stay until I say otherwise.”

It’s insane and abusive.

It’s everything I tried to avoid.

But I stand there, heart hammering, skin flushed, and something in me whispers, stay.