Page 46 of Dark Soul (Tainted #1)

I don’t speak. There are no words for the kind of hunger that drives me now. I take her like an animal—raw, relentless, the wet slap of skin on skin filling the air, drowning out the city’s hum below.

My voice is a low, guttural growl in her ear, not words but a warning, a promise that after tonight, there’s no going back. Not for her. Not for me.

Her moans are my map, guiding me to the deepest parts of her pleasure. The stuttering clench of her body around my throbbing cock, the tremble in her breath, the way her fingers scrabble against the marble all tell me she’s unraveling.

I push deeper, that final inch that locks us together, my hips grinding against her with a brutality that feels like worship.

She doesn’t moan this time. She curses my name, “Lucian,” dragged from her throat like a wound she can’t close, a punishment she can’t escape.

My hand finds her throat again, fingers curling around the delicate column, not squeezing but holding enough to remind her who’s in control. Her pulse races under my grip, a frantic drumbeat that matches the fire in her half-lidded eyes.

She doesn’t fight it. She leans into my hand, her lips parting as she gasps, her body trembling on the edge of something darker than surrender. It’s not just her body giving in, it’s her soul, cracking open, spilling into the space between us.

“You think you can handle this?” I snarl, my thumb pressing against her pulse, feeling it stutter. “You think you can walk away from me whole?”

Her eyes flicker, dazed but defiant, and she whispers, “Fucking try me.”

The challenge ignites something feral in me. I rail into her, my cock buried deep in her slick heat, each thrust a claim, a theft, a fucking annihilation of any distance left between us. Her body is a furnace, soft and wet and so fucking tight it’s almost painful, but I don’t stop. I can’t.

Her nails rake down my arms, leaving trails of fire, her hips bucking back to meet me, to take me deeper, to burn us both alive.

When she comes, it’s a violent unraveling, a full-body convulsion that rips through her like a storm.

Her head throws back, her mouth trembling open, choking on my name like it’s a curse and a prayer twisted together.

“Lucian—” she gasps, her voice breaking, her body shuddering as her climax engulfs her, her warmth pulsing around me, pulling me under.

I follow, my own release a brutal, blinding thing that leaves me hollowed out, shaking, but still fucking starving for her.

I don’t pull out. I stay buried deep, my cock still hard, still pulsing inside her slick, trembling heat. The penthouse air is thick with the scent of sweat and sex, the echo of our breaths mingling with the distant hum of the city below.

Her body is a map of my destruction—sweat-slicked, bruised in places no one else will see, her thighs marked by my hands, her throat red from my grip. Her eyes are dazed, haunted, staring at nothing as she lies sprawled beneath me, wrecked in every way that matters.

I press my hand flat against the marble beside her head, caging her in, my body still seated deep inside her. No retreat. No pause. Just the raw, unrelenting connection of our bodies, the weight of everything we’ve tried to deny bleeding out into the cold air.

She doesn’t speak. Neither do I.

Her eyes stay closed, her chest rising and falling with shallow, ragged breaths, her lips swollen and bloodied from my bite. But I’m not done.

My free hand slides up her spine, fingers curling into her hair, yanking her head back just enough to force her eyes open. They meet mine, and there’s no softness there—only a storm of defiance and need, a mirror to the chaos inside me.

“You’re mine,” I growl, my voice low, a vow carved in blood and bone. “And you’ll feel me every time you move. Every time you breathe.”

She doesn’t answer, but her lips curve into the faintest, most dangerous smile. It’s not surrender. It’s a challenge. A promise that this war between us is far from over.

Her lashes are wet.

I don’t ask why. I know.

This wasn’t about sex.

Not for her. Not for me.

This was a warning. A breaking. A redefinition of what we are and what we can no longer pretend we aren’t.

She made her move, strutted into that bar wrapped in weaponized silk, and sat beside Damien fucking Strathmore like I wouldn’t feel it crawling beneath my skin.

She wanted to wake the beast. She got the whole fucking storm.

And now?

She’s ruined on my floor, mouth red, dress torn, thighs glazed in the aftermath of my wrath—and still, even now, she doesn’t beg. Doesn’t apologize.

That’s what makes her unbearable.

That’s what makes her mine.

I finally move. Not much, just enough to wrap one arm beneath her back and pull her body against my chest. My other hand cradles her thigh and lifts it over my hip. I stay inside her. Still. Heavy. Softening, but not separating.

She flinches when I shift. Not from pain but from anticipation.

I hear it in her breath. The way it catches.

“Are you done?” she whispers.

I don’t answer right away. I drag my mouth to her ear and speak like an aftershock.

“No.”

She doesn’t ask what I mean.

She knows.

This isn’t done. Not tonight. Not ever.

Not now that she’s seen what I am beneath the mask.

I hold her like that for minutes that feel like hours. Her skin is damp, sticky against mine.

Her leg is still quivering where it’s hooked around my waist, and I feel her trying, quietly and carefully, to regain some semblance of composure.

Too late.

That part of her is gone.

She let me in. Worse, she wanted it.

The silence between us grows thicker. Heavier. I listen to her heartbeat against my chest, uneven and fast, like she’s still running, just internally now. Like the walls she built are still trying to hold, even as the foundation sinks.

I let her try.

I wait until she thinks I’m softened. Until she thinks I might say something tender. Something kind.

Then I murmur the sentence she won’t forget.

“Next time you want to test me,” I say, voice barely audible against her temple, “remember this night.”

Her breath catches. But she doesn’t pull away.

She just whispers, quiet and rough, “I will.”

I smile, slow and cold. Not because I’ve won. This isn’t a victory. It’s a shift. A tipping of the scales. She isn’t submitting. She’s adapting. And that’s more dangerous.

I lift her body slowly and carry her to the bedroom. Not the one guests see. Not the one decorated in neutral tones and sleek minimalism. The one beneath it.

The one only I use.

The one she’s not supposed to know about.

She says nothing as I lower her to the mattress. She watches me with those unreadable eyes, like she’s trying to catalog everything. Like she’s trying to stay two steps ahead even now, sore and sated and silenced.

She doesn’t ask for clothes.

I don’t offer them.

Her legs are open and lax. My mark is between them.

I go to the corner of the room and pour two glasses of water. One for me. One for her.

When I hand hers over, her fingers wrap around the glass like she’s grateful and ashamed in equal measure.

She drinks.

So do I.

For a moment, we don’t look at each other.

She sets the glass down, leans back, and closes her eyes.

I sit on the edge of the bed, watching the way her chest rises and falls.

She’s coming down from it.

But I’m not.

This night shifted something in me I don’t want to name. It isn’t just possession anymore. It isn’t just control. It’s need. And it’s catastrophic.

I should send her home.

I should set a boundary.

But I don’t.

I lay down beside her, not touching or speaking, and stare at the ceiling while the taste of her lingers in my mouth and the ache of what we just did wraps around my spine.

She doesn’t move away.

She falls asleep first. I watch her do it.

***

She should be gone by now.

She should have stumbled out of my bed with shaking legs and the remnants of shame smudged across her inner thighs. She should’ve hissed something cutting, pulled herself together, and run.

But she doesn’t.

She wakes with my hand already between her legs and lets me take her again without protest. Without resistance.

And this time, she moves with me.

It’s worse than surrender.

It’s acceptance.

By the time morning light crawls through the edge of the blackout curtains, Vera Calloway is stripped of everything except her pulse, and me.

I drag her to the marble floor. Her skin flattens to it, cold, shocked, as I open her legs again and bury myself with zero warning. No softness. No words.

Just my mouth on her throat and my hips driving into her like penance.

“You wanted this,” I growl into her jaw. “You asked for it.”

Her head rolls back.

She doesn’t say yes.

She doesn’t say no.

She moans long and low.

It echoes off the stone.

I fuck her pussy like I’m trying to weld our souls together, my cock buried so deep it feels like we’re one. Hands under her knees, I force her open—wide, trembling, utterly wrecked. The stretch is brutal, the angle unforgiving, her slick heat clenching around me like a vise.

She arches beneath me, fingers clawing the wall, nails raking my back hard enough to draw blood. I relish the sting, each scratch a mark of her desperation. I bare my teeth, biting her collarbone hard enough to bruise. She gasps—half pleasure, half surrender, her body yielding to mine.

I pull back, my lips grazing her ear, voice rough as gravel. “No one else gets this pussy. No one.”

She swallows, lips parted, blood-red and cracked from my earlier bites. “No one else,” she breathes.

“Again.”

“No one.”

“Say my fucking name.”

Her fingers dig into my shoulders, her breath stuttering. “Lucian.”

It’s a confession, a prayer, and it’s all I need.

I slow, just enough to feel her legs quake, her pussy pulsing around my cock. Then I brace her hips and drive in—deep, final, unrelenting. Her breath catches, eyes wide, shocked, and wanting, locked on mine.