Strong hands wrap around me, carrying me, holding me.
I’m about to fall into a feeling, something I’ve never experienced before. Something that I had in my little girl fantasies.
But then, my wrists are held above my head in a steel-like hold. My eyes snap open and I find a shadowy figure hovering over me, pinning me to the mattress.
It’s dark, but I can make out the contours of his face.
Those hard features and that calm façade. Those intense eyes and the set of his jaw.
My dark stranger. The killer. The tormentor.
Adrian.
My body goes completely slack underneath him as he kicks my legs apart with his knee. His free hand tears my underwear and then he slams inside me with a feral force. I cry out, my back arching off the bed.
He rams into me as if he’s intent on hurting me, as if he’s punishing me with every ruthless thrust. His groin slaps against my flesh with the savage power of his hips, filling the air with ominous intention and crashing against my chest.
“You like that, don’t you, Lia?” His voice is like velvet but with a hidden undertone. “You like being taken hard like a dirty little slut.”
I shake my head, opening my mouth to speak, but he flattens a palm over it, muffling my words.
“Yes, you do. You were touching yourself to me just now. Look at how your cunt is strangling my dick.”
I shake my head again, tears stinging my eyes. I refuse to think I’m that type of person. I refuse to think of myself as someone who gets off on such perverse acts.
But with every word out of his sinful mouth, my core tingles and my head turns dizzy. Being immobilized like this adds a scary type of anticipation. Any sounds I make come out muffled, haunting.
But he doesn’t release me.
If anything, his hold turns rigid and his rhythm takes on a feral momentum. He fucks me like he’s owned me since the moment we met. Like he’s taking what was his all along.
My walls clench and an electric shock starts in my core and shoots all the way to my spine before submerging my entire body.
“Mmm…” I moan.
“There.” Dark sadism coats his words. “Your true colors are showing. You like being taken and owned. You like being fucked like it’s your first and last. That’s what you strive to feel on the stage, too, isn’t it?” He leans down and traps the lobe of my ear between his teeth and whispers hot words, “To completely let go.”
My back arches off the bed in preparation for the orgasm.
The detonating pleasure is within my grasp. Just a little more and I’m about to reach it.
I startle awake.
For a second, I don’t know what just happened. Adrian isn’t on top of me and my fingers are rubbing against my aching pussy.
Holy shit.
Was that…a dream?
My hair sticks to my temples with sweat, and my heart beats so erratically, I’m surprised it doesn’t leap out of my chest.
It’s not news that my dreams are visceral. I used to hallucinate about them, too. That’s why I had to come up with a coping mechanism and test my pain threshold to know if they were real or not.
My cheeks heat at the fact that I was touching myself to that dream.
I remove my hand from my most intimate part with a jerk, the act shaming me to my bones.
“It must be uncomfortable to stop right before an orgasm.”
I freeze, my eyes widening as I slowly turn my head to the side. There’s no way in hell what I heard is correct. It must be some play of my imagination. Maybe I’m associating this with my dream.
Maybe I’m trapped in that dream again.
Because nothing could explain the scene in front of me.
Adrian sits on the chair at my vanity, beside the bed, his legs crossed at the ankles. His coat is lying on the armrest and both of his shirtsleeves are rolled to his elbows, revealing taut forearms fully covered with black ink.
Soft morning light comes from the balcony, but it doesn’t make his features less harsh or consuming. It takes nothing away from the face I was just dreaming about.
He taps his index finger on his thigh at a moderate pace. The look in his eyes is dark, focused, and says a thousand words without him having to utter a sound.
But no, this isn’t real.
I reach a hand down and pinch my thigh. Pain explodes on my skin and I wince.
Adrian doesn’t disappear.
Oh, God. Why is he not disappearing?
His gaze zeroes in on my hand that’s still on my thigh and something passes in it before he slides it back to my face.
“What are you doing here?” My voice is barely a whisper while I struggle to process the scene.
“I drove you home after you got drunk last night.”
I sit up and groan when a headache nearly splits my temples open. Memories of last night slowly filter back in, like I’m watching myself through a snow globe.
My eyes widen.
I kissed him.
Well, he kissed me, but I kissed him back. Then we got into his car, and then…black.
I stare at myself under the duvet, and I’m mortified to find that I’m in only my leotard and its snaps are open, revealing my aching pussy. My clothes are scattered by the side of the bed.
Pulling the cover to my chin, I fight the heat in my cheeks as my gaze flits back to him.
Adrian. The devil who found his way into my apartment.
He remains calm—nonchalant, even—as if he didn’t just witness me in that state or watch me orgasm.
I pause, my heart thundering.
Wait.
He watched me orgasm? That was also a dream—it must’ve been. There’s no way in hell I orgasmed in front of him.
Right?
“You were here all along?” I ask cautiously, almost fearfully.
“Correct.”
“How did you get in?”
“You told me the code.”
Why can’t I remember that? And why the hell did I get drunk in the first place? I already know why—to loosen up, but was it worth this price?
“Did something else happen?”
He raises a brow. “Such as?”
“Like… Like…”
“Asking me to fuck you and touching yourself to orgasm when I didn’t?”
I can feel the color drain from my face, and I wish I could become one with the floor.
Adrian rises to his feet and my head snaps up when he stands beside me. “Now that you’re not drunk, I can oblige.”
“I didn’t mean it,” I blurt.
“Didn’t mean it?”
“Yes, those words were meaningless.”
“Do you often touch yourself and orgasm to meaningless words, Lia?” He takes my hand in his, the same one that was between my legs, and lifts it to his face.
Shame heats my cheeks when he inhales my scent deeply into his lungs. “Isn’t that the ultimate contradiction?”
I pull my hand from his, fast and rushed, as if I’m saving it from catching fire.
His arm falls to his side with infinite carelessness, but he doesn’t move, doesn’t leave. He remains there, watching, looming.
My feelings disperse all over the place; my heart is still buzzing, thundering, with nothing to anchor it in its ribcage.
“I don’t want this,” I mutter.
“Seems that the drunk you is more honest than the sober you.”
“Are you going to make me participate in sexual activities with you?”
“Make you?” he repeats, slight amusement shining in his eyes. “Do you remember what I said last night?”
I rack my brain over what he might have mentioned, and my cheeks burn further with every recollection of my lustful acts. I can’t believe I asked him if he’d fuck me.
God, I nearly begged him for it.
Where was my survival perimeter? If he’d complied, would I have let him screw me?
I shoo the answer to that question away. I really don’t want to know what I would’ve done in that situation.
“Do you remember?” he insists with that calm that I don’t believe for a second. This man is able to wreck lives without blinking an eye.
I nod.
“Use your words, Lia.”
“I remember,” I murmur.
“What did I say?”
“You’re not a rapist.”
“Correct. What else did I say?”
I stare at him, confused.
“After that, what did I say? I know you remember.”
“That you’d deal with me in the morning.” The words leave my mouth in a whisper.
“It’s morning.” He grabs the blanket and I tighten my hold around it. If I let it go, if I fall into his carefully spun web, I’ll never find a way out.
I can smell the scent of his luring, the way he’s carefully bringing me into the midst of his lethal world. First, I saw him kill someone in cold blood, then he allowed me to leave, but even that was calculated. It was a ploy to have me think about him all week long, looking under my bed and out my windows. Locking my doors and checking them several times after. Staring through my damn rear-view mirror, searching for his shadow.
Appearing during a private rehearsal was his way of telling me that he can get anywhere he wants. Find me anywhere I go.
The dinner was also a calculated move to have me loosen up so he could get closer without scaring me shitless. To show me that he’s a normal man who can have dinners and dates.
But there’s nothing normal about him. I never thought he was normal—and I never will. This man is the type who will, without any hesitation, go after what he wants.
And right now, that’s me.
My chin trembles as I keep my solid hold on the blanket. I’m not a fool, I know he could yank it away at any second. Not only is he twice my size, he’s also a killer, someone who’s used to brute force while I’m accustomed to elegance and finesse.
“Did you do all that to fuck me?” I murmur.
“All that?”
“Giving me time. The dinner, the kiss. Not touching me when I was drunk?”
“The dinner was, as I said, to get to know you. The kiss was because I wanted to taste your lips. I didn’t touch you when you were drunk, because I need you present when I’m fucking you. As for your first question, I gave you time to let you cope with the fact that I’m coming for you.”
“I thought you let me go.”
“You’re smart enough to not believe that. During the entire week, you were jumpy, waiting, biding your time until I came back into your life again.”
“You…you were watching me?”
“Yes.”
“Are you a stalker?”
“I’m worse, Lenochka, but you already knew that when you touched yourself, showing me a side of you no one has seen.”
“I wasn’t lucid enough to realize what I was doing.” My cheeks heat even as I say the words.
He tsks and I freeze as a muscle ticks in his jaw. “Don’t lie. Not to me.”
My knuckles hurt from how much I’m clenching my fists and I can feel my insides dissolving into itself. There’s nothing, absolutely nothing, I can do that will stop him.
If I fight, he’ll overpower me.
If I try to escape, he’ll catch me and probably hurt me.
My only possible option to not get hurt is to play into his hand, to let him have his way and hope that he’ll leave me in peace. That after he gets me, he’ll realize, like everyone else has, that I’m not a keeper.
I’m a diamond others admire from afar, but once they dig into it, all they find is black stone.
Adrian tugs on the blanket. “Let go.”
I dig my nails into it, self-conscious about releasing my only lifeline.
“I’m not going to fuck you.” He pauses. “Yet.”
That doesn’t relieve me as much as it should. If anything, it creates a hollow pit at the bottom of my stomach.
I wish he’d fuck me and get it over with. And since I’m not drunk, I can’t ask that of him.
So I do the one thing I can in my situation.
I let go.
