Page 64 of Take Me Darkly

I drove into her slowly, watching her eyes go wide before slipping shut as her body stretched around my full length. The sounds through the stone, the throbbing bass of the club, the entire world outside this room vanished entirely.

There was only the heat.

Only the fire.

Only her.

Chapter Nineteen

Anton

* * *

I was awake at first light, a habit carved deep into my routine since Serena began sleeping in my bed. Some mornings I lay awake in the dark, watching the slow, rhythmic rise and fall of her shoulders, my mind cataloging risk assessments before the rest of Manhattan even stirred. I worried about her with a quiet, fierce intensity she didn’t fully realize. But this morning was different. The pressure in my chest wasn’t dread—it was dark, expectant anticipation.

I slipped out from beneath the sheets, careful not to break her sleep. She turned onto her stomach, one bare arm reaching out to claim the space I’d vacated. The linen had fallen to her hips, and the early dawn light filtering through the stained glass threw ribbons of deep sapphire and rose across the delicate curve of her spine. I stood motionless for a long beat, taking her in, before cold logic reminded me that I had a timeline to keep.

She’d lost weight since I brought her from Lucca. It wasn’t drastic enough for an outsider to notice, but I tracked every single detail of her body. I saw the faint hollows beneath her cheekbones. She smiled, occasionally even laughed, but the sound carried a fragile edge that tore at my gut.

The fire was still in her. I refused to believe otherwise. But it was banked low, smoldering beneath too much grief and uncertainty. She wasn’t meant to live like this, contained and protected. I knew what that kind of captivity did to a person because I had lived it myself. It may have been a different life, but the memory of it sat cold and permanent in my chest. She deserved more than just safety. She deserved her life back regardless of how different it may look now.

I pulled on jeans and a black henley, then walked out to the kitchen. While the coffee brewed, I pulled up our overnight security grid. Twenty-four hours clean. Zeke’s team had logged routine perimeter sweeps with zero anomalies. In D.C., Veronica Black and Devon Wilkshire were still feeding false narratives to the media, holding the vultures at bay, but Devon had been blunt about the strategy. This was a temporary pressure valve, not a permanent solution.

As for the Serpent’s Disciples, there had been nothing but silence for three weeks—no new communications, no movement that Hale Fulton’s contacts could trace, and no flagged activity near known associates of Cade Rosenberg. He had apparently evaporated off the face of the earth along with any paper trail connecting him to the organization. I’d sat with Zeke twice this week trying to decide what that silence meant, and his read was that it was strategic. Organizations like the Disciples didn’t go quiet because they’d lost interest. They went quiet because they were weighing their next course of action.

He was right, and I knew it in the same gut-level way I knew most things that mattered. You didn’t get to where I was by misreading the room. But static silence made it far too easy to slip into a dangerous sense of comfort.

I poured the coffee and carried both mugs back toward the bedroom. She hadn’t shifted, her hand still resting on my side of the mattress.

“Serena.”

She didn’t move.

I set her mug on the nightstand and sat on the edge of the bed, the mattress giving way under my weight. She let out a soft, adorable murmur of protest.

“I know you’re awake, princess.”

One eye opened a fraction, then closed tight.

“That’s a lie,” she muttered into the pillow. “I’m unconscious.”

“Your powers of unconscious debate are incredible.”

“Thank you.” She dragged the comforter up over her head. “Come back in an hour.”

I looked at the blanketed mound, then lifted the corner just enough to slip the steaming mug beneath it. “I brought you something.”

A moment passed, then a slender, pale hand emerged, feeling blindly until her fingers wrapped around the ceramic. She pulled it under, sat up, and shoved her dark hair out of her face.

“This is blatant manipulation,” she declared, taking a sip.

“It’s coffee.”

“That’s what manipulators say.”

Sleepy Serena was equal parts sexy and adorable. The corners of my mouth twitched as I fought back a smile.

“I have a surprise for you today. I need you ready in the next forty-five minutes.”