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Turning away from him, I made a mental note to come back here, to dig through this room and its cursed treasures. Because if Nash had skeletons, I'd be the one rattling their bones.
I kept quiet about the voices, the visions—hell, who'd believe me anyway? It wasn't exactly first-date conversation material: 'Hey, touched a creepy-ass relic, now I'm hearing things. Pass the wine?'
As we retraced our steps back up the staircase, the image of the ghostly woman danced at the edge of my vision. Her spectral form lingered in my mind, a phantom whisper that refused to be silenced. What the hell did she want? And why did it feel like she was screaming at me without making a sound?
"Are you alright?" Nash's voice cut through my spiraling thoughts.
"Fine," I lied smoothly, as fine as one could be when your reality included conversing with dead best friends and brooding stalkers. "Just great."
But as we emerged from the hidden passage, sealing away the darkness below, I couldn't shake the feeling that Aria was trying to tell me something crucial. Like a puzzle piece that would make sense of this whole fucked-up picture.
And I'd be damned if I wasn't going to figure it out.
Chapter 31
Nash
The damp chill of the evening seeped through the cracks in the centuries-old mansion as I led Celeste back to her room. My strides were measured, the sound of my boots against the aged wood flooring mirroring the steady throb of hunger that pulsed just beneath my skin. She was a fucking enigma—wrapped only in a towel, her beautifully dark eyes wide with a mixture of fear and defiance.
"Keep moving," I growled, unable to shake the image of her delicate fingers tracing the spines of forbidden books in the study. What the hell was she thinking, snooping around like that? Didn't she understand the danger she was putting herself in? Or was it that she simply didn't give a damn?
I could sense the shiver that ran through her as we approached her door, the air between us charged with a tension that was both infuriating and intoxicating. "What are you doing to me?" she whispered, more to herself than to me, but I heard it—the raw vulnerability in her voice that clashed with the edge of her words.
"Teaching you a lesson," I said, my tone laced with a darkness that bordered on pleasure. The thought of bending her will to mine, of marking her dark skin with reminders of who held the power between us—it was enough to set my senses on fire.
She stopped abruptly, turning to face me with that rebellious spark in her eyes. "I'm not some plaything for you to control, Nash."
"Damn right you're not," I shot back, my gaze locking onto hers. "You're a trespasser in my domain. And for that, sweetheart, there are fucking consequences." I felt the beast within coil tightly, the part of me that craved her submission, her pain, her pleasure—all twisted up in one maddening dance.
"Consequences," she echoed, a note of challenge in her voice that made the corner of my mouth twitch into a smirk. Little did she know, the game had just begun. And I wasn't one to lose.
The click of the door lock was a goddamn symphony to my ears—a prelude to the lesson I was about to impart. In the dim light of the corridor, her eyes flickered with the defiance I'd come to savor like a rare vintage.
"Kneel," I commanded, my voice an iron fist wrapped in velvet. It wasn't a request, it was an order from the depths of the darkness that stirred within me, a piece of the night itself.
For a moment, she hesitated, her jaw clenching as if to defy gravity and my will along with it. But then, slowly, she bent her knees, the towel draped around her body whispering against her skin like some twisted sort of surrender. Celeste's compliance was a visceral hit, a rush that shot straight through my veins, hotter than any prey's blood.
"Chin up, look at me," I growled, needing to see every flicker of emotion dancing across her face. Her gaze met mine, and it was like staring into the heart of a storm—wild, unpredictable, fucking beautiful. I held her there, in that moment where the world fell away and it was just predator and prey, caught in a dance as old as time itself.
"Good girl," I murmured, though the words tasted sour in my mouth. This wasn't tenderness, this was ownership. The beast inside me prowled closer to the surface, craving the taste of her fear mingled with desire. And God help me, I wanted to drown in that intoxicating blend, to pull her into the abyss where I reigned supreme.
In that instant, with her on her knees and me standing over her, I was more than some high-society vigilante—I was the dark incarnate, her tormentor and her salvation, all rolled into one.
The silence that followed was a living thing, a beast that thrived in the spaces between breaths. I watched as she swallowed, her throat working around the lump of fear and anticipation. Her eyes never left mine, even as I raised my hand, my palm stinging with the promise of what was to come.
The slap was an exclamation mark in the silence, a sharp report that bounced off the walls and sealed my dominance. Celeste's head whipped to the side, dark locks trailing like flames. Her hand flew to her cheek, the red imprint of my fingers blossoming on her skin.
"Fuck, Nash..." she whispered through a grin, her voice a mix of shock and something darker, something that matched the twisted heat in my gut.
"Things that aren't yours—you don't touch them," I hissed, the words laced with venom. "You understand me, Celeste? You're playing with fucking fire here."
I stalked over to the edge of the bed, the predator inside me pacing beneath my skin. Sitting down, I planted my feet firmly on the ground, every inch of me radiating control. I watched her, the way her eyes flickered with hurt, defiance, and a hint of arousal that she couldn't hide from me. It was that response that fueled my hunger, a sadistic craving that clawed at my insides, demanding more.
"Look at you," I sneered, my gaze raking over her form. "So goddamn defiant, even now. But you'll learn, Celeste. One way or another, you'll fucking learn."
This room, this mansion in the heart of Italy—it was my domain, my rules. Betrayal wasn't something I took lightly; I'd been on the receiving end too many times. And revenge? It ran in my blood, hotter than the thirst for the vein.
"Remember who you belong to," I growled, fighting the urge to break, to claim. My moral code, the lines I drew in the sand—they were all that kept me from becoming the very monster I hunted in the night. But damn it all if she didn't make me want to cross every one of those lines, to sink into the darkness where only pleasure and pain existed.
