The silence of the manor was a living thing. It pressed in on me from all sides, a constant reminder of my isolation. Days bled into one another, marked only by Edgar’s polite intrusions with meals and books I couldn’t focus on. Damien was a ghost. I knew he was in the house—I could feel his oppressive presence like a change in barometric pressure—but I rarely saw him. He was avoiding me. Or perhaps, he was simply busy ruling his shadow kingdom.
My anger had cooled, leaving behind a gnawing, desperate loneliness. I missed my world. I missed the familiar chaos of the city, the smell of my favorite coffee shop, the sound of my best friend Leah’s infectious laugh.
It was Leah I thought of most. She would be worried sick. Julian, for all his monstrous faults, had been a constant in my life for five years. My sudden disappearance would be ringing alarm bells.
One afternoon, while exploring the cavernous library—a room so vast it had two floors and a rolling ladder—I found it. Tucked away on a dusty shelf behind a row of leather-bound classics was an old, rotary-style telephone. It looked like a museum piece, but a faint dial tone hummed when I lifted the receiver.
My heart leaped.
My hands were trembling so badly I could barely dial the numbers I knew by heart. It rang once. Twice.
“Hello?” Leah’s voice, bright and familiar, flooded the line.
Tears sprang to my eyes. “Leah? It’s me.”
“Claire! Oh my god, where have you been? I’ve been calling you for days! Julian called me, rambling about some big fight. He sounded like a mess. Are you okay? You didn’t answer when I called back, I thought you’d been kidnapped by some billionaire with a dark past!”
Her joke hit so close to home I flinched. “Something like that. I’m okay, Leah. I’m just… staying with a friend for a while. I needed to get away.”
“A friend? Or a friend?” I could hear the suggestive wiggle in her eyebrows through the phone. “Who is he? Did you finally ditch Julian for someone better? Please tell me he’s devastatingly handsome and built like he was carved out of marble. And rich. Does he have a deep, sexy voice that makes you want to climb him like a tree?”
“Leah!” I hissed, my cheeks burning as I shot a paranoid glance at the library door. “It’s not like that.”
“Oh, come on, give me the details! Is he a good kisser? Better than Julian? God, that’s a low bar. Is the sex incredible? I want to live vicariously through you!”
“I am not having sex with…” My voice trailed off. I couldn’t even say his name.
“You’re holding out on me!” she squealed. “This is the best revenge. I love this for you.”
“I heard that,” a low voice rumbled from behind me.
I spun around, dropping the receiver as if it had burned me. It swung from its cord, Leah’s tinny, confused voice calling my name.
Damien stood in the doorway, his arms crossed over his chest. His golden eyes were narrowed, and he was looking at me with an expression of cold amusement. He must have moved with absolute silence.
“‘Climb him like a tree’?” he repeated, one corner of his mouth twitching upwards. He strode into the room and picked up the dangling receiver, his gaze never leaving mine.
“She’s busy,” he said into the phone, his voice pure ice. He then placed it back on the cradle with a decisive click.
“You have no right,” I whispered, my voice shaking with a fresh wave of fury and humiliation.
“I have every right,” he corrected me, his voice dangerously soft. He took a step closer, backing me against the bookshelf. “Rule number two, Claire. No contact. Or did the thought of climbing your ‘hot rebound’ make you forget?”
Before I could answer, his own phone buzzed. He answered it, his tone shifting instantly to that of the commanding Alpha. “What is it?... The elders again? Tell them I’ll be there in an hour. And tell them to prepare to be reminded of who is Alpha.” He hung up and gave me one last, hard look. “We are not finished with this conversation.”
He turned and strode out, leaving me trembling.
The brief, illicit contact with Leah had only made my homesickness worse. I had to talk to my grandfather. I had to hear his voice. Which meant I had to do the one thing I was dreading: I had to ask my jailer for permission.
I spent an hour pacing my room before I worked up the nerve. I searched the main floor, but Damien was nowhere to be found. Edgar, when I asked, informed me that Mr. Blackwood had returned and was in his private suite.
My heart hammered as I climbed the stairs to the west wing. I’d never been here before. The hallway was darker, more intimate. I found the door at the very end and knocked softly. There was no answer. I knocked again, louder this time. Still nothing.
I could hear the sound of running water from within. A shower. Hesitantly, I pushed the door. It swung open silently into a large, dimly lit sitting room. Beyond it, a bedroom, and through another open door, I could see a bathroom awash in steam.
“Damien?” I called out, my voice barely a whisper. I took a few tentative steps inside. “I need to ask you something.”
I stopped dead in the bathroom doorway.
He was standing under the spray of a massive, rainfall showerhead, his back to me. Water streamed down his body, sluicing over the broad, powerful muscles of his shoulders and back, tracing the hard line of his spine down to the narrow vee of his waist. His skin gleamed in the dim light, a canvas of taut muscle and raw, predatory power. I saw dark, swirling lines of a tattoo across his left shoulder blade, an intricate pattern of what looked like ancient runes I couldn't quite make out through the steam. He was bigger than I'd realized, more intimidating in his raw, natural state than he was in his expensive suits. The water cascaded over every ridge and plane of muscle, and I found myself tracking its path with a fascination that bordered on obsession.
My mouth went dry. My heart hammered so hard I could feel it in my throat. Heat flooded my face, my neck, spreading down my chest in a wave of mortification and something far more dangerous. Every coherent thought I had vanished, replaced by the shocking, illicit image of his naked form. I should leave. I should run. But my feet were rooted to the spot, my eyes betraying every ounce of sense I had left.
Then, he turned his head, and his golden eyes met mine in the reflection of the mirror. There was no surprise in them. Only a cool, knowing stillness, and something darker—a gleam of satisfaction at catching me so utterly transfixed. He held my gaze for a long, torturous moment before he reached out and turned the water off, the sudden silence deafening.
He didn't move to cover himself. He just stood there, water dripping from his black hair onto his shoulders, trailing down his chest in rivulets that my traitorous eyes followed. He was waiting. Testing me.
"I… I'm sorry," I stammered, my face on fire. I couldn't tear my eyes away, even as shame burned through me. "I knocked. I… I need to call my grandfather."
A slow, deliberate smirk touched his lips. It was the first time I had seen anything approaching a real smile on his face, and it was utterly devastating. "Is that all?" His voice was a low, knowing purr that sent a shiver down my spine.
I just nodded, unable to speak, unable to do anything but stand there like an idiot while my body staged a full-scale rebellion against my common sense.
He finally reached for a towel, but even that simple act was executed with a deliberate, languorous grace that felt designed to torment me. He wrapped it low around his hips—dangerously, indecently low—before stepping out of the shower. Water still clung to his skin, catching the light, and I watched a single droplet trace its way down the center of his chest, over the ridges of his abdomen, before disappearing beneath the towel.
He walked towards me, and I had to force myself to stand my ground, to not scurry away like a frightened rabbit. Every step brought him closer, the heat and the clean, masculine scent of him overwhelming my senses. He stopped just inches from me, so close I could feel the warmth radiating from his still-damp skin.
"I'll have Edgar arrange it," he said, his voice a low rumble that vibrated through me. Then he leaned in, his lips brushing against the shell of my ear, his breath hot against my sensitive skin. "Next time, Claire… just come in."
The whisper sent a bolt of electricity straight through me. My knees went weak. My breath caught. And from the satisfied gleam in his eyes as he pulled back, he knew exactly what he was doing to me.
He walked past me into the bedroom, leaving me frozen in the doorway, my heart trying to beat its way out of my chest, my legs trembling, and my entire body flushed with a heat that had nothing to do with the steam from the shower.
Later, when Edgar brought the phone to the library, my hands were still shaking.
“Claire, sweetheart, is that you?” my grandfather’s warm, frail voice was the kindest sound I had heard in days.
“Hi, Grandpa,” I said, fighting to keep my voice steady.
“Are you alright, my dear? I heard you and that Julian fellow had a falling out.”
“I’m fine, Grandpa. I’m… I’m staying with Julian’s brother for a while. He’s taking good care of me.” The words felt like stones in my mouth.
“The older one? Damien? Ah, he’s a good man. Strong. You’re in safe hands there.”
His simple, trusting words were my undoing. A wave of grief for my lost life, for my parents, for the simple, uncomplicated world I had been ripped from, washed over me. A single, hot tear escaped and traced a path down my cheek. I hastily wiped it away, but my voice was thick with emotion when I spoke again.
“Yes, Grandpa. I’m safe. I just… I just miss you.”
“I miss you too, sweetheart. You come visit your old grandpa soon, you hear?”
“I will,” I promised, a promise I had no idea if I could keep.
After I hung up, I stood there for a long moment, thinking I was alone. But when I finally turned, I saw him. Damien was standing in the shadows of the hallway, now fully dressed. He was leaning against the doorframe, watching me.
His face was unreadable, but his golden eyes were fixed on me with an unnerving intensity. He had heard the unshed tears in my voice. He had heard my lie about being ‘fine’.
He had seen my body’s reaction to his in the bathroom. And now, he had seen my soul’s vulnerability. In that moment, I felt completely and utterly stripped bare.