CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
“Wait…”
His baritone echoes across the empty hallway when I’m just three paces from his chambers. There’s no light around me other than the beams coming from a flickering sconce to the right. I turn around to face him. There he is in all his naked, inky glory.
To my surprise, he enters the hallway, cock swinging with each step. Yes, it’s late, but that doesn’t mean much in Lumina. Someone could happen to pass by at any moment. In complete silence, he reaches forward and grabs my wrist.
My gut reaction is instant. I won’t be treated like this—even by him. But I keep this protest to myself for the same reasons I told him nothing when I left the privacy of his chambers.
He pulls me back inside, our gazes locked together in the low light of his chambers. Confusion finds its way into my brain as he leans forward and places his lips against mine.
This is different. There is no demand in his eyes. No possessiveness. No anger. Sorrow, regret maybe, but this is a kiss that comes from a lover, not the tormentor I have come to know.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers, his gaze darting down to my mouth before shooting back up to my eyes. “I shouldn’t have encouraged you to leave. It’s not what I want.”
“It isn’t?” I choke, my voice oddly childish. “What do you want then?” I ask, trying to drop my voice an octave, which only makes me sound confrontational.
A smile of bitterness forms on his face. “To spend time with you. Alone. Come,” he requests, maintaining a loose grip around my wrist as he directs me back into his chambers.
I’m still tense because this could be an act. There could be a fucking electric chair that’s materialized for all I know.
But there is a tenderness here I’ve never seen before, even if it was fleeting. It wouldn’t be unreasonable to think I somehow crave his vulnerability more than his cruelty.
We move left through his chambers and enter a lavish bathroom I don’t recall. Blue Turkish tiles line the walls, a porcelain vanity framed by an ornate mirror that extends across the entire wall. To the left is a large claw-foot bathtub, but it’s the shower to our right that he leads us towards. There’s no screen or glass—simply a showerhead extending from the roof.
It’s strange I’ve never been in here before, but Damien’s chambers seem to change daily, rooms swapped in and out and special nooks and crannies appearing and disappearing at will. If there’s a spell for this, to shift and change entire rooms, I need it.
There’s a whole shelf of candles next to the shower area. Damien reaches for the faucet and turns. Hot water gushes from the showerhead above, threads of steam begin to rise up in the air from the floor.
I stand there in amazement. Sure, dim illumination is mysterious and hot and all, but greater light is sinfully sexy. I can see every ridge of those abs, make out every intricate detail of his tattoos. Every defined muscle along his arms, his broad chest, and shoulders. His body, scarred as it is, is a work of art.
“What are you waiting for?” His question interrupts my daydreaming.
I smile in embarrassment and shrug off my coat, joining him under the stream of water.
After what I’ve just been through, it’s fucking bliss.
The Professor leans right to a separate shelf, returning with a purple vial in hand. He tips it, similarly violet liquid spilling onto his hand.
“Come.”
He spins me around, his big hands rubbing the liquid over my hips in circles, working over my thighs and up my back. I sigh, keeping my eyes shut as the scent of lavender and almond start to lace the air.
The liquid lathers as Damien works it over my entire body, his chest bumping into my upper back.
He speaks as he works. “Your skin is so smooth, my pet, so delicate,” he praises.
“Thank you.”
“I confess I might have gotten carried away tonight.” His palms glide up my back. “Every step of the process is crucial, but that doesn’t mean I enjoy them equally.”
“You sure seemed like you were enjoying yourself. Is it my suffering that turns you on?”
A low murmur. “Suffering is essential, my pet. In life. Here. There is no joy to be found without suffering as its foil. They are intertwined, as is pleasure and pain, and that, that nexus, is what is required for ascension, to reach the heights of magical possibility.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
His hand stops for a moment. “Yes,” he confesses, “but you enjoyed it too, didn’t you, being powerless?”
I’m glad he can’t see the wickedness in my smile. “A little,” I admit.
He raises his arm up and gathers my hair together. Moving it out of his way, he kisses the back of my neck, lips lingering where my shoulder blades meet.
“So fine,” he groans, leaving a trail of kisses down the side of my neck. I tilt my head back, chills moving up and down my spine. He reaches for the vial again before focusing on the front of my body. His hands land on my belly and move in a clockwise motion, leaving circles of foam over my skin. “You must be quite tender.”
I’m not sure he’s ever acknowledged my pain in this way before. “I am,” I tell him. “But I’ll heal.”
“Would you like me to stop?”
“No,” I say, quite determined. “You have no idea how good this feels.”
“It can get better,” he implies, his right hand sliding down my crotch. His fingers reach my inner thigh. They stop and move over to my sex before coming to an abrupt halt. “But not tonight.”
Normally, this would result in disappointment, but I’m enjoying this intimacy. I spin back around to face him, reaching for the vial. “My turn,” I tell him.
He watches me as I pour out the liquid, returning the vial to its position on the shelf. I rub my hands together and admire his large, muscular frame. I place my hands over his stomach and keep them parallel to each other as I work the liquid to a lather. “I never thought I’d find this at Lumina.”
“What is that, my pet?” he whispers.
“Myself.”
Part of me regrets this confession but fuck it. We’re sharing, aren’t we?
“What did you expect to find?” he asks, his peaceful expression encouraging me to continue.
“More of what I had back home, I guess. That cold indifference, hostility, and don’t get me wrong, I see it here, but with you…in our sessions…I see something greater. I’ve found parts of myself here I never believed were possible, that I could be capable of…” I lose my train of thought.
“Mmm,” he murmurs. He snakes his arms around my lower back, this simple move immobilizing me. I’m left with my own arms crossed over his stomach. “You have embraced what most would dare not explore or acknowledge. You saw it with your friend, how dark desires can run, but by drawing to them, welcoming them, they become not a weakness, but a strength—a strength you will need for what is to come.
“And what is that?”
“War.”
He cups the skin of my lower back and lets his hands roam downward. A gentle squeeze of my ass cheeks later, I am exhaling softly over his chest. The tip of my tongue licks my lower lip. I savor the sensation, his strong embrace intensifying this wonderful feeling of safety.
He turns and shuts off the faucet, the last of the water trailing down his body. He walks past me to a stack of rolled-up towels, passing one to me and using the other to dry himself off.
Equally dry, I follow him back out into his chambers.
“I want you to lie down,” he says.
But there isn’t the usual inflection of a command here. No, this is more like a request, which makes it even easier to oblige.
I lie on my back on the bed, a few rogue droplets dotting my skin. Damien gathers my hair together and places it over my shoulder.
He leans over the side of the bed to a drawer and returns with another vial, this one fat and round and golden.
He pours the liquid out, rubbing it in his hands and letting its scent flow through the room. I smell rosewood and something intangible—sweet.
His warm hands land on my stomach. They spread across my skin slowly, the liquid heating wherever it goes.
I’ve never felt so cared for, so…pampered? Is that the word for it? It wasn’t so long ago this man was mercilessly thrashing my ass, but now? His whole demeanor has shifted, which makes me think he is capable of more—of affection and mutual understanding.
Love.
He kneads his thumbs into my muscles and makes his way upwards. He stops just an inch from my breasts, his gaze lingering.
“What were my parents like?” I ask. It’s not a premeditated question, but the time feels right.
It’s a moment before the Professor answers, hands sweeping over the underside of my breasts, a trail of warmth in their wake. “You saw them in the photograph on my dresser, I presume?”
Shit. I knew they looked familiar. So they were what? Besties with him?
This adds a whole new element to things.
They were close. What did they share?
“Did Mortis kill them, while you were hunting him?”
The Professor’s hands stop moving. “No. Your parents were steadfast, devoted…they never wanted a child, but you were a happy accident—one that would ultimately come to end them.”
My throat has gone tight. “How?”
“Your arrival put into motion a series of events that ultimately led to them leaving the Umbral Brotherhood. Without the Brotherhood’s protection, they were left open and vulnerable to certain entities and individuals they’d punished during their time on the job.”
I swallow hard before speaking. “Tell me what happened. I want to hear it.”
He nods, hands working back downwards over my ribs. “There is a faction, the Sable Syndicate, who like to interfere with inais politics, in addition to running Europe’s largest prostitution ring. The petrification spell I used on you tonight…I’m sure you could imagine how that might factor into their enterprise.
“But your parents? They took a particular interest in this syndicate over the years, but without the Brotherhood’s protection, the syndicate saw a chance for retribution, so they took you.”
“I was taken?”
“You were just a baby, but yes. Your parents, on the orders of the syndicate, came after you knowing full well they were walking into a trap, walking to their death. And that is what they found, but not before teleporting you to your grandmother—a spell of which such distance and power would have weakened them considerably.”
I had no idea about any of this. Gran never said a thing about it.
“As your father lay there dying next to your mother, already deceased, the two of them surrounded by countless syndicate members they’d taken with them, he reached out to me.”
“How?”
“Telepathically. We created this connection back in our days at the Academy, much like you and your friends have now. He told me to watch you, to protect you, to guide you when you came of age, and then he passed.”
The fuck. It’s a lot to take in. “But this, what we are doing together…”
“You’re the sole offspring of one of the most powerful magical duos of all time. They knew what you could become.”
I can’t regulate my thoughts. “Did they know what it would require?” A darker thread emerging. “Did they ask you to do it, to train me?”
Damien places a finger on my lips. “Hush now. It does no good to dwell on such things, what they would and would not have wanted for you.”
But I can’t imagine it was this, the deviant acts I’ve performed with the man my father considered a friend. What would he say about what the Professor has done to his daughter, about the taboo acts that have been performed in this very room?
Darkwood continues. “I spent the following years systematically dismantling the Sable Syndicate myself. I started with the pimps and worked my way up, wreaking death until I reached the very top, until there was no one left. I made sure there were no bloodlines, not a single trace of the syndicate that could ever be revived. I owed your parents that much.”
“What about your parents?” I ask, knowing this is pushing far deeper into his personal life than we have ever been before. “Are they still alive?”
He looks away, resigned, before turning back to me. “I was an orphan juggled from home to home until the Brotherhood found me, so I know all about inais, my pet.” His voice is deeper than usual. “I have suffered, suffering which only increased when I started training with the Brotherhood, because there is little compassion or humanity to be found in an organization so deep in the shadows. And maybe it’s there where that final shred of it was snuffed out, but I am stronger for it. I am stronger for what is to come.”
“And what’s that?” I ask tentatively.
He draws back. “Enough of such matters for now. You will meet me back here tomorrow for one of the most challenging trials of all. You will need all your strength, for tomorrow your body may well be broken beyond all comprehension.”
Which doesn’t sound good.
“But for now,” he says, his hands working over my flesh again, “allow me to salve you, a respite.”
It sounds so final, but I steel myself and enjoy at least this small moment of relaxation.
Tomorrow is a new day.
Let him bring his worst then.