Chapter 3 #2
I couldn’t breathe. My lungs were tight bands.
I pushed away from the wall and bolted from the darkness, back into a gallery of shimmering light.
This time, the reflections showed fragments of him.
A sliver of his shoulder in one pane. The line of his jaw in another.
As I ran, they assembled piece by piece, until it felt like he was running beside me in a hundred broken mirrors.
The corridor ended abruptly in a smooth, curved wall of clear quartz.
A cul-de-sac. I whirled, ready to double back, but the opening I’d come through was gone, replaced by a solid facet of rose-colored crystal.
Trapped. I spun again, palms flat against the cool, clear wall at my back, searching for a seam, a crack, anything.
There was nothing. Just my own wide-eyed reflection, multiplied in the depths of the quartz, and the sound of my ragged breath.
Then, the warmth. It seeped into my back first, a solid heat that cut through the chamber’s chill.
He didn’t grab me. He didn’t slam me against the wall.
He simply stepped into the space behind me, his body aligning with mine until every line of him was a shield against the shifting prison.
His chest pressed against my shoulder blades.
His thighs framed the backs of mine. I felt the hard plane of his stomach against the base of my spine.
I went utterly still. His hands came up, not to touch me, but to rest on the crystal wall on either side of my head, caging me in without restraint.
His breath stirred the hair at my temple.
“See?” he murmured, his voice a low vibration I felt through my bones. “Here.”
Here. Not lost in the maze. Not fractured in the glass.
Here, with the solid, unyielding pressure of him at my back, holding the chaos at bay.
The panic didn’t vanish; it transformed.
It melted into a breathless, vibrating tension that held me suspended.
My heartbeat slowed from a frantic sprint to a heavy, throbbing drumbeat.
The thrill won, flooding my veins, settling hot and low in my belly.
I leaned back. Just an inch. A surrender so slight it was almost imperceptible.
But he felt it. A soft exhale ghosted over my skin.
One of his hands left the wall. His fingers brushed the side of my neck, a touch so light it was barely there, just tracing the frantic pulse beneath my jaw.
His thumb stroked once, down the column of my throat.
“There’s nothing in this house that can hurt you unless you ask it to,” he said, his lips now dangerously close to my ear.
“And you, Anna Taylor, are not asking for pain. You’re asking for an anchor. ”
His words unraveled the last of my resistance.
My head fell back against his shoulder, a silent admission.
In the crystal before us, I watched it happen—my reflection going pliant against his, my eyes closing, my lips parting on a shaky breath I couldn’t hold back.
His arm slid around my waist, pulling me firmly back against the entire length of him.
I felt all of him—the hard proof of his desire pressed against the curve of my ass, the steady beat of his heart against my spine.
The maze was gone. There was only this corner, this wall, this man.
And the terrifying, thrilling knowledge that I had stopped running.
His hand slid from my waist, turning me in the tight space between his body and the crystal wall.
There was no question in the movement, no pause for permission.
My back met cool, smooth quartz. His hands came up to frame my face, his thumbs brushing my cheeks.
His eyes were dark, focused, the storm in them perfectly still.
“Here,” he said again, the word a rough command.
Then his mouth was on mine. It wasn’t gentle.
It was a desperate, consuming press of lips and teeth and tongue, an anchor thrown into the raging sea of my fear.
He kissed me like he was starving, like he could devour every phantom future reflected in the glass and leave only this solid, present truth.
I gasped into it, my hands flying up to clutch at the front of his shirt, fisting the soft cotton.
I kissed him back with everything I had—all the panic, all the thrill, all the wanting I’d been running from.
My tongue met his, a hot, slick slide that sent a jolt straight to my core.
One of his hands dropped, gripping my hip hard enough to bruise, pulling me flush against him.
I felt the rigid length of his cock straining against his trousers, pressing into my belly.
A low groan vibrated from his chest into mine.
The crystal around us began to hum, a low, resonant frequency that matched the pounding of my blood.
The chaotic, shifting reflections in the walls started to solidify, sharpening into clear, stable images of us—just us, tangled against the wall, his broad back blocking out the world.
He broke the kiss, breathing harshly, his forehead resting against mine.
“Look,” he rasped, nodding to the wall beside us.
I turned my head. A hundred Annas looked back, but they weren’t fracturing anymore.
Each one was here, now, pinned under Virgil’s hands, her lips swollen, her eyes dazed with desire.
The maze was gone. The chamber had transformed into a single, beautiful room of solid, luminous quartz.
The clarity was shocking. It left me naked.
His mouth found my neck, open-mouthed kisses and sharp nips along the sensitive skin.
“You feel it,” he muttered against my pulse. “What you do. You make it real.”