Chapter 4
I woke in my own bed, the sheets tangled around my legs.
The memory of the crystal chamber was a physical imprint—a deep, pleasant ache between my thighs, the ghost of his hands on my skin.
But beneath it, a cold, hard knot of anxiety had taken root.
Responsibility. The word echoed in the quiet room.
The house was silent. Not just quiet, but holding its breath.
Yesterday’s storm had passed, leaving this eerie, expectant calm.
I couldn’t stay still. I pulled on a pair of soft cotton shorts and a tank top, padding barefoot out of my room.
The hallway stretched, dark wood and darker shadows.
My mind replayed it all—the way the house had used me, the way Virgil had looked at me afterward, hollowed out and yet somehow more solid.
I’d wanted him. I’d chosen it. But the fear was still there, a creature with sharp claws living just under my ribs.
A soft, golden light beckoned from the end of a corridor I hadn’t noticed before.
It spilled from a slightly ajar door of polished ebony.
The air carried a scent—sandalwood, clean and sharp, layered with something older, like rain on forgotten pages.
I pushed the door open. The room was small, a cocoon of deep blue velvet draping the walls and ceiling.
A single candle burned low on an iron stand, its flame the only source of light.
And there, in a low, wingback armchair the color of midnight, sat Virgil.
He looked up as I entered. The candlelight carved planes into his face, softening the usual sharpness.
He wore simple black trousers and a grey linen shirt, the sleeves rolled to his elbows.
His hands rested on the arms of the chair, fingers tapping once, a silent metronome.
“Anna,” he said. His voice was calm, a steady anchor in the velvet gloom.
“The house showed me your wakefulness. Your… unrest.”
I hovered in the doorway. “I didn’t know this room was here.”
“It wasn’t. Until you needed it to be.” He gestured to a plush, sapphire-colored cushion on the floor before him. “Come.”
It wasn’t a request. It was an offer. My pulse quickened.
I stepped inside, the thick carpet muffling my footsteps.
The door sighed shut behind me, not with a click, but a soft, final breath.
I knelt on the cushion, the velvet nap soft against my bare knees.
I had to look up at him. He studied me, his gaze tracing the lines of tension he must have seen in my neck, my shoulders.
“The fear is a loop,” he said, his voice low.
“It feeds on itself. You must learn to break the circuit.”
“How?” The word came out a whisper. “By anchoring yourself in something real. Something you can feel, right now.” He leaned forward, his movements deliberate. “Your mind will try to run. To the past, to the future, to shadows. Your body is here. In this room. With me.”
His hands came to rest on my shoulders. The heat of his palms seeped through the thin cotton of my tank top. I flinched, a tiny, involuntary jerk. “Breathe,” he commanded, soft but firm. “And focus. Only on the sensation. The pressure. The heat. Nothing else exists.”
His thumbs found the knot of tension at the base of my neck.
He pressed, a firm, insistent circle. A low groan escaped me, part pain, part shocking relief.
He worked the muscle, his fingers knowing and strong.
The anxiety in my chest loosened its grip, just a fraction.
“That’s it,” he murmured, his breath stirring the hair at my temple. “Let it go. Give it to my hands.”
I tried. I focused on the drag of his calloused fingertips over my skin, the delicious ache as he kneaded the tightness away.
My head dropped forward, my eyes closing.
For a few moments, there was only this: the scent of sandalwood, the whisper of the flame, the solid, warm reality of his touch.
Then, without warning, the memory surged.
Dark water. Icy, choking, filling my mouth and nose.
The lake when I was fourteen, the canoe tipping, the world turning upside down into silent, suffocating green.
My lungs screaming. A gasp ripped from my throat.
My eyes flew open, but I didn’t see the velvet room.
I saw the murky deep. I felt the cold. The room around me seemed to flood with it, the shadows rising like a tide, the air turning thick and frigid.
I started to shake. “Anna.” Virgil’s voice cut through the panic, sharp as a blade.
I couldn’t answer. The water was in my ears, my chest. His hands left my shoulders.
In one swift motion, he pulled me from the cushion and against him.
I landed half in his lap, my back to his chest, his arms wrapping around me like iron bands.
The chill was immediate, shocking—his body was a furnace.
“Look at me.” He shifted me, his grip unyielding, until I was facing him, straddling his thighs on the chair.
His hands framed my face, forcing my gaze up. “Only me.”
My teeth chattered. The phantom water lapped at my chin. His eyes held mine, grey and storm-lit and utterly present. “The water isn’t here. The past isn’t here. I am here. Feel it.”
He took one of my trembling hands and pressed it flat against his chest, over his heart.
The beat was strong, steady, a relentless drum against my palm.
The solid wall of his muscle, the heat radiating through his shirt—it was real.
The most real thing in the universe. “Breathe with me,” he ordered, his voice a low vibration under my hand.
He took a deep, slow inhale, his chest expanding against my palm.
I followed, a ragged, shuddering copy. He exhaled, long and controlled.
I did the same. The dark, cold water in the room began to recede.
The shadows settled back against the walls, just shadows again.
The chill evaporated, replaced by the close, warm air of the velvet cocoon.
My shaking slowed. My gaze, locked on his, stopped darting in terror.
The fear was still there, but it was outside the circle of his arms. It paced, but it couldn’t reach me.
He saw the change. His thumbs stroked my cheekbones, a slow, soothing rhythm.
“Good,” he said, the word a soft reward. “You came back.”
I was achingly aware of our position. My legs straddling his, the hard line of his thighs under me.
The frantic beat of my heart wasn’t just from fear anymore.
It was from his proximity, from the intensity in his eyes, from the sheer, overwhelming fact of him.
He didn’t let me go. His hands slid from my face, down my arms, leaving trails of fire on my skin.
He settled them on my waist, his grip possessive.
“The lesson isn’t over,” he said, his voice dropping another notch.
“The anchor isn’t just my touch. It’s your own desire. Your own pulse.”
His gaze dropped to my lips. My breath hitched, the sound loud in the quiet room. “Can you feel it?” he asked, his words a dark caress. “The heat? The want? Focus on that. Nothing else.
My heart was still hammering, a frantic drum against the cage of my ribs, but the rhythm had changed.
The cold was gone, banished by the furnace of his body wrapped around mine.
The phantom water had drained away, leaving only the scent of sandalwood and the crushing softness of the velvet beneath my knees.
His hands were warm and heavy on my waist, holding me in place atop him.
I was straddling Virgil Black in a room built from shadow and memory, and the only thing drowning now was my common sense.
“Can you feel it?” His voice was rough, a scrape of gravel in the intimate dark.
“The heat? The want? Focus on that. Nothing else.”
I could feel everything. The hard muscle of his thighs under the thin wool of his trousers.
The rigid line of his erection pressed against my inner thigh, a shocking, undeniable truth.
My own answering ache, a low, insistent throb between my legs that had nothing to do with fear and everything to do with the man whose eyes held mine captive.
My breath came in shallow gasps that did nothing to steady me.
“I…” The word died in my throat. I was supposed to be learning control.
This felt like the opposite. This felt like surrender.
His hands moved, sliding from my waist up my sides, his thumbs tracing the underside of my breasts through my thin cotton shirt.
A sharp, sweet jolt went straight to my core.
I gasped, my hips shifting involuntarily against him.
A low, approving sound rumbled in his chest. “There it is,” he murmured, his gaze dropping to watch his own hands on my body.
“That’s your anchor. Not the memory of the lake. Not the fear. This.”
He pinched my nipple through the fabric, a quick, deliberate twist that made me cry out.
Pleasure, bright and sharp, lanced through me, burning away the last clinging tendrils of panic.
My head fell back, my eyes squeezing shut.
“Look at me.” The command was absolute. My eyes flew open.
His were dark, fathomless pools reflecting the single candle flame.
There was no softness there, only a fierce, focused intensity.
He was studying me, watching every flicker of reaction across my face.
He was the teacher, and I was the only lesson in the room.
“Good,” he said. One hand left my breast and came to cup my jaw, his thumb stroking over my bottom lip.
“Now tell me what you feel. Just the sensation.”
My mouth was dry. “Your… your hand. It’s warm. Rough.” I swallowed. “Your thumb on my mouth.”