The sunlight that filtered into Rosa's old bedroom was muted, a soft gray glow softened by lace curtains and the lingering drizzle outside. Elena lay sprawled across the creaky bed, still tangled in the sheets, her body a battlefield of exhaustion and fire. She had barely slept.
When her eyes did shut, they betrayed her with images that weren't dreams at all, but memories Damian's gaze pinning her in the velvet shadows of Obsidian, his words threading through her veins like smoke, the ghost of his touch setting her body alight.
She rolled onto her back, exhaling sharply, her hand pressed to her chest as if she could calm the pounding of her heart. It was useless. She could still smell him. Not literally no, it was worse. The echo of his scent clung to her skin like a phantom: smoke, leather, something darker and forbidden.
"God…" she whispered into the quiet room, pressing the heel of her hand to her eyes.
She had sworn, sworn, that night would be nothing more than a mistake she could bury in the anonymity of the city. But it wasn't fading. It was consuming her.
Elena sat up slowly, the sheets sliding from her bare shoulders. The air against her skin made her shiver, though not from the cold. Every nerve hummed, painfully alive, like her body had been rewired to respond to Damian and nothing else.
She curled her knees to her chest, resting her chin on them, trying to think of anything else. The funeral she had missed. The house falling apart around her. Marcus, still next door, still watching. Her grandmother's voice, telling her to be stronger than this.
None of it stuck. None of it could hold against the memory of Damian's lips brushing her ear, the sharp demand in his whisper: "Don't run from me."
Her thighs pressed tighter together involuntarily. A low sound escaped her throat before she could stop it.
"Damn it," she muttered, dragging a hand through her hair, restless. She couldn't let him in again. She couldn't be that girl the one who broke under the weight of his hunger, who let herself be defined by his power.
And yet her body betrayed her. Again and again.
She lay back down, staring at the ceiling, her breath shaky. One hand slid absently down her sternum, between her breasts, as though her own skin were foreign territory she was trying to reclaim. Her lips parted on a soft gasp when her fingertips brushed lower, over the flat of her stomach.
"No…" she whispered, shaking her head. But she didn't stop.
It wasn't supposed to feel like this. Just thinking of him shouldn't make her pulse throb in places she wanted to ignore. But Obsidian had changed everything. The way he had looked at her hungry, but not just for her body. Like he wanted every hidden, unguarded piece of her.
The room felt smaller, hotter, her breath catching as she pressed her thighs apart and gave in. Her hand slid lower, trembling at first, until the first shock of contact made her arch into the mattress with a strangled moan.
She shouldn't. She couldn't.
But she did.
Her fingers moved with increasing desperation, and her mind painted the scene she wanted to resist: Damian behind her, his hand covering hers, guiding every movement with punishing patience. His breath on her neck, the heat of his chest pressed to her back. That low, commanding growl that shredded her resolve: "Say my name."
Her voice broke in the silence, half sob, half plea, as her body surrendered to the fantasy. The tension coiled, unbearable, and when it snapped she buried her face in the pillow to muffle the sound.
Afterward, she lay trembling, her skin damp, her chest heaving. Shame rushed in, sharp and suffocating, as tears pricked her eyes.
"This isn't me," she whispered hoarsely. "Not anymore. Not again."
But her body told a different story. Her body remembered.
The storm outside had quieted, leaving only the tick of rain dripping from the gutters. Inside, Elena stared at the ceiling, feeling both hollow and unbearably full. She knew then that Obsidian hadn't been an ending. It had been the beginning of something she wasn't ready for. Something she wasn't sure she could survive.
Damian
Damian leaned back in the leather chair of his penthouse, the skyline stretching behind him in sharp glass and steel. The city moved endlessly below, but his thoughts were fixed, anchored to one place.
Her.
Elena.
He had seen hundreds of women bend beneath the atmosphere of Obsidian. Desire was easy to coax, obedience easier still. But Elena… she had been different. She had fought herself even as her body yielded, every tremor of resistance making her surrender more intoxicating.
He could still feel her pulse racing against his palm, hear the catch in her breath when she whispered his name. She thought it had ended when she fled into the night, but Damian knew better.
He'd waited years. Years for her to resurface, years to watch and pull the threads when the time was right. And now she was back in Millbrook, carrying the same scar, the same fire, the same unfinished promise.
A slow smile curved his lips, but it wasn't kind.
Elena Vasquez wasn't just another indulgence. She was the one that got away. The one who thought she could outrun him.
And Damian Rivera never left anything unfinished.