Page 44 of Inked Adonis

I press myself against the headboard, trying to put distance between us even as my backstabbing body yearns to close it. In the slice of light from the hallway, I catch the predatory gleam of his eyes. The way his shoulders fill the space. The careful way he holds himself, like he’s afraid I’ll bolt if he moves too fast.

He’s right. I might.

“Can I touch you?” Samuil asks in that growled voice that makes everything sound like both a promise and a threat. He hesitates, then adds, “For comfort only.”

The words hang between us like a noose. Like a promise. Like something far more dangerous than either of those things. His lips wrap around each syllable like dark silk, and I hate how myskin prickles in response. How my body remembers his hands on me just days ago, before I knew what he was.

I want to tell him to go to hell. To remind him that comfort from my kidnapper is the definition of Stockholm syndrome.

Instead, I nod.

Because the truth is, I need this. Need him. Need something to ground me before I spiral completely into panic.

His hand settles on my back, moving in slow, steady circles. Clinical. Impersonal. Like he’s soothing a spooked animal.

But it works. My breathing steadies under his touch.

“I am sorry,” he says after a moment, “that my actions gave you bad dreams.”

A bitter laugh escapes me. “Not everything revolves around you and your empire, Samuil.”

His hand stills on my back. For a long moment, the only sound is our breathing in the dark. I expect him to snap back, to remind me that in this place, at this moment, everything actually does revolve around him and what he decides to do with me.

Instead, his voice comes soft and thoughtful. “No. Not everything.” His palm slides up to rest between my shoulder blades, warm and steady. “But some things do. Your safety, for instance.”

“My imprisonment, you mean.”

“If that is how you choose to see it.” There’s something almost weary in his tone. Like he’s tired of being the villain in this story, even though he wrote the script himself.

A tremor runs through me—leftover adrenaline from the nightmare, maybe, or just the endless tension of being here, of never knowing where I stand with him. His hand moves in response, resuming those maddening circles on my back.

“Tell me about the dream,” he says after another stretch of silence.

I almost laugh. Almost tell him to go to hell. But in the dark, with the nightmare still clinging to my skin like cobwebs, the truth slips out instead.

Stupid. So stupid. But I can’t stop myself.

“When I was seven,” I whisper to the darkness, “I learned what happens when you try to save something my father wants to destroy.”

It’s not the whole truth. I leave out how my father came home from the shelter and made me understand what happens to things—to people—who disobey him.

Just enough of the story to make Samuil think I’m being honest, make him believe he’s earned my trust.

But then his thumb finds the scar on my palm, the one the dog’s teeth left before my father took him away. He traces the raised tissue with a gentleness that undoes me.

That touch terrifies me more than his armed guards do. More than the locks on the doors and the long drop from his penthouse windows. Because it’s not calculated or cruel. It’s just... tender.

“Your father,” Samuil says quietly, still stroking my scar. “He used fear to control you.”

It’s not a question. And there’s something in his voice—recognition, maybe—that makes me wonder what scars he carries that I can’t see.

The darkness wraps around us like a confessional, and I hear him draw breath to share his own story.

“My father did the same. He kept mastiffs,” Samuil says, his voice thickening with memory. “Not as pets. As weapons.”

I can hear the calculation behind this offering. A strategic trade of vulnerability meant to draw me in, to make me trust him. But there’s something raw in his voice that feels real.

“They were trained to be vicious,” he continues. His thumb hasn’t stopped tracing my scar. “To attack on command. To kill if necessary. I was terrified of them as a child.” His laugh is dark and hollow. “They would have rolled over for you, I think. The way you are with dogs... you would have seen past what my father made them into.”

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