CHAPTER EIGHT — Whispers In The Dark

CHAPTER EIGHT — WHISPERS IN THE DARK

Liana’s POV

The elevator doors slid open directly into the penthouse, and the silence hit me like cold water.

No servants. No Eleanor waiting with armed guards. Just sixty-three floors of glass and black marble and the low hum of a city that never slept, far below.

Adrian stepped out behind me, close enough that the heat of his body brushed my spine.

He hadn’t spoken since the hospital garage. He didn’t need to.

His hand had stayed locked around mine the entire drive, thumb stroking the inside of my wrist in slow, hypnotic circles, as if he were afraid I’d dissolve if he stopped touching me for even a second.

I pulled free the moment the doors closed again, letting his fingers slip through mine.

He made a low, wounded sound (barely audible), but I ignored it and walked deeper into the apartment.

I had never lived here.

In the original timeline he had kept me at the Rose estate, a convenient wife tucked safely out of sight.

This place had always been his fortress, his private kingdom.

Now it felt cavernous, sterile, too clean.

Everything was black, steel, and sharp edges.

A bachelor’s palace designed to intimidate.

I dropped my coat over the back of a sofa that probably cost more than most people’s houses and moved toward the kitchen.

I needed space.

I needed a drink.

I needed to remember that the man trailing three steps behind me was still the same one who would one day watch me rot in a cell.

He stopped in the centre of the living room, barefoot, wearing the loose sweatpants the hospital had given him.

The bandage on his collarbone gleamed white against tanned skin.

He looked lost.

Good.

I poured two fingers of something amber and expensive, then set the glass down untouched.

My pulse was already too fast.

He watched every movement like I was the only thing in the room that mattered.

“I tried the bed,” he said finally, voice rough from hours of silence.

“It’s too big. Too cold.”

A pause.

“Everything smells wrong.”

I turned slowly.

He hadn’t moved closer, but the hunger in his eyes made the distance feel irrelevant.

“Everything except you,” he added, quieter.

My stomach tightened.

I took one deliberate sip of the whiskey just to feel the burn, then set the glass down with a soft clink.

“You’ll get used to it,” I said. “Or you won’t. Either way, you’re home.”

He flinched at the word home, like it tasted foreign on his tongue.

I walked past him, down the hallway, not checking if he followed.

Of course he did.

The heat of him stayed at my back the entire way.

At the threshold of the master bedroom I stopped.

The bed was unmade (black silk sheets twisted like he’d thrashed in them for hours).

City light poured through the uncovered windows, painting silver across the floor.

I turned to face him.

He stopped a breath away, close enough that I could see the faint tremor in his lower lip, the frantic beat at the base of his throat.

“Rules,” I said, voice low.

“You stay on your side of the bed.

You keep your hands to yourself unless I invite them somewhere else.

You wake up reaching for me without permission and tomorrow night you sleep on the floor with the door locked. Do you understand?”

His pupils were huge, swallowing the gold.

He swallowed hard.

“Yes.”

I stepped aside.

“Then get in.”

He moved instantly (no hesitation, no pride), just raw obedience.

He slid under the covers on the left side and lay on his back, fists clenched at his sides, staring at the ceiling like a man waiting for judgment.

I took my time.

Unpinned my hair.

Let it fall in a dark sheet down my back.

Kicked off my heels.

Slipped out of the dress and into one of the silk camisoles I found still hanging in the guest closet (he had never thrown my things away, apparently).

Every second I felt his gaze burning into me.

When I finally slid in on the right side, the mattress dipped under my weight.

Two feet of empty space separated us.

It might as well have been a continent and a hair’s breadth at the same time.

Minutes crawled by.

I listened to him breathe (fast, shallow, controlled with visible effort).

The mattress shifted.

He had turned his head toward me.

I didn’t move.

“Liana,” he whispered, so softly I almost missed it.

I stayed on my back, eyes on the ceiling.

“What.”

“I’m… cold.”

A lie.

The man radiated heat like a furnace.

I turned my head just enough to meet his eyes.

They were wide, pleading, ancient in their desperation.

Something twisted low in my belly (anger, triumph, something darker).

I reached out (slow, deliberate) and laid my palm flat on his bare chest, right over the wild drum of his heart.

He froze.

Every muscle locked.

A shudder ran through him so violently the bed trembled.

His heart was trying to batter its way into my hand.

I traced one slow circle with my thumb, watching his eyes flutter shut.

“Sleep,” I said, barely above a whisper. “I’m right here.”

He exhaled like a man who’d been holding his breath since the crash.

The tension bled out of him in a rush.

I left my hand where it was.

A leash made of skin and pulse.

Tomorrow I would decide how tight to pull.

Tonight I let the monster fall asleep with my heartbeat under his cheek, and pretended the heat pooling between my thighs was only victory.