CHAPTER 7: The Abyss Stares Back

 I sat in the frigid silence, heart racing, blood thumping in my ears. Now the room seemed smaller, suffocating. My brain, a mess of ideas and terror, couldn't grip anything substantial, anything tangible. The walls were closing in, the corners dimming, the whispers of dark promises.

I don't know how long I stayed there, frozen by the sheer weight of what had just happened. 

Damien's words were rings of fire in my ears, and each one burned sharper than the last. 

"Tomorrow, you will choose."

Tomorrow.

The word loomed like a guillotine over my head, the blade up and sharp and ready to drop.

What was there to choose? The grip of his control was tightening on me, and I could feel all my resistance getting suffocated. The woman—who was she? And why did it seem to me that she was watching me, even now, even when she had left the room? Her piercing, calculating eyes had burned themselves into my mind.

Ugh, I shuddered, attempting to dislodge her from my mind. But it was impossible. It is as though she had etched herself into the core of my mind, a specter, a shadow, a thing that would not be banished.

I had to leave. I had to get out of here. But the idea was just ludicrous. Where would I go?

Damien knew how to trap me in his world, making it feel as if there'd be no way out. 

His presence, his words, how he could manipulate everything I thought I knew—he made me feel so small, so insignificant. But it wasn't just him. It was everything. I was trapped the entire game.

I looked at the door, half expecting to see someone walk in at any moment. Damien, or that woman, or somebody else entirely. It was as though the air itself weighed heavily, pushing against my chest, not letting me breathe.

I wanted to scream, to howl, to rip this place up. But the fear coursing through me kept me in place. What would happen if I started pushing back? What would I do if I said no to playing?

I dreaded the answer would be worse than anything I could imagine.

I jumped startled, my body jerking from the stark knock on the door. I made sticks, pumping jowls, ready to run for the door if I had to. But before I could even react, the door creaked open.

It was him.

Damien.

The air was thick with him, oppressive, choking. He stepped inside and shut the door. You thought you would never have to see this?" His voice was smooth, almost soothing, but I caught the undertone of danger. It was like a warning. A threat cloaked in sweet words.

My mouth turned dry—I took a step back, and my pulse quickened. I couldn't expose my fear to him. I couldn't let him know that his presence twisted something deep inside me, that his words still rattled in my chest.

But there was no hiding from him. Damien knew me. He knew my cracks, the human moments where my resolve wavered. And he loved to exploit them.

"I didn't think anything," I spat out, forcing my voice to stay steady as I felt the tremor trying to break through.

He moved with slow purpose toward the far end of the room, his gaze fixed on me. "Lying again? Can't even confess to yourself what it is that you want, can you?"

His words stung like a slap, and the truth they contained was sharp and cutting. I would rather not say it, not to him. Not to myself. But I felt it. And I felt the torqued magnetism he had for me. He made me desperately want his attention, his approval, even as it shattered me.

"I don't want anything from you," I said sharply, the words more raw than I had planned.

Damien's mouth twisted into a slow, mocking smile. "Easy to say, but deep down, you're already caught in this web. I can see it in your eyes."

I wanted to deny it. I wanted to scream at him, to hurl every scrap of defiance I had left at him. But his words caught in my throat, stifling me before I could say anything.

He stepped in closer, taking up the space between us. You're afraid of the choice you will have to make tomorrow, Elena. That's why you're clinging to this illusion of control. But the truth is, you already made your choice. You just don't know it yet."

His words clawed and cleaved at me, burrowing into the deepest marrow of all my insecurities. 

What choice? What had I already decided? I no longer knew, and it frightened me. It felt like I was tumbling, though I couldn't tell whether I was free-falling into the void or stuck in an endlessly traveling circle, locked in a waking nightmare.

"Tell me what you want from me," I said, though my voice trembled, full of desperation.

Damien smiled once more, that same dangerous, predatory smile. 

"I want you to give me everything, Elena. I want you to surrender. Stop pretending you can evade this. Because you can't. No one can."

My breath hitched. The words hurt, but they were also... seductive. They called to me like a siren's song, offering relief, an end to the suffocation of fear.

I shook my head, not allowing myself to fall for that one again. But Damien was already in there, clawing deeper into my mind, into my soul.

"Tomorrow, you'll decide," he said in a low voice as if making an invocation. "And then when you do, Elena… you will be mine. Fully."

The walls felt like they were closing in around me while suffocating me with his words. I was trapped. There was no escaping. And I wasn't sure if I was strong enough to fight back.

Damien turned and walked away from me, his steps muted but sharp in the silence that had enfolded me.

"Sleep on it," he said, looking back, his eyes piercing me. "But don't take too long. You won't have forever."

And with that, he was gone. On the other side of the door, the latch clicked behind him, and I was alone once more in the oppressive silence of the room. 

With only my thoughts, my fear, and the knowledge that everything would be decided by tomorrow.

The choice would come. And I didn't know if I was prepared.

But there was one thing I knew for sure. There would be no returning the other way.

The world around me faded to a blur, and the muffled sounds of Damien's footsteps warped, fading to a drumbeat in the far part of my mind. My heart pounded in fear as I stood next to the desk, gripping its edge and curling my fingers into the cold wood. His closeness, the overwhelming weight of his being, was suffocating. It was as if the air was thick with the unsaid words of what we felt, filling the space between us.

"You're not just here to do a job, are you?" His voice was low, barely a whisper, but it sliced through the space between us like a knife.

I wanted to scream, to shout at him to stay away the fuck from me, but the words jammed in my throat. I was not prepared to publicly uncloak myself, not yet.

"Damien…" I trembled with the words; the cool exterior I fought to wear was revealed. "What do you want from me?"

He didn't answer immediately. His gaze moved over me, instead, with slow deliberation that absorbed every detail of my posture, of my expression, of the way my fingers shook where I'd clenched them around the edge of the desk. It was as if he was examining my body, gauging how much of my resistance he could erode.

"I want you to stop pretending you don't feel this," he said, and I could hear the slight edge in his voice, a challenge lying underneath. "Quit pretending you can resist me, Elena. I know it's not true."

Every nerve in my body screamed at me to push back, to snap some cutting remark back at him, to take command of the confrontation, but something in me—something fat and stubborn—was pushing back against words that should have come so easily.

I could feel the weight of the air closing in, tightening in my chest as his words embedded in me. 

Resistance? Could I honestly say no to him again?

Or, rather, I was stuck in my head, unable to get to the right answer or any answer. Was I truly that weak? Was I just a piece in his sick game?

He leaned in closer, and I inhaled sharply. I never understood why I didn't walk away, why I stood there frozen. A part of me wanted to strike out, to shove him away, but I was too terrified to do anything at all.

"You can leave whenever you want," Damien said, his voice a whisper. "If you'd like to, Elena. But that means departing this place. Leaving me."

His eyes were dark and intense, and it felt like the weight of his gaze made my skin prickle. I tried to avert my gaze, but I couldn't. I was trapped in there, like a moth to a flame.

"Leave?" I barely whispered breathless disbelief that matched the chaos of my body. "You don't think it's that easy?"

A flicker of something passed across his face but was gone too fast for me to read. He crept closer again, this time behind me. 

I could sense the heat of his body at my back, his breath gusting against my nape.

It was not only a physical closeness. It was his power, his control washing into me, holding me steady. I was transfixed by the sheer power of him. He had power over me in ways I hadn't started to understand.

"You haven't even seen yet how hard leaving will be, Elena." His voice was a sibilant threat, quiet and slow like the offer of something I couldn't escape.

I shuddered involuntarily. It was the most intimate, scary thing he'd said to me yet.

"I…" I caught myself, unable to finish the question I had on the tip of my tongue. Did I want to leave? Did I want to leave him?

Damien had this grip on me that I didn't know how to escape. Every second with him was a war I could never win. My mind and body were waging war on themselves, battling back and forth between how deeply he drew me in and how desperately I needed to maintain my independence.

He stood there in silence for a long beat, and just as I thought he'd leave me hanging there in that painful silence, he spoke again, his voice calm and measured.

"You think I haven't seen how you look at me when you think I'm not paying attention? The way your eyes linger when you think I'm not paying attention? His words hit me with such ease as if he were stating an unquestionable fact, a truth I could not contend.

I froze. I felt my pulse quicken as his observation sank in. I'd been looking at him, hadn't I? Not with disgust or anger, but something other. Something deeper. I opened my mouth, but nothing came out.

He let the silence linger between us before he continued, each word drawing me further into his webs.

"You can lie to yourself, Elena, but you can't lie to me. Not anymore. I see you."

The words struck like a blow to the chest, the weight of them reverberating through me. What was happening? Is this his game—his sick way of tearing me apart, brick by brick?

I shook my head, but my thoughts went in different ways.

"What do you want from me?" I asked though I knew the answer.

His lips turned up in a slow, knowing smile, the kind that belonged to a man who felt he'd already won.

I need you to say it, Elena. Admit you want this as bad as I do."

I swallowed, the words sticking to my tongue. I couldn't—wouldn't—say them. But in the growing animus between us, I was up on a ledge and couldn't look away.

He was no longer simply playing with me. This was no longer about power and control; this was something far deadlier, something I did not fully understand. And that uncertainty, that not knowing, only made it scarier.

Damien was trying to give me something—something that I didn't want. But as the seconds ticked by, I had this sinking feeling that perhaps, just perhaps, I was already too far gone.

I looked at him, and we both understood the feeling.

He had won.

For now.

I froze in place, stunned by his words, and then the office door flew open. A figure entered, their outline filling the doorway. My heart skipped a beat.

"Damien, there is a problem," the figure said urgently.

Damien's gaze danced, the shift so slight as to be imperceptible, though his control held steady. He looked at me with a sly smile in his mouth.

"I'm on my way," he said, his eyes never leaving me.

And suddenly the moment was lost, and I was filled with a thousand questions—and a dangerous new tension we couldn't ignore.