Selena's apartment, her fortress, was both a messy sanctuary and an investigation which has gone on and become obsessive concerning Damien Voss, covered over one entire wall and along the stretch of floor. But tonight, low voices echoed within those thin walls, offering no memory of him protection. She stood beneath the hot spray in the shower, trying to wash away the traces of his cologne, phantom fingers on her cheek, and his disquieting voice. Useless. He had burrowed under her skin and was now so invasive, riffling the neat, ordered lines from her world. As a journalist, she was furious with herself. She had gone into that office with a mission, fully armed with facts and a sense of righteous purpose. This time, she found herself leaving, almost shaken and distracted, and undeniably enthralled. Everything he represented, she loathed-the follies of unrestrained power and corporate greed. But the man sleeping in front of her was much more within complexities. There was a profound loneliness in his eyes, a certain terrifying vulnerability warring with his predatory intensity. And his last words... the monster you unearth. She had thought of it as something metaphorical in his dark-business dealings. But the expression on his face, that split-second flash of genuine torment, hinted at something far more literal, something broken and caged within him.
Pouring a glass of cheap red wine with a shaking hand, she pulled on an old t-shirt, comfortable sweatpants, and paced her small living room. Her eyes fell, as always, on the research wall. The face of the charming billionaire in the gala photos looked like nothing but a lie - an elaborately crafted mask to conceal the raw, haunting man she'd encountered. The contradiction was at the heart of its story, she knew, but it also became ever more the source of dangerous fascination. I'm a hunter, he had said, but the twist is that I feel like I am caught in the trap. Outside her modest apartment building in Queens came a sleek, impossibly black sedan gliding to a stop. It was so out of place it felt like a hallucination. Selena froze, her wine glass halfway to her lips, as she watched from her third-floor window. As Damien Voss stepped out of the backseat, her heart seized inside her chest. The sheer audacity of him, coming here, to her home. This wasn't his world of penthouses and power lunches. This was an invasion. A wave of anger propelled her to the door, her mind racing. Intimidation. A power play intended to scare her off the story. She would not let him see her fear.
The door flew open, her body rigid, ready to fight a dragon. "What the hell do you think you're doing here, Voss?" He was not the same man who had been in the office with her. The impeccable suit was slightly although rumpled, his tie was gone, and the top button of his shirt was undone. That was the very image that stunned her into silence. His skin was pale with a fine sheen of sweat despite the cool night air. His jaw was clenched so tight that a muscle kept jumping around, and his frigid blue eyes held an almost feverish, haunted light. The absolute control he had wielded like a weapon was lost and replaced by a raw desperate tension that turned him into one about to fall through an edge between brute murder and utter despair. "Selena," he breathed, that intonation of his name-not as a challenge, like a prayer-sent a shiver through her. He staggered a step-forward, forcing her backward into her apartment. He followed her, and the door clicked shut behind him, sealing them in together. The little space seemed to shrink around his presence, charged with his chaotic energy. "You have five seconds to tell me why you're in my apartment before I scream," she spoke, her voice shaking despite her attempts to disguise it. He started off by saying, "I... couldn't, with a rasping voice deep and rough. He closed his eyes for a second, as if he were going through a great deal of agony. "I had to go. I was leaving the town. But I saw you." He glanced at her from under the florid burn of the fever that stood in contrast, terrifying and magnetic, against the raw need in his eyes. "Your scent... calms the storm." This made no sense. He sounded insane. But she didn't scream. Her journalist's instinct to observe and understand was battling with her instinct to run for her life. For some reason, he didn't look like a threat anymore. He looked like a man in distress. He swayed on his feet, and before she had thought twice, she had reached out to touch him, her palm resting on his forearm for support. The heat radiating from his skin was shocking, dry as a fever, an intense one thrumming against her palm. "You're burning up," she whispered, anger evaporating rapidly under the cloud of alarm. "Are you sick?" He laughed bitterly. "You could say that." His eyes cruised restlessly all over her face, her hair, and her throat, with desperate, possessive hunger that tingled against her skin. There was a monstrous war inside him, and somehow, she was at the epicenter of it. His hand raised, hovering just a few inches from her face, trembling with barely restrained power. This was the monster trying to refrain from touching her; the realization slapped her like a punch.
"I shouldn't be here," he said through gritted teeth as he stepped back. "That puts you at risk." He turned away from her and aimed for the door with rigid, painful movements. "Get back to your office, Voss. Sleep it off," she said, more softly than she'd intended. In reply, he stopped and remained facing away from her. "It's a full moon tonight," he said, the words heavy with some incomprehensible dread. He turned just enough that one side of his face was dimly beautiful in the darkness. "Selena, lock your door. Do not go outside no matter what you hear. Promise me that!" Before she could respond, he was gone. The door clicked softly behind him, leaving her alone in the stillness. Her heart raced inside her ribs. He had left behind an almost tangible scent of sandalwood and storm, a scented miasma inextricably soaked with the darkness of his pain. She stood transfixed for an eternity before resuming her previously interrupted moment toward the door and twisting the deadbolt shut. This monster was coming, and for some reason, he had used his last moments of humanity to ensure she stayed safe from it.