His Private Hell - Chapter 55: Chapter 55

He was already out of bed.
The air changed when he walked away from her—like something had been broken between them. Eella wrapped the sheet tighter around her naked body, watching him as he paced, dragging his fingers through his hair, tension rippling through every muscle.
“Garrison…”
“Don’t.” He grabbed his shirt from the floor and pulled it on with a violent snap of fabric. “You wanted to play in the fire. You don’t get to cry when it burns.”
“I’m not crying.” She stood too. Let him see her bare, bruised, trembling—and still standing. “But I’m not walking away, either.”
His breath caught. He stared at her like she was the threat now. Like she was the one wielding power.
“Darcie didn’t die because of you,” she said quietly, “did she?”
He flinched. That told her everything.
“Did you love her?”
“No,” he said too quickly. Then again, quieter. “No.”
“But you hurt her.”
“I never laid a hand on her.” He stepped closer, eyes flashing. “She wanted what she wasn’t ready for. That door—what’s behind it—isn’t about sex, Eella. It’s about surrender.”
“And you think I can’t handle it?”
“I know you can’t.”
“You don’t know me,” she shot back.
But he did. That was the problem. He knew every fractured part of her now. Every broken place where lust and pain blurred into something wicked and wanting. She’d invited the monster in, thinking she could control it.
Instead, it was learning her name.
Garrison reached out, his thumb brushing her bottom lip. “You still want me?”
“I want the truth.”
“You’ll get it.” His mouth twisted. “But you might wish you hadn’t.”
⸻
The elevator ride up to the 33rd floor was silent.
Eella didn’t ask why he’d taken her there. She didn’t beg, didn’t tremble. She just stood beside him in the glow of polished chrome and flickering LED lights, wearing the same clothes from the day before, her hair wild, her skin still carrying the scent of him.
When the doors opened, she was hit with cold air and the smell of leather.
And something else. Something that made her pulse stutter.
Desire. Fear. Decay.
The hallway was sterile. White walls. No artwork. Just a long stretch of silence leading to a single matte black door at the end.
“Don’t touch anything unless I tell you,” Garrison said.
She nodded.
The walk down that hall felt like years. By the time he unlocked the door, her heart was a drumbeat of anticipation.
Inside, the light was low. The air was warmer. The walls weren’t white anymore.
They were red.
Deep, wine-drenched red, textured like old velvet and secrets. A massive iron chandelier hung from the ceiling. The scent here was stronger—dark and heady, like incense and candle wax and sex.
Her mouth went dry.
This wasn’t an office.
This was his temple.
Chains hung from the walls, elegant and polished. A chaise made of dark leather sat beneath a massive portrait of a woman with her mouth open in a silent scream.
“I thought you said this wasn’t about sex,” she murmured.
“It’s not,” he said, locking the door behind them. “It’s about control.”
He walked past her, his body fluid and commanding. He stopped beside a panel on the wall and pressed something.
Soft music began to play. Low, rhythmic, almost hypnotic.
“Darcie thought she could handle this. She begged for it. But she didn’t want the truth. She wanted the fantasy.”
“And what’s the truth?” Eella asked, her voice steadier than she felt.
He turned to her slowly. “That once I take you here, you won’t ever come back the same.”
She swallowed hard. “Then take me.”
His jaw clenched. “Strip.”
She didn’t hesitate. The clothes fell away with the whisper of rebellion and the weight of consent. By the time she stood before him naked, her heart was pounding, her skin alight.
Garrison moved like a shadow. In seconds, her wrists were bound in soft cuffs suspended from the ceiling. She gasped—but not in fear.
In need.
“I want you to understand something, Eella,” he said, stepping behind her. His hands smoothed down her hips. “This isn’t about hurting you. It’s about remaking you.”
“Then do it.”
The first strike of leather against her skin was sharp, stinging—but so carefully placed that she moaned.
He kept going.
He broke her open slowly. With rhythm. With reverence.
And when he finally took her—deep, hard, primal—it wasn’t about dominance.
It was worship.
⸻
When she woke, she was back in his penthouse.
Wrapped in sheets. Wrapped in silence. And something else—his scent. His signature. His brand.
He stood by the window in nothing but black slacks, sipping a glass of water like nothing had changed.
Everything had changed.
She sat up. “So that’s your hell?”
He didn’t turn. “It’s a piece of it.”
“Then what’s the rest?”
He was quiet for so long she thought he wouldn’t answer.
Then: “Darcie killed herself.”
The words hit like ice water.
“She wanted more. And when I wouldn’t give it, she found her way back to that room without my permission. She… tried to become something I hadn’t asked for.”
“What did she see?”
He finally turned to face her. “She saw the man I try to hide. The one who doesn’t stop when you cry. The one who punishes too deeply, and takes too much.”
“And now you think I’ll run?”
“I think you’ll beg for more.”
Her mouth parted. Not in horror. In recognition.
“Maybe I will.”
He crossed the room in three long strides. His hand cupped her jaw. “You make me want to burn again, Eella. And I don’t know how to survive that.”
“Then burn with me,” she whispered.
He kissed her.
And it was worse this time. Deeper. Wilder. Less of a kiss and more of a collision.
The monster in him had finally claimed her.
And she didn’t want to be saved.