Chapter 255: Unbearably lonely

My wounded foot throbbed with an agony so excruciating it sent sharp, pulling tensions all the way up my leg. I couldn’t take a single proper step without grimacing in pain. Hobbling pitifully and leaning heavily against the wall for support, I somehow made it to the room this demon had assigned to me. Collapsing heavily into an armchair, my trembling fingers unwrapped the tight bandages.

Matthias hadn’t lied. A fresh row of stitches stood prominently across the bottom of my foot. Dark, stiff knots held the edges of the wound bound together, and the surrounding skin was heavily smeared with brilliant green antiseptic solution.

How was I supposed to attend classes at the university like this? My mind went completely blank—there was not a single answer. With a foot in this condition, I physically wouldn’t be able to limp from classroom to classroom during the brief breaks between lectures. Worse still, the terrifying risk of reopening the wound and injuring myself even further was dangerously high.

Gritting my teeth until they ground together, I rebandaged my foot and changed into the maid uniform he had bought for me. Remembering to slip on a pair of lounge shorts beneath the short skirt to shield myself from his eyes, I stepped out of the room. I decided I would at least start dusting the place to pay off my debt as quickly as possible.

"Why are you dressed like that?"

At the sound of his low voice near the living room doorway, I turned and froze. Damian stood leaning casually against the doorframe, his powerful shoulder resting against the wood. He wore nothing but a pair of grey sweatpants hanging alarmingly low on his hips. Droplets of water from the shower glistened against his chiseled, rock-hard torso, and a small white towel draped carelessly over his broad shoulders.

The dark gaze piercing out from beneath his heavy lashes was so intense and sinister that I involuntarily retreated a step, clutching the flimsy dust rag until my knuckles turned white.

He didn’t merely look imposing—he looked furious, as if I had committed a severe crime.

"You were the one who gave me these clothes to clean in," I whispered quietly, hastily averting my eyes. Staring at his bare, muscular chest filled me with too much shame and terror to handle.

"You should be resting until your foot heals, not hopping around here with a rag," Damian said harshly. Closing the distance between us in a few swift steps, he roughly snatched the cloth from my weakened hands. "Let’s go. The food’s here".

Following him into the spacious kitchen, I froze, swallowing a hungry rush of saliva at the sight of large cardboard boxes of pizza and sealed containers resting on the glass table. Sitting down carefully as far away from Damian as possible, I didn’t dare touch anything until he opened all the boxes himself.

"Take whatever you want".

"Um... is there anything that isn’t spicy?" I asked timidly, my eyes darting over the rich abundance of toppings.

In truth, I had never tasted real pizza like this in my entire life. My mother had always cooked at home, and only a couple of times, just out of curiosity, had we bought a frozen one from the supermarket to bake in the oven.

"Try this one. You’ve never eaten pizza before?" Damian asked with dark curiosity, sliding a box of pizza generously smothered in melted cheese closer to me.

"Not like this—no. We usually always made it ourselves. In our family, pizza was whatever was left over in the fridge when the expiration date was getting close," I shrugged, cautiously picking up a hot slice. I was genuinely surprised that the cheese really stretched in strings, just like in a slick television commercial. "Mmm... it’s like, you know, a family mix".

"What on earth is that?" he asked, frowning without even touching the food. He was drinking coffee, judging by the rich, dark scent.

"Well, it’s when you cook a lot for the holidays and have a little bit of various ingredients left over, so you just chop it all up finely into one bowl and then put it on top of the rolled-out dough. There you go, the pizza is ready. It always turns out different, and sometimes it’s even delicious".

Damian didn’t reply to that, nor did he avert his heavy, possessive gaze from my face. He stared intently, without blinking, as if trying to read my thoughts and slip right beneath my skin. The moment I finished my third slice and awkwardly pushed the empty box away, the guy silently slid a closed plastic container toward me.

Carefully lifting the transparent lid, I found a neat slice of cake, densely covered with fresh strawberries.

A painfully familiar sweetness instantly bloomed like a phantom on my tongue, and the air filled with the scent of home. Of my parents. Of strawberry fields beneath a scorching sun and a naive childhood spent in the village.

Fancy that. All this time I had wanted so badly to escape that place and the sideways glances of the locals for the city, naively believing my life would change for the better here. It had changed. But far from the way I wanted. Everything had only gotten worse.

I ate very slowly, barely breathing. I tried to stretch out not only this incredible dessert, but also that fragile feeling that was gripping my chest in a vise right then.

Lowering my damp gaze to the empty container, I suddenly felt unbearably lonely.

This had happened to me before. A strange, gnawing feeling of absolute emptiness behind my ribs. It squeezed everything behind my sternum, and in a single instant, the world lost its bright colors, fading to grey.

It was as if something incredibly distant, cold, and merciless was sinking rusty vices deep into the core of my soul, spilling there as black despair whose true nature I could never fully comprehend. I desperately wanted to be alone.

Quietly thanking him for the food, I pushed back from the table and started to help clean up and throw away the boxes, but Damian simply sent me to my room. Tonight, I lacked the absolute strength to argue with him or insist on working, so I gave a silent nod and submissively limped my way to my bedroom.

Finding myself finally alone, I quickly changed into soft lounge shorts and an oversized t-shirt before I collapsed, utterly exhausted, into the massive, unfamiliar bed.

Leaving the curtains open, I stared with a vacant gaze at the distant, twinkling lights of the sprawling, alien city. Just as I was slipping into the sweet relief of sleep, I flinched as the door handle clicked and the door slid open without a sound.

I sat up sharply and pulled my knees to my chest, watching in sheer horror as Damian strode into my room with the absolute confidence of a predator claiming his territory, and calmly lay down right on the empty half of the bed—right on top of the blanket.

"What are you doing?!" Pulling the blanket up nervously until it nearly brushed my chin, I panicked and scrambled as far away from him as possible, pressing my back hard against the headboard.

"Well, since you didn’t come to my room yourself like you were supposed to, I decided to cut you some slack for the first time and came to yours." Closing his eyes, he casually locked his muscular hands behind his head.

"And why on earth should I have gone to your room?!" A searing wave of indignation, mingled with wild terror, churned inside my chest at his arrogant words.

He was clearly out of his mind! He was completely unhinged if he seriously thought I would share a bed with him after everything he had done, especially when I had told him repeatedly that I would never, ever agree to it.

"Because, Hart"—his voice dropped to a low, vibrating growl that sent corrosive threads coiling through my mind—"you’re my girlfriend now. And girlfriends and boyfriends sleep together."