Darius Bonus Chapter #6
I shifted in my position on the throne, leaning closer to her and resting my elbows on my knees as I gazed down at her, studying every inch and simply answering her question again, uncertain if I was mad to do so or if I would go mad if I didn’t.
These words had been choking me for too long, this truth burning its way up my throat every time I was in her presence, and the need for them to break free was too powerful to deny now.
“Because you’re in my head all the time. You pulse through my blood with each beat of my heart. I live for every scrap of attention you offer me and suffer through every moment you spend ignoring me,” I admitted darkly, holding her eye as I tried to gauge how those words landed.
“I thought you hated me?” she asked, like it could possibly be so simple.
“I do,” I agreed. “Because you represent everything I want and everything I can’t have.”
“You want me?” she asked slowly, taking a step closer, and I fell utterly still as I found her approaching instead of recoiling. I’d expected her to scoff, or laugh, or call me any number of things, but this…
“You know I do,” I replied roughly, sick of her pretending this wasn’t real between us.
“No, I don’t. I know you like to hurt me and tear me down,” she said, her green eyes still locked on mine, while I remained entirely still and my heart rioted in my chest. “I know you want to control me and take from me and make me bow at your feet.”
“I do,” I admitted, not denying it because I did like doing those things to her, I liked doing anything and everything I could simply to make her see me, and when she was hurting, she always looked.
When she was suffering at my hands, she came alive for me, for better or worse.
“And I think a fucked-up part of you likes it when I do those things.”
“Fuck you,” she hissed, but she didn’t leave because she knew I spoke the truth. The twisted, ugly truth of the rotten creatures we were at our cores, the ones who revelled in the hurt we doled out to one another because we didn’t know how to offer anything better.
“I think you like it when I hurt you because on some level, you believe you deserve it,” I said, my voice laced in grit and her eyes flashing with that rage which turned me on so fucking much.
“Why would I feel something that fucked up?” she snarled, still standing right there, not backing down, never running from a fight. She was Fae right down to the bones of her, built in the image of her father, whether she wanted to admit it or not.
“Because we’re the same. Every time my father hits me or hurts me or chains me, a little piece of me relishes the pain.
Because I know I deserve it. For not getting Xavier away from him.
For not stopping him from claiming the shadows.
For letting him hurt you and your sister.
” I frowned, hating those things about myself but knowing it was the truth, just like she could see it was too.
“I was the reason no one ever kept us,” she said in a low voice.
“I was the loud one. The rude one. The one that no one liked, let alone loved. I actually overheard one of our foster carers asking social services to find me a new placement while they offered to adopt Darcy alone. I could have told our social worker that I’d agree to that.
I could have let her be happy instead of dragging her down with me.
But that’s what I do. I’m the one who stopped her from having Christmas traditions or friends who lasted more than a semester.
I’m the one no one has ever wanted long term… ”
A frown tugged at my brow as I took in that admission, the vulnerability she was sharing with me as if I might be someone she could trust with it…
or someone who could understand. It was her truth, but that didn’t make it any less tragic.
She’d been Fae, that was all. A Fae child was pre-programmed to push boundaries, to ignore danger, to find the hard limits, then break through them.
That might have been too much for the mortals who had been tasked with caring for her, but it was exactly what drew me to her in turn.
She wouldn’t be caged, wouldn’t be told no, wouldn’t let the world push her around.
She simply refused to conform to anything less than the fullness of her desires.
“That’s why you push me even when you don’t have to,” I said.
“You want me to punish you, and you want to hurt me in return.” Her scowl deepened at my words, her hands curling into fists at her sides, but it was true.
She thrived on the tension between us, it brought out the very worst in both of us and it lit us up too, awakening that feral piece of us which we had been told to contain all too often.
But together, we were free to unleash it, free to see what power it might really hold and what hurt it might be capable of causing.
“And I think you get off on seeing me in pain.”
“How have I ever hurt you?” she snapped, but she knew, she had to fucking know what she did to me with every moment of her disregard and every word of disrespect.
“You hurt me every time you ignore me. You hurt me every time you spend time with Milton or that douchebag with the hat or Cal or any other fucker who catches your eye,” I accused.
She pursed her lips at me, but she didn’t deny it. Not outright. “Maybe you’ve been believing your own bullshit. I’m not the one who told the world I was a sex addict.”
“You did, actually,” I pointed out, my rage intensifying as my thoughts fell on that interview she’d done for The Daily Solaria, those pictures of her which had stuck in my mind ever since, the taunting words, the unnecessary addition of those male models.
“Only because you gave me no choice,” she shot back.
I stared at her for a long moment, wondering if she truly believed that.
Did she think I’d forced her to take those photos?
Or had she secretly loved every moment of that shoot, knowing what it would do to me when I saw it, knowing how it would rile me up and lash back at me far more effectively than any other form of response could have.
“I had that model fired,” I admitted, more than a little smug over that knowledge even if it did make me an even bigger piece of shit.
“What?” she asked with a frown, like she had no idea, like she couldn’t even remember him.
“The one in that photo shoot with you,” I growled. “The one it looked like you really did screw.”
I wondered if she’d admit it, and I wondered what I’d do if she did, if she’d fucked him and screamed his name and let him taste the sins on her lips.
I’d hunt him down if she had. I didn’t care what that made me, I didn’t care if I had no right to feel that level of possession over her. I’d hunt him down and-
“Wow. You’re insane,” she said harshly, realisation dawning in her green eyes. “That poor guy probably really needed that job.”
“He didn’t need to take his work so fucking seriously,” I snarled, thinking of his hands on her body, his gaze roaming, the lust he hadn’t even tried to hide.
“What the hell is this, Darius?” Roxy asked angrily, and my heart leapt as she took that damn tone with me, scolding me like I was hers to do so to.
“What is it you want from me? Because you’re acting a hell of a lot like some scorned lover, but we never even made it off the starting line, so I don’t understand why-”
“Neither do I,” I growled, knowing she was right on some level, even if I rejected that with my entire being.
She was mine. And yet she wasn’t at all.
“But when I see you, all I want is to lay claim to you. I want you to be mine and I know you never will be, and it’s making me even more fucked up than I was to begin with.
That’s why I hate you. Not because I’m supposed to or because my father wants me to, but because you represent every freedom I’ve never been given.
It’s like you were designed entirely to taunt me and toy with me and crack me open, and I won’t let it stand. ”
“So what do you want from me?” she demanded. “Do you want to sit up on that throne with me on my knees before you. Would that end this feud between us?”
Silence. A single beat of it which left me with a terrifyingly clarifying notion.
“I don’t know.”
She stared at me as the seconds ticked past, and I swear something in the air itself shifted, like she heard that admission for what it was.
I’d told her plainly how I ached for her, how I wanted her and burned for her and even though I didn’t dare move, I was utterly consumed by the desire to reach for her.
This want was a need which was destroying me in every moment that I denied it.
I hadn’t been able to remove the taste of her from my tongue since that day in the Shimmering Springs.
I hadn’t slept a single night without dreaming of her, hadn’t gone a single day without seeking her out.
No other girls even registered with me. That single photo she’d sent me so fucking long ago had spent so much time on my Atlas screen that it might as well have been my screensaver.
But no matter how hard I fought it, no matter how often I gave in and fucked my hand to the thought of her flesh against mine, thinking I could banish the need myself, it didn’t change, it didn’t ease.
She was under my skin, and I was starting to think there could be no cure to it.
I blinked at her as she placed her foot on the first step of the raised platform beneath the throne.
There were three stairs which raised me up above her.
Just three. Though that distance seemed endless as my breath caught and held and I was left staring at this creature who had taken full possession of my thoughts.