Chapter 9
DOVE
Consensual non-consent.
Impact play. Bondage. Orgasm denial.
A heated, shuddering sensation traces down my spine.
Somnophilic activities.
Free use.
My throat bobs as my eyes dart all over the laptop screen in front of me. As promised, a copy of our signed agreement was waiting in my inbox when I got home from Bane's place thirty minutes ago.
“Home” for me, though, isn’t the main house, where Dad and Medusa—sorry, Felicity—live.
When I returned from Il Refugio, the ultra-exclusive “wellness facility”…
aka rehab clinic…situated on the edge of Lake Como in northern Italy, I couldn’t bring myself to live under the same roof as Dad and that cunt.
But the Brooklyn Heights mansion is over a hundred years old, which means it also has an old carriage house.
This is where I set up my home base. It’s nice and open, which gives me plenty of space for the barre, just in case I decide the eleven million hours I spend dancing at the Mercury Theater isn’t enough.
There’s also a ton of room for my paintings, a little sitting area, a small kitchen, and a full bathroom, along with a lofted sleeping area.
I like it. It’s quiet, and everyone—mostly—leaves me alone.
At the café table I’ve got set up in the kitchen area, I re-read the devil’s deal I’ve just signed.
Each time I get to the list of kinks included in the “contract of consent to physical and sexual activity”, heat floods my face.
But the most mortifying, fucked-up part isn’t the list of kinks I’ve just agreed to participate in.
It’s that they’re all things that do turn me on.
Like, a lot.
I can guess where that came from. I don’t know—don’t remember—if I gravitated toward being restrained, having my control taken away, free use, or even worse, rape-play, before Lark and I were taken.
Taken, and held for two nights by that fucking psychopath.
I…might have been, I guess? But everything I’ve learned about who I was before that experience suggests otherwise.
I don’t love the me I am now. But I’m pretty sure I’d hate the me I was before my trip to hell.
Back when I was Dove the head cheerleader, queen bitch of Thornfield Prep, dating Scott Hathaway, the chest-thumping neanderthal quarterback, and breezing through the world like a spoiled little mafia cunt.
But meeting the devil face to face changes you.
So, maybe I was into the idea of being ravaged and fucked against my will back then, or being someone’s toy, whenever and wherever they choose. Being used while I’m asleep.
But I think the surer bet is that those fucked-up needs and desires were implanted in me while I was in that room.
I’ve read a lot about the psychological effects of torture, imprisonment, and extreme stress. And when I replay those hellish, nightmare flashbacks of being chained up, my head bleeding after that monster shaved it raw, and hearing what I couldn’t block out happening in the room next to mine?
My eyes squeeze shut as my body violently shudders. My brain short-circuits briefly, bright lights like a mini lightning storm exploding through my front cortex and making me wince as my hand flies to my temple.
For a second, I’m back there in that rotting house.
Chained to the cot.
Dirty, cold, hungry, and terrified.
Listening to that monster rape and finally murder my best friend in the room next door. Her muffled, gagged screams. The sound of flesh slapping flesh.
I bolt from the kitchen, stumbling into the bathroom and lifting the toilet lid just in time to vomit.
The lightning storm in my head subsides a little then. I sink to the floor, breathing in and out unsteadily as I rest the back of my head against the tiled wall. My hair falls over my clammy face, but I don't brush it away, looking up at the ceiling through a haze of blonde and pink.
My hair’s been almost every color of the rainbow over the past seven years.
Sometimes buzzed super short. Sometimes extra-long.
The therapist I saw for a while at Oxford Hills Academy, over in England, told me my ever-changing hairstyle was a coping mechanism; a way to “take back control and autonomy over my body” after that psychopath shaved my head bald when he took us.
I mean, no shit, Sherlock.
Eventually I exhale and push the hair out of my eyes. Then I flush the toilet, stand, wash my hands, and splash cold water on my face.
I grab my laptop off the kitchen table and bring it upstairs to the sleeping loft with me. For a moment, after I undress, I glance at the reflection of my body in the full-length wall mirror.
The old me was obsessed with unrealistic beauty standards and the male gaze.
Since my trip to hell, I have a different outlook.
I mean, I know I’m pretty, even if the circles under my eyes are a little deeper these days. I’m in—real talk—insanely good shape, thanks to a lifetime of ballet.
But while I don’t remember much from before the amnesia, I do remember hating any and every little blemish I’d find on my body. A pimple was cause for a meltdown. A bruise from dancing? Kill me now. End my suffering.
A wry smile curls my mouth as I look at myself.
I’m in ludicrously good shape. I’m toned, slender, strong…and yes, pretty.
But my body is also a battle report of what it’s been through. Recent bruising from a fall at rehearsal purples the outside of my left thigh all the way up to the hip. Another one from a different tumble…Val and I really need to get that lift sorted out…swells on my right forearm.
The thin white lines, evenly spaced and all the same length across my thigh where it meets my hip.
I don’t cut much anymore. Hardly ever, really. But there was a time…
I shake my head, letting that part of me fall back into the shadows as I take stock of the rest of my wounds and marks that the old me would have crashed out to see.
The scar on my knee from the patellar impingement surgery I had when I was nineteen. The ones on my elbow, from when I was high as a kite and fell sideways through a plate glass door.
The burn marks on my back, one of my shoulders and my right hand, from the fire and explosion that knocked away my memory the night I was rescued.
Tattoos—some still beloved, others that make me cringe. Scars from other accidents. My fucked-up feet and the hidden track marks there.
I smile quietly, turning, really looking at my body without trying for the best angle or the most flattering light.
Everything might be spiraling out of control right now, but at least I don’t hate myself like I used to. I might not like myself all the time, but I’ve learned to put away the hate.
Mostly.
And that’s something to be proud of. That took fucking work, and time, and tears, and falling over and over before I could stand on my own again.
I frown a little, thinking about my time at OHA, and then at the slightly less prestigious Manchester Prep after I was “encouraged to leave” the former.
Suddenly being an outcast.
Trying to remember who I was, hoping the memories would come back. Screaming in terror when they did.
I think—no, I know—that’s why I tried heroin that first time, at Oxford Hills University. Those memories, returning after being lost in the ether, were a literal walking nightmare from which I couldn't wake. And once they did come back, nothing could keep them away.
Nothing except heroin.
It's ludicrous, I know: an aspiring ballet dancer doing heroin? But shooting up was the warmest hug I’d ever felt. The great escape from the monsters rampaging through my head. Better than any high, any emotion, any elation.
But heroin is a heaven that rapidly turns into a hell. Your salvation becomes your prison—bars that lock you down as you watch yourself lose your entire life.
Friends. Family. Your pride. Your dignity. Your interest in doing anything but more fucking heroin.
I slowly inhale, forcing myself to look at myself.
Most people don’t make it back from that trip to the dark side.
I did.
I survived. I lived. Fate whispered that I could not withstand the storm, and I shouted back that I am the goddamn storm.
So this shit with Bane?
I grimace.
Let him do whatever he wants. It won’t break me. Whatever he’s got up his sleeve… I’ve survived worse.
I shower in the upstairs bathroom off my sleeping area. Then I pull on some cozy sleep shorts and a hoodie and sit cross-legged on my bed. I open the laptop, reading the list of kinks again, my face growing hotter.
I know there’s a strong possibility that I get turned on by fucked-up stuff like rape fantasies, or being tied down with my control taken away, or a free use kink—which, yes, is exactly what it sounds like—because of what I lived through back in that room.
I know that ordeal probably rewired me. Rearranged “things that are bad” and “things that I want” in my head.
I know this. It doesn’t change the fact that I do get turned on by this shit.
A lot.
I close the laptop, turn off the lights, and sink back against the pillows.
And my sick, twisted brain comes awake.
My mind replays the mix of shame and pure arousal I felt when he made me bend over and spread myself open to his gaze. I shiver at the memory of his lips brushing my ear, and his deep rasping voice purring against my neck.
The feel of his big hand on me, cupping my fucking pussy…
Desire bubbles and ripples under my skin. My thighs squeeze together, and—God help me—I feel the seep of wet heat pooling in my core.
My breath hitches as I slide my hands over my body to my breasts, the fingers of one hand finding a pebbled nipple under the cotton.
I pinch it hard, biting back a sharp gasp as pain and pleasure erupt inside me.
I pinch again, twisting the aching nipple as I squeeze my thighs tight together and roll my hips.
I know. I’m a fucked-up disaster.
So fucking what.
My hand slides lower, pulling up the hem of my hoodie. My fingers tease across my stomach, pushing lower until they slip into my shorts and beneath the lacy edge of my panties.