Chapter Twenty-One • Limitations • Damien
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“Okay, okay. Let me see it one more time,” I say a few hours later as we lie on the living room floor on another makeshift cot of blankets and pillows.
I’m on my back while Gloam chills on the angle of my bent knee, and Lillith is resting her forearms on my chest, her chin perched upon the point where they meet.
“Damien, I thought you were going to let me rest,” she says, but she doesn’t sound put out.
“You said the hair color thing takes, like, no energy. You told me it’s the magical equivalent of brushing your teeth.”
“Do you like to brush your teeth eight times in one day?” she teases.
“Uhhhh, yes,” I lie. I beam when she falls into another fit of giggles.
She sighs, sitting up properly and crossing her legs. She wiggles her manicured fingers in front of my face. “Nothing up my sleeve,” she says.
She runs her hands through her hair, and I watch, mesmerized all over again, as the pale white of her hair shimmers with pastel pinks and violets and yellows in the same paths her fingers catch.
She gathers her hair up into a ponytail, showing me both sides.
She’s let the most vibrant shade of lilac settle for a moment.
Then she shakes her hair, mussing it slightly, and all the color is gone. Back to stark white.
I shake my head with wonder. “Holy shit, I don’t think that will ever get old,” I say.
“It will, once we go to The Buried City,” she says, coming to curl up next to me again.
“When are we doing that?” I ask.
She shrugs. “Whenever you’re free, I guess,” she says.
“Tomorrow?”
“Really? Are you sure?”
“Yeah. I mean, why wouldn’t I be?”
“It can be overwhelming,” she says. “I mean, it can be a pretty intense place to visit for a mortal the first time.”
I snort. “I’m sorry—a mortal? What is this, Charmed? Buffy?”
She has the grace to look embarrassed. “Look, I’m not saying it’s great vernacular, but it is the vernacular we use. It’s not my fault! This is, like, very old-timey bullshit.”
“And how is the landscape for witch-mortal relationships? Are we marginalized?” I ask.
“It’s a little uncommon, but no. We shouldn’t face any scorn for our mixed lineages,” she says with a sage nod. Then she blinks before pursing her lips and tilting her head to the side, like she’s thinking.
“What?” I ask.
“I actually should do a small working before we go,” she says. “Witches aren’t the only thing that live in The Buried City. Mortals are rare, and there are some entities that are too weak to leave The Buried City to hunt, or are exiled there—”
“What... kind of working?”
“A simple binding ritual.”
“Sounds kinky,” I say, grinning.
She turns scarlet. “N-no. More like... uhm... well—” She trails off before finally squeaking out. “It’s like a... sort of, uh. Well, it’s something that vampires used to use on their thralls.”
“Wait a fucking second. Vampires?” Something occurs to me. “Wait. That thing you said about the largest population outside of Transylvania...”
“Yes,” she says, eyeing me like I might get up and run.
“You were serious,” I say.
“Yes?” she repeats, cringing this time.
“And their thralls are... ”
“Like—uh...” she flushes impossibly deeper and before she can clarify it dawns on me.
“Oh my god,” I say feeling my own grin stretch. “You totally have to mark me as your territory, don’t you?”
“Oh gods,” she groans. “I promise it’s not, like, a weird sex slave thing.”
“Blood kinks, sex slaves. What’s next? Ritual fornication?”
She looks at me with such a guilty expression that my mouth drops open.
“No. Fucking. Way.”
“It’s not, like, all the time,” she says. “And only special people really at the center of the ritual! It’s not, like, magical orgies or anything. I mean—not usually during the actual ritual.”
“I’m more and more into the idea of this Buried City thing,” I say, waggling my eyebrows.
“As if I’d be inclined to share you.”
“Who says you have to share? I’d be the one sharing,” I say, brushing hair away from her face and pulling her back down to where I’m lying.
She rests her chin on my chest and examines me for a few moments. “Are you... like, into cuckolding or something? You said that whole thing about sharing. I just assumed you were joking.”
I shake my head. “Not joking, no. But I like to be an active participant. I just don’t feel particularly threatened by my partners getting to feel good when it comes to bedroom activities.”
“You mentioned discussing limits earlier...” she prompts.
I nod. “Yeah. I think we ought to, if you’re open to it. Good for us to be on the same page.”
“And what page is it that we’re starting on?”
“Well,” I say, brushing my fingers down the line of her spine. “Suffice to say I’m a bit of a kinky fucker. Like, the real thing—not some Fifty Shades bullshit.”
She nods. “Alright, would you say you lean more dominant?”
“Yes,” I say without hesitating. “Have you explored much kink before?”
She shakes her head. “Not in the structured way I think you mean. There’s not much of a community here for that—I think the town is too small. It’s too easy to run into your dentist or your mail carrier or something.”
Something warm spreads in my stomach, and I adjust myself just slightly, so my growing arousal doesn’t jut into her stomach. “But with your previous partners...”
“I’ve dabbled, I guess,” she says breathlessly.
“Tell me,” I say quietly.
“In how much detail?”
“However much you’re willing to share.”
She inhales in preparation and looks away, a habit I make note of that I’ll have to train out of her. I want her to look at me when we’re discussing these things.
“Well—ah, my first real sexual experience was with a member of a fae court during one summer solstice when I was nineteen. He glamoured me—c-consensually, of course. It was discussed before he did it. He was very polite and he only used enough of that power to make everything feel incredible for me.”
I nod, not really sure what all these words mean, but putting things together I think. “So, he did something to enhance your experiences with him. Like a mental thing?”
She nods. “Yes. A glamour is a sort of trance state that fae can induce to make other people more malleable and compliant. He was respectful when I told him I didn’t want to go, er... Well, all the way with him.”
“So, what did you do with him?”
“I just obeyed. He mostly used my mouth. He wasn’t exactly gentle, but the glamour made me feel like I was the luckiest woman alive to have him choose me.
He also wanted me to use his mouth.” The flush in her cheeks offsets the mental image of her blissed out and dreamy as she gets her throat fucked and grinds against some stranger’s face.
“And you liked that?”
“Very much so,” she says, the quality of her words sweetly timid despite the readiness with which she says them.
“What else?” I ask.
“Bastion very magnanimously offered to take my virginity when I made it to 21 without it happening yet,” she says, her tone going a little stilted. “Blindfolds were involved... and some restraints.”
“What kinds?”
“Well-conditioned jute rope,” she says.
My brows lift. “Color me impressed. Is he a rigger?”
“I don’t... think so. He just prefers to do things properly.” She says it like she’s quoting him. “He just bound my wrists together and away from my head.”
I nod. “How was that?”
“Painful. But... it made things a little more interesting. I liked testing the bindings.”
I make a mental note of that for later. “Anything else?”
She shrugs. “Nothing to really write home about. I haven’t had that many partners in my life. I guess roleplaying if you count Beltane last year, but that was more of an ‘ecstatic trance’ thing than a kink thing.”
“Uh... I know you don’t think we’re just going to gloss over that,” I say. “Details.”
“It’s embarrassing,” she whines.
I test the waters with her then. I let my expression sober and my tone level out with a sort of unspoken authority. “Lillith,” I prompt again.
She looks adequately chastised, but a flush dusts across her cheeks and the bridge of her nose. I reward her with a brush of my thumb over the crest of her heated cheek as she continues.
“Beltane is when The Goddess and The Stag meet, and he claims her as his bride. Bastion was chosen as the stag last year, and since he gets to invite whoever he likes to play the part of the goddess, he asked me. It’s an honor to participate, so I said yes.
There was a chase, and once he caught me...
there was a ritual. A claiming on an altar while other participants bore witness. ”
“So... primal play. And a bit of exhibitionism. Are there any things on your wish list that you’d like to try? Anything you don’t want to do?”
“Nothing really comes to mind,” she says. “But... I do like the idea of you taking charge, if that’s what you’re trying to sus out.”
“Do you, now?” I ask, unable to help the way my smile widens. The promise of compatibility between us leaves me pleasantly breathless.
She leans her weight on me again, letting her head loll to the side as her eyes go hooded. She nods shyly and tucks her lower lip beneath her teeth.
“I need to hear more about that, little bird,” I say.
“I think... it might be nice to be your plaything for a little while. If you promise to like me as much as you do now when you’re done with me.”
Arousal tunnels through my middle in a way that makes every sinew and nerve ending feel like it’s on fire. I feel the tight expansion of her ribcage in the circle of my hands, knowing she must feel the same.
“Good,” I say with a warm smile, despite the way my voice bottoms out. “Then be a good girl. Undress from the waist down. And wait for me on the couch while I wash my hands.”