Chapter Thirty-Four • Prey • Lillith #3
I smile and reach up to my hair, feeling the need to fix it.
“Lillith, sweetheart. You’re beautiful. Always. You don’t need to worry about your hair, or your feet, or anything else, alright?”
“Sorry,” I say, a little embarrassed. “I’m not trying to be vain.”
“It’s normal to feel a little vulnerable after an intense scene,” he says. “How are you feeling about it? Did you enjoy it?”
“Yeah,” I admit, fiddling with the tip of my left ring finger. “You get pretty scary when you’re in that mode.”
“Too scary?” he asks.
“No,” I hedge. “No, it’s kind of thrilling.
And when you turn that side of you off, when this version comes back out after, it’s sort of like a breath of fresh air.
It’s like... you’re such a golden retriever all the time.
So excited and sweet and eager. And when you slip into that dominant frame of mind, it’s like I get to see something that’s just for me.
Even if I’m scared, even if it makes me cry sometimes, it’s like I know that deep in here—” I place my hand on his chest, over his heart.
“I know you have my best interests in mind. That I’m giving you temporary control with the full knowledge that you’ll hand it back over as soon as I demand it. ”
He nods and smiles, his pointed teeth lovely in the moonlight.
“You are so beautiful when you let me take control. I don’t know what it is.
Maybe it’s because I spent so much of my life feeling like I was unwanted or auxiliary—you know.
Being a foster kid is complex, or at least it was to me.
I don’t fault my foster mom for not adopting me, but there was always this knowledge hanging in the back of my mind—that things weren’t permanent.
That I could be tossed away at any time.
All it would take was a phone call to my social worker and I could have everything ripped away from me.
My environment, my friends, my girlfriends, my school. It could all go away, just like that.”
“Did you think that would happen?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “No,” he says. “Not really. But maturing and knowing full well that she could get rid of me... I mean, it just took away a fundamental piece of stability that I think most other kids had. I think that’s why drumming became an outlet for me.
It was another thing that couldn’t be taken away from me. ”
His expression goes far away for a moment and a question comes to mind.
“When was the first time you ever dominated someone? What was it like?”
His eyes flicker back to mine before he purses his lips in thought.
“Mmn—I guess the first real time I experienced kink in the way you’re talking about was when Oren took me to a rope social up in Seattle a bit after I turned eighteen.
I’d been intrigued by BDSM for a while—I mean, I was a teenager with a computer.
I watched porn, you know? And then Oren was absolutely the kind of friend who sent his favorites for me to watch. ”
I laugh. “Of course.”
“Maybe it’s weird, but we kind of bonded over that stuff. He’s always been hypersexual, even though he’s pretty aromantic. As soon as that fucker turned eighteen he went to a dungeon. And going to that rope social, I think it healed something in me a little bit. I—what’s that face for?”
“What face?” I ask. “I don’t have a face.”
Bluffing. Definitely bluffing. But I’m not going to admit the truth to him.
That I feel a little twist in my stomach over the fact that he had those experiences with someone else.
And not me. And that he likely had spent a good deal of time with other partners.
And how they were probably better at all of it than I was.
“Lil-lith,” he teases in a sing song tone. “You look like you’re about to hurl.”
Damn my stupid transparent face. “I’m sorry,” I say, not able to meet his eyes.
“Don’t be. Just tell me what that face is about,” he says.
“I don’t want to. I like hearing this story, and if I tell you what I’m feeling, you’ll stop telling it.”
“I promise I won’t,” he says. “Is it jealousy? Is that what it is?”
I feel heat flare in my cheeks and, humiliatingly, tears burn my eyes. “Damien, you’ve been with so many people,” I mumble. “I’ve been with two. And I just… What if you get bored of me?”
“Hey,” he says. “Look at me.”
I cover my face with my hands.
“Look. At. Me. Right now, Lillith.”
A command. He slips back into that dominant space so quickly. I drop my hands reluctantly and look up at him. His eyes are steady and calm, his expression sincere and strangely serious.
“I will never get bored of you,” he says. “Never.”
I nod.
“And yes. You got me, alright? I’m a slut.
I have been physically intimate with a lot of women, okay?
And I won’t do you or them the disservice of saying I didn’t enjoy it.
But nothing has ever compared to how it feels when I’m with you, Lillith.
When I met you—I don’t know. I just knew it would be you or no one else, okay?
So no matter what story I tell you—no matter what awakening or fun I had with another girl—when I met you, I knew in my fucking bones that all of the heartache and disappointment was because you were waiting for me in my future. ”
And now I’m crying for an entirely different reason. I’m crying like a little baby because he is so perfect and I love him so much and he’s mine and he will be forever.
“Oh no, sweetheart, don’t do that. Not while I can’t wipe them away,” he says.
He sits me down on a large stone next to the pond in the center of the park. He wipes my tears away, smiling all the while. “Do you still want to know the rest of the story?”
I nod wordlessly.
“Alright. Well, it’s not all that exciting.
They had a shibari lesson at the social.
Nothing crazy. Just some simple floor ties.
I paired up with this girl, I don’t even remember her name, honestly.
We paired up and they taught us to tie a harness.
It was fun and challenging in the way that drumming felt challenging.
“We laughed a lot, and when the lesson was over we were encouraged to play a bit if we wanted to. I was—well, shit, I was lucky she was pretty open to just about anything, because I didn’t exactly have the training I needed to play with a stranger.
I didn’t know how to negotiate or check in or anything.
In hindsight, it was kind of a dangerous way to do things.
They didn’t even ask us about our experience with BDSM.
Maybe they just assumed if Oren was bringing me that I was cool. I don’t know.”
“Did you guys hook up?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “No. We didn’t sleep together.
We only tied the one time, but she was so pliant and willing.
She let me pull on her hair, put my hand around her throat.
Bite her. Things like that. And when she was a breathy little puddle, I told her to look at me.
” He pauses, kneeling before me with his hands on the top of my thighs.
“Look at me, Lillith,” he says. Calm. Commanding.
I do, not realizing that I was looking down at my hands. His loam and sea eyes flicker between each of mine.
“Yes,” he exhales, nearly euphoric. “That was it for me. Of all the things she let me do. Of all the things you let me do to you, Lillith. This is what does it for me. The ability to command connection. The security inherent in domination is what I became addicted to. For me, it’s not some power trip or even sadism—not really.
It’s the constant proof that I can be mean and demanding and even unreasonable, and you’re still here. ”
His eyes drop from mine and I follow his gaze to his hands. Read the tattoo there. DEVASTATED, all in caps. A brand he keeps.
Some people are worth being devastated for.
“Maybe that makes me fucked up,” he says, his whisper breaking a little. “Saying it out loud...maybe I’m just fucked up.”
I lace my fingers with his, squeezing one hand.
“I’m pretty fucked up too,” I say, staring at our joined hands.
“And why shouldn’t we be? The world can be a cold and painful place a lot of the time.
Sometimes it seems intent on letting us know that we’re just a little blip on the radar.
How easy it can be for people to leave us and loathe us—if it’s so easy, it must mean something’s wrong with us right? ”
“Right,” Damien says, a little choked up.
“So, we stumble through the world until we stumble into the person who loves us for everything we are and are not. And for me, that’s you.”
He looks up at me and smiles. It’s a sad thing, and I think my smile must be a little sad too. But I think, just for now, that’s okay.
“Lillith, I hope you know that I’m not ever going to be able to let you go,” he says, lifting one of his hands to cup my cheek in his palm.
I lean into his touch and nod. “Good. Because I’m totally going to hex you if you’re dumb enough to dump me.”
He lets out a wet laugh, lifting himself up onto his knees to kiss me. My heart soars, and I know I’m going to marry this man someday. Both here and in The Buried City. I see the vision as clear as a premonition in my mind’s eye. I can almost feel the silk ropes around our joined hands.
A slow clap rings out across the pond, and the vision shatters. I whip my head toward the sound and the world tilts. My mind can’t parse the information at first. There’s a surreal wrongness to the scene unfolding in front of me.
The clapping stops and a voice fills the silence instead.
“How very touching,” he says in that bizarre accent as he steps from the shadows into the moonlight. “But I’m afraid your little lover boy is going to have to learn how to share.”
I stand up, putting myself between Damien and the intruder.
Because that’s Aemon. Here. In the flesh.
And I’m going to fucking kill him.