Pure

Chapter 20

CHAPTER TWENTY

OPHELIA

My glasses are the perfect distraction at school on Monday. Everyday objects look fresh and new, details magnifying or retreating at a single nod or shake of my head. Walking is a breeze and so is finding my locker without feeling for the raised numbers.

I don’t have time to relive the sharp shot of jealousy when Damien suggested he find another girl. Not when I’m training my glasses to read the teacher’s scribbles from the electronic whiteboard. I can’t dwell on my insistence he use me instead when I’m memorising touch commands.

During the change for second period, I pass Damien in the hallway and almost stop walking. His wide-set eyes sparkle with cold intelligence; curls of dark hair fall across his forehead.

My gaze follows the precise line of his jaw.

Before, his attractiveness was abstract just like anything beyond my standard visual range. Now it captures my attention.

It’s only when I’m eating lunch alone that I think about how Damien set me up on Saturday night. He set me up good, but it only worked because I already wanted him that way.

Now I can’t get it out of my head.

The mindlessness of his pure animal pursuit… each flashback leaves my body trembling. The raw panic of sprinting through the forest, footsteps closing in, branches whipping my face or catching in my hair like they were in partnership with my pursuer.

My fingers curl like they’re clawing into the mulch of dropped needles again, every muscle shaking.

Damien’s already seated when I arrive at music class and slip into the next desk along. When he turns my way, his ribs brush against the desk edge and he winces. There’s a mottled shadow under his jaw.

“Are you okay?”

“Always, Snowflake.” He wears a gentler smile than usual. “Just got more exercise than expected over the weekend.” His eyes cut across to mine. “Thought I might take up running.”

Despite the humour, he remains subdued throughout class, enough that when the bell goes, I wonder again what he’s going home to.

Rather than bus, I walk through the park, amused by Cam’s clumsy footsteps following behind me. And instead of heading straight home, I drop into the dingy pawn shop again. The guy behind the counter is the same and doesn’t question me when I ask for a replacement canister of spray.

“And do you have anything small for recording video? Like a wire or something?”

He holds up a finger and disappears out the back, returning with a small array of electronics. “This one clips to your collar,” he explains, pushing it forward as the best option. “And it’s self-contained. You sync the files to your phone or laptop later.”

A perfect option since Damien will check my phone again. “I’ll take it.”

On Tuesday, a finger drags across my hip when I pass Damien in the corridor, but the touch is so light, I’m half convinced it’s my imagination.

When we pair off in music, analysing Penderecki’s Threnody, my senses react as much to his proximity as the nerve-tightening score. His promise from last week echoes on repeat. I’ll put you on your knees for this.

By lunchtime Wednesday, my body is chaotic with anticipation.

Again, I hide in the condemned bike sheds, past the flapping tarpaulin. The corrugated iron roof sags above me, rust blooming through peeling strips of light green paint. Probably leaded.

I methodically eat my sandwich, not tasting anything while my new glasses sharpen features I’d rather not see. Black mould, cigarette butts, the brittle skin of a used condom.

I’m doomscrolling on my phone when his footsteps crunch across the gravel.

My spine goes rigid. I’d recognise his gait anywhere.

Damien fills the doorway, blocking most of the light. “There you are, Snowflake.” He glances around, face scrunching in revulsion. “Remind me to never let you select a picnic spot. This is disgusting.”

He steps inside, and the shed shrinks around us. “Phone.”

“Why? It’s not recording.” I show him the screen.

“Because I said so.”

His eyebrow arches and his air of menace is far more effective now I see more clearly. I can’t look away from his pursing lips, tracing the upper line until it’s cemented in my memory.

“Unless you want to renegotiate our deal again in light of Saturday? Something tells me I’d get a much better deal today.”

Smug bastard.

My fingers tremble with nerves as I pass the phone to him. He pockets it without looking, then crouches before me, close enough I smell his cologne more clearly than the decaying shed. He runs his knuckles along the cheek, and his touch is impossibly gentle.

“On your knees,” Damien orders as he stands, and a jolt of pleasure zips through me. Fragments of Saturday reawakened by his commanding voice.

I bend forward, testing the ground with my palm. “Yeah. I don’t think so.”

“Oh, are you too delicate for concrete?” Despite the teasing lilt, he strips off his blazer and lays it on the ground. “There you go.” Pressure on my shoulders until I comply.

He steals the glasses from my face, tucking them into his breast pocket. “Let’s just keep these away from the firing line.”

I sit back on my heels, wincing up at him, the sun right behind his head. There’s a pull in my stomach as I guess where this is going, then he surprises me, dangling a pair of handcuffs from his finger.

“Arms behind your back, wrists together.”

They’re plain metal, not padded, and look suspiciously like… “Are those real?”

“Real as in they exist in the world? Sure.”

“I mean—”

“I know what you mean, and no, I didn’t steal them from police.” He arches his eyebrows, and a flicker of heat curls inside.

“Can I have them in front?” I put my wrists together, tilting my head and feeling a plastic edge against my jaw where the device is secured. “I want to touch you.”

Satisfaction curls his lips, and he nods. He clicks the first cuff around my wrist, and feels inside with his finger, making sure there’s room before fixing the second. “Nice and secure.”

His hand cups my cheek, warmth pulsing from it and travelling down to ignite a matching throb in my stomach, then lower, my centre already growing wet.

A reaction I half wish was faked for the recording… but isn’t false at all.

“Ooh, this is a nice shade for your cheeks.” The tease is back in his voice, and the shed heats ten degrees as I lean into his touch. “Think I’ll call this one… desperation.”

“Desperate to get up from this cement.”

His lips are against my ear now, gently vibrating. “You might want to rethink that attitude, or you won’t get your present.”

My face is pulsing with heat, now, and god knows what range it’s hitting on his fictional colour chart. Damien stands again, throwing me into shade, the sunlight a painful halo around his curly hair.

The shadows make his face hard to read, but I easily hear him pull down his zipper, tooth by tooth until my shoulders are rigid.

“Open your mouth.”

I press my lips together, feeling another pulse in my core as he laughs, hand closing around my chin, thumb rubbing along my lips, the pressure growing with each sweep until he pushes inside, my jaw yielding.

The salty tang of his skin makes my mouth flood with saliva, and the rhythmic push and retreat motion soon has me sucking his thumb, tongue eager for every taste.

“The worse you behave, the harder you’ll make it for yourself,” he warns, but it doesn’t temper my attitude, instead firing me up until I wrench my chin free of his clutching fingers, thumb coming free with a pop.

He taps the top of my head. “Naughty brat.”

Then his thick fingers splay around my skull, stronger than steel as he pulls me close, forcing his thumb back inside my mouth until the strain makes me open for him, the silken tip of his cock following, surging inside until it bumps against the back of my throat.

“Good girls decide how much they take,” he informs me, clicking his tongue as I struggle to withdraw. “Bad girls take what they’re given.”

His hand is immoveable, relentlessly holding me in place as he briefly withdraws, then pushes even deeper inside my mouth—inside my throat—hairs tickling my nose as his thick cock chokes me, saliva gushing until it spills from my lips, dripping down my chin, no room to swallow.

I stare up at him, watching his eyes narrow with pleasure. The puff of his lips, tongue snaking out to lick them.

The noises coming from me are obscene, but so are the groans emanating from Damien’s mouth. Something about knowing I’m responsible for each moan, the sheen of sweat across his forehead, the glazed look in his eye, melts my core.

I’m on my knees, a pose that couldn’t be more submissive, but I don’t feel his domination as weakness, not today, especially not when I’m the one who leans forwards, swallowing him deeper, holding steady even as my throat works, exulting in the noises torn from his throat.

It’s power.

Embracing everything he can give me, eagerly opening my throat as he continues thrusting, using me, face fucking me until I’ve lost track of reality.

The world narrows, just chances to gulp in air, the urge to gag and the strain of my throat muscles convulsing. My knees ache from the hard cement, the pulse in my centre growing ever more insistent, thighs squeezing in a desperate bid for friction.

Damien’s clamping fingers release me, pulling me off his cock, leaving my mouth unbearably empty.

As I squint up at him through watering eyes, he strokes his cock once, twice, then his cum spurts free, slashing onto the dirty concrete in front of me. Some hits my knee, burning hot. Pumping again and again until he’s spent, wiping the last few drops from his tip.

“Have a taste,” he says, and his fingers fill the void left by his cock, pushing deep into my mouth, rubbing his seed over my tongue in a burst of smoke and salt.

When he pulls back, I lean forward, coughing and choking as I gulp in air, spit still dripping from my chin. Barely aware.

“Aren’t you going to undo the cuffs?” I finally ask, awkwardly wiping away the worst of my dribbling tears and spit.

“Only when you clean up the mess.”

Damien squats level with me, his fingers soft at first, then hardening as he pushes my face towards the ground. I stare at the spots on the filthy concrete, stomach pulling.

“Go ahead, be a good slut for me and you might still earn a reward.”

I tell myself I’m just obeying so he’ll set me free, so the recording will look more incriminating, but that doesn’t explain why my thighs are clamped hard together. It’s not the reason my entire body is on fire.

I extend my tongue gingerly towards the first splash, the spreading patches dark splotches against the lighter pavers. Easily visible since my head’s barely an inch above the ground.

“Such a good girl,” he murmurs as I lick his release from the dirty concrete. “Get every drop. Show me how much you like it.”

I’m fighting with myself. Body against mind. Shame warring with a low, dirty excitement. This should be humiliating, it is, but beyond that is a drive to obey and be rewarded.

On my first lick, the grit, the foul taste, remind me of the park attack, but I swallow and go back for more. Damien’s somehow hijacked my brain. This isn’t me… yet every command feels so right.

“That’s perfect.” He pulls me upright, his arm an iron support around my waist. “Poke out your tongue.”

He sucks it into his mouth, the rhythmic pull matching the throb between my thighs.

“So filthy,” he growls, voice thickening into a stranger’s. “But so obedient.”

He delves beneath my kilt, fingers hooking aside my underwear, damp with arousal. His kiss is bruising, possessive as he walks me backward until my spine hits the mildewed wall.

“You got so wet.” His fingers slide through the slick heat between my legs, teasing around my swollen clit. “You loved that, didn’t you? Being on your knees for me.”

“No.” But my hips buck against his hand, chasing the friction.

“Liar.” He slides two fingers inside me, thumb still working my clit in tight circles. “Your cunt’s telling me everything I need to know.”

I open my mouth, but Damien presses a finger to my lips. “Shh. Not a sound. We don’t want anyone coming to investigate.”

Reminding me there’s an entire school beyond this doorway and flapping tarp. Tempting me with the threat of discovery.

Damien’s gentle strokes build into something rougher until I’m writhing with need and pleasure, biting my lips not to scream. His other hand fists in my hair, holding me in place against the shed wall. Despite my efforts, small noises escape, whimpers and gasps that echo off the corrugated iron.

“That’s it.” His voice drops to a growl. “Come so my fingers are covered in your sweet juices. Soak my hand.”

The need gathers in my core, and he claims my mouth, stealing my gasps as the need builds, teetering on the edge.

“Fuck I love you.” The words are barely audible.

A whisper I might have imagined except for the way his whole body goes rigid afterward, like he’s shocked himself.

Then my orgasm is crashing through me. Wave after wave as he swallows my moans again, his hand around my throat, pinning my neck against the dank concrete wall, fingers still working me through the aftershocks.

I’m still clinging when the cuffs come off my wrists. Damien returns my glasses and phone, then tugs and smooths my clothing back into place, combing his fingers through my hair until the bell for fourth period rings.

Then he pulls away sharply, putting distance between us while I stand there, stunned, still trembling.

“You might feel some kind of way after this.” His tone shifts back to casual, but there’s tension in his shoulders. “Sometimes the comedown can fuck with your head. I’ll call you tonight. Just… press pause on everything you feel until then, okay?”

He’s gone before I can respond, footsteps fading across the gravel while I lean against the mildewed wall, legs too weak to support me properly. The shed feels cavernous without him. Just me and the dripping roof and the stains on the concrete that are already soaking into the porous surface.

I rub my wrists. The thin lines scored into them by the cuffs are already fading, along with the ache in my knees from the cold ground.

A forbidden thrill runs through me as I scan the shed for any evidence we might have left behind.

There’s nothing.

I place my palm on my abdomen, pushing back against the emptiness that wants to flow.

“You’re okay.” I clench my teeth, inhaling through my nose. The same mantra he used on me behind the community hall. “You’re okay.” My voice is far stronger on the repeat.

When I’m steadier, I remove the recording device from my collar and turn it off, storing it in the zipped pocket inside my bag for later examination. Then I just stand, arms loose by my sides, staring at nothing.

Until the second bell rings, jerking me into action. I should be waiting outside class by now.

With one last glance around the shed, I shuffle under the tarpaulin, rejoining the normal world.