Chapter 21 Xave #2
The cabin isn’t anything fancy. It’s just a two-story structure with a main room/living room combo, a kitchen, a powder room, and a small den on the first floor, and three bedrooms and a full bathroom upstairs.
The furnishings are pretty basic and well-worn, and most importantly, there are no cameras or microphones or keylogs, so it’s one of the only places we can talk without the risk of being overheard.
I motion to the large sectional sofa in the living room in front of the gas fireplace.
Damon sits on the chaise part, and I flip on the fireplace to get rid of the damp chill in the air, then sit next to him. There are a few feet of space between us, and it takes way more self-control than it should to stay where I am and not slide closer to him.
“Why have you been following me?” he asks, his eyes fixed on the fireplace as the flames crackle and flicker over the ceramic logs.
“You knew that was me?”
I already assumed he figured it out, but this confirms it.
He slides his gaze to mine and gives me a little smirk. “I mean, I’m dumb, but I’m not stupid.”
“You’re not dumb or stupid,” I say, not liking that he’s putting himself down.
“Maybe not, but I just meant it wasn’t that hard to figure out. Especially after we started…” His cheeks and neck flush soft pink as he swallows hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing enticingly.
“Jordan asked me to tail you,” I tell him, circling back to his question. “He found out about you and Eden being friends, and he asked me to gather intel on you.”
“To see what my intentions were?” he asks, his expression amused.
“And to see if you were going to be a problem.”
He flicks his lip ring with his tongue a few times, and my body tightens at the casual move.
Thankfully he doesn’t seem to notice my reaction, and his brow furrows in confusion.
“But we were friends for a while before you started following me. Unless you were just really good before and I only noticed after you’d been at it for a while.”
“He didn’t find out about you two until he asked me to start tailing you. And you clocked me right away. You’re the only one who ever has.”
Something flickers across his expression, and it looks suspiciously like jealousy.
No, that can’t be right. Can it?
“You do this sort of thing a lot?” he asks, more of that possible jealousy sparking in his eyes.
“Follow people to get intel?”
He nods.
“Yes. But you’re the only one I’ve actually stalked,” I tell him truthfully.
“What’s the difference?” he asks, but I can see relief in his eyes, and I have to bite back a grin.
Is it possible Damon liked being stalked as much as I liked doing it?
“With the others, I just kept an eye on them and reported what I saw. With you, I didn’t just follow you.
I watched you. And I did it because I wanted to.
Because I liked it. And I didn’t report most of what I saw or found out about you to Jordan.
You weren’t just a mark to me, and he didn’t need to know what I learned if it wasn’t relevant to his reasons for having me watch you in the first place. ”
“Really?” he asks, and there’s no mistaking the hope in his gaze.
I nod. “My job ended weeks ago, but I didn’t stop because I didn’t want to. And everything that we did, well, let’s just say that had nothing to do with a job.”
“So you haven’t done that sort of thing with other people?” he asks.
I shake my head.
He drags his tongue over his bottom lip and gently bites the silver ring in his piercing.
I know it’s an innocent move and he’s not doing it to seduce me or anything, but my already half-hard dick twitches appreciatively as I track the move with my gaze.
“Have you wanted to do that kind of thing before we…” He swallows, and it takes way more effort than it should not to look at his throat so I can watch his muscles work.
“Yes,” I tell him, a husky tone creeping into my voice. “But I never once had the urge to act on them. Not until I started following you.”
“No?” he asks, not even trying to hide his hopeful tone or expression.
I shake my head. “Have you thought about that kind of thing?”
“Yeah,” Damon says thickly. “Not exactly that, but stuff like that.”
“Have you ever done anything like it before?”
He lets out a little snort-laugh that’s way too endearing. “Fuck no. I’ve spent years thinking I was insane and there was something fundamentally wrong with me for wanting that kind of stuff.”
“And now that you’ve done it, do you still think there’s something wrong with you?”
He shrugs and glances at the floor as a flush of color creeps up his neck. “Not as much as before, but yeah, sometimes. I mean, even you can’t deny it’s fucked up. People aren’t supposed to want that sort of stuff.”
“Why not?”
He shoots me a confused look. “Because it’s wrong.”
“Why is it wrong?”
“Because…”
“We’re consenting adults. What does it matter if we’re into things that other people think are wrong?”
“It doesn’t, I guess. But it’s still messed up.
I mean, what does it say about me that I like pretending that you’re forcing me to suck your dick and fucking me against my will?
What kind of damage do I have that getting stalked and chased and scared out of my goddamn mind gets me hotter than anything else I’ve ever done? ”
“I like pretending I’m forcing you to suck my dick and fucking you against your will,” I say simply. “I also like stalking and chasing and scaring the shit out of you before I make you suck my dick and take what I want. Do you think there’s something wrong with me?”
He shoots me a smirky smile. “In general, or just when it comes to your kinks?”
“My kinks,” I say with a soft laugh.
His expression goes serious again. “No, I don’t.”
“Then why would there be something wrong with you?”
“Because you’re the one doing it, and I’m the one taking it.” He shakes his head gently. “And I don’t mean it in a top/bottom way. I mean you’re the predator and I’m the prey. That’s the part that’s messed up. I’m not supposed to want to be prey.”
“Why not?”
He opens his mouth like he’s going to answer, but closes it, his brow furrowing again. “I don’t really know. But it feels wrong.”
“Does it feel wrong because you think it’s wrong, or because you’ve been told it is?”
He pauses like it’s the first time he’s thought of it that way. “Because I’ve been told it is.”
“I’m not saying your feelings aren’t valid,” I tell him. “I’m just saying that there’s nothing wrong with being into stuff that other people don’t understand. And there’s nothing wrong with you for liking any of what we’ve done.”
He holds my gaze for a few beats, and I can see the moment he lets go of whatever was holding him back from accepting that his kinks don’t define him as a person.
“You should be a therapist or something because you just undid about a decade of emotional trauma and self-flagellation in about two minutes of conversation,” he says, a smile tilting the corners of his lips.
“Pretty sure I’d make a terrible therapist,” I say with a grin. “I like chaos, and I get bored easily. That’s a bad combo for someone who’s supposed to be the voice of reason.”
He chuckles. “Yeah, that might not be the best idea then.” His smile fades, and he flicks his lip ring with his tongue absentmindedly as his gaze goes thoughtful. “Why did that guy try to kill me?”
“Because someone hired him.”
His eyes widen. “Seriously? I mean, I kinda figured it was something like that because of the whole ‘who sent you’ thing while your cousins were doing their interrogation, but I didn’t really believe it was true.”
“Believe it,” I tell him grimly. “And I know about you getting jumped back when school started up again.”
“You do?” He shoots me a confused look. “But that was weeks before you started following me.”
“I saw the videos of it,” I tell him. “That’s how Jordan found out about you and Eden. He showed me the security footage of her helping you to Romeo House and going inside with you.”
“Wait, how did he see her going inside with me? You mean he saw her go through the gate and assumed she came inside because of how long it was before she left through the gate again?”
I shake my head. “We have an entire surveillance network on top of what the school already has. And we also have access to your network thanks to a crack in your security that Jace recently found.”
He stares at me for a few beats, confusion and shock written all over his face. “Why are you telling me this? That sounds like something you could get in a lot of trouble for telling a Keeper.”
“It is,” I say. “But I’m not telling you as a Keeper. I’m telling you as Damon.”
“What’s the difference?”
“Because I trust you.”
His eyes widen again, and he kind of reminds me of the shocked-face emoji. “Really?”
I nod.
“But you don’t know me.”
“Maybe not, but I don’t need to know everything about you to know I can trust you. My instincts tell me I can, and I always trust my instincts.”
“Do you trust many people?” he asks quietly.
I shake my head. “Only my family. And you.”
“Really?”
I nod. “Do you trust me?”
He lets out a little snort that’s not quite a laugh. “Yeah. I kind of have to trust you to do what we’ve been doing.”
“And beyond what we’ve been doing?”
There’s a very real chance that I’m reading the room wrong and Damon doesn’t feel even a fraction of what I do, but right now, that’s a chance I’m willing to take.
I’ve never met anyone who makes me feel what he does, and he’s the only person who’s ever gotten under my skin like this. That means something, and my gut is telling me it means something to him too.