24. EVERY-NIGHT
alistair
That night wasn’t the last time Ariella came to me. It was the beginning.
She visits me every night.
She stays hidden behind the curtains, watching me pound into my so-called wife. Fucking her into oblivion beneath me.
She stays silent, patiently learning, and waits until I’m done.
Once I am—when my body is spent, and my mind slips into that heavy, bone-deep exhaustion—she comes out alive.
She emerges only when she’s certain I’m gone to the world of unconsciousness.
But I don’t.
My body pretends to drop into slumber like a dead man after fucking under an audience.
Any other man would. However, I stay alert to feel her crawling out of the shadows and inside the blanket to clean Delilah off me off. Unlike the very first night, when I unexpectedly fell asleep.
The first touch is always tentative and curious. The faintest brush of her lips or breath, or something warm and inviting against my skin.
My body registers it before my mind does by responding slowly. All she does is lick me—slow, testing strokes that drag sensation out of me inch by inch.
Sometimes she takes a little more. A hesitant suck. A soft, almost shy pressure. Just like a little kitty.
I let her believe I’m going through another filthy, recurring hallucination where I come undone at the mercy of something I never quite see.
And each time it takes everything in me not to tangle my fingers in her hair, drag her forward, and put that wicked mouth to a proper use. To feel that careful curiosity break into something desperate while I ruin it for good.
Instead, I let her believe she’s the one in charge.
Every morning, I wake up to Ariella leaving her signature lip print exactly on the same side of my chest. I never wash it off completely. I keep its originality so that she can kiss it again.
Delilah doesn’t say anything about it, though I know she has noticed once or twice by now.
Tonight marks the fifth night.
Fifth night of fucking my cyborg wife just so Ariella can crawl out from the dark and clean her off me.
Every night, the thought alone takes everything in me to not leave Delilah and reach for Ariella instead, and fuck her in front of an audience.
Ever so slowly, the hesitation is thinning in her. The fear is dulling at the edges. Each night she lingers a second longer, moves a little bolder, breathes a little heavier against me. She’s starting to understand exactly what she’s allowed to do.
It’s as if I’m feeding into her ego simply by letting her continue this ultimate sin. It promises a payoff worth the wait.
Tonight, she doesn’t leave the way she always does. No quiet escape through the window followed by her shadow dissolving into the night.
She chose the door instead. I heard the faint click barely enough to register, but my body noted it anyway.
And of course, that’s when Delilah decides to stir up, pulling me out of my feigned slumber.
“Where are you going?”
“I thought I heard something,” her voice cuts through the quietude, drowsy but alert enough to be a problem.
Fuck.
For five fucking nights, she’s been oblivious. Blissfully, conveniently blind. And now she decides to question.
My eyelids flatter to adjust my vision to the dim light to study her. My mind wanders if this is the moment she finally stops playing ignorant. If she’s about to run to the Triarch Dominion to whisper about my infidelity curling on her tongue.
“It’s nothing,” I pull her back against me. “Go back to sleep.”
For a second, it almost works. Then we both hear a faint commotion downstairs. For fuck’s sake. I nearly roll my eyes.
She stiffens and pushes against my chest. “Alistair…”
I don’t let the irritation show.
“Why don’t you stay here,” I say, already shifting out of bed, “while I go and take a look downstairs?”
Her eyes flick toward the door, uncertainty creeping in. “Do you want me to come with you?”
“No,” the word comes out softer than it feels. “It might not be safe for you. Stay here, okay?”
A lie wrapped in concern always lands better.
She hesitates, then nods reluctantly.
I drag a hand down my face before adjusting my sweatpants. The fabric clings uncomfortably at the front because of the damp patch pressing cool against my skin—evidence of exactly what just happened. On top of that, I’m still semi-erect.
A quiet exhale leaves me as I step out of the bedroom, closing the door behind me. The moment I step out, I’m not looking for an intruder. I’m looking for her.
My every sense alert as I make my way down the stairs although I already know whom I’ll find.
There Ariella stands in the brightly lit kitchen, the soft glow from the overhead light catches against the sleek black of her outfit.
A bowl of chocolate-mint ice cream sits in her hand, entirely at odds with the scene—too casual for what she’s been doing in the shadows.
My mouth curves. “Eager to be caught, little kitty?”
The name fits too well.
The mask she’s wearing, those cat ears perched on top, only feeds the image already forming in my head. Something small yet feral, deceptively soft yet dangerous.
Something that would look even better on its knees with a leash on my hand that’s wrapped tight around its throat.
Her shoulders flinch subtly. I like the reaction.
Still, she doesn’t drop the bowl from panic or make an attempt to run. Instead, she sets it aside with an eerie calmness.
My gaze takes her in her, dragging over her the second she finally turns around to face me—black leather from head to toe.
A bodysuit that leaves nothing to the imagination while exposing no skin at all. It clings to her like a second skin, molding over every curve with obscene precision, outlining the shape of her body that’s made for sin.
She looks much taller than usual—I assume it’s because of the platform boots she’s wearing.
But it’s her body that holds me.
The way the leather dips at her waist. The sharp flare of her hips. The clean, unmistakable space between her thighs that draws my eyes whether I want to or not.
God fucking forbid if I ever get my hands on her, I won’t just be worshiping her, but entirely ruin that perfect, untouched control and show her exactly who’s been in charge from the start.
Just because she started the race doesn’t mean I’d lag.
My body responds faster than my restraint can catch up. I can feel myself forming a bulge in front of my sweatpants, thick and insistent beneath the fabric. My mind is already slipping into places it shouldn’t be going.
How I’d tie her and put her on a fucking leash. How that composure would crack under my command. How those carefully calculated movements would dissolve into begging.
I drag in a slow breath and force it back down, clearing my throat to rein myself in.
“I asked you a question.”
She tilts her head, playing innocent in a way that doesn’t fool me for a second.
I wait for a verbal answer.
Rather than giving me one, she calmly strides in my direction, deliberately swaying her hips.
And then she stops—too close. Close enough that the smell of peaches and cream hits my nostrils, momentarily flooding my senses. I briefly close my eyes, discreetly breathing her in.
I want to tear off the leather of her skin and bend her naked over the kitchen counter just to see if she smells this intoxicating everywhere else.
She’s close enough that I could do it in a second.
But I stay still, letting her burning gaze lock onto mine.
It’s the first time we’re looking at each other under the light instead of shadows.
No distance. No illusion. Just the undeniable awareness that we both know exactly who stands in front of us.
And yet we pretend to stay in the dark anyway.
My fingers twitch, itching with the urge to grab her, to tear that fucking mask off and force her out of hiding for once.
“You do know I have a wife.”
She gives a small, clipped nod. It’s almost as if she’s unbothered by the truth.
“Yet you still come back,” I lean over to whisper only for her ears. “Every. Single. Night.”
A silent chuckle ripples through her—not loud, not mocking, but knowing.
It crawls under my skin.
“What do you want from me, little kitty?” I ask standing straight.
Ariella lifts her gloved hand, and before I can stop her, her index finger presses right in the middle of my bare chest.
Then she slowly drags her finger across my bare skin, tracing nothing and everything at once, careful not to run it over her lip print on my chest.
A tentative touch. A faint scratch. A teasing glide.
My body reacts anyway, before my mind catches up.
I force myself to focus on the intent behind the sudden touch. I’m surprised I didn’t slap her hand off, but trying to decipher what she’s trying to say without a voice.
Her finger pauses. Then shifts to spell it out—You.
My brows lift, disbelief flickering through the heat. “Me?”
The audacity.
She nods unapologetically but with certainty.
A dismissive scoff leaves me. “You don’t even know what you’re asking for.” She really doesn’t.
She tilts her head again, then slowly nods it as a ‘yes’.
My jaw ticks from her defiance. She’s rejecting the warning before I even finish it. I’m on the edge of snapping.
“Next time, I’ll have my way with you, little kitty,” the promise is edged with an underlying threat.
A soft click slices through the tension, snapping whatever hold Ariella had on me. She reacts instantly.
One second she’s in front of me—close enough that I can still feel the ghost of her touch on my skin, on the next—she’s gone, slipping down behind the kitchen counter with a precision that speaks of practice, not panic.
I let out a quiet breath through my nose, something between irritation and reluctant approval.
She’s far too cunning for her age. I’ll give her that.
“Everything alright downstairs, honey?” Delilah calls from the bedroom, her concerned voice making this inconvenient.
My gaze drifts to the spot where Ariella disappeared and lingers there for a beat.
“Yeah, just some stray cat,” I answer, casually, my eyes never leaving Ariella. “I’ll be right back.”
“Okay,” she agrees without questioning.
There’s something almost mechanical about the way she complies, the way she folds into the role of the perfect housewife so effortlessly—obedient and undemanding. Designed to be everything a man is supposed to want without ever asking for more.
It should be enough for anyone but me.
I force myself to move and head toward the stairs, already preparing for the possibility that Delilah might’ve followed the sound instead of only calling out for me.
The last thing I need is the two of them colliding in person.
I round the corner and find the door locked with her nowhere in sight. I exhale in relief and walk back to the kitchen for one last time.
There’s no trace of Ariella—not a sound, not a shadow, not even the faintest misstep to suggest she was ever here. She took almost all the evidence of herself with her, except the window.
The bowl of chocolate-mint ice cream ironically sits where she left it, slowly melting into itself. Beside it, the window is slid half open, the night air slipping in through the narrow gap, stirring the curtains to give her exit away.
For my eyes only.