25. Threx A Memory （The First Time）
twenty-five
Threx: A Memory (The First Time)
A Memory
There are certain ways shadows like to play, and they have always been interested in her.
Crawling along her skin in the early light, drinking the dawn from the slope of her neck.
The pink of her lips fading into a gloomy violet whenever she shifted just so.
It was a strange somnophilia, the way they took her body but never her soul.
Unlike me. All I am is shadow.
It was a slow-burn morning, the kind that whispers when it slips into a room before leaving it deathly cold. She had been sleeping on my arm, the brush of her thigh draped over mine as though my body was hers to take.
And it was.
I didn’t let others touch me this way or feel anything beyond the emotion I was willing to give them. But with Daphne, it was different. She knew me. It was simple. Violent. Perfect. Just like her.
Everything about her made sense, even with a blade at my throat.
It hurt me to know that Daphne never knew she was dancing on the gallows, or that she had fallen in love with a ghost. That if she weren’t here tethering me to this pathetic excuse for a life, I would say, fuck off to the rest of it.
Not that I wanted to die, but much like the end of The Lord of the Rings when Frodo leaves the Shire because his soul was too weary, I craved that longboat into the After.
Some weird chance at peace. But as long as Daphne walked among the living, I would be here, too.
Maybe that is why the shadows kissed her good morning but never left their mark.
She yawned, her pale lids opening just enough to catch me looking at her.
“Did you know,” she said behind a dreamy smile, “that when men are hanged they get a boner?”
I shook my head, cracking a smile in the dim light. Oh, the things my woman says.
“It’s called angel lust. Apparently, being decapitated or hanged constricts the blood flow and causes a death erection.”
Yes, I did know this.
Intimately.
We hung traitors in the Underworld, over the walls of their clubhouses, in the shower, off a bridge…
It did not fucking matter. You break your vow, they break your neck.
It was the only actual law that every faction or minor club accepted, because loyalty was the only type of morality that gave you permission.
Still, dying with a rager, while your lungs twitch and your body folds in on itself, is the darkest shit of all.
“Watching the History Channel again?” I placed my hand on her stomach, loving the way her body instantly became mine.
“You were late,” she yawned again. “And Nathem was comfy.”
Daphne rolled into me, causing my hand to slide to her hip.
“Can we skip today?” she asked, inhaling my scent. “You’ve been gone a lot.”
She wasn’t wrong.
“Sure,” I lied, watching her eyelids flutter. These were the best moments of the day. The small minutes before time began, and she was all mine.
Daphne went quiet, her body attempting to drag her back into sleep when her leg slid down the line of my cock. I was hard… but we didn’t talk about it. I think she silently took the win while I quietly gave it to her.
I smiled into her hair, thinking about her younger self and the first time she had ever asked to see it.
“It is so soft,” she said, stroking it up and down with those beautiful hands of hers. “But how…” She cocked her head to the side, arching a brow from between my legs.
“What?” I had asked, making it twitch to see her smile.
“Well,” her eyes went wide, and she swallowed. “How do you fit it all in your mouth?”
My stomach heated at the thought of her pretty little lips licking and tasting me, or the way her eyes would water if I fucked into it.
“Practice,” I teased, and she hit me on the thigh.
“But what does it taste like?” she wondered, glancing down at her own sex before narrowing her eyes at mine.
“Sex and thunder,” I laughed.
“Yeah,” she bit her lip. “Probably more like sweat and pee,” she corrected, making a face and gagging.
Fucking gagging.
“No,” I scoffed, tucking it back inside my gray sweatpants, which she insisted I wear.
Daphne smiled at me, her cheeks blushing the most beautiful shade of pink as she crawled onto my chest.
“Did I offend it?”
“Yes,” I bit back.
“Fine,” she giggled. “Let me taste it.”
“No,” I shook my head. “It thinks you’re evil now.”
Daphne’s smile fell below my throat, and she sighed.
“You know men wash their junk, right? And don’t piss all over themselves.”
“I know you do,” she smiled against me, before taking a long pause. “I didn’t really like it,” she confessed, a heavy cloud breaking inside her body, but I didn’t follow.
My muscles tensed at the shift under her weight, and I lifted her chin to meet my eyes.
“Like what?”
“Sex. It was kind of… I don’t know,” she peered over my chest at the door, “painful and awkward.”
Fire shot through my veins in a blinding panic, eating up my insides.
She knew I had been having sex for a while, but there was a difference between releasing energy into a hole that didn’t matter and Daphne giving her first time to someone who didn’t care enough to walk her through it. To worship her. To…
Fuck. Someone was going to die tonight.
“What? When did you…?” My cheeks puffed. “Why did you?” My eyes snapped, and she tensed.
“I guess I just wanted to get it over with,” she blinked into me. “Maybe I am just broken. Like that part of me doesn’t work right. I don’t know. I’ll keep trying. I mean, I am sure everyone’s first times are complete shit.”
My heart slipped before ramming straight into the center of my ribs. I knew she hoped it would be me, but that came with a door I couldn’t open. At least not yet. Not while my hands were stained red and there was a literal gun to my head.
Part of me should have known she wouldn’t have thought that piece of herself was worth protecting for the right partner. She had so little self-esteem, and I should have paid attention, or at the very least called her out on it before she made this stupid, fucking decision.
“Who was it?”
It had to be some fucker in the club, and so help me God, if it was Wolfe, Blade, or Nathem, because I swear to all that is holy, I would throw them over the goddamn wall!
“He did nothing wrong,” she said, placing a soft kiss over the beat of my heart.
“Who was it?” I demanded again, my eyes shifting to every face within these walls.
“Rinley something?” she shrugged. “He’s kind of a fucking idiot.”
The cleanup crew twat wannabe who couldn’t keep his trap shut? He… had his dick inside my woman… first? I almost threw up.
“It wasn’t even a big deal. He basically just held me against a wall and then walked away. I mean, I guess some parts were kind of…”
My hand went over her mouth because if she uttered one more goddamn word, I would light this entire room on fire.
“What are you thinking about?” Daph blinked, nudging her cheeks against my nose, forcing the memory to fade.
“The night you told me Rinley was your first.”
Daph made a face and nudged me in the gut.
“Gross. Why?”
“Why did you give him that part of yourself?” I asked, wrapping her in my arms before she could squirm away from the question.
“Thay,” she squeezed her eyes shut and pursed her lips together.
“Daph, he is the fucking worst!”
“Nobody wanted me, and I was tired of feeling broken.”
Nobody wanted her? I could name at least thirteen dicks in this house that jump at attention every time she walks into a room. Mine included.
“It was a stupid choice, and one I made forever ago,” she laughed, shaking her head.
“Did you know I dragged him to the edge of the wall the night you told me… by a rope Wolfe slung over his neck?” I watched the brightness in her eyes grow.
Daphne liked it when I fought for her, and fuck if it did not make her hips lean into mine just enough for me to feel it in my spine.
“He didn’t get hard, though, or know why. Just pissed his pants.”
She smirked, gliding her palm over my cheek before losing it at the base of my neck.
“I should have been brave enough to ask you to take it,” she said, playing with the tip of my ear. “But I was afraid you would say no. And I was not so good at handling your rejection back then.”
She wasn’t good at it now, but I wasn’t about to mention that out loud.
I hated that she felt that way, especially because I wanted her. All of her. Inside me. Above me. Through me! There was no space I wished she would not occupy, no piece of me I wouldn’t give her if only I knew it wouldn’t kill her in the end.
“I probably would have said no,” I admitted, hating that about me. “But I certainly wouldn’t have let you give it to fucking Rinley.”
Daph wrapped her legs around my hips in a playful lock.
“I wouldn’t have let myself give it to him either,” she yawned, kissing me on the throat.
This was when she would leave me. Traipse off into the bathroom in her messy white tank top, with her tits poking through and her panties only covering half of her ass.
I loved the wild in her and the way she never apologized.
How beautiful she looked, no matter how the world left her: starving on a bench, dying in the rain, or crawling out of my arms to begin her morning.
And I don’t know what it was? The idea of Rinley. The way the shadows kissed my woman awake this morning… Or just the sleep tangled up in her hair, but when she moved to start her day, I didn’t let go.
“Thay?” she scrunched her nose, and before I could keep my body from being a fucking idiot, I kissed it.
Not her mouth, I told myself. Whatever you do, don’t fucking kiss her. But this part of her, I took.
Daphne stilled, and I peered into her, searching for permission to lose my fucking mind. To make this mistake! Begging her to tell me no… and knowing that she wouldn’t.
“Thay,” her breath stopped, when my hands slipped to her panties. She was warm. Wet. And quiet.
“Daphne,” I mouthed carefully, removing them from her thigh in a slow trickle. Giving her time to tell me to stop. “I want you.”
“You do?” Her expression teetered somewhere between shock and amusement, as if she was waiting for me to pull the cord on my jest, but when my cock rolled forward to nudge at her entrance, she stopped smiling.
“Since when?”
I pulled her back into the pillow, lifting her thigh so I could stroke into her before the madness of wanting her took me completely.
“Since always,” I admitted, so close, so fucking close to being inside her.
Daph’s breath eased into breaks and ellipses that rolled hot against my lips when she arched into me, pressing against the tip of my dick in a heated tease.
I moved to tug her tank top free, just to feel the swell of her nipples against my chest. If she only knew how many times I dreamed about putting them in my mouth.
“Oh,” she whimpered when I spread her wider. I was larger than Wolfe and twice as mean. But I did not want to fuck this up! Her back arched when I thrust forward, and the way her lips parted broke the monster.
I stilled, searching her face.
Don’t fucking kiss her, Thayor Milo Gavros.
Threx. You, Bastard.
WHATEVER YOU DO
DON’T FUCKING KISS HER!