Chapter 19 Roxana
ROXANA
Sunlight falls into my eyes through a gap between the curtains, and caresses my face the way a lover would, its touch warm and sensual.
I yawn and stretch like I’m trying to touch the ceiling with my fingertips.
Then I sit up slowly, the covers sliding down my bare breasts and stomach, revealing the healed pentagram brand, faint and smooth.
I glance over to the empty side of the bed and smile, already looking forward to my husband’s return from work.
Then I get up, put my black satin bathrobe on, and go downstairs.
I make myself some coffee, and I sit down at the table and savour a few bitter sips before the inevitable cannot be postponed any longer.
My new book was released yesterday, and it’s time to check the sales.
I flip my laptop open and wait for everything to load, already bracing myself for all the usual zeros.
I take a final, fortifying sip. And then I nearly choke on it, coughing and wheezing whilst my mind processes what my eyes are telling me. Because yes, there are zeros. But not the way I’m used to seeing them.
All those numbers ... they don’t start with zeros. They end in them.
Well, well, well ... what would Goodwoman Stubbs say if she knew that the bully professor story I pulled out of thin air just to scandalise her would be the one to finally send me from a publishing rock bottom to the stratosphere?
Poor thing would be turning over in her grave, no doubt.
But it’s been half a year since she fell down that steep, spiral staircase while climbing down from her favourite hideout.
She was found lying sprawled on the landing with a broken neck and with her blouse torn where her tasteless golden rose brooch caught on something during the fall.
Everything pointed to an accident so very clearly that foul play was never even suspected.
Never even investigated. That unfortunate soul.
Now she doesn’t get to have an opinion on the success of my messed-up little book.
Nor does she get to tell anyone any secrets. Hers or mine.
And so, there isn’t a person left besides me who ever knew of the existence and the purpose of the mirror with that black, lifelike skull on top of the frame.
Well, Silas, technically. But Silas hasn’t been Silas for months now, not since the night when the mirror was destroyed. Even though I can still see traces of him sometimes, those traits or little gestures that I have always liked, I am now the wife of Sangrel Morvian. Not Silas Moore.
The whole day passes me by in a whirlwind of emails, messages and social media posts.
I barely even have time to make more coffee.
It’s incredible, like something out of a fever dream.
When my husband gets home, he finds me still in my bathrobe, my eyes tired and stinging from hours of staring at the computer screen, but my face adorned with the widest smile of my life.
I get up to kiss him, wrapping my arms around his broad torso and closing my eyes as his tongue invades my mouth.
“Hello, Daddy,” I whisper to him, my lips brushing against his, our breaths fusing.
He slides his hands down my hips, pulling me closer with a primal noise that’s somewhere between a growl and a moan.
“I want you to ...” he trails off as I flatten my breasts against his chest.
“What? Take this bathrobe off and lie on the table so that you can pump your babies into me?” I suggest, already tugging at the belt.
“Yes,” he rasps, pulling me closer. “But also ... you should see someone about it.” He sets me down, stepping back so that he can lay his palm flat across my lower abdomen. “This. Why it’s not happening.”
“Oh.” I retie the bathrobe belt and walk over to the table.
I hoist myself up and sit on it, crossing one bare leg over the other. He groans a little, and his eyes—equipped with coloured contact lenses to conceal his unnatural irises—fixate on my thighs.
“What if it couldn’t happen?” I ask with exaggerated innocence, my tone such that it should sound like nothing but alarm bells to him. “Would your thirst for me diminish?”
“No.”
“No, I didn’t think so. And do you want to know why?”
He frowns, a shadow passing over his face.
“Because it wasn’t any less during those parts of my cycles when I couldn’t get pregnant. That’s how I figured out your thirst doesn’t correspond to my fertility, does it?”
He shakes his head slowly.
“No,” I say again. “But it does affect your ability to leave. Because with the mirror gone, you cannot leave, can you, not until you do actually get me pregnant?”
“I cannot.”
His scowl deepens with dawning comprehension.
“Ah, I can tell you can already see where I’m going with this. But bear with me. See, at first, I wasn’t sure if there was any way to prevent getting pregnant by you. But then I remembered that Andrew Wilson needed a shotgun.”
A ripple of confusion creases his brow.
“While possessing Wilson, you weren’t able to kill using your powers. You needed a shotgun. When confined to a human body, you’re just a puppeteer, aren’t you? You may invade and control the mind, but you’re bound by the limitations of your puppet’s body.”
“It is so,” he confirms. “There must be a balance. A balance between this world and the Underworld.”
“Yes. Well. That’s how I figured that birth control would be effective against your semen. Same as it would be against Silas’s, because really, it is Silas’s. Even though there is your essence in it, it is only as powerful as its human vessel.”
“You are a lot smarter than Silas gave you credit for.” Despite his apprehension, evident from the myriad of tiny lines around his eyes and mouth, I detect a faint premonition of a smile in his expression.
“I’m a lot smarter than anyone has ever given me credit for.
Including you.” I shrug. “I picked up an emergency contraceptive tablet and some birth control pills the day I figured out who you were. But I knew that wouldn’t do long-term, there were too many ways for you to interfere with that.
Since you can see all of Silas’s memories, I assume you know who Stuart Woodrow is, even if you no longer play squash with him? ”
“The head of faculty’s husband. A gynaecologist.” He nods reluctantly, but not in a way like he’s unsure. More like he already knows he won’t like what I’m about to tell him.
“I went to him to get my tubes tied. Like all fucking doctors, at first he refused to perform a procedure like that on a childless woman my age. Talk about bodily autonomy. How is it not my problem if I change my mind? And since he was so keen on talking ethics, how is it not fucking worse to risk having a child you don’t want than to risk wanting a child you can’t have?
” I roll my eyes, curling my lips in distaste, then add quietly, “Clearly he’s never been an unwanted kid. ”
I shake my head. “Anyway, that idiot picked the wrong woman to patronise. Because I came prepared. I had leverage on him. Those photos of him and Mia fucking Campbell that he sure as shit wouldn’t want his wife to see.
He caved so fast.” I scoff, amused by the recollection of Woodrow’s nervous stammering.
“He performed the procedure back in March.”
I chuckle out loud when I see my husband’s eyes bulging in shock, his mouth opening and closing without any words coming out. It’s far from easy to make him speechless, but fuck if I don’t enjoy the challenge.
I buzz with the thrill of my triumph as I deliver the coup de grace: “And so, Daddy, you are now mine until death do us part. My prisoner in a cage of flesh and bones. A slave to a thirst that I made sure can never be quenched. But one that you’ll be forever compelled to keep trying to satisfy.”
A dark thunder descends into his eyes, their gaze dangerous with a carnal undertone. I’m half expecting him to lunge at me, readying myself for a fight that neither of us can win, a fight that both of us will inevitably end up losing in each other’s arms.
But then something shifts in his expression, like storm clouds parting. His smile is like that first ray of sunshine after a particularly long winter.
Uncrossing my legs, I spread them to the sides until I part the slick fabric of the bathrobe like curtains, putting my pussy on display for him, already glistening with readiness.
“Poor Daddy. I fucked you completely, haven’t I?” I purr and circle my entrance with my fingertips, coating it all around with my arousal. “Care to return the favour?”