Chapter 14 #3
The words fall on my ears, meaningless, except for a few. The rest of our life together. I can’t understand it. But an odd sort of hope bubbles up in my chest. He can’t mean it. Can he?
He’s holding my hand in his, his thumb tracing a light circle on my palm. “You’re going to have to accept, my pet, that I do know a few women who aren’t you. Doesn’t mean I’m sleeping with any of them. In fact, I haven’t been with a girl since the moment I laid eyes on you.”
My breath hitches, and I find myself drinking in his words, believing him. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.
“Do you know the first time I laid eyes on you, Seraphina?” he asks softly.
Slowly, I shake my head.
“About a year before the boys brought you in.” He squeezes my hand. “I haven’t fucked another girl since the first time I saw those big violet eyes of yours in the surveillance footage of the Devil department store.”
I stare at him dumbly, trying to make sense of what he’s told me.
“You were just about the cutest thing I’d ever laid eyes on,” continues Damien. “I knew the first moment I saw you on the screen that you belonged to me. You hadn’t even met me yet, but you were mine. You still are, my darling, and you always will be. Do you hear that?”
I can’t bring myself to react. It doesn’t sound real. I’m sure it isn’t.
He clicks his tongue impatiently. “You’re a very naughty girl, aren’t you? Here I am, opening myself up to you, and you’re not even listening. Have you heard anything I’ve said these past few days? Clearly not, or you wouldn’t be staring at me like your brain is turned off.”
I close my eyes, willing him in equal parts to go and to stay. His words hurt me even as his presence soothes me more than I can understand.
He sighs. “Come here.”
He lifts me once more into his lap, cradling me like I’m a helpless child. I can’t resist nestling into him, and the words he continues to speak sound meaningless again. The only thing I care about is their soothing warmth. I doze off, his voice like a lullaby in my ears.
__
It doesn’t feel like I’ve slept a long time, but when I open my eyes again, the room is enshrouded in darkness. Damien is still holding me in his arms. In fact, he doesn’t seem to have moved at all, and yet, he must have held me like this for hours. It’s pitch black.
“Go to sleep,” he murmurs, as he begins to rock me back and forth. “It’s the middle of the night.”
But I’m wide awake, the gloomy darkness piercing through my heart, sending cold shivers down my back.
“What’s wrong?” he asks, noticing my state.
“The light,” I gasp. “Please… turn on the light.”
Still holding me, he reaches for the bedside lamp, and clicks it on. Then he looks back at me with a teasing expression.
“Scared of the dark, pet?”
Yes, I am. Far too scared to be angered by his amused tone. Ever since I was buried in the ground, the dark terrifies me. I always kept the bathroom light turned on at the house in the Catskills. And, although I would close the door, that little triangle of light was enough to keep me sane.
He stares at me, seeming to read me, as usual.
“Tell me what happened.”
I shut my eyes and try to nestle back into his chest, but his fingers find my chin, and he gently angles my face up so that I’m forced to meet his eye.
“Go on. Tell me.”
I’m too tired to resist. But it’s so hard to speak. He waits patiently, stroking my hair, seeming to understand me better than I understand myself. I want to tell him. I just can’t find the words.
At last, I manage to whisper, “I was buried.”
I feel him tense around me, and he doesn’t move for such a long time that I begin to wonder if he’s okay.
“So, they did bury you?” he says at last, his voice hoarse. “In a coffin? Underground?”
I can’t even nod a confirmation to those words that bring back a rush of horrible memories. Memories I’ve been keeping deep down, under all the layers of silence. I can’t have them surging back. It would be too hard.
But he doesn’t need me to nod. He knows what my silence means.
“How were you able to get out? Was it Noel?”
This time, I do manage a nod, and he squeezes me to his chest.
“How long were you in there?”
Too long. Far too long. I’d have no idea, only Noel gloatingly mentioned it. Told me how he’d had a few drinks and forgotten all about me. How he wondered, as he was digging me out, whether it wasn’t already too late.
“Four hours and fifty-three minutes,” I recite, the words ingrained in my mind.
He groans and presses me to him again.
“My poor darling,” he murmurs, and this time, the term of endearment holds a world of meaning. Darling. He never called me that before. Not even during those months of bliss. But now, I’m his darling.
I know I’m falling right back into his trap, but I find myself not caring.
I close my eyes as his hand begins to stroke my back. He works his way under my pajamas and continues to stroke me, the pads of his fingers twirling over my bare bottom. They soothe the bruises that I can still feel throbbing lightly. I sigh deeply, sinking into his touch, into him.
I don’t know how long we remain like this, our bodies entwined, his fingers comforting me.
They continue to dip deeper, down to my upper thighs, while his other hand rests on my lower stomach, drawing circles on my skin.
Little by little, they awaken an urge deep down inside me that I’d believed had disappeared forever.
I must have squirmed a bit because he chuckles softly.
“Not yet, darling. You’re far too fragile.”
The words only frustrate me more. Especially when I feel his hardness pushing into my bottom. It’s all I can do to keep myself from seizing one of his hands and directing it at my panties. I turn pleading eyes toward him.
“You’re incorrigible, do you know that?” he murmurs in my ear, and the tickle of his hot breath against my neck makes me shiver with want.
He hesitates for a moment, his hand still resting on my stomach, his fingers stroking my side lightly, and I wriggle in reaction to the tantalizing feeling.
“Ticklish, are we?” he chortles, his fingers dancing faster on my stomach.
I writhe against him, feeling his length hardening more than ever against my bottom, until he pins my arm to my side, and flips my shirt up over my breasts.
His eyes drink them in, and I shift uncomfortably under his hungry gaze.
Then he flicks my nipples with his fingers, and they form stiff peaks that he brings his mouth to.
He captures each one in turn, rolling them under his tongue, sucking them.
As I moan with need, he slips his other hand in my panties, finding my already soaked folds.
I know he likes me to keep still, but I can’t help but arch in his lap as he drags a finger up and down my folds, toying at my clit until I spasm with want.
Then he buries his finger deep inside me.
As his mouth continues to gently torment my nipples, his finger finds the spot that drives me crazy.
But he only teases it before sliding out and rubbing my clit again.
It’s better than I remember. So much better.
His tongue on my nipples, his finger pushing in and out of me, another one rubbing my engorged folds.
Before long, I’m bucking, the pressure building in me, until my entire body shakes in the clutches of an intense orgasm.
It’s all the more potent because I haven’t been touched in eight months.
My vision actually goes white for a second, and I lie panting in his lap, sinking into the comfort of his arms.
“Good girl,” he praises me, then licks my arousal off his fingers.
It seems to make him hungry for more, because he lifts me up and lets me fall on the bed with a touch of that old ferociousness that always turned me on so much.
But the next moment, he touches my cheek gently. “Did I hurt you, my pet?”
I shake my head.
Looking relieved, he opens my thighs and kneels between them, ripping off my panties with one hand before his mouth latches onto the bundle of nerves between my thighs.
His tongue darts across me, teasing me by never quite landing on my clit. I nearly cry out when he finally flicks it, then sucks it in, his teeth grazing it just enough to send an occasional spark of pain to my stomach.
I’m kept on edge between the pleasure and the very light pain.
I wish he’d give me more of the pain, the kind that brings me to greater heights than pure pleasure can.
But he’s holding back, his hands stroking my body gently, almost reverently, sliding down over my ass to find the wounds that he inflicted, and the memory of that whipping seems to prevent him from going as far now as I’d like.
Instead, he plunges his tongue deep within me, and my body explodes with sensation. But just as I begin to tense, the pressure building to intolerable heights, he withdraws and nips at my thigh gently. I’m left writhing in frustration, and he chuckles.
“My insatiable darling.”
Just that word—darling—sends me soaring, and I practically come without his touch.
“You like that name, huh?” he murmurs, rewarding me with a lick. “My sweet, sweet darling.”
He purrs the name into my folds, then laps at me greedily, but stops again just when I start spasming.
“Please,” I gasp. “Please.”
“You’re a very lucky girl,” he murmurs, dragging his tongue once more against my slit, causing me to shiver with need. “I don’t usually reward begging. But I will, this time.”
He pushes his tongue inside me, swirling it around, but keeping it just shy of my G-spot. “Not yet, though,” he smiles sadistically.
I pant under him as he drags his fingers lightly down my sides, causing me to twitch again, then over my stomach.
The light tickling drives me frantic, and he seems to enjoy my reaction, before bringing his hands over my bottom until he finds my back entrance.
I moan, more frustrated than ever when one of his fingers dips in my crack and applies pressure to the hole.