Chapter 20 #3
He cups my mound, and I’m so needy I can’t help but grind into it.
Then I freeze, hearing his chuckle in my ear.
At any other time, I’d be angry, but the memory of the bruises I inflicted on his chest is strong.
Instead, I hide my face in his chest as his teasing laughter gives way to ragged breath.
But just when I’m wondering where he’ll touch me next, he surprises me by abruptly pushing me off his lap and standing up.
“Have some work to do. Behave, pet.”
Before I’ve even had time to react, I hear the balcony door sliding shut behind him, and the click of a lock.
“Damien!” I cry, jumping up and trying to open the door. But he really has locked it, and I’m stuck outside on the balcony.
I take a few steps back, my mind trying to process the situation. Just a few moments ago I was feeling so connected to him, and now, he’s shut me out. Literally.
What the fuck.
Through the glass wall I see him take out his cell phone, sprawl on the bed, and begin to type out a message. He doesn’t look at me once. I’m reminded of the time he made me go to the corner in front of the other Devils, how embarrassing it was, how I seethed with quiet fury.
Now, there’s no one else, but I’m not just in the corner. I’m locked outside, watching helplessly as Damien ignores me.
I realize with a pang that this is it. The real punishment. And it’s not because I hit him. It’s because I refused to tell him about Lucy.
I should have known this wasn’t over.
If anyone is as determined as me, it’s Damien. This battle of wills is only getting started.
At first, I cling to the hope that he will return quickly.
But he seems intent on typing out one message after another.
He even puts his earpiece in and takes calls.
My legs grow tired from standing, my knees locked, and after a while I let myself sink to the ground, still watching him, still hoping he’ll take pity on me.
But he never grants me one look. Anger begins to sink its claws in me again. How dare he? How dare he punish me like this?
I stand back up, walking around the balcony seething helplessly, growing all the more upset as I imagine him laughing at this display of anger—silly, babyish, I’m sure he would call it.
I’m two steps away from kicking in the door, but somehow even in this state of cold fury, I can’t bring myself to break anything.
The thought holding me back is that this balcony door belongs to us. To our house.
Unexpectedly, those words are like a balm to my heart. Our house. It’s the first time I’ve felt real ownership of anything. I own a house.
Though do I really own anything, if Damien owns me?
Suddenly, I can’t decide if I’m more angry or horny. The two wage a battle in my body until they’re both defeated. Defeated by boredom.
Time drags on, the sun growing lower in the sky, and I wonder if he’ll keep me out here until I tell him about Lucy.
Her name makes me shudder now. I always knew something was off, yet somehow, I never allowed myself to think about it for too long.
I’d always been invisible. I should have known better than to discard another invisible woman.
If anything, I should have taken a special interest in this girl who in so many ways mirrored me.
Instead, I allowed her to exist only in some deep recess of my mind.
Even after she brought me the dessert that held the key to a much-desired but illusory freedom, I didn’t dwell on her.
Not even when I used that key and found myself in the clutches of Angel.
And when I realized she was the one who had yelled ‘Stop’—meaning she’d been there when I’d stolen the perfume—I merely… well, forgot about it.
All of it points to one thing. She’s involved with Angel. She saw me steal the perfume, though the nanochip was no longer inside it, if it ever was. I suddenly realize it probably wasn’t. That nanochip had never left Angel’s hands. They never intended to hand it over to anyone.
But it was a lot easier to blame some apparently weak, helpless girl, than to out themselves to Devil.
So the disappearance of the nanochip was pinned on me. Did Lucy orchestrate it? Or only fail to stop it? Either way, she’s guilty.
And then, she gave me the key. Not to save me. To kill me.
She deserves to die. And yet, I can’t seem to speak her name to Damien. The thought that she should die over me makes no sense.
If he was the one in danger, it would be a different story. But as long as it’s only me… I’m not about to start ratting her out, even if she is the rat.
I’ve been lost in my thoughts for some time when I notice with a jolt that the sun has dipped below the horizon, and darkness enshrouds me. I must have been locked outside for quite some time now.
I can barely see my fingers. Fuck. I can’t see them at all. My heart starts beating erratically. I hate the dark. I fucking hate the dark. And I’m stuck outside, trapped in it.
I train my eyes to the bedroom, wondering why its light no longer reaches me.
Panic suddenly chokes my chest when I realize it’s just as dark as out here. The light is turned off, and in the darkness, I can’t make out his shape. He’s no longer in the bedroom.
It must be nighttime by now. I’ve been here for hours. And now, he’s left me alone.
Sweat beads on my temples. I don’t know if I’m more terrified of the darkness or of his absence.
I wonder where he could possibly be. I’ve begun to have such faith in him that the thought he could even leave my side—if only to go to some other part of the house—feels strange.
But as that thought sinks in, another, far more unbearable one, follows it quickly. Has he abandoned me?
Did he bring me up to this place just to lock me out on a balcony and desert me?
The idea should make me laugh. I know, objectively, it’s absurd. Still, with Damien, you never know. No matter how much trust I have in him, some part of me still doubts. I thought I’d vanquished my fears once and for all after the wedding. But no. Some part of me will always doubt.
If he’s really deserted me, then I’m trapped in the middle of nowhere, and no one knows where I am.
Unless Lucy does.
At the thought of her name, my heart practically gives out. She knows. Fuck. She knows.
All thoughts of my own predicament melt as a new fear wraps its clammy hands around my heart. Did something happen to Damien? Did Lucy tell Angel where to find us?
A searing pain crashes through my temples, and I actually groan out loud. My mind is spiraling into absolutely unbearable thoughts.
Did Angel follow us out here? Have they killed Damien? Are they coming to kill me?
That last thought doesn’t frighten me half as much as the idea that they might have killed Damien. Suddenly I realize that by withholding my suspicions, I’ve endangered him just as much as myself. I hate myself. Goddamnit, I hate myself. If only I’d told him…
I lean hard against the glass, willing the coldness to cut through the fog that’s begun to swirl around me.
But it’s useless. My entire body dissolves into shudders, and as panic soars through me, I find myself unable to breathe.
I try to suck in breaths, but they’re shallow, and the more I try, the more lightheaded I feel.
Soon my vision grows dark and I feel myself going limp.
As the fog nearly strangles me, I feel a deep, soothing warmth against me. I’m cradled in the arms of the person whose scent I would recognize anywhere.
His touch is enough to help me emerge from the depths my mind has sent me to. I cling to him, inhaling him, my hands clutching the sleeve of his shirt, unable to let go.
“It’s alright, darling,” breathes a voice. “Everything’s okay.”
I’m vaguely aware that he’s brought me to the bathroom. I hear the sound of running water before I’m lifted into warm, sudsy water, still enveloped in his arms.
“I’m right here, my Seraphina.”
I close my eyes, letting his soothing voice wash away my panic. He glides a hand over my body, lathering me with something that smells like lavender, and my headache ebbs.
For a long time we remain like that, his warm arms surrounding me, his hands tracing shapes on my skin. I feel myself relaxing entirely, and the coldness that has invaded my every pore melts into the thick soapy water.
Then he puts his mouth to my ear and whispers, in a voice thick with darkness, “Did you really think I’d forgotten about your little act of defiance?”
I don’t answer, a tear pricking its way out of my eye.
“What I had forgotten was that you were scared of the dark,” he adds under his breath.
I’m way too relieved that he’s alright to resent him as I should. He only forgets my pain. Not my defiance. But he’s here, Lucy didn’t get to him, and that’s all that matters right now.
As if reading me, he clasps me to him and finds my lips with his. “I shouldn’t have left you out so long,” he says after a long pause.
I know that admission must have been hard for him to get out.
I shudder in his arms and he holds me closer to him, squeezing me so hard I can barely breathe, but I don’t mind it. I need to feel his weight around me, crushing me, reminding me forcefully that he’s safe. That he’s mine.
“Hold still, my darling,” he says, at last tearing himself away from our violent embrace.
He props me up between his legs as my body shivers, desperate to find once more the warmth of his touch.
Soon his hands are in my hair, lathering shampoo into every curl. I close my eyes, basking in his touch, fully at peace now. I still have no clue how he has this effect on me.
His fingers rub the last of my headache away, and he takes the shower head and rinses the suds.
Then he flips me toward him and plants a deep kiss on my lips.
Once again, I’m nestling in his arms, desperate to stay there forever. And as his fingers continue to stroke me, another kind of desperation bubbles up inside me.