Chapter Thirteen • Casual • Damien #2
“Oh, yeah. I mean, I was with her from ages seven to eighteen, until I aged out and got my own place. We’re really close still; I go to her place for Christmas and Thanksgiving every year,” I say.
“For most intents and purposes, she is my mom. But she never actually adopted me officially. When I first came to live with her, she needed the subsidy offered by the system to pay her bills, and when I aged out, it just felt like a vanity we didn’t need to worry about. ”
Her expression goes stricken but she forces herself to focus on her task, emptying out the seeds from the dried chiles into small jar and plopping them into the cooker. “I’m so sorry,” she says.
“Don’t be. Aside from some rough group homes I barely remember, it honestly wasn’t a horrific experience for me. I think I got off really lucky. And it’s not like staying with your birth family keeps you from being alone, you know?”
Lillith looks at me knowingly and nods. “Yeah,” she says. “You’re so right about that.”
She throws more chili pods into the pressure cooker along with an entire bulb of peeled garlic. Then she takes a few bay leaves out of a repurposed jar and hands one of them to me.
“What’s this?”
“It’s a bay leaf,” she says with a smile. “Make a wish on it before we use it in the food.”
“Wait, really?”
“Yeah,” she says, holding hers under her nose and smelling it. “It’s a tradition. Nan always had me do it whenever a recipe calls for bay leaf. It’s a good way to put a little magic in your cooking.”
I smile down at the dry leaf, completely endeared to her. “You sure you don’t want to keep all the wishes for yourself?” I ask.
“There’s more than enough magic in the world to spare a little for you,” she says, sidling up to me and leaning against my chest.
I smooth my free hand into her hair, tilting her head back so I can kiss her, holding the bay leaf up and over her like it’s some kind of culinary mistletoe. When I part from her, her eyes are still closed, her dark lashes curling the tips of raven wings.
I don’t need to think very hard about what I wish for. It’s the same thing I’ve wished since meeting this woman. All I want is for her to fall as hopelessly for me as I have for her.
She opens her eyes and kisses her bay leaf, then holds her hand open for mine. “All done?” she asks me.
“Mhmn,” I say, letting her take my wish and cradle it along with hers in her hand.
She drops them both into the pressure cooker and closes the lid, selecting her desired settings and leaving the contraption to its own devices.
“Easy peasy,” she says. “Let me just wash my hands so I don’t smear any pepper guts in my eyes.”
“Good call,” I say, letting her loose to do just that.
Once she’s done, she takes my hands in hers and leads me into the living room with a coy look that I’ve come to really fucking love.
It’s the look that means she wants me to kiss her until she’s whimpering underneath me, or on top of me, or against the wall.
I give her a crooked smile back that I know she goes weak in the knees for.
“You look like you’re up to something,” I say.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“No?” I ask. “Is that the look you give all of your Tarot reading clients? Something about those cards get you hot under the collar?”
“I just... Maybe I want to make up for disappointing you,” she says. “Maybe I want to cheer you up with a little consolation prize.”
“Something tells me that this consolation prize is going to make me even more of a simp for you,” I say.
“Would that be a problem?” she asks, eyes widening with false innocence that always makes me want to do the worst things to her.
God damn, please let the universe align so I can fuck her soon.
All I want to do is make her come on my hand, and then my mouth, and then my cock.
I want to fuck her throat and bite her ass and suffocate between her soft, thick thighs.
“Not at all,” I force myself to say. It sounds low and husky.
“You’ve been really patient with me,” she says softly.
“Bare minimum, sweetheart,” I say, apparently incapable of forming full sentences anymore, hoping that this reward she has planned for me rhymes with ‘blow job’.
Honestly? I’d settle for seeing those pretty stiletto nails and long fingers against the straining form of my cock. I’d settle for dry fucking humping.
“I still can’t—well, I shouldn’t do anything sexual with you yet,” she says, popping the bubble I’ve been floating into. “If I do one thing with you, I’m not going to want to stop.”
I keep myself from asking her why that’s a bad thing, and I’m so glad that I have the self-control of a monk because she immediately follows up with her intentions.
“What if I told you that I bought a few new lingerie sets? And that I wanted to model them for you? And let you pick your favorite to tear off of me once we get the all clear from the doctor?”
I tent one of my hands over my eyes and let out a little groan. “I’ve never wanted something so much in my life,” I say. “I’ve also never had bluer balls, you evil little thing.”
“We don’t have t—”
“Don’t you dare finish that sentence,” I say, dropping my hand, my composure and kindness slipping just a little more than I mean it to.
Her eyes go wide with what I think might be anticipation—I can sense it in the subtle edge to the way her breaths quicken.
I know enough about Lillith to know that she’s at least privy to kink.
But we haven’t strictly talked about dynamics of dominance and submission.
We haven’t negotiated at all, and the last thing I want to do is treat her a little too roughly and hurt her feelings or make her feel like I’m aggravated with her.
“Bossy,” she says a little breathlessly.
My cock aches in my jeans and it takes all of my self-control to limit my roughness to grasping her plump lower lip between my thumb and bent index finger.
I pull just a little so that her lower teeth become visible.
Her lashes flutter in a way that tells me she likes it.
“I’m going to go sit on your couch,” I say, dragging her lip until it slips from my grasp and rebounds, blushed and shining.
She nods, capturing her lower lip between her teeth. “Okay,” she says.
“Are you going to put on a little show for me?”
“Would you like me to?”
“I would,” I say. “Do you want me to tell you what I’d like you to do?”
I hope she hears this as what it is. A request for consent. It’s fast and loose and not exactly safe or sane, but I think I can trust her to tell me what she doesn’t want. I think I can—
“Please,” she whimpers.
Fuck. My. Life.
“You’re such a good girl, aren’t you?” I ask. “You just want to be told what to do. You want to be told how to make me fucking insane over you.”
She nods, and while I normally wouldn’t let a non-verbal ‘yes’ slide, I let it go this time.
“I’m going to sit on that sofa. And I’m going to be nice and comfortable. This might be your place, Lillith, but right now I’m in charge. Understood?”
She nods again.
“And you’re going to go into your cute little bedroom and change into your favorite of those little underthings you bought for me. Because that’s who you bought them for, isn’t it? You bought them for me?”
“I did,” she breathes.
“Good girl,” I say.
She moans. Honest to god moans, like I just slipped my fingers between the folds of her perfect little pussy. I pray to the gods of stamina that I don’t just spill a load in my jeans. “Then after you put your favorite on, you’re going to come out here, and you’re going to strip for me. Aren’t you?”
“Yes,” she whimpers, her breaths labored now.
“Good,” I say. Then, I can’t take it anymore.
I grasp her around her neck, not hard enough to choke her, but enough that she can’t pull away easily.
I bring her closer—close enough that I can feel my erection brush up against the little swathe of exposed skin between her crop top and her pants—and I kiss her.