Chapter 44
Two Years Later
Dig slapped his hand over my mouth, and with his other, he dug his fingers into the soft flesh of my thigh, holding me still as he thrust into me from behind one last time. I drowned under the orgasm, moaning into his hand.
He let me go.
Echoing with pleasure, I launched into the tabletop, embracing the cool skin of the wood and breathed out the tension that had been winding up in my nerves.
While I focused on my inhalation, Dig cleaned his seed from between my legs, put my underwear back on me and pulled down my pencil skirt, making sure it was without a wrinkle.
I took my time standing up, still ringing high from the explosive bliss and funnelled my arms back into my matching pink blazer that Dig held out for me.
He wore a neat blue suit and there was something about his scars and tattoos concealed behind prima dry-cleaned cotton and a five-thousand-dollar watch that got my heart ticking quicker than normal.
As he pulled out my lipstick and fixed my lips, I took a strand of his black hair out of its tousled wave to put a little more roughness back in him.
His lower lip spotted in blood from my biting him during a furious kiss.
Underneath the soaking of my hairspray and his cologne, he smelled a little like metal and leather again.
It brought nether memories from years ago.
We could have almost… almost been back in the Execution Battle.
He didn’t wear his sunglasses anymore.
Only at home.
I wondered if he had brought them with him. “Do you have—”
“Del!” He slapped the table, his voice peaked with irritation, made the sting of my orgasm resurface.
I was suddenly envious of the table. I wondered if I could move a little, position my ass over the place where he had slapped…
“We don’t have time for more,” he said. “They’re waiting for you.”
I watched his hand, hoping he’d punish the table again. “It’s my nerves,” I said. “I’m so delicate, like a flower.”
“You’re not delicate like a flower, you’re delicate like a bomb.” He patted his pocket and pulled out what he hid inside, showing just a flash of plastic red. “Yeah, of course I brought them. Am I an idiot?”
A knock rang out on the door.
My assistant strutted in with her too-tall heels and huffs of annoyance that I was not yet out on the stage. “What is taking so long?”
Tommy clicked close to her, holding her bag, a tray of takeaway coffees and a perpetual glower of disappointment. He was the perfect assistant to my assistant. He much preferred her than me and never took my bullshit.
“We had to fuck,” Dig said.
“Ugh.” My assistant frowned. Tommy mimicked her.
“It’s better to be late.” I dusted my blazer. “It makes it looks like I’m busy, doing important things. They love me anyway. They’ll vote for me.”
Tommy handed Dig a takeaway coffee. “Currently, people are only voting for you because you killed your Soulless incest brother. Which you did not even do. Or it’s because they saw you in your underwear on TV.
Neither are enough reason to attain voters.
They haven’t even commented on your policies. At this point, you’re going to lose”
“It’s alright.” I patted his shoulder with a smile. “I have a plan.”
“What plan?”
I paraded out of the double doors with my posse behind me.
The crowd roared and rallied their flags at my arrival.
Cameras flashed. Voices were flung at me through a tempest of questions.
I waved, dutifully, and smiled with all my pearl white teeth.
Dig held out his hand for me to clasp as I walked up the stairs and onto the stage.
At least five hundred had come out for the debate for the new position of Administrator. Taking over my brother’s political position had been difficult, especially since his admirers did not approve of me changing my family’s main agenda.
I aimed to bring down the unjustifiable treatment of Soulless.
There were far too many innocent people being thrown into prison and to their deaths.
And those that were guilty of being criminal?
Their barbaric treatment needed to change.
Unpicking centuries of damage was messy, arduous and nearly impossible.
My first small step to doing so relied on my securing a position in government.
I stood proud at my podium, flashing my opponent a huge, unblinking smile like a possessed clown.
When I looked at him too long, he winced. Being married to Dig Graves and being shown on TV after surviving a gruelling Execution Battle sometimes made people a little perturbed around me.
The debate begun.
I answered each question with poise, and relied heavily on my training and practice, giving out replies and solutions.
“What you’re saying is ridiculous,” my opponent said through a laugh that had been curated by a trust fund. “Letting Soulless run free on the streets?”
“If they have committed no crime, then yes,” I said. “They should be free.”
“Nonsense. We all know they turn to crime eventually; it is best we nip it in the bud before they bloom.”
“We do not know if Soulless naturally become wicked.”
“It is evidenced in the Execution Battle.”
“They kill in the Execution Battle to save their lives.”
“You, Delphine De Astor are a killer yourself,” he said into his microphone, eyeing the cameras. “Delphine De Astor does not care for life.”
His words were meaningless to me. Nothing but raindrops. Meanwhile, I held an umbrella to stop them from touching me. I knew I was odd. But I nurtured my strangeness, I stopped thinking of it as an intruder and instead, I learnt to live with it.
Besides, there was someone who loved it. A serial killer who waited patiently for me, for seven years. Dig Graves loved me. Every drip of who I was and did not ask me to be anything else.
For all my life, I had been a ‘should be,’ a ‘could be.’ When really, I just needed to ‘be.’
“There are rumours that you're a psychopath,” my opponent said. “That you can’t feel…that you can’t cry.”
“Well, currently, I am having a difficult time dealing with my grief.”
“Excuse me?”
I let out a choked sob. “My sweet Aunty Beatrice just died.”
I won.