36. The Ball of the Damned
Selene
The old barn at Haunted Spurs is unrecognizable.
Production has transformed it into a Victorian nightmare theater. Burgundy velvet drapes hang from the rotting beams, massive wrought-iron candelabras cast a warm, flickering light, and a carpet of artificial fog rolls across the hardwood floor.
The atmosphere is decadent, majestic. Perfect.
We contestants are arranged in a semicircle, shrouded in shadows, while the center of the room serves as the stage for our grotesque, wonderful show.
Emma and Levi are the first to break the ice.
A spotlight cuts through the fog. The music is a slow ballad, driven by heavy drums. Emma is wearing a blood-red velvet cloak over a pristine white corset. She looks like the very incarnation of innocence.
From the dark, Levi lunges out. His Big Bad Wolf costume is feral: yellow contacts, dark makeup around his eyes, and a shredded shirt.
They start a two-step that rapidly morphs into a theatrical hunt.
Levi tracks her, grabs her, spins her around.
Emma doesn't really run away; she lets herself get trapped against the barn's center post.
The beat of the music drops. Levi grabs the edges of his own shirt and rips it off with brutal force, popping the buttons and exposing his chiseled chest.
The audience (meaning us and the eliminated contestants) roars in approval.
He lunges at Emma, hoisting her up by the thighs and burying his face in her neck beneath the red hood, pantomiming a fierce, ravenous bite that makes her arch backward. Devoured and submissive.
"Not bad for the fire chief," Carolina whispers beside me, blowing on her nails.
It's her turn.
Carolina, Cade, and Cole glide to the center of the stage.
The soundtrack shifts to a dark, sensual indie-rock track. The Vampire Diaries inspiration is obvious from the start. Carolina is wearing a 19th-century black lace gown, her brown hair loose and wild, with a Katherine Pierce glare ready to burn the town to the ground.
The twins circle her. Cade is wearing a black leather jacket, sporting a tormented, dangerous look; Cole is in an unbuttoned white shirt, a sadistic predator's smile on his lips.
The choreography is a triangle of pure lust and burning looks.
They fight over her, passing her back and forth in an aggressive dance.
Carolina dominates them both. She grabs them by the collars, shoving them back, only to pull herself right back against their chests.
The finale is Rated R: Carolina drops to her knees, her back arched.
Cade grabs her hair, baring her neck on one side, while Cole leans in on the other.
They both sink their teeth into her pale skin.
Two streams of fake blood trickle down Carolina's breathtaking cleavage, as she stares down the camera with an ecstatic, diabolical smile.
The cameramen are sweating.
The smoke thickens. The music fades into the majestic, dark, and desperate notes of a pipe organ.
Lucien and Melusine take the stage.
The Phantom of the Opera, but stripped of all romance and reduced to its most perverted essence: obsession.
Melusine is wearing a white silk slip, diaphanous, almost transparent. Her long brown hair barely covers her breasts. A long, thick black satin ribbon is tied tight around her neck like a collar.
The other end of the ribbon is wrapped around Lucien's massive fist.
Her brother is wearing a tailored black suit, no tie, and a white porcelain half-mask covering the right side of his glacial face.
The dynamic isn't a dance: it's pure control. Melusine tries to pull away, silently singing her despair, but Lucien gives a sharp yank on the black satin ribbon. She is pulled violently backward, crashing against his broad chest.
He traps her from behind. A gloved hand slides over her stomach, trailing up to grip her neck right above the ribbon, establishing his dominance.
For the grand finale, Lucien spins her around. He grabs the back of her neck. With a brutal, theatrical gesture, he rips off his porcelain mask, throws it to the ground, and literally devours her mouth in a possessive, desperate kiss, bending her backward.
The hum of nervous applause dies down.
The darkness falls completely. It's our turn.
Ron laces his fingers through mine in the dark. He guides me to the center, toward the set design production put together according to my instructions.
A massive gothic throne, forged in fake black iron and obsidian, towers in the center of the fog.
As we get into position, a voiceover recorded by an actress from Mrs. Lacey's academy introduces our performance. But the words echoing through the barn aren't hers. They're mine.
I wrote a monologue for this moment. A story, to exorcise my demons. The female narrator's voice, low and velvety, fills the air as a red light shines down on me.
"They always told us Persephone was kidnapped. That she was dragged by force into the darkness by the Lord of the Underworld. But the one who writes the story is often too afraid to admit the truth."
I step toward the throne. I'm wearing a gown of black lace and dark tulle, structured like armor, with a crown of black brambles woven into my hair, framing my white streaks.
"The truth is that the Queen of Spring was tired of the light. She craved the shadows. She wanted a world where she no longer had to be perfect, but where she could be worshipped for her sins."
I sit on the obsidian throne. I cross my legs, letting the dress's plunging slit fall open slightly, and display a blood-red pomegranate resting in the palm of my hand.
"And Hades... the God feared by all, the ruthless monster of the Underworld... turned out to be the only one willing to offer her the entire world."
From the scarlet smoke, Ron emerges.
And my breath truly catches. He isn't acting; he is the King of the Underworld.
"While others fled from sin, he dragged it onto his own throne and crowned it pleasure. He didn't fear it—he worshipped it, turning damnation into his darkest delight."
He is shirtless. A heavy mantle of black wolf fur drapes over his broad shoulders, fastened by two dark chains cutting across his chiseled pecs.
"He wore it like a second skin and tasted it like the sweetest ruin. He had turned temptation into an art, an obsession, the most dangerous form of pleasure."
The darkness in his blue eyes is dense, palpable. He strides toward the throne with a lethal presence.
"Because the greatest secret of the Underworld," my pre-recorded voice whispers, as the music shifts to a low, hypnotic hum, "is not that he held her prisoner. The secret is that he was completely, hopelessly at her mercy."
Ron reaches the foot of the throne. Our eyes lock.
And then, under the wide eyes of the entire cast and the cameras... Ron Willers... drops.
He slowly drops to his knees. A God bowing solely and exclusively for his Queen.
The room holds its breath. Ron lifts his face to me, submissive in his pose but fiercely dominant in his gaze. He rests his hands, adorned with dark silver rings, on my knees. He slowly slides them up my thighs exposed by the slit, parting them slightly.
My heart skips a beat.
This forcefully reminds me of him on his knees between my thighs... back in the bedroom.
The heat of his fingers burns.
I lower the hand holding the pomegranate, offering it to him.
Never breaking eye contact, he leans forward. His lips graze the split fruit. He sinks his teeth into the red seeds, eating directly from my palm, the scarlet juice staining his lips like blood, a vow of eternal devotion and sin.
As the darkness falls to seal our performance, his deep voice vibrates against my ear, invisible to everyone, meant only for me.
"My Queen, I want to fuck you on this throne with that crown on your head."
The music of the Ball of the Damned echoes through the house. The party has been going on for hours, but Ron and I are only just now deigning to make our appearance in the living room.
We have an excellent excuse, actually.
We were pleasantly, sinfully busy on the obsidian throne.
I walk beside him down the dimly lit hallway, and every single muscle in my body, every nerve, is a bundle of pulsing sensations. I feel the fabric of my dress rubbing against my skin, which is suddenly way too sensitive, and I feel a pleasant, dull ache between my thighs.
We did it without a condom for the first time.
And I was the one who asked him to.
I can't exactly explain why I did it, or when the wall of my rationality completely crumbled. I just know that the more I get to know Ron Willers, the more I watch him move through the world, the more I am convinced that maybe, good guys do actually exist.
He is real. He is genuine. He is a man who has been through so much, who has lived through abandonment and loneliness, but who, by some absolute miracle, remained pure. He didn't let the pain turn him bitter. He chose the light, he chose to smile, he chose to protect.
And ever since I felt him completely bare inside me, skin against skin, without any barrier between us, it fucked my brain up even more.
My mind isn't here. I just keep hearing, on a feverish, obsessive loop, his deep voice, raspy with lust, whispering to me:
"If we do it without, you'll be mine forever, Selly."
"You are my queen."
"I'm going to fuck you everywhere, constantly."
"I'll never get enough of you..."
A liquid shiver runs through my lower belly. We had never done it so sweetly. When he entered me the first time, on the throne, he looked at me like I was made of glass, like he was crossing the threshold of a sacred place. There was a reverence in his touch that brought tears to my eyes.
And then... Ron let the beast out and started fucking me exactly like the King of Darkness.
I had never done it with anyone in such an animalistic, possessive, primal way.
It was... spectacular. Devastating. But there was also something profoundly different about it.
At a certain point, when the pleasure threatened to make me pass out, he moved his hands. He firmly laced his fingers through mine, palm to palm.
Our eyes met in the dark. He was buried to the hilt inside me, perfectly still for an eternal second, and in that eye contact, there was something unbearable. It wasn't just sex. We were reading each other's souls. He was laying bare everything he felt for me, no filters, no holding back.
And in that exact moment, surrendering to an emotion I had never felt in my life, I asked him to come inside me.
And when he did, I understood what he meant by that line.
If we do it without, you'll be mine forever.
And maybe... I might not be scared of that at all.
Ron stops before crossing the threshold of the living room, pulling my hand gently.
He turns to face me, the echo of the music vibrating in our bones. His blue eyes are dark, still heavy with everything we just did to each other. He caresses my cheek with the back of his hand, a touch so gentle it clashes with the brutality of just a few minutes ago.
"You okay?"
"Never better, new-cowboy."