LUNA
From the day I could walk, Father spoke of the safety of the Keep. Where even a demon girl was safe, where locks would never be broken. My bedtime stories spoke of barred windows and watchful guardians, but despite this, it’s the forest that has always been my sanctuary.
Predators lurk and steel jaws lie in wait, but if one stays away from certain quarters, there isn’t a soul around to hear a confession. It’s safe in a way society will never be.
The Shadow Sanctum has never been more dangerous for me. But it isn’t the forest my feet carry me to tonight. It’s the treehouse where I first gave a piece of myself to Sawyer.
I sit on the platform, my bottom going numb as I stare out at the treetops that go on for miles. Clouds partially cover the moon, but its yellow glow is still bright and full. Too full for a night deserving of darkness.
How did we get here?
Things must’ve been good for a time. The Shadow Sanctum has held strong for generations, so there must’ve been a time before the infection where people felt true happiness. True freedom. Respect.
Was Father the downfall?
Was I?
The rope ladder groans as a person climbs up. If it’s a brother or sister, if the people have found me, I don’t hold my breath for them. Maybe that’s why I chose the treehouse instead of the forest—being found would be providential. Safety is reserved for the innocent.
But the climb is too quiet to be an outraged brother. Too graceful to be Thorne.
I don’t need to wait for blond, shaggy hair to come into view before the truth settles like a shamefully heavy weight on my back. I chose this spot because it’s the first place he’d look.
A low grunt drags past lips too beautiful for a man. Once Sawyer has pulled himself onto the platform, he lays my coat and scarf over my lap.
A thump against my chest—my heart leaping into my ribcage.
I don’t move.
“Thought I might find you here,” he says as his thigh grazes mine. It’s cruel how closely he settles himself next to me. If it’s a tease, it doesn’t show in his voice.
My eyes lower to the coat as I remember the shell necklace tucked inside one pocket. What was once a grand gesture is now a cheap offering. Meaningless. A thief returning stolen treasure.
Sawyer sighs. “I’m sorry… I didn’t mean what I said.”
One side of my lips rises into a bitter half smile. “Are you suggesting I don’t have daddy issues?”
He doesn’t respond right away. Instead, he looks off, hands rubbing his jeans like he’s hoping they’ll catch fire. After what I’ve put him through, he should be used to the cold.
“It’s not uncommon, you know,” he finally says.
“Right.” I swat a stray hair that’s caught in my eyelash. A breeze volleys it back—even Mother Earth is angry with me.
“You’re processing trauma, Luna. You don’t get to tell your brain how to handle it… There’s nothing wrong with you.”
“I don’t need you to lie to me.”
I tense at the hand that grasps just above my knee—gloveless and cold, with scabs clinging to cracked flesh. All the wind has spared is the webbed scar tissue that’s turned an angry red. If I held it, he wouldn’t fight. Not right now.
“Luna,” he whispers with a voice that makes a speech out of one word. Incredibly how he does that.
“Nearly every woman I have been with in my adult life has experienced trauma in some form. I’ve seen it play out dozens of times… You know this is true.”
I burst with a humorless laugh that carries in the window. I’m lucky the people have never heard my laugh, else they’d recogonize it. “I suppose the human trafficker would be the expert on sexual trauma.”
He tenses beside me, his knee retreating from my own.
There.
Now we’re even.
I peek at him from the corner of my eye and expect anger. I don’t really I’m hoping for it until my face falls at the serious look in his moon-glazed eyes. He doesn’t look at me, but instead at the night sky while his legs hang rigidly fifty feet from the ground.
“I guess so,” he says with a voice I don’t even recognize.
No follow up. A second stretches into three until even in the cold, my hands grow clammy. “You claim my… response, is not uncommon. I can’t imagine it’s the default.”
“There is no default.” Spoken so much quicker than I expect.
“Some trauma survivors are hypersexual, some are hypo, some fall in between. Some get flashbacks, nightmares, panic attacks, obsessions. And some…” He pauses, never more careful with his words.
“Some have kinks. I’ve done the daddy kink a hundred times.
It’s not weird to me. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. ”
I snort. It’s harder than I expect to curl my lip.
He finally faces me, the warm glow of the moon catching the blue of his irises. For a moment, they sparkle. “There’s nothing wrong with you.”
Nothing.
Nothing wrong with me.
He looks me square in the eyes as he says it, his face soft, his expression one of compassion. I know not to believe him…
But he is such a good liar.
If I let myself be led by this look alone, I would think I was the center of his universe. He’d never lie to me. Never hurt me. Never betray me.
What a joke.
And yet…
“You’ve done it before?” I ask, my voice weak. Scared.
His eyebrows arch. “Daddy kink?”
I nod, two small dips of my nose.
When he chuckles, there’s a trace of real humor. “Yes, Luna. It’s really not a weird one. At all.”
Doubtful.
“What would be considered a weird one?”
His eyes lift as he sucks in a long breath through his nostrils. When it rushes out, he finds me again. “Agalmatophilia.”
I blink. Shake my head. “I’m not familiar.”
“Of course you’re not. That’s what makes it weird. If I were to throw a rock at a Sabrina Carpenter concert, I could hit a woman who enjoyed the occasional Daddy dirty talk. Every woman in the building would know what it is.”
“It’s disgusting.”
“Then I must repulse you.”
He raises a brow when I can’t find words. There’s a retort here, an argument to be made. I don’t find it quickly enough.
“Really, Luna. If you could see the things I’ve done, you’d throw up. I like it nasty. And weird. The weirder the better.”
“Liar.”
He smiles, his knee tipping against mine once again. I look down my lap and curl my hands into the fleece lining my coat hood.
“Fine,” I say with a tone that shows how little the lie means to me. How inconsequential his words are. “I’ll bite. Tell me about agalmatophilia.”
His smile widens. For a moment, he just stares at me with a look that fights so hard against the firmness of my mouth. I don’t return his smile—what foolishness that would be—but there’s a twitch in one corner of my lips that doesn’t still until Sawyer faces the sky once again.
“It shows up in different ways for different people. But my experience with it involved a woman who liked to role play as a doll.”
“A doll…”
He nods. “She would hold very still while I braided her hair and applied blush to her cheeks. I would dress her, talk to her, and even sit her at a table with cups of tea and other dolls. When I fucked her, she would keep so still with her eyes opened, you could barely tell when she came. She would make the tiniest high-pitched sound. It was sexy in the weirdest way.”
He glimpses me and laughs. “You should see your face.”
“That did not happen.”
“Ah… There she is again. My naive little dove.”
“You made that up.”
“I have watched a grown man put on a diaper and suckle the tits of a woman he called Mommy. There are far worse stories I could tell, let alone make up. I’ve done it all, Luna.”
“Including dress up as a breastfeeding infant.”
His head tips to the side with an amused grin. “That’s more of a male fantasy. I participate in women’s fantasies. But…” he shrugs, “I’m not against it. I’ll try anything once, as long as it doesn’t involve actual children.”
There’s a subtle change of tone at the end of his sentence. Humor weaponized with a message: pedofilia wrong, literally anything else good.
Subtle, Sawyer. Really.
My chin lifts. As if he truly issued a challenge. “Anything?”
He nods with zero shame.
“Ménage à trois, then.”
His head rears back. “Is that a joke?”
“Sex with a man.”
“Once. In an orgie.”
I open my mouth… but my knowledge of the perverse is clearly limited.
“Animals?” I ask, half sarcastic. Half reluctant.
When he gives me a mischievous smile, my eyes bulge.
“What?”
He just laughs.
I shake my head. “You’re right. You’re repulsive.”
“I’m adventurous. If you haven’t seen a woman get dicked down by a horse, you can’t call yourself adventurous.”
I stick my tongue out as I groan my disgust, and this seems to only amuse Sawyer more. He’s disgusting. But his confidence could fool a priest. I find my mouth curving as I watch him and feel tension leave my muscles. In a moment, I’m at ease—an impossibility I’ll never understand.
We are never so vulnerable as when we love.
It’s rare that I give Sigmund Freud’s words credit, but he must’ve understood the strangeness this man makes me feel.
As though my weakness cannot help but show in his presence.
And he cannot help but accept it. Accept me.
In the same way I cannot help but accept him.
The thought clears as I shift toward Sawyer. “So do you just have all the kinks then?” I pull my coat to my stomach and slip my hands beneath it. “I mean… You have a daddy kink too?”
His mouth opens, but he doesn’t immediately answer. Which makes it obvious enough.
“I guess it makes more sense for you to have a master/slave fantasy,” I hurry out before he can answer my question.
“Uhh…” Sawyer lets out a breath, his mouth working. “No. Not really. Actually, that’s one that I’m not into. I don’t like being called Master… Don’t mind being called slave, though.” He gives me a wink, but I feel something beneath what he’s saying. Especially being as it makes no sense.
I shake my head. “I don’t get it… You owned a sex slave island.”
“A kink island, Luna. I owned a kink island.”
“Where the kink was owning sex slaves.”