Page 23 of Demonic Delights

“What if I can’t manage it?”

I breathe sharply through my nose in a humourless chuckle.

“I get to brand you with my mark.”

Roxie gasps and half-turns her head in my direction, so that I can see her mouth hanging open in shock. Soon she recovers, though, closing it in determination before opening it to speak again: “All I have to do is carry the glass on my back around the living room, right? Just once? That’s it?”

“That’s it,” I confirm, but the glee in my voice alone should be a clue for her not to trust me.

“You hate it when I spill something on the floor,” she points out, looking up at me sideways, and she taps the sycamore hardwood with her knuckles.

My present self has to agree with her, but the one in my nightmare dismisses her, “I don’t give a fuck about the floor.”

“Well, that’s new,” she remarks, a crease appearing between her brows. “Any other changes I should be aware of?”

She turns her head a little further to look at me directly with a challenge etched in her face, and a low guttural grumble escapes me.

“You’re testing my patience,” I point out harshly. “You shouldn’t. Doing as I say is your only chance to prevent me from doing what I want.”

Tracing her arse with the cane in an unspoken threat, I notice in the dim dance of shadow and light from the fireplace that her whole body is erupting in goosebumps.

She’s so responsive to everything I do.

That sight stirs me in more ways than one, my balls throbbing, my veins raging with need, and my pawn’s heart—what ??—beating a little faster.

“Start crawling,” I order her, and she obeys with a nonchalant, “Fine.”

She moves forward in small, careful movements, methodically using the opposing hand and knee, and keeping her back perfectly straight.

A clever girl, I think, letting her get a little ahead of me and walking level to her cautiously swaying hips.

It is when that thought morphs to ‘my clever girl’ that I wince and shout, “Faster!”

At the same time, I raise the hand in which I’m holding the cane, and I bring it down much too sharply with an intimidating whoosh.

As I recall Roxana’s pained, astonished shriek back in my office, I flinch and accidentally drag the red pen across half a student’s essay. Never mind that, it’s one I was about to fail anyway. But I feel sickened by my mental image of the angry slash across Roxana’s flesh. I have to remind myself that it never happened, that it’s just my tortured mind trying to fill the gaps in my memory with the strangest products of imagination.

Now I would be the first to admit that when she was younger—before I discovered those sinister aspects to her personality that made that kind of play feel off—I definitely could be less than gentle with her when she let me. I doubt any man cohabiting with Roxana for any prolonged period of time would pass up on the opportunity to bend her over his knee and punish her arse until bright red. But never with that cane. That was always for psychological effects only, and I was damn careful with it, knowing how brutal that can be.

If only this whole thing didn’t feel so disturbingly, viscerally real ...

Dread coils through my body as I return to that living room in my mind’s eye, but something else intertwines in, something scalding and pulsating. A powerful, primal kind of lust such as I have never felt in real life.

Roxana is looking up at me, the fire reflecting in her eyes and complementing the surprised defiance in her expression. She had jerked forward with the impact, and the glass slid off her back with a sturdy click and is now lying on my easily damageable wooden floor in a puddle of liquid! Present me wants to rush for a rag to mop it off, but I’m just a passenger in my body, and my driver doppelganger clearly couldn’t care less.

“Want to quit?” he asks Roxana, but it’s my voice that comes out.

“Do you know me as someone to shy away from a challenge?” She raises her eyebrows at me with an amused half-smile that exposes nothing of her teeth but the sharp tips of her canines. “Pour another one,” she tips her head in the direction of the glass.

“Alright. Get back to the start line.” I bend to pick the glass up just as she mutters a muted “fuck”, before turning around and crawling in the direction of the bar, her back curving and highlighting the shape of her rear, all the more tempting because of my mark on it.

The freshly poured glass is sticky with the previously spilled liquor as I return it to the centre of her back.

“Go,” I order her, and she does, cautiously as before, but with tension in her posture, her movements less fluid than before, her muscles rigid.

She’s expecting another strike, I realise, preparing herself for it.

I want to trace my fingers along that first horizontal line marring her skin. I want to kiss every inch of it before burying my pawn’s face—WHAT??—between her legs, balancing the pain with pleasure.