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How can someone so fierce and so frightening be so gentle? To discover, last night, the way that he could excite me makes me so conflicted. I don’t doubt at all how much I enjoyed it, or how much I enjoyed this kiss. It just seems impossible.
I tear myself away from his heated lips, my head swimming with confusion. How can it be this good? Are all demons secretly excellent lovers, or is it just him? Or a darker thought: is there something wrong with me? Is it normal to enjoy this so much?
I gaze at him, struggling to sort out the thoughts in my head.
I want more, but it scares me at the same time. I’ve never desired someone this much, but what does he expect from me?
He stares back, and his gaze reflects my confusion. He looks uncertain as if he thinks I didn’t enjoy the kiss as much as he did. I don’t have the words to explain that I did like it, maybe too much. Even if I could tell him, I’m not sure that I want him to know.
But he doesn’t scold me or get angry.
He could take it as a rejection and become hostile. I’ve seen that often enough to know how it happens. How spurning someone’s advances can garner their rage. Instead, he furrows his brow in what seems to be concern. “Do you have everything you need here?” he asks. “Were you taken care of today while I was out?”
I’m still caught up in the kiss, unable to pull the words together to answer him. I nod mutely, the most that I can get out over the electric current coursing through my body. There’s a dull buzzing in my ears that I can barely hear him over.
“Good,” he says, and stands abruptly.
I can feel the loss of him, and it disorients me. I want him back on the couch next to me.
But as I’m trying to find a way to say so, he continues. “I’m pleased that everything was to your liking.”
And with that, he’s gone.
It feels like I’ve been dismissed. I suppose in a way I have been, even though he’s the one who left. Is that all he wanted, one kiss? Now he’s had enough, and he’s gone?
I know that I’m the one who ended the kiss, but it hadn’t occurred to me that would be all that I get. I pulled away, not because I didn’t want more, but because I was overwhelmed by just how much I wanted.
I almost wish that he would have gotten mad when I refused him. If he had hit me for it, I could have been confident in knowing he deserved to be hated like the rest of his kind. It’s easier to have an enemy than to pine for a friend.
But he didn’t leave me with anything that I could find fault with. I have no excuse I can cling to, to make myself feel better about his rejection. I want him more than ever, and it feels like he’s completely indifferent to whether I desire him or not.
With my longing for him still coursing through my veins, my mind drifts to yesterday. To the way that he teased and tortured me, in the most delicious manner. The sensual way that he ate off my naked body, while I writhed for more.
I hadn’t known what to expect when I had been left like that, forced to wait for his return. I had been scared, but that quickly faded. All that was left in its place was my own wanting. It was almost shameful how I moaned and cried for him.
I’ve never been stimulated like that, left in the throes of my high and desperate for more. His fingers inside of me, filling me with a satisfaction that I didn’t know was possible. I’ve spent all day wondering what it would feel like, to go further. Imagining the pleasure that he could drive into my body, if just his touch alone made me that wild.
All day, I waited for him to come back. I thought about him, and his hands, and I wished he was there to do it again. And then he did, and I had my chance, and I blew it. Is it a chronic condition of mine, to make such silly and self-destructive choices? I seem to have an uncanny knack for always making things worse, for shooting myself in the foot.
Or is my self-sabotage the right course of action? Can I not bring myself to trust him, not completely, because it forces me to recall how I was devastated by the promises that the Demon King made and refused to keep.
The King pretended that he would take care of us all and remove us from our horrible enslavement on Protheka. I believed him… I trusted him. And I found myself enslaved again, trading one nightmare for another.
Ending up in this house is an improvement. And his concern for my well-being does touch me, but I don’t deserve it. It’s been a long time since anyone took such pains for me. My sister used to, though that feels like another lifetime ago.
Look how I repaid her for her concern, by selling her out to the Demon King and his minions. My whole family, all those people who trusted me. They depended on me to do the right thing, and I failed.
I’ve caused so many people so much pain.
It may be for the best that he scorns me, that he can walk away from me so easily. I desire him, but even if he can leave me satisfied, I haven’t earned that. It feels like, if I dare to dream, I can picture myself staying happily ever after, kept safe here in this house. But why should I get that, anyway, when others won’t and it’s all my fault?
I don’t know which one I really want. I fantasize about this tender demon giving me what I don’t deserve. It’s the only thing that will assuage my vicious survivor’s guilt, which is made more complicated by the fact that I don’t know how the others are being kept. I don’t know the extent of the damage I have caused.
If they’re doing well, I could alleviate some of my remorse. But I have no way of knowing what happened to them, or how they paid for my choices. I’d like to think that Cora is doing well. That maybe she could even bring herself to forgive me someday.
The last time I saw her she had a demon who seemed prepared to take care of her. I hope that he did, that he still is. I hope that she has a good life and I haven’t stolen her happiness from her.
But that still doesn’t absolve me of what I did to Matt and Beth, I remind myself, my mood growing even darker. My ill-founded deal with the Demon King was supposed to get us away from the slave camps of Protheka, and out from under the dark elves reign. It did, even if it didn’t bring us the joy I had once dreamed of.
