The Unchaste

Disembodied Soul

CW: Triggering description of Violence/Abuse.

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Delilah placed the book aside, wide eyed, white in fear and un-breathing. She pulled herself out of the chair with some effort and as quietly as she could, she reached for the door.

Of course she understood. Men had needs that they must alleviate. Unlike women, theirs want couldn't be mitigated in the limits of self-discipline. They didn't try to contain it in the limits of their will. She had occupied his room for God knew so long. He must have been agonizingly unable to...

To cast off his inhibitions?

The click of the lock, followed by door creaking ajar on its hinges became the painfully loudest phenomenon of Delilah's life. And second loudest of that evening. They yet louder one was yet to come.

He whipped from his deskwork at the sound, and eyed her inquiringly. "And where to?"

She stuttered something uncomprehendable. She couldn't believe how ill-lucked she was.

"Fresh... air?" He repeated her words with contemplative calmness. Apparently, that was what her excuse had been. "You do realize, don't you? You will walk down the dark corridor, climb down the darker steps, slip at the fractured elbow of it, tumble down and break your neck. Then suppose, if somehow, you manage to save your neck; downstairs, there are just derelict chambers. You will find a moss ridden ballroom or two, with windows studded of shattered glasses and cracked floorboard. No flare of ball-gowns and tailcoats. You will walk out. No air out there either. It's cloudy tonight. What will you do, Miss Eves? Serve prey for nocturnals or waltz with the forgotten phantoms?"

For a moment, Delilah was systematically distracted, navigating through his words. But then, from the corner of her eyes, she saw that swelling in his trouser shift.

Again.

She gasped, and was disgusted by her own interest in his discomfitures, and quaking in an unexplainable thrill_ Delilah raced the door, staring ahead_ out, into the darkness.

"Not that I am stopping you." Richard's firm voice goaded from behind her, making her slow down. "But it might bear out as a deeply dangerous thing to do. The night, out there, is wild."

"It is fine." She mumbled in a shaking voice, stepping out into the dark. "I will not interpose you any more trouble."

Red.

Delilah was red.

Closing the door behind her was proved terminally fatal. Delilah was caught captive by his hand around her wrist in the last moment.

"No." He ordered darkly, appearing at the door. "You will not. You do not catch on subtle clues well and you might be one but I am no fool to let you dally out there in this ruin."

He yanked her in with the slightest jerk and Delilah_ that tall woman_ cowered under his taller, threatening form. "Did I do something offensive? Say something odious to you? Something distasteful?" He demanded scornfully as she backed away and kept backing. "If so, tell me right at once Miss Eves. Don't delay. It maddening enough not to know what has made me the target of your decisive disdain."

Delilah resisted the urge to shoot him a pointed look 'down' there. He sounded so bitter but she was bitterer.

She scowled then asked, "Is there no brothel around here?"

He stopped short. And time. And because he stopped, she stopped too, finding her nails to fidget with. A sorry excuse for an excuse but what was there to say.