Every now and then, I felt the sudden desperate longing to go home. Except...I didn't know what home was. I didn't know where it was, what it looked like, what it felt like. Because home was not my parents' house: there was too much pain there. Home was not Mary Jeffries' Doll House: I had only hidden there, found shelter there. Now the place to which I returned, exhausted and hungry, was Damian's house with its dark walls and dozens of unknown rooms.
Every time that feeling returned, I remembered that I was longing for a place that had never truly existed.
Alexander left us on the sidewalk outside the house, where moths fluttered in the orange glow of the streetlamp and all the curtained windows before us were lit within. The man left with the nasally promise to update Damian on their "client's" progress soon, before speeding off into the night much to the alarm of neighborhood dogs who were set into a chorus of barking at his roaring engine.
As I stood there, tired and cold and aching to my very bones, I had a sudden recollection. My mother used to have a little hollow ceramic house painted to look as if it were snow-covered, and every December she would set it out on the kitchen table with a lit candle within. I used to stare at that little house for hours when I was younger. I could imagine a family living inside it, warm and happy. Somehow, the sight of Damian's house glowing in the dark made me recall it. Maybe it was merely my exhaustion, but there was a strange comfort in it.
Then I remembered Octavio. And Rachel. And Damian's thinly veiled and dangerously alluring threat to make me unable to sit. The coiling in my stomach as he withdrew his keys to unlock the door was not fear, but an odd mixture of shame and excitement. The admission of the nasty things I'd done in order to escape lingered on the tip of my tongue, an outpouring of guilt.
But it was too late for that. The door was already open, and Octavio was there pacing in the hall.
The moment the young man's eyes fell upon us, his expression moved from fear to utter terror. He gasped, backed himself into a doorway, gasped again and clutched at his heart, all the while pointing a shaking finger at me.
"She-she h-hit....ran-ran away...away...threatened...to...to...kill me," Octavio closed his eyes, and Damian was swiftly at his side, grasping the young man's shoulders. I felt my face grow hot with shame. What kind of apology was sufficient for threatening to kill someone?
As Octavio still could not manage to string his words together, despite Damian's encouragement, I gave the story for him. "I knocked him over the head and pinned him down," I announced, my voice caught halfway between regret and stubborn pride. "I strangled him and threatened to kill him if he tried to stop me from leaving." The words tumbled out. Just saying them aloud sounded painfully awful. I swallowed hard, and dug deep within myself, searching for an apology. "I'm sorry, Octavio. I thought I was saving Damian."
It sounded weak. Unrepentant. I hated apologies with a passion, and it showed. But that did not change the regret creeping up on me the longer I looked at Octavio's shaken, terrified face and remembered that same look on him as he lay beneath me earlier that day.
Meting out fear to an unwilling participant was not nearly as pleasurable as frightening the willing and eager.
Octavio's adam's apple bobbed nervously. Damian gave him a firm pat on the back. "Don't worry yourself," he said gently. "All is well and I can assure you that you aren't in danger, Octavio. I'm here. Samara won't be causing trouble. Take one of the pills from my office drawer and go to bed. Take your rest."
Still clutching at his chest, Octavio wandered away with a dazed expression of relief. Damian's expression, on the other hand, had grown so tight it made my stomach clench. He slowly turned back to me, leaning himself against the doorway that Octavio had attempted to barricade himself within, arms folded.
"So," he said, voice barely above a growl. "Now we've come to the matter of your astoundingly cruel behavior to my friends. Anything further you would care to admit?"
"You can't blame me," I said quickly. "If you hadn't kidnapped me in the first place-"
"Octavio and Rachel did nothing to you," he said. "Go on, be furious with me for taking you captive. It's a wretched thing to do but even now I can think of no alternative. You're a danger and you remain to be." He spread his arms, shaking his head with the expression of a man pushed past all exhaustion and patience right to the cliff's edge of his endurance. "Let's have it out, Samara! You're angry. So yell at me for it. Go on."
But the anger wasn't there. Damian had helped me. He had been there and held my hand and refused to leave me when I was at my most frightening, my most dangerous. As much as I would have liked to use it to deflect the blame off of myself, I understood why he had brought me here. Here was better than prison, it was better than Soule Asylum, and either one of those would have been my fate if Damian had not found me at the Halloween Festival.
My eyes started stinging, so I clenched my teeth. Damian looked so tired. So worn. Yet...he looked young. Older than I, by a little I guessed, but too young to be standing there with shaking hands and dark circles under his eyes. Why did he bear this? Why did he take this responsibility? Why should he care if I was overtaken by demons and destroyed others with me? It would have been so much easier if he...just...didn't...care...
Why did he care?
"Well?" he said, with a heavy sigh. "Have you anything to say at all?"
"This is Rachel's dress," I said softly. "I hit her and stole it from her."
He pinched the bridge of his nose, closing his eyes. "Did you hurt her?"
I winced. "I only slapped her."
He looked away from me. My eyes were now burning. Everything was blurred. I hated this. I hated what I had done. It had been a stupid, foolish mistake. I just wanted the guilt to go away. I wanted him to look at me. I didn't want him to be angry.
Terror crept up on me. He was angry...he would send me away. He would commit me to the asylum, as he should have done from the beginning. I would be left to whatever horrors my own mind could conjure, surrendered to the mercy of my demons. He would leave me...
"Please don't send me away," I whispered. My voice hitched and garbled my words. He looked back at me quickly, his eyes sharp.
"What did you say?"
I swallowed hard. I was torn between fear and stubbornness, desperation and hope - the only hope I'd had in that past year. I was teetering at the precipice of breaking so many promises I had made to myself.
All will betray you, so trust no one.
No one can help you, so don't let them try.
They will not understand, so don't let them in.
A sudden footfall on the stairs made us both turn. Rachel stood there on the landing, her hair tied back in a simple braid, wearing another black dress that looked identical to the one I had stolen from her. Her expression, when it fell upon me, was not nearly so dramatic as Octavio's. In fact, she did not appear fearful at all. She just stared at me in silence, all the words she needed to say seeming to flood forth from her eyes alone.
I dropped my gaze, an action I had tried so hard to train myself to break. I had spent so many years of my life being sorry. Lowering my eyes, looking away, always in fear of my father's fury and my mother's shame. But then...it had always been for the wrong reasons.
"Rachel," Damian walked over to the stairway, and leaned himself against the railing to look up at her. "Are you alright?"
She nodded, and much to my surprise, began to make gestures with her hands too quickly for me to follow. Damian shook his head. "No, you've done enough, there's no need-" She began again, looking between him and myself and curling her lip. Damian chuckled tiredly, and cleared his throat to compose himself before glancing back at me. "She says you're filthy, smell like blood, and have ruined her dress."
Part of me wanted to laugh, while the rest wanted to be offended. But I did stink, even I could smell it. "Sorry," I said. "I'm sorry, Rachel." Making apologies out of sincerity rather than fear was a new phenomenon for me, one my tongue was not used to.
Rachel looked me up and down, screwed up her mouth and shrugged. She then made more signs toward Damian, who began to shake his head. "Truly, Rachel please, there's no need-" She swept up the stairs and away before he could get another word out. Damian sagged defeatedly, rubbing his head.
"What's happening?" I said, as Rachel's footsteps faded above.
"She's going to draw you a bath," he said. "She said you'll ruin the carpets with your muddy feet." He watched me for a moment, then said, "It seems she has forgiven you, or at the least, chosen not to worry over it."
Forgiven. The word made my belly lurch. I played nervously with the hem of the dress, and then the collar. I tried to summon back the pride that was my shield, but it was failing me. There was too much pent up within me: guilt for my actions, relief to be freed from at least one of my tormentors, fear that I had damaged Damian's opinion of me beyond repair. What did it matter...what did his opinion matter anyway...
But it did.
"I'll show you to the bathroom," Damian said wearily. "Then I must retire..." He winced. "Ah, right. Not before I've locked your room..." He glanced at me, guiltily. I'm sure my expression was equal in its measure of guilt. He began to turn away, as if to lead me up the stairs, when I blurted:
"Aren't you going to punish me?"
He stopped, and looked back. "Aren't I going to what?"
I shrugged nervously, my words stumbling over each other in their rush to get out. "Punish me. You said...I mean, at the church...said that..."
"Foolish words, said in frustration," he muttered. "Contrary to the opinions of Congress, I don't believe I have any right to take a woman in hand."
"Not unless she asks you to."
The air between us seemed to tremble. He, with one foot on the stairs looking down with a carefully guarded expression. I, staring up with near bursting desperation. I needed my outlet, my solace, my place of comfort. My catharsis in masochism.
Slowly, he came to me. Skin streaked with sweat, dirt, and ash. Eyes reddened at the edges, his hastily thrown-on shirt still mostly unbuttoned. I gazed up into his eyes and saw the spark return there.
"Are you asking me to?" he said.
"Yes. Please. Yes."
A/N: It's only taken like 25 freaking chapters but YES, we're going to return to a bit of kink finally, so PREPARE YOURSELVES.
It's really interesting to write this sort of BDSM for me however: this book will explore a lot of bondage elements that don't explicitly involve sex, or aren't strictly of a sexual nature every time. Sometimes, the desire for things like bondage or discipline is not STRICTLY sexual, and does not arise purely from sexual desire. Such as here, Samara seeks it truly as a catharsis, as a relief, as an outlet to release her tension. It's honestly been such a joy for me to write this way, because it delves into a lot of my own feelings regarding BDSM: it's not just hot, it's not just a turn on. Sometimes it's a relief. Sometimes it's that release you desperately need from being so tightly in control and composed.
The next chapter will be coming soon! Thank you so much for reading ♡