Total pages in book: 122
Estimated words: 120475 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 602(@200wpm)___ 482(@250wpm)___ 402(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 120475 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 602(@200wpm)___ 482(@250wpm)___ 402(@300wpm)
For one more day, she’s safe. She’s whole. She doesn’t need me.
I should turn and leave. But I don’t. Instead, I stay rooted, watching as she continues to bounce and dance in place to an invisible melody. When she finally drops the phone back into her pocket to head toward the parking lot, her steps are confident and sure. She’s a queen who answers to no one.
I wait until she disappears around the corner. Only then do I exhale, the breath trembling as it leaves me.
“I’ll keep you safe,” I murmur into the empty street, the words a vow I’ve no right to make. It’s all I can do. Stand watch. Remain unseen. Ensure she has the freedom to walk her own path.
Even if it kills me.
SIX
Two weeks later
MOIRA
I reach over to pluck a greasy fry from the basket, then lean my head back in the steamy bubbles of the hot tub as I eat it. Damn, Domhn really does know how to live it up. This hot tub is fucking massive.
“Fine, if you don’t want to talk to me,” I shout at the top of my lungs. “I’ll just keep enjoying your amazing backyard!”
I look around his large, elegant back deck for cameras. I’m sure there are at least ten pointed at me, but my annoying fucking brother has them discretely hidden.
Is he even listening?
I mean, sure, it’s almost three in the morning. I grab my phone from the other side of the hot tub with my non-greasy hand to double-check—yup, two-fifty-seven. But I figured that would piss him off even more with all his fancy security alarms going off.
It’s been weeks since I had any sort of stimulation.
And I mean… any.
Obviously, I still masturbate every time I’m in an enclosed space—my bedroom, my bathroom, my shower, the bathroom of the coffee shop on the bottom floor of my building, in my car with my seat levered down so no one can see me—but there’s barely any point to it lately. And yes, I know, it’s creepy. And no, I’m not proud of it. Especially since there’s nothing more shameful than being in a public restroom, rubbing at your pussy like it’s a firestick and you’re trying to get a goddamn spark when there’s absolutely nothing happening. And then just feeling even more numb.
I can’t get off.
What the hell even is my life if I can’t fucking get off?
I splash the bubbling water with both my fists and furiously kick my feet. Then my ass slips off the edge of the bench.
“Shit!” I splash even more, giggling as I regain my balance.
What if I went back and saw that hot priest?
I let myself sink back in the water but stretch out my arms to hold on to the side of the smoothly tiled hot tub this time, kicking out my feet in the multicolored water. While this house is far smaller than his last, Domhn’s still so fucking fancy; the pool and hot tub have lights that aren’t just white but slowly shift back and forth between gentle neon colors.
I put my feet together like I’m a mermaid and let my body float, head resting on the edge.
Maybe I should go back to church.
I sigh. That priest was so fucking hot. I’d let him give me absolution anytime.
I smirk, then sigh again.
Last Sunday, I went back to listen to the bells, but I couldn’t go inside. I didn’t need to go and make a dumbass of myself again in front of the yummy priest. I just stayed long enough to catch a peek of him when the doors opened, where he stood there, all dark and sexy in that collar of his and so patient with each one of the older folks who came through the receiving line after church.
If he looked at me with those gentle eyes again, I would melt, and then die, and then throw myself in his arms, slowly sliding down his body with my hands still clutching him, and then run away again as fast as I could.
So, instead of recreating that mortifying situation in reality, I go to the club night after night. But I don’t bother fucking anyone.
I keep hoping Bane, the magic-fingered masked dom, will come back, but he never does. Sometimes, I take a turn on the spanking bench to at least feel something, but not even that can get past whatever this funk is I’m in the middle of.
I just know it hurts a tiny bit less when I’m at the club.
But tonight, both Quinn and Jinx were busy sceneing on stage, and I just sat there alone, feeling nothing. I tried texting Anna and Kira but got no response.
Everybody’s got their own lives. And I’m just floating, purposeless.
Because I told Marci to take me off the schedule at the shelter so often the last six months, she said she didn’t have any available volunteer shifts when I called today. Bitch. There are always shifts. She just doesn’t like me.