“I might not be able to fix mine, because you have me outmanned and outmuscled,” I grunt, trying to free one of my arms so I can reach back and touch Darius’s face. I stroke his cheek. He moves where I want, coming closer to me until our cheeks are pressed together. “But you can’t stop me from taking other contracts if you stop putting me on the good missions.”
He cracks his fist on the edge of the desk, and the sound of thunder clacks through the room. “Do you have any idea who you’re talking to? I won’t let them put you on other contracts.” He snatches the papers off the desk and holds them up. “Sign them.”
“I won’t.”
“Sign them, or I’ll break your arm so you can’t hold up a camera.”
“I’d rather get eaten by rats.”
With no warning, Darius shoves me off him so that I lie splayed over his desk, his cock and tail ripping out of me in a way that makes me cry out in pain. He storms out of his office, slamming the door so hard at his back that a few books and bobbles fall off the shelves behind me, and so do the weapons that were on the lowest shelf.
Wincing, I stand upright and turn around. I glance at the weapons on the ground, feeling proud of myself for standing tough despitefeeling like I just had my insides scooped out. My pussy is gaping, and so is my ass. Both are clenching and winking, desperate for more of what Darius had.
I bend down and stroke my finger along one of the weapons. Lightning flares beneath my touch, but doesn’t hurt me. I place them back on the shelves carefully, hoping that he figures his shit out but also understanding that this is shit only he can figure out.
I learned a long time ago that I was no one’s therapist. I get to choose how I let folks treat me, and even if I want to be put in a cage by him, I don’t want to be caged by him. If that’s a line in the sand we can’t erase together, then I’m going to leave and let our lawyers and our good friends at the COE settle the fallout.
He has to understand that I’m a photographer. I’m an artist. For better or worse, trying to disentangle me from my life’s work would be like trying to use chopsticks to pick all the salt out of the ocean.
The hero always saves the damsel at the end of the story, and if this was going to be the end of ours, then hell—nobody said I couldn’t play both parts. After all, as he’s said himself, he’s the villain.
And once he finds out that I’ve been spying on him, he’s going to do worse than break my legs or throw me off the top of our building. The bullshit contract amendment and the little pink paper I’ve folded up in my pocket won’t mean anything. Because after my confrontation with the Marduk, and after hearing from his own mouth that he plans to kill Mr. Singkham, I’ve got to start taking my spy duties seriously.
Chapter Nineteen
Monika
The web of lies may have begun with Taranis, but it ends with me. That’s what I keep telling myself as I sit down with Mr. Singkham, my last encounter with Darius replaying itself in my mind. I’m so uncomfortable, sore as hell, and my meeting with Emily and the COE gyno definitely did not help. She was ecstatic when I told her that Darius and I had beenintimate,and even had a name for what happened to his penis when it ... expanded. She called itknotting.
I had a little bit of tearing, and she asked me way too many questions about why my asshole looked inflamed. She gave me cream for all of it, a prescription for extra-strength ibuprofen, and the courage to keep having sex with Darius if I’m enjoying it. And I am enjoying it. Even if I want to give him a lobotomy.
Entirely breaking doctor-patient confidentiality—or maybe that doesn’t even exist for the COE—she let me know that he was clean and that I didn’t need to worry about pregnancy because he’d had a vasectomy. Huh. Emily also told me he hadn’t been in yet, but she asked me to encourage him to come see her. She wanted to have a look at all his shiny new bits. I snorted and wished her luck. If he didn’t want to see her, he wouldn’t come to see her. Nothing I could do to change that.
“This is what it looked like?” Mr. Singkham has a binder open on his desk in front of me. He’s sitting in the chair next to mine rather than across from me, excitement oozing from him like he’s a little boy on Christmas Day. Wait—do they celebrate Christmas in Thailand?
I glance over at him and see that his full concentration is on the laminated sheets. “No. It’s not a long sword. It’s short. Two of them.”
“You think he has two separate weapons?”
I shake my head, then shrug. “There were two of them, but they were identical.”
Mr. Singkham releases a long, thoughtful sound, stroking his chin. “Back to the thumbnails.” He flips pages until he arrives at a set of two-by-two-inch images, each one depicting a separate “weapon” against a backdrop of plain white. Some of them don’t much look like weapons, though. Most of them don’t look like much at all, but there are a lot of them. Two dozen at least.
“Shouldn’t I just focus on the ones that have been stolen?”
“These are the ones that were stolen.”
“Oh shit.” I shake my head and go back to the pictures. They look hardly more useful in battle than kitchen utensils. “The weapon I saw was sparking blue and white.”
“And you say it started to radiate energy because he was upset with you for the social media post?”
“I mean ...” I reply, shifting in my seat, my face growing surprisingly warm. The marriage license crinkles in my pocket. I flap my hands. “I don’t know. He was angry and it was glowing. Whether the two things were related, I couldn’t hazard a guess.” It also sparked after he left, but for whatever reason, I don’t mention that.
“Fascinating. Just fascinating.”
“What is?”
Mr. Singkham looks at me. He’s grinning. “That he’s managed to turn his weapon on at all. We haven’t had a Champion who’s been able to do so yet.”
