Page 137 of Jinxes and Drumsticks

“Look. At. Me. Right now, Lillith.”

A command. He slips back into that dominant space so quickly. I drop my hands reluctantly and look up at him. His eyes are steady and calm, his expression sincere and strangely serious.

“I will never get bored of you,” he says. “Never.”

I nod.

“And yes. You got me, alright? I’m a slut. I have been physically intimate with a lot of women, okay? And I won’t do you or them the disservice of saying I didn’t enjoy it. But nothing has ever compared to how it feels when I’m with you, Lillith. When I met you—I don’t know. I just knew it would be you or no one else, okay? So no matter what story I tell you—no matter what awakening or fun I had with another girl—when I met you, I knew in my fucking bones that all of the heartache and disappointment was because you were waiting for me in my future.”

And now I’m crying for an entirely different reason. I’m crying like a little baby because he is so perfect and I love him so much and he’s mine and he will be forever.

“Oh no, sweetheart, don’t do that. Not while I can’t wipe them away,” he says.

He sits me down on a large stone next to the pond in the center of the park. He wipes my tears away, smiling all the while. “Do you still want to know the rest of the story?”

I nod wordlessly.

“Alright. Well, it’s not all that exciting. They had a shibari lesson at the social. Nothing crazy. Just some simple floor ties. I paired up with this girl, I don’t even remember her name, honestly. We paired up and they taught us to tie a harness. It was fun and challenging in the way that drumming felt challenging.

“We laughed a lot, and when the lesson was over we were encouraged to play a bit if we wanted to. I was—well, shit, I was lucky she was pretty open to just about anything, because I didn’t exactly have the training I needed to play with a stranger. I didn’t know how to negotiate or check in or anything. In hindsight, it was kind of a dangerous way to do things. They didn’t even ask us about our experience with BDSM. Maybe they just assumed if Oren was bringing me that I was cool. I don’t know.”

“Did you guys hook up?” I ask.

He shakes his head. “No. We didn’t sleep together. We only tied the one time, but she was so pliant and willing. She let me pull on her hair, put my hand around her throat. Bite her. Things like that. And when she was a breathy little puddle, I told her to look at me.” He pauses, kneeling before me with his hands on the top of my thighs.

“Look at me, Lillith,” he says. Calm. Commanding.

I do, not realizing that I was looking down at my hands. His loam and sea eyes flicker between each of mine.

“Yes,” he exhales, nearly euphoric. “That was it for me. Of all the things she let me do. Of all the things you let me do to you, Lillith. This is what does it for me. The ability to command connection. The security inherent in domination is what I became addicted to. For me, it’s not some power trip or even sadism—not really. It’s the constant proof that I can be mean and demanding and even unreasonable, and you’re still here.”

His eyes drop from mine and I follow his gaze to his hands. Read the tattoo there. DEVASTATED, all in caps. A brand he keeps.

Some people are worth being devastated for.

“Maybe that makes me fucked up,” he says, his whisper breaking a little. “Saying it out loud...maybe I’m just fucked up.”

I lace my fingers with his, squeezing one hand.

“I’m pretty fucked up too,” I say, staring at our joined hands. “And why shouldn’t we be? The world can be a cold and painful place a lot of the time. Sometimes it seems intent on letting us know that we’re just a little blip on the radar. How easy it can be for people to leave us and loathe us—if it’s so easy, it must mean something’s wrong with us right?”

“Right,” Damien says, a little choked up.

“So, we stumble through the world until we stumble into the person who loves us for everything we are and are not. And for me, that’s you.”

He looks up at me and smiles. It’s a sad thing, and I think my smile must be a little sad too. But I think, just for now, that’s okay.

“Lillith, I hope you know that I’m not ever going to be able to let you go,” he says, lifting one of his hands to cup my cheek in his palm.

I lean into his touch and nod. “Good. Because I’m totally going to hex you if you’re dumb enough to dump me.”

He lets out a wet laugh, lifting himself up onto his knees to kiss me. My heart soars, and I know I’m going to marry this man someday. Both here and in The Buried City. I see the vision as clear as a premonition in my mind’s eye. I can almost feel the silk ropes around our joined hands.

A slow clap rings out across the pond, and the vision shatters. I whip my head toward the sound and the world tilts. My mind can’t parse the information at first. There’s a surreal wrongness to the scene unfolding in front of me.

The clapping stops and a voice fills the silence instead.

“How very touching,” he says in that bizarre accent as he steps from the shadows into the moonlight. “But I’m afraid your little lover boy is going to have to learn how to share.”