Page 39 of Dance of Thorns

I smile.

“When you least expect it, baby.”

9

DOVE

Consensual non-consent.

Impact play. Bondage. Orgasm denial.

A heated, shuddering sensation traces down my spine.

Somnophilic activities.

Free use.

My throat bobs as my eyes dart all over the laptop screen in front of me. As promised, a copy of our signed agreement was waiting in my inbox when I got home from Bane's place thirty minutes ago.

“Home” for me, though, isn’t the main house, where Dad and Medusa—sorry,Felicity—live. When I returned fromIl Refugio, the ultra-exclusive “wellness facility”…aka rehab clinic…situated on the edge of Lake Como in northern Italy, I couldn’t bring myself to live under the same roof as Dad and that cunt.

But the Brooklyn Heights mansion is over a hundred years old, which means it also has an old carriage house.

This is where I set up my home base. It’s nice and open, which gives me plenty of space for the barre, just in case I decide the eleven million hours I spend dancing at the Mercury Theater isn’t enough.

There’s also a ton of room for my paintings, a little sitting area, a small kitchen, and a full bathroom, along with a lofted sleeping area.

I like it. It’s quiet, and everyone—mostly—leaves me alone.

At the café table I’ve got set up in the kitchen area, I re-read the devil’s deal I’ve just signed. Each time I get to the list of kinks included in the “contract of consent to physical and sexual activity”, heat floods my face. But the most mortifying, fucked-up part isn’t the list of kinks I’ve just agreed to participate in.

It’s that they’re all things thatdoturn me on.

Like, a lot.

I can guess where that came from. I don’t know—don’t remember—if I gravitated toward being restrained, having my control taken away, free use, or even worse, rape-play,beforeLark and I were taken.

Taken, and held for two nights by that fucking psychopath.

I…might have been, I guess? But everything I’ve learned about who I was before that experience suggests otherwise.

I don’t love the me I am now. But I’m pretty sure I’dhatethe me I was before my trip to hell. Back when I was Dove the head cheerleader, queen bitch of Thornfield Prep, dating Scott Hathaway, the chest-thumping neanderthal quarterback, and breezing through the world like a spoiled little mafia cunt.

But meeting the devil face to face changes you.

So,maybeI was into the idea of being ravaged and fucked against my will back then, or being someone’s toy, whenever and wherever they choose. Being used while I’m asleep.

But I think the surer bet is that those fucked-up needs and desires were implanted in me while I was in that room.

I’ve reada lotabout the psychological effects of torture, imprisonment, and extreme stress. And when I replay those hellish, nightmare flashbacks of being chained up, my head bleeding after that monster shaved it raw, and hearing what I couldn’t block out happening in the room next to mine?

My eyes squeeze shut as my body violently shudders. My brain short-circuits briefly, bright lights like a mini lightning storm exploding through my front cortex and making me wince as my hand flies to my temple.

For a second, I’m back there in that rotting house.

Chained to the cot.

Dirty, cold, hungry, and terrified.