Page 31 of To Free a Soul (Duskwalker Beginnings #2)

“I thought you were saying that it wouldn’t feel good because you didn’t have an emotional attachment to me. I didn’t know...”

Her voice broke off when she thought, Oh god, I sucked his cock when he couldn’t even feel it! Mortification, horror, and embarrassment, all wrapped up into one barbed bundle, had taken root in her chest, and she wanted to crawl into a hole and die.

She brought her knees up so she could cover herself and shuffled her arms in a way that allowed her elbows to hide her breasts. She covered her face with her hands and let out a sob, unable to handle the way her emotions crushed her in that moment.

And despite everything, her stupid body didn’t care about how she was feeling. She was still wet, still horny.

“It’s not my fault you made that assumption. You should’ve asked for clarity.”

Like she’d been hit with a hateful club, his words knocked her anguish sideways. That barbed ball in her chest grew fangs, as her blood boiled with rage.

“An assumption?!” She lowered her hands just enough to glare at him. “I didn’t know I needed clarification! You are the abnormality! Everyone feels! You are the one who is different. Why would I think I needed clarification?! You shouldn’t have assumed I knew what you meant by your lacking answer!”

I had no idea he’s numb to it all.

To every kiss, to every touch, to the very feel of her skin, her warmth, her breaths. To the way her body moulded around his and the sensation of being inside her.

Lindiwe finally braved unfurling herself to grab her clothing, then squeezed her arms and torso into her dress before yanking it down.

She swiped up her underwear, swam over to her cloak – thankful it wasn’t too far away – and threw it around her shoulders.

Then she tucked her underwear into the pocket for later.

“Lindiwe, I’m sorry if–”

“I don’t want to hear your sorry right now!”

She understood this was a massive misunderstanding and that they were both at fault, but it didn’t erase the last nearly one hundred years, during which they’d been intimate many times without her knowledge of what he lacked.

It made her feel small and pitiful.

Where all of it, every single bit of it, felt like a horrible lie.

He once said something to the effect of, “So I can see,” and now I understand. Because he didn’t feel anything, he had to see his way around her body. That’s why the first time hurt so much. He couldn’t feel that he’d made himself too big, couldn’t feel he was going too deep.

She kept coming back to the same thought, and each time she remembered, her fangs lost their sharpness and left only regret. I sucked the dick of someone who was entirely numb to it.

She’d thought she had been... sexy, sultry, naughty.

Absolutely, but all by her-fucking-self.

“I want to leave,” she whispered, refusing to look at him.

“I’d rather we talk about this,” he stated firmly, in that devoid, emotionless tone he often had. “You were enjoying yourself. I don’t understand what the issue is.”

“I want to leave!” she screamed, turning physical and out of his reach. “This is why I’m so fucking afraid of coming here and talking to you, because I can’t just walk away when I want to.”

She swiped her tear-stained cheeks before she buried her face once more, this time shaking her head.

“I’m stuck here by your whim, your will.

And when you feel entitled to it, I know you’ll leave me here for not doing what you want.

” She hugged her midsection as she let out a sob and turned her head away from him as much as possible, only to face the unending darkness of him . “So please. Please just let me leave.”

If I’d known... I wouldn’t have asked for sex. I wouldn’t have wanted to do anything with him. I would have just been a good servant and had his babies through his gross wormy tendrils and not given it another thought.

That seemed preferable to the embarrassment that was so white hot it was incinerating her insides into a ghastly, bubbling wound.

“Fine,” he bit out.

Lindiwe traded one darkness for another as night danced all around her when she was placed on her knees at the cliff edge of the Veil. She’d landed softly, and she took in the comfort of the real world. How it was cold, and heavy, and so lonely.

“Please don’t watch me. Just leave me alone,” she pleaded as she keeled forward over her knees, continuing to hold her midsection.

She didn’t know if he submitted to her wants, as he never answered, but Lindiwe just cried into the Veil. To the view that was both beautiful and haunted, expansive yet evil.

It all just feels like a cruel joke. He probably thinks he did it for me, but that just makes me feel so pathetic, like I needed it so badly from someone who can only ever ‘witness.’

Something rustled in the bushes behind her. She didn’t even need to turn around to know that the snarling creature behind her was a Demon that had likely come to investigate her sobbing.

She remembered the last time she was stuck at the edge of this cliff, broken and betrayed, crying as a Demon sniffed at her heels for a meal. It was so vastly different between that day and the way she felt now, but it’d led to her trading her soul for this life.

She’d never regretted it more than she did now.

She stiffened, used her mind like a muscle, and felt out with a tentacle of magic. She grabbed the Demon, uncaring whether it was around its torso or neck, and threw it forward.

Bellowing out a scream, it flailed its arms and legs as it flew through the air and into the forested canyon below.

She felt zero satisfaction .