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“I’ve never had sex before.” “That only makes what you’re offering more valuable in the eyes of people willing to pay for it.”
she is in a class all her own, a shark swimming with minnows. Like minnows, people flit out of her way as if sensing danger.
“Stories aren’t real life.” “No, but they contain a multitude of lessons that a clever person heeds.”
The number one thing on that list? Curiosity. The very trait I can’t seem to scrub from my existence. I can’t help that I want to know more about everything, that the walls built high for my safety are the same ones that suffocate me when I’m not lost in a book.
I learned a long time ago that sex and submission are the only comfort she’ll allow me to offer, and so I push away any dissatisfaction that she’s shutting me out once again.
“Mmhmm.” Ursa taps my under the chin with one blood-red nail. “And after the auction, she’ll be our good girl.”
“We aren’t friends.” She says it almost kindly. “I’m going to fuck you until you come so many times, it’s my face you see when you think of god. But we are not, and never will be, friends.”
The best cruelty lashes unexpectedly, the sweetest kindness can hurt so acutely.
I don’t know if I trust her entirely outside the bedroom, but in here? She’s my Mistress, my queen, my goddess.
Playing teacher and student is just one of my many fantasies, and if I’ve acted it out in all its variations, it feels different with Zuri.
When she returns, she’s holding a large dildo that’s shaped like a tentacle.
“She’s the Sea Witch, after all.” “I thought she’s called that because she used to drown her enemies in the ocean.”
She’s a villain, but she’s not a monster.
“I’m saying that a smart person doesn’t let rage blind them to the realities of the world. No one is wholly good or wholly bad. If you know their motivations, you can use them to encourage the outcome you desire.”
Forgiveness isn’t a simple thing. It’s fluid and imprecise and often beyond me.
“You’re soft. Others might see that as a sin, but it’s not. It’s an asset. Cling to that as long as you possibly can, because you’ll lose part of yourself when you let the world make you hard.”
“If I’d known you, I never would have agreed to play things out this way. I like you, and you deserve better than to play the part of a pawn.”
It doesn’t change the fact that I’ve sacrificed everything for people who will move on with their lives together and forget that I ever existed.
“There are two kinds of people in this world. Those that flourish in the shadows—and those that suffocate in them.
“Sometimes friends should play support, sometimes they should shine a light on hard truths.”
I was prepared for his anger. I was not prepared for him to try to shove me right back into my old self the same way my sisters did.
I never really believed in happily ever after. Not for people like me.
