Page 22 of Taken By Touch and Torment

Her hand softly grasped his chin. He stared up at her as if she were the sun itself.

“Cassius, baby,” she crooned. “You may not speak a word of my friend coming to visit us, understood?”

He didn’t even glance at me. He only nodded. “Of course, Rosalind. Never.”

“Good boy,” she praised, pouting her lip like she was speaking to a toddler.

But he ate it up, his chiseled, handsome face melting as if she’d given him everything he’d ever wanted. She whispered something in his ear, and he left. I noticed a white slave collar around his neck, bite marks on his tanned wrists.

When we were alone, she gestured for me to sit on a white couch beside her. She offered me lavender and chamomile tea in a delicate floral teacup with a rose gold handle.

I was at a loss for words. She glanced at my neck, and it took me a moment to realize she was staring at my own bulky black collar. Then her eyes trailed down to my exposed stomach, where the name Durian was splayed in ugly red knife marks. Every morning, Aunt Carol healed them, and every night, Durian cut into me all over again.

I pulled my black robe closed. I’d forgotten I wasn’t in anything more than a bralette and panties. Modesty didn’t mean anything to me anymore.

Rosalind didn’t offer me pity. Only confusion etched into her features.

“You know what you are,” she said. “That’s why you were terrified when we first met. Why you thought I’d come to kill you.”

“I didn’t realize succubi could recognize each other,” I said, taking a tentative sip of tea. It didn’t smell like elixir, nor could I read any magick in its warm depths. Like Rosalind had said, if she’d wanted me dead, she could’ve done it while I was sleeping.

“You know what you are,” she repeated, her brows drawn. She stared at my neck again. “Yet you’ve allowed yourself to become a human slave.”

“Allowed is an interesting choice of words,” I muttered. “I didn’t volunteer. I was kidnapped. The same as that man you were… entertaining.”

She watched my face closely. “Why do you assume bad intentions on my part?”

I opened my mouth and then closed it. She had a human slave in her rooms. And she was a succubus. She was living in luxury in Durian’s palace. The reasons to assume she was the worst kind of person were endless.

“Fine. You clearly don’t want to answer any of my questions. That’s fair,” she said, her tone even as she lounged back on her couch. Her white silk gown bunched around her, her gorgeous legs peeking through the ample slits. “So ask yours.”

“Will you answer them?”

She smiled, twirling a blonde lock around her finger. “I don’t know yet.”

“Is it as irritating to you as it is to me that we can’t read each other?”

Her smile widened. “No. I find it exhilarating.”

I let out a long breath.

“But I’m not the one with everything to lose,” she said, and it wasn’t in a cruel or sinister way. Only honest.

With a nod, I proceeded. “Why are you here?”

“If you mean in Hatham, I was born here, to a vampire woman,” she said. “She’s dead now. A good thing too, considering she tried to end me more than a handful of times.” She studied her impeccably manicured nails, picking at a cuticle as she spoke. “Some children get bedtime stories, others nearly get drowned in the bathtub.”

She laughed softly. And though her words made my heart sink, they equally made me lean forward—recognizing more of myself in Rosalind than just our succubus nature. I, too, had a penchant for using humor to cope with the overwhelmingly shit hand I’d been dealt in this life.

“I think my sister would’ve preferred if I’d been drowned in the tub,” I said with a smirk. “She might’ve done it herself if she’d had the grit. And, of course, if she didn’t need to use me to survive.”

Rosalind relaxed, mirroring my small smile. “Cowardly. They’re always so cowardly, aren’t they?”

I assumed she meant the people who’d hurt us. It was strange to attack Isabella openly, to no longer be blindly loyal to my abuser. I still had a tinge of guilt. But I had a lot more anger now. It was getting easier and easier to see the situation for what it was and not for what I’d hoped it would be.

I nodded.

“But you didn’t mean Hatham, when you asked why I was here. You meant this palace,” Rosalind said, bringing us back to my original inquiry. “And the answer to that question is a very long story that I do not care to tell in its entirety. You’re smart enough to ascertain the basic facts: I’m here because I’m an asset. I stay out of the way, and I do what is required of me to remain in the good graces of those who matter. Running from who I was didn’t work. I think you may know something about that.” She paused, and I made no reaction. “So I leaned in. I came home. I carved out a little nook for myself where I wouldn’t be killed. At least not yet.”

---