Page 28 of Deviant Illusions

Roses with thick vines and sharp thorns are inked into the back of his left hand. The thorn on his ring finger is the only one that has any color. A bright red drop of blood clings to it and his other hand is marked in a gothic Gorgon head. Half of its face is a skull—the eye socket has something crawling out of it—and the other half has features but the flickering candlelight doesn’t allow me to make out who it is.

He indelicately tilts the candle to the side and the hot wax drips between my shoulder blades, making me hiss. The sensation of it cooling isn’t unbearable. I’d still prefer not to be used as a candelabra. More wax is deposited on my skin, so much that it doesn’t set straight away.

“Kane?” He doesn’t look at me and holds the candle upside down to melt the base against the orange flame of his Zippo. “Kane, I can’t move.”

There are more deposits, and the balaclava shifts over his jaw as he clenches his teeth. “Good.”

A dull ache travels up my knees as I’m forced to remain kneeling. Without moving my head, I look through the corner of my eyes to see what I’m attached to. The collar around my neck has a chain on the side that leads across the room. The looped end lays over my bed, fixed under the leg. I won’t be able to pull it free without burning myself.

There must be at least ten candles stuck to my back. The wax drips down. From the heat alone, they’re all different lengths. But once he’s happy with how much has melted, Kane adds the one in his hand to my skin. A weak hiss escapes me as he pushes the melted base between my shoulder blades.

“Take your mask off,” I beg, like a pathetic fucking idiot.

He drops down to his haunches and gently holds my jaw with his thumb and forefinger. The strain in my neck is eased as helooks between each of my eyes. His voice comes out haunted and menacing with the eerie candlelight.

“You first.” Using the back of his fingers of his free hand, he strokes the side of my face, tracing each contour as emotion weighs his voice down. “The boy who loved you died. You killed him, Delilah, when all he ever wanted to do was love you openly. That was his only crime, and it was enough for a hundred and fifty-seven death sentences.”

He didn’t get a death sentence. He was charged with manslaughter and arson. I even wrote a letter when I wasn’t allowed to testify. It explained that it wasn’t Kane’s fault and I tried to fucking help him, so he doesn’t get to forget history or rewrite it to make me the villain.

Softening my voice, I ask, “What happened?”

His fingers tighten around my jaw and his eyes blaze. Even without the reflection of the numerous flames on my back, they would be on fire as he spits, “You.” My jaw is close to breaking from how tightly he’s holding it. “You came into my fucking life with your frilly fucking socks and said ‘Knock, knock.’Thatis what fucking happened.”

My hands are free to push him away, but I’m aware of the candles stuck to me. The wax that has dripped onto my skin won’t protect me from the flames if they fall.

He digs his fingers into the corners of my lips, forcing my mouth open, and spits down in a line. Most of it hits my chin and he smears it into my skin with the pad of his thumb.

“I hate you. And this mouth,”—he traces my lips with his spit-covered thumb—“will only ever be a place for me to drop my cum.”

His fly is still undone, and he tugs on the band of his boxers to free his dick. How the fuck is he still hard? I have no reference to know how long I’ve been unconscious for, but it has to havebeen a significant length of time for him to chain me up and place candles on me. Has he been hard all this time?

There’s dried blood smeared along his length, and he spits down, wetting it before he strokes himself from base to tip. I clench my thighs together as he rolls his palm over the glistening tip, making the Gorgon head inked on the back of his hand come to life. The side of the face I couldn’t make out is now in full view with the candle flames flickering over it. The part-woman inked on his hand is made up of half of my features. The eye is a white orb, and the hair is made of snakes, but it’sme. Those are my features beside a terrifying skull with a beetle crawling out of its decaying eye socket.

“Are you going to burn me?” I whisper up at him.

He drops one knee to the floor and pushes his thumb over my teeth. “I should.”

“But you won’t,” I finish with hope in my voice.

“Not yet, koukla mou. You still haven’t made me come.”

He tugs on my bottom teeth, pulling my head down to meet his dick. My hair falls in a curtain around my face and drapes over the tops of his thighs. It manages to not be pushed into flames as he swaps his thumb for his dick and thrusts up into my mouth.

I gag instantly, trying to breathe through my nose as the heat on my back gets closer. There’s no gentleness though. He holds my head with both hands and fully kneels to fuck up into my face. Wax slips over the well in the candles and I moan around him as it splashes against my back.

“I fucking hate you,” he grits as he pulls my head down, so my nose is buried against his groin. I’m tilted further, the candles leaning at a precarious angle and the warmth of the wax racing along my spine to my nape. It flows the other direction as Kane buries himself in my throat. The wax cools as it travels along the curve of my ass, and I swallow around him.

The thick candles wobble on my back, the bases tugging at my skin as the wax securing them in place cracks from the momentum, but he doesn’t slow. He speeds up, and I hug his thighs with both arms as my knees scrape against the rough floor.

“I fucking hate you!”

I nod, slowly moving my tongue side to side against the underside of his dick resting against my tongue.

“I wish I never met you,” he groans, wrapping my hair around each of his fists to form handlebars. I’m roughly pulled off him as he tugs, and I choke down air as he grits, “What the fuck are you?”

The wax pools at my nape, slipping around my collarbones as the drips cool before they can hit the floor and hang from my chest like small, rounded icicles. He pulls harder. And I breathlessly answer, “Yours?”

The wax forms an armor around my shoulders in different colors—some red, some white, and some black. But they run into and over each other like Kane’s own distorted art show.

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