Page 138 of Damsel in Disguise

She stumbles from the force of it, a soft gasp escaping her lips—but she doesn’t resist. If anything, she melts into me instantly, like she’s been waiting for this exact moment to happen in real life.

The room smells wrong—metal, blood, something synthetic burning beneath it. But I keep kissing her in the room that still has the corroding Synthète.

Those small hands clutch at my bare shoulders while my mouth moves against hers, slow at first, then deeper. My tongue presses past her lips, and she lets me in.

Ariella leans into me, rising onto her toes without realizing it. Her hands wrap around the back of my neck to pull me down to her height.

My grip tightens slightly at her throat to feel the way her pulse jumps rapidly beneath my fingers. It’s addictive.

She moans in my mouth, clutching on my body as the kiss deepens, turns messier, more breathy, more desperate.

My tongue drags slightly against hers before I pull back just enough to let her breathe.

“You wanted me to prove,” I murmur against her lips, grabbing her throat a little harder to cut off the airflow.

She parts her lips, gasping to draw oxygen into her lungs while my thumb presses firmly against the pulse point on her throat.

“Careful what you decide to believe, little kitty,” and I capture her lips with mine to devour once more.

42. DAPPER-DAN

alistair

EIGHTEEN YEARS AGO—AGE 12

They call me a good boy.

Not in the way people mean kindness, nor warmth, nor anything resembling innocence. It’s never about virtue. It’s about utility.

Good, as in compliant. Predictable. Easy to overlook in a room full of louder, or easy to manipulate.

My mom taught me that if you smile long enough, people stop looking too closely. Their curiosity dulls, their instincts soften, and whatever unease might have stirred at the back of their mind dissolves into something far more convenient.

I’ve noticed they stop asking questions. They stop wondering what sits behind your eyes, because the answer no longer feels necessary.

She played that song often enough that it became an instruction. “When it feels like all the world is wearing a frown, put a smile on and spread it around…”

I don’t usually see her smiling. Not in the way people define happiness—soft, effortless, unburdened. Her smiles are practiced, worn like armor in front of strangers, stretched just enough to survive the night.

But each time I’m around, it’s different. That same wide smile settles on her lips and lingers, almost stubborn in its persistence, as if my presence alone is enough to anchor her to something gentler.

I watch it carefully, memorizing the exact curve, the way her eyes soften around the edges, the way it almost looks real.

I always want it to stay that way.

And yet, every time that song plays in the radio, something shifts in her.

She hums along under her breath at first, then louder, letting the melody pull her into motion until she’s swaying across the kitchen floor.

My mother always plays the song at night, always after everyone leaves, after the door closes for the final time and the house settles into a quieter kind of decay.

She washes herself first, scrubbing away whatever marks the night has left behind—blood from her lip, her wrist, her thigh, depending on what the evening demands—before she allows herself to sit.

She always thinks I am asleep.

She always faces away from me.

The radio crackles softly, the melody slipping in and out of clarity as she hums along, her voice threading through the broken sound like she is trying to convince herself that something softer still exists.