Page 80 of Damsel in Disguise

“Hey there, little kitty,” I murmur, far too awake.

27. PET

alistair

Ariella freezes mid-motion, caught in the center of her own filthy little ritual—the kind of sin that doesn’t beg forgiveness, only exposure.

For half a second, she looks feral. Then instinct takes over.

She’s on her feet in a flash, ready to bolt—mask still in place, gloves forgotten, careless in a way she never is. Panic has already loosened her precision.

I don’t let her have the distance.

My body shoots upright with my hand firmly closing around her arm. I forcibly yank her over me.

Her body collides over my chest. The impact is rough, the shock of it steals whatever breath she had left.

A startled gasp slips past her lips. That’s all she gives me.

Delilah subconsciously chooses that exact moment to shift.

The subtle rustle of sheets, the slight turn of her synthetic body toward us, is enough to sharpen every nerve in me.

Without hesitation, I drag the blanket over my body, swallowing Ariella into the dark with me.

The thrill of it hits instantly, coiling straight down my spine and settling hard in my balls. My cock responds before rational thought can interfere. It rises with an eager, almost anticipatory tension.

I can feel it poking against her ass. She tries to move, but it only positions my cock between her legs.

Every inch of her tense and hyperaware body is now pressed flush against mine. Uneven breaths tangle in the suffocating space, brushing across each other’s lips in shallow bursts. I can feel the way she’s holding herself still—not out of calm, but restraint.

For a moment, I almost wish Delilah would reach for me—drape her arm across my body, brush against the truth buried beneath the covers.

I want to see it unfold. Want to watch the Triarch Dominion’s perfect creation react to something so fundamentally human. I want to corrupt their humanoid machine with something as crude as forbidden desire.

Lowkey, I want to know how they’d react to finding me with my stalker—the same one they wanted to experiment and turn like that of Delilah.

I let the silence stretch, counting the seconds by the rhythm of Delilah’s breathing, before I carefully slide a hand toward the nightstand to grab my phone.

The screen lights up in my palm, dimmed to the lowest setting. I pull up the monitoring app—a live feed of every internal parameter running through Delilah’s synthetic system. Heart rate simulation, neural activity patterns, and motor suppression levels.

If she’s pretending, I’ll know.

A quick scan of the ratios confirms it—REM state. Deep enough not to interfere. Unstable enough not to last for long.

Time is limited.

I slide the phone back, then peel the blanket away in one smooth motion and shift off the bed, taking Ariella with me as if she weighs nothing more than a thought I’ve already decided to act on.

Rather than fighting to break free, she wraps her arms and legs around my neck and my waist, holding on to my body.

That surprises me more than it should. No resistance. No hesitation. Just compliance wrapped in utter silence.

I wonder, briefly, what would happen if I stripped the mask off her face right now. Whether that composure would crack, or if she’d still hold herself together without the illusion of anonymity.

But not yet. There are better ways to take something apart.

Tomorrow, maybe?