"I'll take the real slavery to you any day, rather than a... than a... gilded cage..." Her voice trailed off and she swallowed and just like that, warning bells sounded in his head. He didn't know where her thoughts were.
How did he not know where they were? He had always been able to tell and yet now in this horribly fragile moment, he was at a loss. For God's sake, he had experienced a month in the most intimate relationship with her, and he couldn't tell now? Fucking really? "Than a gilded cage?" Ash prompted softly.
"Oh! Um, sorry. Than a gilded cage under a different name. I lost my train of thought."
"It's alright. I understand." His fear soothed a little bit, because her focus was back on him and not down whatever dark alleyway it had disappeared to. Her expression was cleared again.
"And that's fair, really. I was going to say that I'd like to be in a relationship with you, if you're willing, and it can be whatever type of relationship you'd like, however open you'd like. You can date others and go to bookstores with me, use me for domination sessions to clear your mind, if you like. I'd have to warn you that would be hard for me, though. Or you can be my slave still, if you want."
Ash grinned shyly. "That'd be easiest for me. And we can talk about you going to classes and living off campus and obeying me."
His grin turned teasing and happy. "I think you'll find I can keep a little slave girl's focus where it belongs, instead of having her run wild on weekends, or going to sex clubs while rolling Ecstasy."
She laughed easily for a moment. "You're crazy if you think it will be anything less than slavery to you after what we just did for a month, especially after that feeling of... of..."
And then she fell away from him again, and he heard those alarm bells. It was like he was talking to two people. One was the calm girl he had seen in the dungeon, but the other was the wild, terrified thing he had known beforehand. "That feeling of disappearing."
Disappearing.
Disappearing?
For a moment, Ash was more furious than he'd ever been in his life. The force of it stunned him and he had to focus to wrap himself in the icy coldness, regain his control. "How do you mean by disappearing?"
She frowned and considered it, but it was like Ash was watching her fade away right in front of him. Fear took over her little by little. Her stance turned defensive.
"I don't... I don't know. Um, just there wasn't a feeling of being all there, I guess? Or maybe I was so calm and I'm never calm and I always feel like this instead where my thoughts are racing."
"Hey. Look at me, Pet. Take a breath. You're working yourself up. You need to calm down and think clearly for me, or else we can't have this conversation yet. Breathe for me and calm down."
She obeyed automatically, but her thoughts still raced and her face still twisted with them. "Are you hungry, Pet?"
Ash was thinking of a change of scenery, but it turned out to be the question that would damn him. She nodded and then without thinking about it, her gaze lowered to his jeans, and she choked.
And this time, there was nothing Ash could do to stop the panic that rose in her so fast that it stunned him.
"Oh, my God. Holy shit, I just- No. I have to get out of here. I have to go home. I have to... I- I-" She cut off and stared at him with wide eyes that cut him. Without another word, she turned to run.
"Wait! Jezebel, please, don't leave. Talk with me." Ash caught her wrist in a last effort and she turned with so much panic.
"Let me go!" When she turned, her voice was a shriek and she clawed at his wrist and hers, cutting herself and breaking off one of the nails he had so carefully manicured. She tossed the icy hair he had glossed and tamed to a lovely shine, tousled it into a mess with her panic.
Ash let her go because somewhere, somehow, he had already fucked up. He had missed something crucial to her if he had given her the impression that she was disappearing under his care.
The worst part was that he didn't even know what he had missed. He had seen everything, noticed everything, except for something necessary.
His chest felt hollow, aching, as if some part of him had been gruesomely ripped out and he should bleed to death from it. But there was no blood from this wound.
Ash made it back to his car without going insane, which was amazing, because all he could see was her face. But by the end of the week, his sanity was fraying.
She wasn't at her apartment, he quickly learned, wasn't answering her phone calls or Facebook messages, at least not from him. Even days later she was gone, disappeared, and he stalked her like a creepy motherfucker, but couldn't find her.
Her classes would be starting soon, and he didn't know if she was getting to them or if he had seriously fucked her up somehow. If she was active around campus, she wasn't staying at her place.
It was torture. The worry ate him alive.
"Holy shit." Ash covered his face with his hands and groaned, feeling terrible. He vaguely remembered that it was Sunday and after Sulfur's had closed down the night before, he had gone a little batshit.
Because it was the first day he wouldn't have the club to distract him from the goddamned heartache that sucked so freaking bad.
He remembered pouring a glass of the maple bourbon that Ivory, Ash's brother, liked, and thinking it tasted terrible, even while he drank another sip because it made him feel fuzzy. And then he remembered taking a leaf out of her book.
He had taken an Oxy for recreational use for the first time in his life. "How does she do this all the time?" He felt like freaking death.
***