Page 39 of Caging Darling

Astor would be disappointed in me. I’d like to see that, I think. Since I awoke, I’ve been compiling a list of what I might say to him should he ever find out.

It’s a fantasy, I know. Astor and I will never interact again, and all of these conversations will remain in my head. I’ll never get to hear the rage spike in his tone when he thinks Peter abused me without my consent. I’ll never get to smile at him, oh so demurely, and tell him that Peter didn’t make me do anything.

That I chose this all on my own.

I’ll never get to see the shock on his face. I go back and forth about whether he would smirk and say, “Well done, Darling,” or if he would lose his capability to speak. If he’d trawl his gaze over my body and wonder where Peter touched me and wish it had been him instead.

Peter stirs beside me, pulling me tighter into his embrace. He nuzzles his mouth to my neck, planting kisses at the divots of my Mating Mark.

Something burns in my belly. It’s not desire.

Once he awakens more fully, he tugs at the sleeves of my nightgown that I donned in the middle of the night. “Where’d this come from?”

“Must have been sleepwalking and put it on,” I say, teasingly, though where the energy for my voice comes from, I have no idea.

“I don’t mind,” says Peter. “All the better for me to take off again.”

He snakes his fingers down my back, to the buttons on the back of the nightgown. I squirm. Where his touch lit a fire in me in the night, in the day, I feel exposed, taken, even with all my clothes on.

“Wendy Darling?”

“I have to go to the bathroom,” I explain, then extract myself from the bed.

It’s notuntil Peter leaves to pick up a few supplies for the boys before we return to Neverland that I plant myself on the floor and cry.

It’s not that I’ve ever felt virginal. Not since the time I knew what that meant. Not with my mother’s handpicked suitors taking advantage of my body in so many ways, I’d almost forgotten I’d never actually slept with a man before.

Still.

It shouldn’t bother me as much as it does, pluck at the back of my mind. The memory of Peter’s hands running down my back shouldn’t feel like spiders crawling over the ridges of my spine, but it does.

For a year, I’ve been waiting for this to happen. Eventually, I mean. There’s been a part of me that’s always expected the weight of my bargain to grow too heavy, the pull of the Mating Mark too strong to resist.

I thought that when Peter finally took me, it would be no different from the night in the Carlisles’ manor. Except I wouldn’t be able to scream. Wouldn’t be able to tell him no.

When he first called in my bargain, shortly after John died, I used to have dreams about that moment. I’d dream I was locked in my body, that my limbs had gone stiff, that I couldn’t move under Peter’s touch. That I’d open my mouth to cry out, but no voice would come out.

That Peter didn’t notice.

He took me anyway, as if he were being kind, sweet. As if he’d forgotten I couldn’t move.

That’s what I always expected sleeping with Peter would be like. But last night, it had been me who initiated. I might be bound to my Mate, but I’d adorned my shackles like golden bracelets, placed my chained hands over Peter’s head, snagged him by the neck, and pulled him in.

I’d always thought Peter bedding me would be wholly his choice. In some ways, it had been mine. And I don’t know how to process that. I don’t know how to be relieved that he didn’t take what wasn’t his by force, while also…

There’s a prick in my heart, one that’s been lodged there ever since Peter fell asleep, arms around me last night. But now that he’s no longer near, it’s as if it’s dug itself deeper into my flesh. Or perhaps I simply don’t have the comfort of lying in his arms to distract me.

I thought I didn’t have any left, but tears once more sting at my eyes.

“Darling?”

I crane my neck behind me and find not Peter, but Astor’s wraith. He’s sitting on the bed, cross-legged. It’s a ridiculous position, one that the real Astor would never take up because of how boyish it looks. But Astor wouldn’t choose to be anywhere near me, either. He certainly wouldn’t follow me from another realm.

“What are you doing here?” I sniffle between sobs.

“I heard you crying,” is all he offers by way of answer.

My heart gives the most painful stutter. I stare at him, try to imagine the Nolan Astor I know, try to imagine his features within the shadows. But it’s been a year, and I’ve forgotten all but the basics of what he looks like. Ivy green eyes. Sharp angles. I can’t quite make my mind conjure anything else.

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