I met his gaze, dumbstruck. Was this a punishment? It must have been. He’d penalized Beck for using me without payment, now I had to make amends for my part in the trickery. Beck had money, but I had… even less now. Maslow had no use for my body, but there was more he could yet rob me of.

  I huddled on the floor at his feet, clutching my stomach as though I expected to find it concave.

  “You can use the room down here,” Maslow said. “Just keep it tidy for company.”

  The room down here.

  The one with no windows and furniture made of chrome and leather. The glamorous cage with restraints bolted to the walls and ceiling and a camera to monitor my every move.

  Tears spilled over; I didn’t try to stop them.

  I felt like I might never stop crying.

  Maslow offered no assistance as I gathered myself off the ground.

  Reeling and with nowhere else to go, I went where he sent me.

  The walk down the hallway was like a gallows march. My feet dragged until I reached the door and shouldered it open, too spent to lift my arms. Inside, the air was cold and clean. Clinical. It was the opposite of the rich, comforting aroma of Beck’s suite, and the sights were stark and hard compared to the hotel suite’s lavish fittings.

  This space was too bold. It screamed with buckling straps and corded leather whips and lengths of chain that assured me I would scream in here too.

  The bed was made, pristine but wrong, and the furniture was as cruel as ever. Metal restraints dangled like waiting hands. I didn’t look at them, but I couldn’t ignore the camera light glaring red in the corner.

  Watching.

  Recording.

  I stumbled to the bed, climbed onto the mattress, and curled in on myself.

  A hiccup punched through the silence. Then another.

  I cried until my sobs gave out, leaving behind a dull, aching quiet.

  And I stayed where I was put, in the place Beck said I belonged.

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-NINE

  Zephyr

  I’d wanted a few hours to mourn, but not like this.

  Not in this horrible room where I was a prisoner.

  Not while Maslow watched from the bank of TV monitors in his office.

  Not so profoundly isolated.

  At least upstairs, I would hear the other guys rustling around. Opening and closing doors, occasionally shouting or taunting one another, the sounds of life. Here, the ragged panting of my breath had become deafening, and it frightened me.

  I didn’t mourn either, because that would be acceptance, and I couldn’t accept this. I’d bartered my way out of Hell in the hopes of finding something better, but everything that surrounded me now was more of the same.

  In Hell, the demons had hurt me then mocked my pain. They’d demolished my sense of autonomy, diminished my worth, and left me alone in the dark. They’d tried to ruin me, and these past two months on Earth had almost finished the job.

  My thoughts were scattered, but one jutted out with edges sharp enough to cut: I would have been better off if I’d never met Beck.

  Our relationship, if I could call it that, had only delayed the inevitable. It gave me a glimpse of things I was not meant to have and lured me into a lengthy denial. It tricked me into believing I was something more, that I deserved better, and I had a purpose beyond Maslow’s whims.

  Without Beck, I didn’t.

  I curled up on my side, sucking on my fingers while my tears soaked the bedsheets. I couldn’t move. Couldn’t bring myself to change out of Beck’s pajamas. Couldn’t respond to the knock at the door that preceded Darby pushing it open and then peeking inside.

  “Hey, Cherry.” He sounded cautious, and I wondered what he knew. “We’ve been looking for you.”

  He entered the room noiselessly, and I missed the click-clack of his usual high heels. His stage clothes were much more elaborate than what he wore the rest of the time. During off-hours, he traded his corsets and gartered stockings for velour tracksuits and babydoll tees. Today he wore white that matched his swooping curls and enhanced his umber-brown skin.

  He made it only a few steps before stopping with a gasp. “What in the holy kink kingdom is this?”

  I’d told him about it weeks ago, and I was surprised he hadn’t been down to investigate. When the club was closed, we were often at loose ends for activities, though Darby stayed busier than most. Between coordinating routines and planning set lists, he handled the work part of our jobs. Less mine since he didn’t know a thing about aerial arts, but he found the most beautiful scores I could choreograph, which I appreciated just as much.

  He crossed the room with his head on a swivel. I couldn’t interpret his expression, but I sensed a low pulse of lust as his attention hesitated on the glass cabinets and rubber toys on display.

  His flicker of desire faded by the time he reached the bedside where he peered down at me, orange eyes creased with concern.

  “Honey, what are you doing in here?”

  I rubbed my face, but the satin shirt sleeve felt rough against my chapped cheeks. When I mustered words, they came out in a croak. “Mazzy took my room.”

  “The one upstairs?”

  I nodded while sorrow swelled up around me. “Said he needed it f-for storage.”

  Darby’s gaze flicked over my huddled form until he asked, “Mind if I sit?”

  My shoulders bounced in a weak shrug, but otherwise, I didn’t budge. I felt frozen in place, bound by fear, and buried in misery.

  Darby climbed onto the mattress. Compared to the beds upstairs, this one was massive—one of the only things in the club that could rival the scale of Beck’s suite. He scooted toward the headboard, casting a curious glance at the built-in restraints, more puzzled than disturbed.

  I knew he had more experience than I did. Probably more than anyone here. It made sense that he’d take all of this in stride, the way he seemed to take everything. It was effortless. And enviable.

  Putting his back to the headboard, he sat against it, cross-legged with his hands in his lap. It was a relief that he didn’t touch me. I was raw from Maslow’s assault and too fragile to handle.

  A minute passed before he asked, “Where’d you go last night?”

  I’d expected to answer that question from our boss, but the wraith hadn’t seemed to care where Beck and I had gone or what we’d done. He’d said as much. Didn’t mind if Beck prostituted me on a street corner as long as he paid for the privilege.

  “Beck took me.” My voice scraped against the grit in my throat. “He… bought me. For a day.”

  Darby gave a low whistle. “That must’ve set him back a pretty penny. Mazzy’s tight with his own money but loose with everyone else’s.”

  He sounded proud, and that felt wrong. It gave credence to Beck’s suspicion that I had conspired with Maslow somehow. Taken advantage of him.

  Tentative fingers brushed my hair, smoothing it like Colette had done. For how compelled everyone seemed to groom me, I must have looked a mess.

  “But why are you sad?” Darby asked. “It’s a compliment, you know. People don’t shell out cash for things they don’t think are valuable.”

  I hadn’t come to terms with it yet—first, the fact that I’d been assigned a price, and second, that Beck had been willing to pay it. It was an exorbitant amount, but he’d barely flinched. At first, it had felt like a gift, but after everything that followed, it seemed more like a debt. One I had no way of repaying.

  “Do you miss him?” Darby’s question changed the course of my wandering thoughts.

  “Yes,” I answered too readily, then shook myself. “But that’s not it. I…”

  I was heartbroken, and I could have been angry, but I wasn’t. I was seized with sorrow and the slow, seeping assurance that the thing I’d lost was something I should never have had.

  But maybe I could have had it a little bit longer. The fact that I didn’t was no one’s fault but my own.

  “Darby, I ruined it,” I confessed, pushing up to face him at last.

  “Ruined what?”

  I struggled to sitting, and feeling returned to my limbs like a flurry of fire ant bites. Upright and across from Darby, I couldn’t help but slouch as I explained. “I poisoned him. Our first night together. He’s mad. He should be. And he…” The stream of words crashed into a rock. A hard truth in the middle of the current, something I could not avoid. “He said we’re through,” I whispered.

  Darby’s marigold eyes grew intensely focused. “You made him enthralled with you?”

  I cringed while finding myself unable to deny it. “I didn’t mean to,” I said. Then added, “Or maybe I did. But Darby…”

  He tipped his head, and his tail swished slowly while he waited for me to drum up the courage to admit, “I wanted to keep him.”

  Then it was tears all over again. A waterfall.

  I pressed my palms to my face, knowing they would flood but still trying to staunch the flow as Darby cooed at me.

  “Come here, Cherry.” He opened his arms, and I dove into them, letting him wrap his much smaller body around mine.

  He tugged me to his chest, and I latched onto his waist. The fabric of his jacket was fuzzy against my skin as he dutifully wiped my tears and swept my hair back. I was sweaty and snotty and probably as red as a beet, but he didn’t comment. He didn’t shy away as I buried my face beneath his chin, getting a waft of the perfume that might have been overwhelming if my nose wasn’t so busy running.

  Gradually, my eyes dried, but I stayed tucked in, finding a measure of peace inside the ring of Darby’s arms. I wasn’t sure if I’d had brothers or even sisters when I was alive, but I was certain I had one now.

  The petite demon petted down the nape of my neck and onto my back in long, soothing strokes. It might have put me to sleep, which would be the only way I could hope to get any rest in this pornographic playroom.

  My eyes fluttered closed as my strangled breaths eased, and above me, Darby mused.

  “You know, I don’t get to do this much.”

  “Do what?” I sniffled.

  “Cuddle,” he replied while rubbing between my shoulder blades. “Be close. Sugar daddies don’t like their babies being too needy. You want new shoes or a pretty pair of panties? They’re on it. You want to just be held without a dick in your ass? Not so much.”

  The mention of sex made my empty stomach churn, and I grimaced. “I would love to have a dick in my ass right now.”

  Darby giggled, then adjusted to hold me tighter. “Well, you can’t have mine. I save that for special occasions like taking a piss, and…” He paused long enough that I glanced up to see him contemplating. Finally, he shrugged. “Actually, there’s nothing else. So you’re on your own.”

  I sighed, amused by his banter but too exhausted to show it. I’d barely laid my head back down when he nudged me, directing my attention to one of the glass-fronted bookcases positioned against the wall.

  “Luckily, you have a whole army of dildos at your disposal,” he said. “Give one a name. Take it for a ride.” He snickered, and I had half a mind to tell him to take every one of the fake, rubber things to the dumpster because the point remained…

  “I’d still be hungry, though.”

  He’d stopped petting me at some point, but at that, he trailed his fingers down my spine. “Yeah,” he hummed. “I guess so.”

  “Was Beck my sugar daddy?” I wondered aloud.

  “Maybe,” Darby replied. “His pockets are deep enough.”

  “He has a limo,” I added by way of evidence. “And a chauffeur.”

  Darby snorted a laugh, breath warm against the back of my neck. “And he’s old as fuck. You don’t live that long and not learn to accumulate.”

  “His suite was nice too. He said it was my home.”

  For the night.

  I couldn’t bring myself to add the qualifier or admit I’d wanted to keep that too. The place. The feelings.

  Darby was quiet for a moment, then said thoughtfully, “Well, I can’t say I’ve ever had a sugar daddy take me home. That sounds more like a regular daddy thing to me.”

  Maybe that was it. The word I’d been looking for. Something to describe how Beck made me feel when I was with him. Safe. Cared for.

  And without him?

  Utterly bereft.

  I blinked fast, trying to banish the sting behind my eyes before it could spill over and make this whole thing worse. Darby didn’t need to see me cry again.

  “But he’s nothing if he thinks he can just throw you away,” Darby said, his voice low but firm behind me.

  I didn’t reply as he continued. “Listen, Cherry. Don’t ever let some man—any man—decide what you’re worth. And I don’t mean the money. Pretty things and paychecks are well and good, but we’re more than that, all right?”

  I should have nodded. Instead, I lay quietly until the silence made me shift away. I untangled from him with a murmur of apology and sat up.

  I didn’t know how much I was worth. I didn’t even know who I was outside of the Dollhouse, outside of Beck’s gaze. When I looked at myself, all I saw were fragments: the body that tried to consume me, the name I’d made like a wish that might never come true. I didn’t know what was really me, or if I was real at all.

  Thinking of my mother on the car ride over had been an aberration. Not unwelcome, just strange. It left me wanting more—memories perhaps, to soften the sharp edges of what I’d lost.

  But how was I supposed to feel better about losing one thing by dwelling on everything else I didn’t have?

  Frustration escaped me in a grumble. “Darby, I don’t know anything about myself. And the things I know, I don’t like.”

  He shifted again, tucking his feet under himself and draping his tail across his thighs. The end twitched seemingly of its own accord as he pondered.

  “Is it anything you can change?” he asked. “The bad parts, I mean.”

  “I don’t see how.”

  Silence descended again, dense and heavy. I let my head drop back and stared at the ceiling, needing a blank slate to calm my busy mind.

  “I want to perform,” I said. “I love being onstage. I love the music and the spotlight and the way people look at me when I’m up there. But…” I paused to offer Darby a remorseful look. “I hate the VIP rooms. I feel trapped there. Like a bug in a jar people shake because it lights me up somehow.”

  “So, you’re a firefly.” Darby smiled. “I loved those when I was a kid.”

  I wanted to say I had too, but I didn’t know. Surely, though. There must have been something mundane before this madness. Something as normal as little bugs that shone like stars in the blanket of night.

  Darby looked wistful, and maybe I should have asked about his past, his life. It might have triggered something or helped me see the man inside his demon skin. We’d all been mortals once, and we’d all been so ready to return to Earth because it was home. Even if this part of it didn’t feel like it.

  Glancing over my shoulder, I glimpsed the steady red light filming every minute of this. Were there microphones too? Could Maslow hear what we were saying? Did he care?

  I hoped he did hear because it might be the only way I’d ever be brave enough to tell him the things that came out next.

  “I don’t want to live in a room with a camera on me like I’m some never-ending act. I love to perform when I choose it. But this isn’t a choice, and I’m scared that if everything’s always on display, there won’t be anything left that’s really me. That I’ll forget where the show ends and I begin.”

  The statement left me wrung out and limp, but Darby stiffened.

  “There’s a camera in here?” he asked. “Right now?”

  “Of course there is,” I replied. “They’re everywhere.”

  He sat up and scanned the walls until he spotted the device. His jaw ticked in agitation, and he shoved away from the headboard, moving to sit beside me instead so we both faced away from the camera’s lens.

  Then he leaned in and rested his horned head on my arm, and I took a breath.

  “I’m tired of being hungry all the time. Of needing things I hate needing. Of having to smile and flirt and pretend I like it when people touch me just to keep from feeling worse. And I’m tired of this…” My features pinched in a bitter frown. “This magic I have that makes people want me, because that means I’ll never know if they actually do.”

  Beck felt betrayed, that much was clear, and honestly? I did too. It was like I’d deceived us both, but in different ways. I’d charmed Beck somehow, lured him like the siren Maslow said I was, and I’d been carried away by my own song, believing some well-to-do higher demon could see me as more than a rent boy with a ridiculous price tag.

  Darby’s arm slipped around me again, steadying me against the threat of another breakdown.

  “I don’t want to enchant anyone. I just want—” My voice was the first thing to crack. “I just want someone to care about me because they want to. Not because I made them.”

  Darby snuggled into me with his tail wound around my middle. “I care,” he murmured. “You didn’t make me.”

  My heart flopped like a fish out of water, and I turned into him, grabbing hold and pulling him down so we were lying back to front. He squealed with surprise but swiftly relaxed into my embrace. Given our height difference, he fit neatly inside my frame, a small, snuggly thing that I couldn’t imagine anyone not wanting to cozy up with, dicks in asses or no.

  “I thought I was comforting you,” Darby complained, but his happy wiggle betrayed his true feelings on the matter.

  I puffed a sigh into his hair. “Yeah, well, you’re tiny, and this feels nice too.”

  “It does,” he agreed, then tensed. “But maybe not in the middle of Porn Central Station. Don’t want Mazzy jerking it to the sight of us looking sweet on each other.”

  The thought of Maslow palming his dick to anything made me want to gag. I released Darby and rolled over to sprawl on my back with my hands over my face. My palms muffled the words as I groaned, “Ugh, you ruined it.”