“Kiss me,” she granted the requested permission, glad that the dream hadn't soured the entire evening. “Hug me, squeeze me. Love me.”
She couldn't give them money, nor could she ever imagine being completely dutiful and obedient, however fun it was to let Mallory try to tame her. But love? Dawn had plenty of that to give.
“Oh, thank God,” Mallory murmured, and surged forth to peck sweet kisses at the edges of Dawn's giggling mouth, her cheeks, and then her forehead.
Impatient for more, Dawn moved so that she could sweep her tongue along in an invitation before nibbling at the bottom lip that shook in a breathy smile. Mallory stilled next to her, and pressed back to deepen the kiss.
Running her fingertips down Mallory's arms, Dawn reveled in the way they rippled with the promise of strength, flexing before eventually relaxing against each compassionate stroke.
Mallory broke their kiss with a gasp. Shimmying down along Dawn's body, she promptly found solace in placing an ear against the thrumming beat of a heart, just between her breasts.
Quick puffs of hot breath fell over Dawn's nipples, and she grinned down at the sight. But instead of the sultry mouth descending upon her aroused peaks, she found closed eyes and furrowed brow once more. Mallory had asked to set the pace in her own way, so she didn't question it. Her hands wove through the strands of dark hair that fell around them, untangling the knots in it.
“I'm tired now. Aren't you?” a weary voice breathed liquid fire over her chest again.
With a sigh, Dawn laid back against the bed. Her hands kept stroking, unwilling to stop what Mallory seemed to find the most pleasure in tonight, even if it meant foregoing her own. She'd caused quite the ruckus with her tantrum weeks ago, but it didn't get her anywhere. This did, though. This pleased her.
“Mmm hmm,” she conceded, and leaned forward to place a lingering kiss to the crown of brown hair.
For the second time this night, Dawn found solace for herself, in the silence. It didn't take too long for her eyelids to flutter shut, safe in the knowledge that she held her love, and in turn was protected by the supine form on top of her.
It didn't take too long for Mallory to slip from her arms, though. Dawn considered asking where she was off to, but thought it better to not question the common, post-nightmare meandering. Her eyes opened lazily to peek at the ghosting retreat before closing once more.
Mallory would come back when she was ready. She was sure of that.
_____________________________________
Noise assaulted her ears until it could no longer be ignored, and Dawn stretched with a mighty yawn between the tangled sheets of their bed. The sun was well into the sky, so she must have slept late. She didn't feel like she'd slept at all.
“Geez, what is that?” she mumbled, and rubbed her eyes.
Mallory was sitting on the floor, rummaging deep into boxes and muttering to herself. Once she heard Dawn's inquiry, she smiled and sat back. “Sorry. Some people brought quite a few of your boxes from... well, you know. They're downstairs, and I thought – ”
Her voice died at what Dawn thought must be her befuddled stare. Mallory ran a dirty hand against a paint splotched button down, and stared back. It must have been what she wore to paint the cottage, or her apartment before – riotous colors staining the white fabric every inch or so. “It reminded me of... Never mind. I thought that I might bring some things up from the basement. Look.” Mallory pointed at the bedside table.
Dawn tucked the wayward strands of her hair behind her ears so that she could see better. Her iPhone was still there on the table, along with a cup of coffee. Behind that was a crystal picture frame, throwing prisms in the sunlight.
Her nose wrinkled at the noxious smell of freshly sprayed ammonia, and she realized that Mallory must have cleaned the frame recently. Using both hands to pick it up carefully, she squinted down at the two 2x3 pictures set side by side in it. Obviously meant for such, the cut glass frame had two inlaid ovals to display them.
Her finger ran over the still-damp edge of one oval, and her heart clenched as she recognized an older photo of the only woman that had ever protected her before Mallory. A knot grew in her throat, and Dawn gulped it back before whispering yearningly at the elegantly posed socialite. “Mum...”
“Her picture was thrown in the very top of one of the boxes downstairs, and I hated to see it so abandoned.” Mallory watched Dawn expectantly.
Next to Dawn's mother was an even older picture, the woman in it unfailing in her demand to be smiled back at from the depths of celluloid and paper. Mia Christopoulos had a thick mane of wavy, orange-red hair, reminding Dawn of a sunset that predicted a storm.
“Ohh,” she exhaled reverently, and gave the picture the same sentimental swipe of her finger. “She looks so happy.”
Mallory frowned, and rubbed at her forehead with a wince. Rummaging around the box some more, she plucked a tortoiseshell and silver comb and brush set out, along with some perfume bottles. She didn't respond to Dawn's description of her mother, but hummed underneath her breath as she worked a damp rag over the items.
“Headache from staying up half the night?” Dawn chanced.
“Mmm,” was the non-committal reply before the humming began anew. Typical.
Watching Mallory clean the items gave Dawn a chance to notice what else had been brought up from the basement. She looked quizzically at the fine cherry dressing table that had been shoved next to the chair beneath the window, and held her breath as Mallory placed the gleaming silver and glass on it like the pieces to a puzzle. The book of Plath poetry was there, too – set on the edge of the vanity, instead of it's usual place beneath the bed.
Turning towards the bed with a grin, Mallory then waved her hands at the arrangement. “I don't know why these weren't out. They're too pretty to be locked away, don't you think?”
Unable to stop herself from grinning back, Dawn did. The day after a nightmare was usually fraught with snappy behavior from Mallory, so she considered this a welcome change. “Sure. Whatever makes you happy.”
“I knew you'd like them,” Mallory said, relaxing a little. “Want to go downstairs and see what else came while you were sleeping?”
_____________________________________
Winds howled against a bedroom window in the old mansion at Sevenoaks, a late summer storm brewing far in the distance. Heat and humidity had bowed the wooden floorboards over the years, and they creaked and moaned with each new gust. It sounded like the entire house groaned with each buffeting blast. Even the water pipes squeaked from inside the walls at the rising pressure.
Though the room had long been stripped of the white carpeting and mauve curtains, the full sized bed remained. There weren't any linens on the sagging mattress, and the elements had ravaged the cherry wood of the frame over time, a spiderweb of hairline cracks blemishing the smooth edges.
Beyond that were more pieces of broken furniture, and the door to the hallway, but the woman who sat in the corner didn't want to look. Face buried behind the safety of folded arms around tucked knees, she tapped a bare foot in nervous rhythm against the floor.
It was becoming unbearably hot, but she didn't emerge from the corner. Her wheezing breaths from the dusty, stagnant air echoed in the cocoon created by her position, and the discomfort made her angrier by the second.
Sweat beaded between her tense shoulders to roll down her spine, but Mallory did not move. “Un-fucking-believable,” she hissed.
She remembered easing up on the newer medications that Margaret had given her, or at least their frequency. Anything would help in her quest to get Isla back from the Crown as soon as possible, and a good impression would never be made on the interview to begin the adoption process if Mallory listed six different cocktails. It would surely give her secret away.
Dawn needed Isla, and stability, too. Living for love alone was not good enough for her amare. She deserved more. She deserved better.
Margaret had always assu
red her that she wasn't crazy. But what else was being stuck like this, if not pure insanity? It frightened Mallory, and her growing rage frightened her more.
“How could you do this to me?” she cried out, and slapped her foot against the floor. “After everything I've done!”
She pressed her fingernails against the skin of her forearms in an attempt to wake up, but there was no pain. It didn't make sense that she felt discomfort elsewhere, except for the fact that she had no power over of her surroundings, not yet.
For fifteen years, Mallory had led her carefully crafted life. Once the thrill of youth and partying had waned to more singular interests, she'd found comfort in being taught control over herself and her body once more. Sharp wit and a glacial facade eventually replaced naivety and carelessness, protecting her from the world and its potential to hurt her.
But what good was learning how to find pleasure in pain now? What good were all the years of forcing a strict and rigid schedule – drowning herself in a never-ending thirst for lust at night and knowledge during the day – when it was useless against the onslaught of a mind that no longer wanted to obey?
Steven was dead. It was time to move on from this torture, the nightmares that plagued her when no drink or drug could pacify the screaming inside her head.
Steven was dead. Strangely enough, that was the reason she was curled up in a corner in a futile attempt to calm down.
The dream had begun as so many before it, with her seated against the window to wait it out until its inevitable conclusion. However, this time the goons were missing two vitally important members – Steven Rose, and Lenny Brewster.
Once her younger self had realized that there was no man holding her down, or pulling the garrote tight around her neck, she'd jumped up and gone after the two remaining figments of their shared imagination with vicious intent. Slashing wildly with the very blade that felled their mother, the girl knew no mercy.
And why should she have? Mallory didn't think she had ever seen so much blood – imaginary, or otherwise.
The pools of it converging with the grotesque stains already on the carpet seemed to placate the heaving fourteen year old. She didn't even seem to mind that she was naked any longer, if not for the slack chain around her neck and the sheen of red that covered her from head to toe.
Lilith had spun in a slow circle to admire her work.
With the scene no longer in play and the girl distracted, Mallory sought to follow Margaret's advice to escape. It was a grievous mistake.
As soon as she'd hefted herself up to cross the room, the blood-stained blonde's attention had turned towards her. The girl had coughed a tormented sob in her direction before following her gaze to the only exit from the nightmare.
Springing into action, she had thrown down the knife, and ran out of the damned door first.
By the time Mallory had reached the door, it wouldn't budge. Oh, how she'd tried to open it – pulling, pushing, and pounding, swearing all the while.
Over the course of several hours, the room changed before her eyes. Each passing minute saw another thing moved, or aged to the point that she remembered it on that fateful night at Sevenoaks; the night she'd waltzed Dawn around the foyer like they were dancing on clouds.
It was maddening, and so here she sat, refusing to watch another moment of the demented workings of her mind.
She could refuse to look, but as the air began to cool and the lavishness of deeply piled carpeting bloomed afresh beneath her feet, it became harder not to.
The smell of decay faded away, replaced by the smell of fresh cut roses and her signature perfume. Drawing in great swaths of breath after suffering in the heat for so long, Mallory threw her head back against the wall.
“Hullo,” a timid peep sounded from across the room.
Mallory's head lolled forward, and her eyes shot open. The bedroom was restored to its original grandeur prior to the events that had led to its decline – wood gleaming with polish, and frills freshly pressed. The bed was piled high with pillows and the awful pink duvet she'd hated for years. Beyond it sat her dressing table.
Seated on the tufted bench, her younger self tilted her head and regarded Mallory with no small amount of fear. She was arranging and re-arranging the silver brush set, gloved hands already prepared for an evening of dancing. The diamond necklace that had started it all was laid across the table as well, glowing in the incandescent light.
“I hate this dress.” Lilith wiggled peevishly in the blue lace. “Don't you?”
Small talk – the girl was trying to make small talk after leaving her trapped for God knew how long. Not paying any mind to the notion of how much more cracked up she could be by engaging in it, Mallory rose to her feet and stalked forward.
“What did you do?” Mallory demanded to know, and thrust a finger forcefully towards the offending piece of jewelry. “Where did you get that?”
A rosy blush spread across the younger self's cheeks, and she looked down at her lap.
“It was just a day. One day,” she whispered sadly before looking back up. Her eyes narrowed as she glared at Mallory, and a fervor overtook the tenor of her voice. “I was just so mad. You don't love me like you used to, Mallie. You didn't keep us safe, and I had to know why.”
Stopping just near the foot of the bed, Mallory tried to think of one good reason not to tear the girl limb from limb, if only for locking her away. What finally gave her pause was the painful realization that she'd only done the same thing – albeit unconsciously – for fifteen years. “I said, what did you do? Where did you – ”
“Dawn's pretty, you know,” the girl interrupted sharply, as she turned back towards the mirror in rebuff. Staring off into the false reflection, she seemed to ponder something important. “And kind, and loving. You should make more pancakes. She liked them.”
“Dawn?” Mallory croaked, and felt the startlingly sharp bite of her fingernails against her palm as her fists clenched. The girl thought Dawn was loving? That was a stark reversal of her original opinion. “Loving? For the love of God, please tell me you didn't.”
“No! Eww, no,” Lilith bristled at the accusation before her expression turned dreamy. “I just kissed her, is all. I couldn't help it. Bleedin' hell, she's so beautiful...”
The fury she'd kept bottled up during her confinement flared and burned in Mallory's chest at the confession. “I ought to slap you just for that.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Wring your neck.”
“Please?”
Taken aback, Mallory sank down onto the bed. “What do you mean, please?”
“Like I said, I just wanted to know why, just for a little while. Sometimes, it felt all wrong and all right at the same time,” Lilith straightened her posture in a vain attempt to look brave. Her rapid breathing told otherwise. “All I wanted to do was go back to sleep, but I didn't want to leave Dawn.”
Her face crumpling in unhappiness as she looked around the room, she began to cry in earnest. “It was scary, but not as scary as this. God, I don't wanna be alone in here any more. I was taking a nice bath.”
“You must have fallen asleep,” Mallory assumed. Every ounce of anger that she'd felt before fled her at the innocent, frightened ramblings. In the anger's place was an ache she'd not felt since being told that her parents were dead.
The girl was terrified to be locked back in this very room, with nothing to do but sneak glimpses of happiness that wasn't hers to take. While she had been very prepared to allow that to happen before, Mallory now didn't know if she could do something so inhumane. One day here had her at wits end.
Vindication was supposed to taste sweet. It tasted bitter instead, a surprising conclusion to the agony of the mortal sins done to her. Those sins were supposed to cry to Heaven for vengeance – the cry of those murdered, the cry of the abused and orphaned. It was an empty cry; cold, and broken.
“Please, Mallie. I just wanna be free, now,” Lilith implored. “I don't wanna be in here,
but you don't either. She loves you. She needs you.”
The scrape of metal against wood grated against her ears, and Mallory looked at the source of the noise. The heavy diamond necklace dragged across the vanity until it slipped off, dangling from the grasp of a shaking hand.
“How utterly morbid,” she groused, sensing the intention behind it.
The teenage version of herself revealed her own bit of knowledge, garnered through bits and pieces of stolen memories, the shards of an incomplete life. “I'm you, and you're me. I'll be okay.”
Bringing the necklace up to her throat, Lilith draped each end of it over a shoulder and held the gem in place against her heart.
“Help me? I can't do it myself.”
Chapter 27: Kalat Lunat Covella
Peccatum in Carne: Sins of the Flesh (The Three Sins of Mallory Moore Book 1) Page 42