Many thanks to Mahaliem
for beta reading this fic.
Lilah drew form 39C towards her and uncapped her pen. Expense forms
were always submitted hand written, though she’d never been able to get
a convincing reason why that was so out of the Accounting staff, even
when this very pen had been buried nib deep in a nerve cluster in
Perkins’ hand. The deputy accountant had been surprisingly inventive as
he babbled out a stream of excuses but you soon learned to recognise an
evasion in this place. She’d decided that it was sheer bloody
mindedness coupled with the Luddite tendencies of most demons and left
it at that. Eventually.
She poked at the crumpled heap of receipts in front of her, sighed, and
pulled out one at random, copying the details onto the pale yellow form
in a scrawl she took pains to make just this side of indecipherable.
June 1. 2002. $79.95. Lingerie
And she was damned if they were getting any more than that. Let them
drool and jerk off to dreams of her in silk and satin, rich red
ribbons, night black froth of lace against her pale skin - though if
she ever found out they’d dressed her in baby doll pink, they’d die
choking on the stench from their entrails - let them jerk and shudder
all they liked. It wouldn’t be accurate.
Lilah smiled. It had taken her nearly seven hundred dollars to discover
that Wesley got off on her in leather, but not enough to make it worth
the stickiness it left on her skin when he peeled it off her, and liked
ripping silk to shreds, but usually couldn’t be bothered, preferring to
lie back and watch her strip as he gave orders in a lazy, husky
whisper. And when she wore crisp, white cotton, demure and plain, he
turned into just what she wanted in bed...
Men were so complicated sometimes. Lilah just liked Wesley naked.
Cotton...her mood soured. Wesley’s sheets were cotton too. She’d left
him sprawled amongst them one night, face down, looking as if twitching
a finger would be beyond him. She’d walked down the corridor, enjoying
the thought of him sleeping with her scent on him, wondering if he’d
dream of her, feeling a softening at the thought that startled her into
a dreamy smile. She’d been almost at her car when her steps had slowed
as she tried to work out what felt wrong, and then she’d realised that
one earring was missing and the weight of the other felt strange, as
though such a tiny tug needed to be balanced or she might fall over.
Smiling at the absurdity, she’d walked back and opened the door without
knocking, gone so short a time that she didn’t feel the need to
announce herself.
In the minutes that she’d been gone, Wesley had stripped the bed.
Sheets and pillowcases lay in a heap on the floor, ready to be
laundered, and he was showering. Lilah had felt humiliation before but
never so keenly. Wesley had told her she was dirty when he fucked her
and she’d let each taunt slide off her like water on glass, truthfully
not caring what he said when his fingers were hot and hard against her
body and his eyes were empty of all but need.
But this...to know that he could not bear a moment’s more contact with
her, that he could not stand to sleep on sheets she’d lain on, when she
left his apartment with his come slickly thick between her legs because
he’d never once offered her the use of his shower and she was too proud
to ask...
She’d stood there, rage and hurt trembling through her body in echoing
spasms, building up until all she could hear was her own harsh, angry
breathing, until she’d had to grit her teeth to stop them chattering
- then she’d stripped off her panties, picked up a handful of
sheet and wiped herself clean with it. Leaving silently, without
killing him, had been harder than going back the next night and kissing
him as if she didn’t know that to him she was the definition of guilty
pleasure.
Shaking herself free of the memories, she reached for another receipt
and scrawled down the details.
June 6. Manicure. $40.
She liked her nails short enough not to catch on things, but that
wasn’t an option in her world, so she grew them long and kept them
polished and coloured; diamond hard, jewel-bright shades that she
picked for the names. There was something that amused her about nails
coated in ‘Sinful Scarlet’. Sin was all sorts of things, but was it
red? Lilah didn’t think so.
The manicurist had tsked and sighed over the jagged edges she had to
file down. It was always the three centre fingernails that suffered the
most when she clawed at sheets or skin, but Lilah hadn’t screamed for
Wes for a while now, not since the night she’d lost her earring, and he
was getting inventive trying to make her. Which, though she was silent
to punish him, wasn’t exactly a bad thing for either of them. Wesley on
his mettle was driven and ruthless and that appealed to her on too many
levels to be anything but a bonus. She frowned. He’d hurt her once
without meaning to; surprising a yelp of pain, genuine and unstudied,
out of her, and spent the next five minutes apologising. That bothered
her - not because of the chivalry; she could see he wasn’t going to
shed that any time soon, but because it made her wonder just how much
of the darkness was an act. It had to be real to be worthwhile to her
employers, as they never hesitated to remind her.
Last night, he'd told her to keep on the glasses she'd worn to taunt
him, to remind him that what he wanted he couldn’t have...it’d been the
best punishment she could come up with.
And he’d liked it. He’d been hard before he walked
over to her; angry and amused and aroused, but not hurt. She’d wanted
him to be hurt. If she couldn’t hurt him then he didn’t care...
But she’d gone along with it, like she did in all the games they
played, until Wesley had looked up at her, pigtailed and pert as she
rode him, her plaid skirt pushed up and her white blouse ripped open,
and she'd realised the indifference wasn't an act, even if the darkness
was.
And after that, Wes doing his laundry at midnight didn’t seem such a
big deal any more.
The receipt for the glasses she’d worn when she’d dressed up as Fred
wasn’t in the pile. Some things you can’t get out of paying for.
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