writing_shadows

"Oh darling, how ghastly," Venice says.

No. Not enough. The man was raped, near enough, and you know how that feels. You've been victim and perpetrator in your time. You know how it stains. You can't just say 'how ghastly'.

Venice pauses for a moment, and tries to read Dion's expression, but she can't. She never really can. Maybe she's just not known him well enough, or maybe he just is as shallow as he seems; less man and more cat, only lacking the immediate proclivity towards lethal sadism. Oh, he is charming enough, Venice supposes, and he's certainly good looking, in a clean cut and sporty fashion. He always seems cheerful and his sexual enthusiasm is almost boundless, which apparently makes up for a lot, but she's never found anything beneath that obliging surface.

Still, he's a man, as well as a vile cat, and men don't deserve to be brainwashed into sex slaves in weird cults.

"My godfather," she says nonchalantly, because it doesn't do to make a scene, "used to give me to his creepy friends as some kind of special underage present,"

OK. Too much now. This isn't about you, and your childhood trauma. This is about him. And god knows, if you say anything more about Uncle Bernie and the horrible men with their horrible wandering hands, then you'll start wanting to cry and then you'll do something crazy instead. You always do.

So she smiles, in what's meant to be sympathy, but probably falls far short.

"I have absolute sympathy for how very unhygienic it makes one feel," she says, because she does. She wonders if Dion did feel the same as her. She wonders if that's what he's hiding behind the endless affability and the expensive charm. She wonders where he goes inside his head when he goes home alone, and isn't with a willing woman to hide behind.

When she speaks again, she's a little softer than she was before.

"It's...it's like there isn't enough bleach in the world," she says.

And maybe that's right. Maybe that will mean something to him. Maybe that will make sense and he'll stop looking at me as if I'm buying him, a piece at a time, and I'll stop feeling like he's selling himself, every time he takes me to bed.

Then Venice watches with bright golden eyes, with their crazy spinning pupils, which never convey much in the way of warmth or empathy whether she means it or not. And perhaps that's what Dion sees, because he only smiles that same opaque smile as ever.

"You're welcome to help me soap it all off in the shower before we head for the yacht," he says.