Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It’s already late by the time Silco rises and shrugs his coat on, but Jinx is quick to set aside the scrap she’s tinkering with, clambering to her feet to join him.

It isn’t until he holds up a hand to stay her that she realizes, with a sinking disappointment, that tonight is one of those nights.

“Not this time, Jinx. Stay here. Finish what you were doing,” he instructs her with the gentle firmness she’s become accustomed to, nodding his head toward the half-finished contraption at her feet.

A bubble of frustrated curiosity swells in her chest at this ongoing, periodic secrecy of his, but she knows by now that arguing will get her nowhere.

She watches him leave in sullen, dejected silence and he’s scarcely been gone thirty seconds before the jeering begins in her head-- voices like the discordant shriek of violin strings being abused, fraying her nerves.

He’s keeping things from you.

He doesn’t trust you.

“That’s not true. He just… needs some time to himself. Everybody needs privacy once in a while,” she reasons aloud.

Or he just needs a break from you. You’re obnoxious. He must get so sick of it; putting up with you day in and day out.

“You’re wrong,” she insists, but a note of uncertainty in her tone belies her vehemence.

Why don’t we see for ourselves? Then you won’t have to wonder anymore.

Jinx hesitates. She doesn’t relish the idea of blatantly disobeying Silco.

Don’t be such a baby. He doesn’t have to know. You’ve tailed someone plenty of times without getting caught.

*
She catches up to him in minutes.

Impulse control has never been her strong suit.

As she follows him from the docks and deeper into the Lanes, she is keenly aware of what happened the last time someone told her to stay put and she didn’t.

But, she assures herself, this is different. He’s just running an errand-- the height of mundanity.

Then why didn’t he send Sevika? Traff? Rethe?

“Will you shut up? That’s what we’re finding out,” she mutters irritably under her breath, keeping the back of Silco’s distinctive coat within her eye-line.

Her bewilderment is nearly paralyzing when she watches him disappear into the brothel not far from Last Drop just a short while later.

Jinx stares in near uncomprehension as a tumult of unexpected emotion begins to roil inside of her. She feels sick; feverish and nauseated as she struggles for breath--- it’s like someone just kicked her in the stomach. When the shock begins to wear off, however, there’s just… anger. Seething hot anger with a knife’s edge of betrayal and something… something else. She doesn’t immediately recognize it for the venomous jealousy that it is.

He’s in there fucking someone! Mylo’s voice crows with boorish entertainment.

“No he’s not,” Jinx growls through her teeth. “He doesn’t… he wouldn’t do that. He’s not like that.”

What, you think the guy’s a monk? This explains everything.

“He’s probably just… collecting dues or--or-or--” she searches wildly for another possibility, no matter how improbable.

Or-or-or he’s about to give it to someone good. ...And why do you care so much anyway, you little freak?

“I don’t. I don’t care. I couldn’t care less. I…”

Jinx’s voice gets stuck behind the lump that rises in her throat.

“I just don’t think he would do that.”

Why don’t you find out for sure? You came all the way here. If you go home now, you’re gonna whine and mope and wonder and pick at it like a scab, so why not just spare yourself the trouble?

Jinx knows a bad idea when she hears one. But she also knows how futile it is to pretend that she hasn’t already made up her mind.

*

She’s never actually been inside the brothel before-- it’s one of the few things that Vander had ever forbidden in no uncertain terms, and she----- Powder------had never harbored any burning desire to flout that rule to find out the particulars of what went on in there.

Between an awkward, nervous, somewhat abstract explanation from Vi and having eavesdropped on a few of Mylo and Claggor’s conversations, she had managed to get the jist.

She half expects to be stopped and turned away at the door because of her age, but no one says a word to her as she furtively slips inside.

Immediately, she’s enveloped by a cacophony of raucous, lurid noise and an overpowering miasma of perfume and incense that makes her nose and throat itch. Her senses are utterly overwhelmed for several moments as she tries in vain to process the sheer amount of naked flesh teeming around her. Jinx had not anticipated her own undeniable interest in looking at bodies that are not her own, or the titillation that it sparks low in her belly, making her heart pound and her skin feel hot and cold all at once.

Standing there in the front parlor, she realizes distantly that she must be gawping, but there’s just too much to look at. Everywhere she turns her eyes, there is something new and illicit; a woman with her thighs spread wide open to display the pink delta at their apex and all the piercings that adorn it; a young man, bound and gagged, with what appears to be a cage around his genitals; a slender, androgynous creature in an ornate mask undulating to a beat throbbing beneath all the noise like a pulse.

Jinx is only freed from her incredulous hypnosis when she spots Sevika in a corner with a lissome young woman grinding rhythmically on her thigh. She utterly freezes for a moment, panic rising in her chest as she realizes that Silco will definitely hear about it if she’s spotted. Fortunately, she’s far too preoccupied to notice the girl and Jinx backs out into a dimly lit corridor.

The startling spectacle of seeing Sevika clearly enjoying herself that way renews her sense of purpose-- that anxious, sick feeling swiftly returning to the pit of her belly as she becomes even less certain about what Silco would and would not do.

Moving through the hallway, her eyes dart back and forth as she peers into each room-- only looking long enough to confirm that he isn’t there. It’s tempting to linger and watch, but a gnawing sense of urgency outweighs her burgeoning fascination.

At least, she thinks to herself, all of the doors are conveniently open. Not only does it make her search much easier, but the unshakable certitude that Silco would never allow himself to be lasciviously gawked at by passersby provides some small sense of relief.

...Until she comes to the only door that is closed.

*

It’s the very last door on the left, and somehow Jinx knows-- just knows-- with a dreadful certainty that Silco is in there, and she can scarcely breathe for the vicious stabbing sensation in her chest.

Of course she has to see for herself.

Just a regular old glutton for punishment, huh?

“Shutupshutupshutupshutup,” the girl hisses distractedly, her mind a disjointed flurry of thought as she considers how to get inside the room.

Why can’t you just accept that the man’s got needs? Needs that you can’t fulfill. ...Or is that what this is all about? You want that to be you in there with him? You want him to f---

“Got it,” Jinx whispers, her eyes snapping open abruptly as she recalls one of those tiny, insignificant details that sometimes get lodged in her brain.

Almost all of the rooms have laundry chutes.

Rushing back down the hall, she searches in a frenzy for the stairs that will lead her to the sublevel; where all of the laundry gets dumped.

When she finds them, she takes them two, three at a time, nearly tripping forward and coming to a clumsy halt at the bottom as she catches herself against the wall.

She doesn’t take as long as she should to contemplate which chute will bring her to the correct room, but once she’s chosen and is squirming into the tight space to begin the upward climb, she feels that same sense of terrible assuredness that this is the one.

This is pathetic. Scrabbling around like a rat in the walls because you just have to see it. You’re so beyond messed up.

Jinx pauses in the dark to slap herself hard across the face, hoping it will silence the commentary for a little while-- just a little while. The stinging pain is worth the temporary quiet… when it works.

Resuming her crawl, she soon comes to a dead-end that can only be the door to the chute.

*

Holding her breath, she reaches up and presses gently at the metal barrier in front of her, willing the hinges not to squeak. Light begins to filter into the cramped space as the girl eases the door down in tiny, torturous increments.

Details of the room become visible; it’s a parody of opulence with its antiquated, plush red furniture.

Jinx doesn’t just feel like her heart stops when she finally sees Silco, it clenches to a shuddering halt behind her breastbone.

He’s seated on a settee not unlike the one that furnishes his office-- though it’s much more worse for wear. Jinx has a perfect view of his profile; the unscarred half of his face as he looks downward at the girl kneeling between his knees.

She can make out dark hair, pale skin… the girl is young, she realizes. Shockingly young. As young as Jinx is herself, and that detail sends a painful surge of covetous fury coursing through her body.

But the thing that is certain to sear itself into her memory--- the thing that makes her want to claw the whore’s eyes out and utterly wreck her stupid little face is the fact that Silco’s hands are moving methodically above his lap, patiently braiding the other girl’s long hair.

The way he braids her hair; two thick ropes that will hang down her back.

One is already completed and he’s close to finishing the other.

You thought it was special--- him doing that for you, huh? Guess it’s not. Not if he’ll do it for a whore.

Or maybe she’s special. If he does the kinds of things with her that people come here to do.

She must have something you don’t. Otherwise he’d be at home with you now, wouldn’t he?.

Jinx watches, both frozen and burning, as Silco silently coaxes the girl to turn around and face him, relaxing against the back of the settee with a familiar, indolent repose.

But there is an underlying tension in his body that indicates expectation.

Or anticipation.

The girl kneeling in front of him reaches for the buttons of his trousers almost as a matter of course, Silco’s gaze fixed intently on her small hands.

Despite the red-hot fire iron of rage plunged into her chest, a dizzying wave of arousal crashes over Jinx when the other girl works him free and he stands rigidly erect with an intimidatingly unassailable masculinity.

She isn’t supposed to see this--- watching him like this is a betrayal of his trust.

And yet part of her feels furiously entitled to watch, given her unshakeable sense of some betrayal on his part--- something that she’s having a great deal of difficulty understanding, let alone processing. She knows it doesn’t make sense, but that doesn’t lessen the intensity of what she’s experiencing for the first time… not her viciously possessive outrage or the new and alien but explosive desire for the man who is--- for all intents and purposes--- her father.

It feels like the girl’s entire body begins to throb as the prostitute angles him down and dips her head forward to take the crown of him into her mouth.

Silco’s chest expands with a sharp inhalation, the muscles in his jaw tensing. He’s no longer looking down; he seems to be gazing off into the middle-distance now as he almost absent-mindedly winds one of other girl’s braids around his hand with an elegant, sinuous gesture. His other hand slides beneath the other braid to cup the base of her skull.

The prostitute’s head begins to bob--- slowly at first and then building toward a rhythm that Jinx discerns Silco is controlling by the tension and flex in his arms. For all that her heart is pounding, she feels hypnotized by the motions.

Silco’s posture shifts, his shoulders rolling forward just slightly-- it’s a minute thing, but it proves to be the only warning given before the hand on the back of the girl’s head abruptly tips her forward, angling her chin toward her chest and then forcing her down with the inexorability of a hydraulic press. It happens so fast and with such smooth, controlled violence that it’s reminiscent of a snake constricting its prey.

The girl’s face disappears into the crux of his thighs, the other half of Silco’s length that had previously gone untended driven home in a single, swift motion.

Jinx is struck dumb, watching the prostitute’s spine arch like a cat’s as she heaves mutedly and begins to struggle in panic.

And Silco, with calm, measured, merciless strength, holds her in place with her face flush against his pelvis, his hands tight and his arms only faintly straining with the effort.

His good eye goes lidded after a moment and his head rolls back in the first display of genuine pleasure he’s shown.

He inhales slowly as the girl between his thighs bats frantically at his knee with another heave.

“You’ll never trust me enough to know just how much you can take… will you?” he murmurs throatily, lifting his head and turning his gaze downward to watch the girl claw helplessly at his legs. His exasperated disappointment is belied by an almost palpable, predatory enjoyment of her desperation that Jinx can see gleaming in the blue of his untainted eye.

He finally pulls her back a moment later, the girl flushed and gasping for air with tears streaming down her cheeks.

“Breathe,” he instructs tersely.

“I’m--I’m sorry--I--” she attempts thickly.

Silco gives a single shake of his head, curtly rejecting anything that might follow. “I don’t pay you to apologize.”

She withers beneath the intensity of his relentless stare.

Jinx knows what it feels like to be on the receiving end of that look; how much more effective it is than raising his voice or striking someone to express his disapproval.

Grasping the girl once more as she takes him back into her mouth, he doesn’t give her the luxury of working up to anything this time; her head is forced downward in a motion that seems almost effortless, save for a single hitch when he hits the back of her throat and her body goes tense with a guttural retch.

It doesn’t stop him from sinking her the rest of the way down an instant later.

As he holds her in place this time, she makes a visible effort to resist struggling, her hands clenching and unclenching where they rest at his sides.

“Better,” he praises on an exhalation, his features smoothing with enjoyment.

The hot ache in the low of Jinx’s center becomes nearly unbearable as she watches his hips tilt upward. They begin to roll sensually-- slowly at first, but the pace begins to increase as the girl starts to heave uncontrollably again.

It suddenly strikes Jinx that the vigor and speed of his serpentine thrusts correlate directly with how the girl is choking on him. As she drops any pretense of composure and begins to squirm once more, Silco’s breathing becomes an audible, shuddering pant.

There is an electrifying tension building in him and Jinx swears she can feel it in her own hips--- she wants to buck, grind, match his motions in perfect empathy as he holds and presses the girl’s head ever more relentlessly between his thighs.

His jaw is tensed, his teeth tight, his brow furrowed and his good eye closed while the other slowly dilates, his pupil threatening to eclipse the bright ring where his iris used to be.

The girl turns frantic, beginning to fight in earnest to free herself from his grasp as she grabs for his wrists.

“Down,” he orders through his teeth, his voice a low, tense growl. “Stay down.”

It’s like he’s been taken over by something and he’s too close to seeing it through to stop.

Jinx forgets herself for a moment and shifts her weight to push the metal door open further, wanting a clearer view of the inevitable culmination of all of this.

She abruptly falls forward, the hinges shrieking wildly before giving way to a deafening CLANG when she instinctively pitches backward and the door snaps back into place, throwing her into complete darkness.

A near swoon of terror overtakes her as she catches herself and just barely avoids sliding all the way back down the chute. It occurs to her in the instant before the metal door is ripped open that maybe that would have been a better bet---- with any luck, she’d break her neck and avoid the fallout this is going to cause.

Before she can think to do anything, a hand closes in a vice-like, bruising grip around her calf, savagely jerking her out of the chute with an alarming, wiry strength and sending her spilling onto the floor.

“I’m sorry--- I’m sorry--- I’m sorry---” she repeats desperately like a warding spell, chancing an upward glance.

Silco has hastily redressed himself, but his hair has fallen slightly out of place and he is clearly apoplectic as he stares down at her.

“Get up,” he tells her, the low rumble of his voice and the seething calm of the words falling on Jinx’s head like a blow.

His ward is apparently too slow finding her feet for his liking, so he snatches her foream in that same shockingly steely grasp and yanks her off of the floor, almost dragging her behind him as he throws the door open and storms down the hall.

*

He says nothing on the way home, the silence growing exponentially worse as it claws at her, giving those jeering voices in her head plenty of time to mock her; to insist that this is it--- she’s done it now. Messed up again! He’ll hate you for this!

When they reach the Lookover, he lets go of her arm and begins shrugging out of his coat.

Jinx can’t take it anymore.

“Well?! Say something! Would you say something?!” she says sharply, but it’s more plea than demand.

“Go to your room,” he tells her flatly, not pausing as he climbs the stairs.

Jinx is frozen for several moments, her head a nest of angry hornets that makes her want to pound her skull until the chaos dies down.

A moment later, she’s rushing up the stairs after him, finding him already seated at his desk when she bursts into the office.

Flinging herself into his lap, she feels his entire body tense as she snakes her arms around him with a series of hiccuping sobs. “Please please don’t hate me. I’m sorry. Just don’t hate me. Please…”

Instantly, he wraps her in an embrace--- the same embrace that saved her life the night everything fell apart. He cradles her to his chest, tucking her head beneath his chin.

“I don’t hate you,” he assures her gently but firmly. “I will never hate you, precious girl,” he continues in promise, tilting his head down to place a kiss on her brow. He lets that sink in for her; lets her body relax and her trembling cease. “But Jinx,” he goes on when she has calmed, catching her chin under his finger and tilting her head up to look at him. “You disobeyed me,” he reminds her sternly.

Her expression grows sheepish and wary; the very picture of guilt. She contemplates trying to explain why she followed him, or why he’d found her spying, or why his visit to the brothel had upset her so much, but it’s far too daunting. Instead, she lands on: “I don’t want you to go there. I don’t want you to see that-- that girl. ...I want to be the one who makes you feel good that way.”

Silco goes very still. It seems to Jinx that even the rise and fall of his chest halts for a moment.

Her hand slithers down between them to splay against his crotch and she’s surprised-- thrilled-- to find that he’s still rigid beneath his trousers. She can feel the powerful pulse of him even through the heavy fabric.

The moment she touches him, he inhales sharply with a little jolt. His hand dives for hers a moment later, clutching her wrist to draw it away. He intertwines their fingers instead. “You needn’t concern yourself with those matters, Jinx.”

With a pang of frustration, she pulls out of his affectionate grasp and reaches down to palm his erection more aggressively. “I want to,” she insists firmly, lifting her head and leaning in to graze her lips against the shell of his ear. “I want it,” she reiterates on a hot exhalation, stroking him inexpertly but insistently...pleased when she evokes an uncontrollable shudder and he seems to flex beneath her fingers.

Sliding from his lap to the floor, she kneels in front of him and swiftly begins to pluck at the buttons of his pants. “I can do it,” she assures him, “I’ll show you.”

“--Jinx,” he murmurs, striving for reproach but faltering as he stares down at her. His expression wavers between dismay and feral hunger.

Encouraged by the fact that he isn’t stopping her, Jinx hurries impatiently, only slowing as she carefully draws him out.

His flesh is a livid, dark color and feels like steel wrapped in silk.

“...You didn’t finish at the brothel,” she realizes abruptly.

He gives a curt shake of his head. “You might remember that I was rather rudely interrupted,” he rumbles archly, still looking as if he might push her hands away and tuck himself back into his pants at any moment.

Understanding she does not have time to hesitate, Jinx runs her tongue over her lips and with no further warning, leans forward and fits the thick crown into her mouth.

He’s fever-hot against her tongue and lips.

She begins to suck almost instinctively, her mouth sealing tightly around him. She’s rewarded with a hiss as Silco inhales sharply through clenched teeth above her, his hips jolting. His hands fall to the armrests of his chair a moment later and he squeezes until the wood groans beneath his punishing grip.

“Jinx,” he grunts lowly---- though it no longer sounds like he’s attempting to stay her.

Assessing the way he is grasping the armrests from her peripheral, it occurs to her that he is trying desperately to control himself.

She recalls what seemed to incite him at the brothel.

Her mouth slides down the length of him until he bumps the back of her throat. Inhaling deeply through her nose, she reaches out and takes Silco’s right hand, guiding it to the back of her head.

It splays there, but remains impassive and immobile, frustrating her.

Jinx forces her head down on her own, pressing him harder into her soft-palate and triggering her gag reflex. She is irritated by her own limitations and inexperience, but she can hear Silco panting above.

Squeezing her watering eyes shut, she makes another attempt and is unsuccessful, giving up with a muted retch.

“...Chin down. Relax your throat,” Silco instructs, his voice low in his throat, like a purr.

Angling her jaw, Jinx makes a concentrated effort to avoid tensing and gives another insistent downward push with her head.

It happens with far more ease than she could have anticipated, the thick of him becoming an intense, bruising pressure as it moves into her throat. Instinctive panic grips her as she heaves, immediately attempting to tug her head back, but the hand on the back of her head goes abruptly tight, applying a relentless pressure that forces her forward.

In another instant, the other hand joins it and he’s clutching her to him in a vice grip.

“Swallow,” he snarls.

Jinx obeys instantly and automatically, swallowing repeatedly the way she would if she had taken too big a bite of food and was desperately trying to get it unstuck.

Silco’s hips roll up a single time. “Good girl,” he praises, the word lurching in his throat, strained by pleasure as he begins to surge. “Don’t stop--- don’t stop,” he warns in a ragged pant.

Jinx continues, her head pounding and her entire body throbbing with the intensity of her arousal and elation.

“Good girl,” he exhales, as if with some great relief as he uncoils and tips his head back, allowing the girl to pull back.

She draws off of him with a gasp, her head reeling dizzily as she rests her cheek against his thigh.

For several moments, they’re both left panting in silence.

After an interim, Jinx crawls back into his lap, nuzzling into his neck. Silco welcomes her, curling an arm around her back and sliding a hand up her leg.

“...I did a good job?” she wonders quietly.

“A very good job,” he growls in reply.

“It felt good?”

“Yes, Jinx, it felt good,” he sighs.

There’s a pause as she lifts her head to look at him.

“...Can we do it again?” she asks in hopeful expectation.

Silco scoffs incredulously. “No,” he replies automatically. “...Yes,” he amends half a second later. “---Not tonight,” he clarifies firmly.

Chapter Text

Silco's self-loathing is just beginning to burn off the haze of sexual gratification when Jinx lifts her head and guilelessly chirps:

“Can we do it again?”

She can be excused for her youthful ignorance of the limits to male anatomy, but his cock has the indecency to twitch like there’s a single chance of it, which is what jolts him into snapping: “No.”

He ought to leave it at that. He ought to make it clear that this can go no further than it already has, that it was an unforgivable mistake; a weakening of his resolve. But he sees the instantaneous hurt and disappointment that clouds her face, a pout knitting her brow and making a moue of her sweet mouth– (the mouth he just came into, he can’t help but think, stirring again).

Against his better judgement, he relents and corrects himself: “Yes.”

The way she brightens with excitement evokes an almost physical pain that jabs him directly in the chest. “...Not tonight,” he intones, looking away from her to pretend he is considering the cigar box on his desk.

Shame…guilt, they feel like ill-fitting garments from some earlier time in his life that he’s trying to squeeze back into. He’s long accepted that he’s a monster– he must be to do what is needed in order to make any meaningful change– but this was a line he had been determined not to cross. He had promised himself that if he couldn’t keep his Jinx out of the shadowy, primeval corners of his mind, he would at least keep her safe from the impulses they evoked. He hadn’t even wanted her to know those parts of him existed.

He’s failed. Utterly. Spectacularly.

Perhaps attempting to keep her from learning who and what he truly is was a fool’s errand. It’s miraculous (and highly inconvenient, if he was being honest) that she’s managed to sow seeds in the scorched earth of his heart, but that was never going to change the fact that the soil is still toxic. He’d never been stupidly naive enough to think that whatever grew from that poisoned ground wouldn’t be something twisted and unnatural, but he had dared to hope that Jinx would never have to learn that.

She deserves more than a monster for a father.

She deserves better than a man who has fucked prostitutes even younger than she is, and relished it. Someone who is not incited by tender, youthful, unmarred flesh for the way that it has no choice but to bend and yield and bruise for him. She deserves so much more than a creature who can love her unequivocally and still paradoxically hunger for her because of what she is– what she represents.

She was Vander’s before she was his.

He can never forget that. He can never make it stop mattering to the blackest, most depraved parts of him. No matter how much he tries, he cannot silence this ravening obsession that lives in his mind; that makes him picture his brother’s impotent rage and anguish as he’s forced to watch his sweet daughter struggle and fight to breathe as Silco holds her down on his cock to the very end. Until they’ve both had enough.

And to make matters so, so much worse, the girl wants to do this for him. She’s unwittingly volunteered to exorcise this fantasy with an enthusiasm that both horrifies and arouses him more fiercely than anything else in recent memory.

Jinx.

She only wants to make him feel good.

How could he not love her? He is everything to her, and she wants, in turn, to be everything to him (she is) — has he ever, in his miserable life, known a sweeter, more guileless devotion than that?

No.

And so he hates himself for irrevocably corrupting the bond between father and daughter, because he knows his girl. He knows exactly what’s going to come out of her mouth next.

“Then when?”

“When—” he hesitates for just a moment, feeling like he’s trying to gauge the location of a stair step in the dark. “Whenever I need it again,” is what he settles on. Not a rejection, but not a promise.

Jinx is not satisfied with his noncommitment. “When will that be?” she demands with a note of impatient frustration.

Her hand snakes down to his spent (but not entirely softened ) cock a moment later and he jolts, catching her miniscule wrist and bringing her palm up to his lips to press a kiss into it while he furtively tucks himself away with his other hand. He needs to distract her and there is only one thing he believes will be remotely effective now that he has set her on this path.

She deserves better, but this is what he can give her. He can do this for her at the very least.

“Why don’t I make you feel good?” he murmurs gently at the shell of her ear, sliding his hand up the inside of her thigh.

He’s taken aback by how violently she clamps her knees together, blocking him. Her body seems to have been touched by livewire, her every muscle going tense.

“I don’t deserve it,” she tells him in a small, fragile voice. “...I was bad.”

This child. As well as he’s come to know her, there are still so many moments when she is opaque to him. Does she even want his hands on her? Or was this truly all for his benefit, enacted out of some misplaced sense of possessive jealousy and obligation to his needs? He feels vaguely sick at the notion that it might have been.

“I wasn’t supposed to follow you, and I wasn’t supposed to watch, and watching you made me…” she trails off, either in embarrassment or because she can’t quite find the language to describe how she felt.

It doesn’t matter. He can intuit what she experienced, and some part of him is relieved, as if it somehow absolves him. And that relief is ignoble enough— he chooses to ignore the fact that on some level he is tantalized by the idea of her watching him use the girl at the brothel, quietly burning with arousal and jealousy.

Silco sighs softly, drawing his hand out of the clamp of her thighs and gathering her closer to his chest. “You were curious. And I can’t fault you for that. Everyone is at your age.”

He gives her time to consider that. “...Were you?” she asks a moment later.

He exhales a sound of rather caustic mirth. “Oh yes.”

She lifts her head and turns to look at him intently, a pensive frown knitting her brow. “--Why did you go there tonight? Instead of asking me? Is that where you’ve been going all those times? When you wouldn’t let me come with you? …Do you like that girl better than me?” she asks him in a low, wounded tone.

The idea that he could ever desire anyone, in any fashion, more than this girl in his lap is so absurd that he can only shake his head. Not just because of what she was to Vander, but because of what she is to him. His little force of nature, his prodigy of destruction, his little servant of the Wolf.

He suddenly turns her in his lap, his hands firm on her hips as he lifts her and rolls up onto his feet, depositing her on his desk where he proceeds to cage her in with his arms, palms flattened on the desk’s surface to either side of her, his lips perilously close to hers.

“There is no one but you, Jinx. You’re perfect,” he imparts in hushed tones.

She looks…overwhelmed by that admission. And then immediately doubtful. He knows before she even opens her mouth that she’s going to ask why he needs a prostitute if that’s the case.

“I didn’t want to do to you what I would do to a whore, Jinx. You… That isn’t what I wanted for you. For us.”

She cocks her head and stares at him for a long stretch of pregnant silence, her mind working furiously. “...But I want it,” she declares with a dusky finality, as if that decides everything.

Silco finds himself wanting– with an alarming desperation– for that to be the final word on the matter.

She has no idea what she’s saying. She can’t possibly. That isn’t consent, he inwardly reproaches that part of him that wants to abandon any further attempt at normalcy and let this be what they are to each other— whatever this is.

Jinx must see the conflict flickering across his face as he regards her, because she presses on: “I liked it. It made me feel good to do it. —Right here.”

She abruptly snatches one of his hands and pulls it to her until he’s cupping her at her apex, feeling the heat of her radiating against his palm through her pants.

Some levee inside of Silco breaks at this.

He does not have time to try and repair it before he’s on her, devouring her sweet mouth, biting into the plush of her lower lip, growling low in his throat like a beast. He’s shamefully excited to feel how startled she is, her mouth opening pliantly for his tongue. He swallows her sharp gasp when his hand tightens possessively on the soft swell of warm flesh that fills it.

He relinquishes his grip only so that he can hook his fingers into the band of her pants and drag them down her hips, almost tumbling her onto her back. She clumsily toes her boots off and in a flash, she is naked from the waist down, pants carelessly discarded on the floor. She looks up at him with wide, wondering eyes, her expression a muddle of nervous excitement, trepidation and yes, there it is, he sees– desire.

Silco can only hold that innocent gaze for a moment, though, before his eyes rake downward and lock on her perfect, untried, utterly virgin cunt.

Even sweeter than he’d imagined.

Perhaps growing self-conscious, she shifts, attempting to draw her legs together.

He very nearly snarls with a flash of teeth, prying them open again and forcing her thighs so wide apart that she looks like a butterfly on a spreading board.

Slowly, he leans in, keeping his eyes fixed on hers. “I’ll show you what it means to feel good...child.”

Bracing himself with one hand splayed on the desk beside her head, he brushes the knuckle of his pointer finger over her unblemished cheek, down the line of her throat, over one pert breast– briefly catching on the nipple through the cloth of her shirt– and on down her ribcage. He can almost count the outline of each one when she draws in a sharp breath. Turning his wrist, he uses the pad of the same finger to trace over her navel and down to the ridge of her iliac crest, watching how she’s already unraveling for him with a hot, fast panting of breath.

His wrist turns again and then he’s cupping oil-slick, naked flesh.

She barely fills his palm.

A choked whimper rises in the girl’s throat and he takes a dark delight in listening to that sound become a strangled cry when he parts her with the edge of his thumb.

He goes rigid again for the way her spine arcs up as he begins to circle that thumb around the delicate little pearl that sits at the top of her seam. He’s attuned to every tremor, every hitch in her already ragged breathing; each one telling him precisely how firm and how fast she needs it.

He waits until he can feel her quaking to slide his middle finger into the spectacularly tight heat of her, almost all the way to his third knuckle. His good eye goes lidded as he contemplates what it would feel like to bury himself to the hilt inside of her. Would he even be able? Would he be too much for her?

Jinx begins to whine, her muscles coiling as the tension builds in the very center of her. She sounds incredulous, overwhelmed, almost unnerved by the intensity of her own pleasure as it ratchets up.

Silco bends his finger into a slight curl as he begins pumping it slowly into the impossible clutch of her body, his thumb still moving in ever-tightening circles around its target.

The girl gasps sharply and grabs for his wrist in desperation with a helpless ‘nuhhh’ of a sound. “I can’t— I can’t,” she pants imploringly, shying from the magnitude of her first climax.

“You can,” Silco purrs in assurance, undeterred by the bite of her nails as they dig into his forearm. His bracing arm suddenly curls beneath her back, lifting her into a seated position so that she can lean into him and rest her brow against his chest as she bucks uncontrollably.

He keeps the tempo of his ministrations steady for her, reading her need for consistency and focus as she climbs higher and higher.

She starts to shake against him with shuddering breaths.

Stroking the small of her back, he tips his chin down. “That’s it,” he encourages in a voice like velvet. He can feel her teetering on the precipice, her hips jittering as she begins to succumb. “That’s right. Just like that. …Come for me, Jinx,” he tells her, his voice bottoming out as it becomes firm. “ Come for me.”

She buries her face in his chest, muffling a protracted moan that climbs in pitch and volume as her hips jerk and she obeys, giving herself over completely. Silco holds her, splaying his hand over her lower back and curling his finger more firmly to press it into a nebula of nerves she never even knew she possessed.

“That’s my girl,” he whispers in praise. “My lovely Jinx.”

That his profound and tender love for her can exist in tandem with the gnawing, ravenous urge to push her flat onto her back and fuck her until she utterly comes apart beneath him feels perverse. It is perverse, and he isn’t sure if he will ever be able to reconcile the two, or if he should even try.

When she has gone limp and boneless against him, he very carefully withdraws his finger and cradles her head as he lays her back down on the desk.

The way she gazes up at him with dazed adoration makes him ache twicefold—- in his chest and beneath the confines of his trousers.

He has no idea what this means for them going forward. He doesn’t want to distract himself from the beauty of her afterglow with it.

Leaning over her, he tucks a lock of hair behind her ear and watches her eyelids begin to droop.

After a moment, he breaks the silence. “...Would you like to do it again?”

Her eyes snap open and it’s only when she sees the very slight arching of his eyebrow that she realizes he is teasing her.

“No,” she snickers, not too proud to receive a dose of her own medicine. “Not right now,” she adds dreamily.

The corner of Silco’s mouth twitches up in a smile, and he ignores the dark, nearly rabid impatience of the thing that moves inside of him, demanding to know ‘then when?’

Chapter Text

He wakes up to Jinx crawling into bed with him, the mattress dipping under her slight weight.

Consciousness rushes up at him like he’s falling back into his body, and he blinks at the ceiling with his good eye, the lingering effects of too much whiskey making him bleary and slower to react than he would otherwise.

He’d needed to drink himself into a stupor the night before. Not just so that sleep would finally come, no— but also so that he wouldn’t end up darkening the door of his daughter’s room after putting her to bed.

Silco had been forced to peer into the murky depths of his own depravity and resist their terrible undercurrent, lest he pull Jinx straight down with him. It had to stop-- he had to stop this now, or there was no telling where or if it would ever end.

It wasn’t simply that it was unfair at best and damaging at worst, it was that the keenness of his hunger for her frightened him. He could already tell he would never have his fill of her. She would become an obsession— an addiction-- and he would utterly consume her if he didn’t snuff out the fuse before it reached the chassis.

It had taken virtually all of his self-restraint to tuck her into bed and chastely kiss her brow as he pictured himself tearing the covers off of her instead, pinning her slender arms to the mattress— she would let you, some part of him had insisted, she would let you do anything to her if it pleased you. She could be yours. She would belong to you more completely than you ever imagined anything could---

Those thoughts had lingered long after he’d managed to tear himself away, walked the distance of the corridor, then all the way downstairs. They had threatened to send him stalking right back to cast a long shadow over the girl’s sleeping form.

So he had muted them with a lot of whiskey. A debilitating amount. An incapacitating amount. So much that he hadn't even managed to stroke himself to completion before consciousness had slipped away.

However, the torpor has been slept off and now he can feel her sidling up to his supine body and he curses the fact that he managed to strip his clothes off last night but had apparently been too drunk to think of locking the fucking door.

He is just about to verbally reproach her when she abruptly rolls onto her belly and slithers beneath the coverlet, both of her hands wrapping inadequately around his stiff, jutting cock. She tugs it toward her and suddenly he feels her hot breath on the crown.

It makes him throb even as his heart seems to stutter to a painful, clutching halt in his chest.

He rips the blanket back to expose her and his glower must be precisely as fierce as he suddenly feels in that moment, because she freezes and looks up at him with wide eyes.

"What do you think you're doing?" he demands, his voice quiet but simmering with barely restrained ferocity.

"...You–you said I could do it again when you needed it," she replies with guileless insistence.

Silco has to willfully ignore the extrapolation that she thinks he needs to come because he's hard, and the implication that she would therefore be ready and willing to open her little mouth for him each and every time his cock twitches to life.

"You don't get to decide that for me," he warns sharply.

"I'm—"

Jinx is clearly about to apologize until she witnesses his realization that she is naked dawn on his face, darkening his features. Her voice dies in her throat and finally she looks unnerved, proving she has some sense of self-preservation after all.

Yes, girl, now you see it, don't you? You're swimming with a predator and you've just chummed the water.

It's only the notion of that fear appearing on her face every time she looks at him that stops him from snatching her by the hair and rolling on top of her.

So often it seems to him that he has adopted two very different girls who inhabit the same body.

Sometimes she is Jinx—a creature beginning to learn that she possesses teeth and claws; that she is powerful and lethal. Jinx is perfect.

Other times, however, she is still Powder… Still the girl he found sobbing in the alley that night. The girl whose tiny throat he had been an instant away from slitting with the intention of holding her in his arms and comforting her while she bled out on the wet concrete. A mercy killing.

Right now, she is Powder; fearful, tremulous, soft with uncertainty and contrition.

Silco reaches down and grips the back of her head in one hand, taking hold of his cock in the other and maneuvering each of them to feed her the thick head of it.

Immediately, she tries to slide down and take more of him, but he clutches a fistful of her hair and jerks her back.

"Suck," he orders firmly.

Her brow knits with a brief flicker of confusion, but she complies, her lips tightening behind the flare of his crown.

There is absolutely no finesse in it– it's clumsy and over-eager… almost appetent, in fact.

She sucks him with the graceless, demanding, rhythmic enthusiasm of a baby animal who has just learned to latch.

The thought steals his breath away with its perversity, each too-firm pull of her mouth seeming to send an electric current down his shaft to tug directly at his balls.

The grunt it evokes from him is drawn out into a velvety purr as he watches her watching him.

Perhaps this is what his girl needs, he thinks with deviant pleasure. Not the sweet, fattening sustenance of a mother's milk, but the viscous brackishness of a father's to grow strong on. To toughen her up; sharpen her edges.

He uses just his first two fingers and his thumb to begin slowly stroking the length of his cock while she holds the crown in the tight vacuum of her mouth.

Do you see, old friend? Do you see what I've made of your daughter? See how desperate she is to please me?. His mind conjures Vander's face as his breathing hitches and for once, he doesn't push the image away. He indulges himself, picturing all of the things he longed to see for years: impotent rage. Horror. Total helplessness. Guilt.

Silco thrills with an uncontrollable shudder.

Let Powder wither and Jinx be nourished at the end of my cock. I'll erase you more and more with every feeding She'll be mine. Utterly mine.

The way you.

Never.

Were.

With a sharp, frantic exhalation, he uses both hands to clutch Jinx's head and forces her down– down-- until he's pressing her hard against his groin, her heaving entirely muted as her body tries in vain to reject what he provides.

"Take it," he snarls. "Take it all."

And she does.

Even as she squirms, her throat tightens around him with a series of luridly wet sounds while she swallows needlessly.

He looks down at her enormous, teary, reverent eyes and he doesn't think he's ever seen anything as arousing as the sight of her flushed face framed by his spread thighs and bent knees, his pelvis slowly rocking against her mouth.

Silco holds her down even after he's finished. His hands remain firm on her head, tightening and refusing to allow her to move when she tries to pull back.

He watches the instinctive panic set in; her lissome, pale body beginning to thrash around in the sheets. Her legs kick wildly as she plants her hands on his slender hips and pushes with total futility.

When she viciously digs her nails into his flesh just below his ribs, that exquisite pain in combination with the keen arousal from her struggling creates a pleasure so acute he could swear he comes again with a low, shuddering grunt, his hips jerking though he has nothing left to give.

Finally, he releases her and she jerks off of his cock, gasping and wheezing with trembling desperation, collapsing between his thighs.

Silco curls his fingers around her slender bicep, tugging her up and gathering her limp body against his chest. "Breathe. Deep, slow breaths,," he murmurs, tenderly stroking her hair away from her face.

"I'm sorry I scratched you," she manages in a thick, quavering whimper.

"It's alright. You've done so well for me, Jinx. So well," he assures her, pressing a kiss against the top of her head as he gently wipes her tears away with the pad of his thumb. His other hand trails down her naked back, fingertips counting her vertebrae. "...Do you still enjoy making me feel good, my lovely?" he asks after a brief interim, tipping her chin up to look her in the eye. *****

She doesn't hesitate: "Yes."

Jinx can't tell from the look that passes over his features whether that was the answer he wanted or not– his blue eye narrows a fraction as he studies her face.

He thinks you're a little freak. Because you are, Mylo imparts from the end of the bed, his disgust tinged with derisive amusement.

He's practically your dad now, Powder. That's messed up. Would have done that to Vander? Claggor asks with his characteristically quiet, gentle judgement.

Jinx tries to ignore them, tugging her chin out of Silco's grip and nuzzling against his chest. She resists the urge to shout back that of course she never would have done that to Vander; Vander had never given her the hot, tingly, desperate, shaky feelings that Silco makes her feel.

"...Is there something wrong with me for wanting to do that for you? For…liking it?" she inquires in a small, fretful voice.

He takes a deep inhale and lets it out slowly, moving her with the rise and fall of his chest.

"No, Jinx. There is absolutely nothing wrong with you," he replies with a gentle sternness.

She knows she should be reassured by these words, but some part of her almost wishes he would confirm what Mylo and Claggor tell her– that he would call her nasty names like the ones she sometimes hears his goons use for ladies who make them mad.

"...But you are very sure that you like it, aren't you? It's not something you want to do simply because you feel like you must or that you should like doing it?" he asks a moment later.

Jinx thinks about it for a moment with a pensive frown and shakes her head. "No. I like doing it because… I want you to feel for me what you felt for that girl at the brothel. I want you to need me like that. I like making you feel good that way because…"

She searches for the words, ignoring phantom jeers of 'slut.'

"Because doing it makes me feel like you did with your fingers last night. …Or at least really close to it. It makes me feel like I could come just from when you do."

Jinx notices immediately that he tenses with her use of that word, his wet cock pulsing once against her belly.

A thrill of excitement runs through her at the notion that she might hold any power over him whatsoever– even if it's just in a word.

Popping her head up to look at him, her eyes gleam for a moment.

"Do you like when I say that? …Do you like me talking about how you make me come?" she asks, deliberately emphasizing the word as she sits up and straddles him, cognizant of the fact that her cunt slides against his softening cock with a pleasantly electric, slick sensation.

She is supremely pleased when it twitches beneath her.

He immediately snatches her hips and jerks them forward, seating her higher on the flat cobblestone of his belly.

"Learn one lewd word and suddenly we fancy ourselves a little succubus, do we?" he asks archly as he stares up at her.

"...I know more than one," Jinx huffs, annoyed at how easily that tiny taste of power is stolen away by his caustic tone.

His brow arches upward and half shrugs in an airy, unconvinced gesture, toying idly with one of her braids. "Enlighten me."

"Well I–" she falters, some of her bravado crumbling. "I…" She takes a breath to try and steady her nerves, but that just makes what she says next come out in one fast string of words on the exhalation: "Ilikeditwhenyoustuckyourfingersinmypussy."

The last word is barely even a murmur as the girl's cheeks flush, her eyes pivot away from his and she snatches her other braid, plucking nervously at the end.

She can feel him staring hard at her and it makes her cheeks grow hotter.

"Cute," he mockingly congratulates her with flat sarcasm. "What else?"

Too flustered to even attempt any of the other things she's happened to overhear in bawdy conversation, Jinx shrugs, her expression turning sullen.

Silco's hand suddenly comes down on the curve of her bare ass with a sharp clap of sound, the pain only registering once her shock begins to fade.

"Ow-- what was that for?!" she demands with an indignant squeal, rubbing at the swiftly reddening skin.

He has never spanked her before. Never even threatened it.

"Hubris," he growls as he abruptly tips her over to the side, rolling her onto her back to loom over her on his knees.

He braces himself with a hand beside her head and curls over her, emphasizing how he dwarfs her as his other hand almost idly winds a length of her braid around his fingers. Cocking his head as he stares down at her, he takes in the sight of her.

"Do you like having a warm belly full of my jip, girl? Do you like being fed from my cock? …Hm?" he presses, tugging just a little on her hair to punctuate specific words. The burr in his voice drags over her senses like it's a physical touch, making her shiver.

Jinx suddenly feels like her entire body is malfunctioning– her heart is pounding too hard, her bruised and aching throat feels too tight, she seems to be throbbing everywhere and she can only nod as she stares up at him.

"You like making me come with this perfect little mouth of yours?" he demands, shifting to stroke the pad of his thumb over her lips.

Again, all she can do is nod mutely as he demonstrates how to really utilize this sort of talk.

Dropping his head, he brushes his lips over the side of her throat. "And would you like me to do more than fuck your tight little cunt with my fingers? Would you like to come for me again, Jinx?" he whispers.

The girl has that lurching sensation like tripping forward and being unable to regain her balance.

"Uh huh," she manages to whine in the midst of her nervous, intimidated arousal.

In the next instant, she finds her knees lifted and bent, her supple thighs spread wide enough to make her hips ache a little.

Every intimate part of her is exposed for Silco's perusal, and he drinks it in.

She thinks he's going to— he could only be about to—

But he isn't hard anymore, she realizes with confusion, darting her eyes down to see the way his cock hangs heavily between his legs.

The girl jolts when he suddenly leans down low and drags his tongue up the length of her slick, hot flesh.

It's such an alien sensation–so unexpected and so… well– shocking-- that her first instinct is to try and snap her legs shut.

He seems to anticipate that reaction this time, however, and grips them firmly, preventing them from closing even the tiniest bit.

His lips settle over the delicate little hood at the top of her cunt, kissing gently before his tongue begins to tease over it.

The intensity of each flick of that tongue is like a little static zap, making her jolt and shake and hiss. It's almost too much.

It is too much, and she squirms beneath him with a whimper.

He seems to read this discomfort for what it is and begins to explore elsewhere, licking up and down the length of her.

And there's a particular spot– a little upside down U of a spot, just beneath her still overstimulated clit that makes her hips jolt with more and more pleasure with each pass of his tongue.

It makes her feel a little like she needs to relieve herself, which seems as though it ought to be uncomfortable, but it isn't. Not at all. It begins to build a delicious, hot pressure inside of her and makes her breathing quake.

"Rightthere-- Right-there-right-there-right-there!" she cries out on another singular rush of breath, desperate and greedy and imploring. She tries to spread her thighs wider, tilting her pelvis up to offer him better access and Silco understands immediately where she's asking for his focus.

Suddenly he's laving her right there and Jinx's pleasure builds exponentially. It's dizzying. She's panting hard in just moments, inhibitions utterly forgotten as she settles her hands on the back of his head and presses. "Ha–hh–harder-- lick harder," she demands raggedly, the intensity of the pleasure making her entire body shake and coil.

When he obliges her, giving her precisely the pressure she needs, her back arches uncontrollably and Jinx's mind goes blank, her eyes rolling back with total, blissful delirium. She's scarcely even aware of the guttural moan that seems to make its way up from her belly as her orgasm crashes over her.

Her hips haven't even stopped bucking yet when she forces out: "More– more pleasemore."

Silco continues, never altering his pace, and he makes her come twice more before Jinx is too overstimulated and has to tug on his hair to make him stop.

He lifts his head, panting nearly as hard as she is, his lips vibrant and slick.

And Jinx has a view straight down to his engorged cock.

Lust-drunk, she doesn't even falter when the words tumble out of her mouth: "I want you to fuck me. I want you to fuck me with your cock. I want it in me."

She sees that look go across his face again– the dangerous one that reminds her of that moment just before a shark's eyes roll over white. The one that both frightens and excites her.

She's certain he's going to do it.

But then the look is overtaken by something that's so out of place in his expression that she can't even immediately identify what it is.

Panic.

"...Go back to your room," he intones in a low, frighteningly cold tone, freezing her insides.

"But I–" she begins, her heart stuttering in confusion and abrupt terror.

"No," he snaps sharply, cutting her off. "Do as I say. Now."

When she still can't seem to move under the weight of her paralytic fear, he suddenly gets up and drags her out of his bed by the forearm precisely the way he dragged her from the brothel the night before, hauling to her his door and tossing her out into the hallway, still naked.

She scarcely has a chance to turn back to him when the door slams in her face, the lock rattling on the other side as it's engaged. ______________