Prince of Darkness

Chapter 11: Alone

I know it's going to hard without Daman, but try and enjoy this anyway! ;)

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Chapter 11: Alone

I shut my eyes, pretending to be asleep and rolled over onto my right side so I was facing away from Daman.

He had his arms still wrapped tight around my waist, and I knew when they slackened he’d be asleep.

As soon as I was sure he couldn’t see my eyes I opened them – having them shut was just too much of a temptation to fall asleep.

I deepened my breathing though, and focused on that to keep me awake.

I had already thought of an excuse I could tell Daman if he caught me up and about. I would simply tell him I sleep walk, but that I had been so exhausted last night that my body was too weak to withstand such mid-night wanderings. And if he asked why I hadn’t done it whilst he was watching me back at Adam and Eve’s I’ll tell him I did, but it was normally soon after I fell asleep that it happened so he always missed it because he came later.

I knew Daman would probably suspect that I was being mendacious, but I was fairly confident he wouldn’t have enough evidence to out me.

I lay patiently content for the time being in Daman’s arms – it was the last time I would have their protective strength surrounding me forever.

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It felt like a whole twenty-four hours before Daman started to fall asleep, even though it couldn’t have been more than two. Then his breathing didn’t deepen for another half-an-hour. Even after that I waited another half-an-hour to make sure he was well and truly deep asleep.

More than once I nodded off, mostly it was only for a few minutes, but when I awoke the third time it was to find that Daman had started to fall asleep, and the last time I had been fully awake, so had he. It must have been a good forty-five minutes at least that I had slept through. I was lucky to have woken in time.

After that I was more vigilant - making sure whenever my eyelids felt too heavy I would think of how terrified I had felt when Daman had been enraged that I’d slapped him.

As they say patience is a virtue, and eventually, my endurance paid off. Daman was well and truly asleep.

I delicately wriggled my way very slowly, and stopped every few seconds, until I was safely out of his arms and out of reaching distance.

Then I scrambled off the mattress as quickly as I could manage whilst being as quiet as possible.

I reached my top and was about to grasp it when I heard a sound coming from Daman. I froze and sorted through my explanation.

“Ally…Babes, what are you doing?”

I tried to act as innocent as was feasible, and stood to look him in the eye.

Only to get a jolt of surprise, Daman’s eyes were closed, and he was lying flat on the bed, not sitting up as I had expected.

“No! Don’t leave me! Please! I’d do anything for you and you know it…”

Then Daman just mumbled something more with my name it, rolled over and continued sleeping.

He had never been awake all along, Daman sleep-talked, wow.