“I think you’re afraid,” she said. They were on the sofa now. She was, not voluntarily, curled up against the inside of his body. They both faced out at a TV screen that was playing soundlessly.
“Can you never just let me enjoy the afterglow?” he asked playfully.
“I think you think that whatever it was that scarred you and made you this way would end up sounding trite if you described it. And you’d lose the power you think you have as a ‘force of nature.’”
“Well, definitely, to the second point.”
“And the first?”
“You’re right. That’s what I’m afraid of. If you knew that I’d watched as my mother was murdered and dismembered in front of my three-year-old eyes, with me sitting in a pool of her blood for three days, you’d just think, ‘oh, another one of those.’”
“That’s not you. That was
Darkly Dreaming Dexter
, I think.”
“Oh. I’m always confusing us.”
“Well, it’s easy to tell you apart. Compared to you, he’s a good guy.”
He gave her body a squeeze of appreciation.
“But you know,” she said thoughtfully. “I never really got that anyway.”
“What?”
“How that makes you a serial killer, seeing something like that. I mean, it’s horrible, but how does it make you want to repeat it? I don’t see that. I can imagine if you were personally tortured in some way, over and over, how that might make you want to do the same thing, or something similar. Or if you were sexually tormented, you learn to associate the horrible thing with sex in your mind, so you repeat that, but... I don’t know. You may be right. Maybe it’s something innate, that has very little to do with your childhood. Or it’s a predisposition that’s triggered by an abusive childhood. You know?”
“You seem to find this topic interesting.”
“Well, duh. It’s affecting
me
.”
“I would think the answer was to focus, as you have been, on surviving. Not on me.”
“Well, all this horrible sex hasn’t broken me yet. What makes you think it will?”
“Would you prefer that I switch over to pure physical torture?”
“All your questions are trick ones.”
“I won’t make you answer. Suffice it to say, that that would bore me. And you’re so much fun this way. And I already explained, it’s not the sex that will break you. It’s the powerlessness. And it will work.”
“Even if I know that’s what you’re doing.”
“Even. Maybe especially.”
She just raised an eyebrow in doubt.
“Did you like what you just did?”
“No.”
“But you’ll do it again any time I tell you to.”
“Until I kill you.”
“You do know how to make me laugh,” he said, running his fingers through her hair affectionately.
She didn’t say anything.
“Do you know how long I watched you before I started this?”
“No.”
“Such a quiet life you live here. There was something about you that I knew would be interesting. You don’t seem to mind being alone.”
“There are certainly times when I prefer it.”
“Really alone.”
“I talk to people, I write to people, I communicate.”
“If we’re going to speculate about each other...”
“Forget it. I’ve given up.”
“Fat chance.” He smiled. He paused a moment. “There should have been someone here I had to kill to get to you.”
She couldn’t help emitting a slight gasp.
“Why wasn’t there?” he continued.
“I’m glad there wasn’t.”
“That’s very noble of you, but seriously.”
“I don’t have an answer for you.”
“I’m sure you do.”
“I don’t.”
“Do you have some terribly annoying habits? Are you avoiding them? Maybe you hate men. I couldn’t blame you. We’re awful.”
She remained silent.
“I guess I was just surprised. You’re so appealing. But I waited and I watched, and no one ever came.”
He turned her face to look at him. Her eyes were cold.
“No man to hold you. Like this. Ever?”
“Maybe I like girls.”
“Fair enough. Where is she?”
“Maybe I don’t like anybody.”
“That would make you like me. Are you like me?”
She suddenly wriggled and tried to escape from his arms. He held her tightly.
“How dare you?” she cried. “You son of a bitch.”
He laughed.
“Don’t get so excited. Just making idle conversation. If you prefer, you can go down on me again. That will certainly shut me up for a while.”
“I’ll bite it.”
“I don’t think so,” he said, less pleasantly. He pushed her off the sofa onto the floor. Grabbing her by the hair, he slapped her face twice, not as hard as he could have. Then pushed her onto her back.
“What did I tell you? You don’t get to be offended. If I ask you a question, you answer it. And if I tell you to do something, you do it. Now, you will suck my cock. I never get tired of that.”
He jumped off the couch, took a few steps over to his satchel and returned with another set of plastic restraints. Cuffing her hands behind her, he moved into a comfortable position on the sofa so that she could minister to him. He shoved her into place between his legs.
“Make me happy,” he said.
Eyes brimming with angry tears, she did what he said.
He kept her cuffed for a while, as he followed up the blowjob with another frontal assault. He fucked her slowly this time, grindingly. He didn’t come.
She kept her lips tightly closed, her eyes, open as he demanded, fixed on a spot somewhere behind him. After he stopped, he examined her.
“You’re getting a little swollen down there, a little abraded, I think, too.”
She said nothing.
“I think we could both use some lotion.”
He left her for a moment, went into the bathroom, grabbed a bottle there, and stepped quickly back. She appeared to have moved slightly, in the direction of his bag, he noted. She must have rolled over once or twice, because she was still bound.
He smiled to himself.
“Comfortable?” he asked.
She still said nothing.
He held up the bottle of lotion, squeezed some onto his hand, and applied it to his penis.
“Ummm. I gotta say, that feels good. I was beginning to chafe.”
Her lips got thinner.
“Would you like some?”
Now, she was beginning to pout.
“Just say yes,” he said. “Just say, ‘yes, please, could I?’”
She looked very unhappy.
“Just say it.”
“Yes, please, could I?”
“No!” he said, with a laugh. He enjoyed the look on her face. But he put some on his fingers and applied it to her swollen crotch. His movements were smooth and gentle. “Just kidding. Doesn’t that feel better?”
She looked away and then back at him. “Yes. Thank you.” There was no emotion behind her words.
He smiled again. And slipped a finger inside her.
“You make me sorry I have to destroy you. I think I would never get tired of playing with you.”
“Playing?” She couldn’t help herself. He slipped another finger in. She writhed in pain.
“Ooh. I guess you’re more than a bit sore there. We’ll give it a little rest then, why don’t we? Do something else for a while.”
He removed his fingers and brought them to his nose. “Hmm. Lotiony.”
“This hurts,” she said.
She was still lying on her cuffed hands.
“Well, then, I guess you shouldn’t talk about killing me,” he said.
“I was just joking?”
He stood up and looked down at her. Then he rolled her over with his foot until she was on her stomach. She didn’t look much more comfortable, however.
Nonetheless, he walked back over to the sofa, grabbed the TV remote and turned the sound up.
“Anything good on?” he wondered. He started clicking through the channels yet again.
Why wasn’t there someone here that he had to kill to get to her? Nothing he had done so far hurt as much as the answer to that question. Nothing
could
ever hurt as much as that.
She had never been operations. Just analysis. It was her strength. And even after her husband had gone, she’d kept the group going, from a distance, thanks to technology, making the occasional business trip when she needed to. Because she’d thought the fight was worth it. Because she knew that it was. And she’d thought that she’d already lost all that there was to lose. But that was never true, was it?
“There is, unseen by most, an underworld, a place that is just as real but not as brightly lit. A dark side.” She’d always been drawn to that line from that old TV show. She’d always thought it was amazing that there were people out there who had to be told.
This one here knew it. That’s why, strangely, isolated in her little patch of underworld, the one thing she didn’t object to in this situation was the conversation. Because in a way, this man lived in the same world she did. They hadn’t met until now, but they could understand each other. Of course, she couldn’t let him see all of that. But he sensed enough. Enough to enjoy their dialogue. She wouldn’t go so far as to say that she enjoyed it. But the fact was that she could talk to this man as herself in a way that she hadn’t been able to with anyone else. Not for a long time.
She still had to be very, very conscious of what she said, its implications, its likely effect. She couldn’t be entirely herself. But when could anyone? Maybe for a minute, at the very end. One way or the other.
Maybe that was how it was for everybody.
He wasn’t just mean. He was fast. She realized her decision not to fight him was the right one. But it hurt to find that out.
“Someone’s at the door,” he said, out of the blue.
She was still on the floor, lying on her tummy with her hands tied behind her back. She didn’t have time to think. She raised her head and glanced his way. He was beside her immediately, and the next thing she knew her head was hitting the floor with what felt like a crack.
When she regained consciousness, she saw him sitting on the floor not far from her, his back against a wall. He was smoking nonchalantly.
She looked at him, and he smiled. Her head hurt.