“I guess I’d only be worried if you really believed that.” And once again, she proved capable of sarcasm. Under these circumstances. It was hard to follow her moods, but not one of them so far was appropriate. Except for that instant of panic. She was intriguing.
“Relax,” he said. “I’m kidding.”
“Thanks.”
He grinned at her. “You’re going to be fun, aren’t you?”
“That’s not my intention.”
“But you don’t have any choice, do you? You’re clearly not going to collapse right away. And I wouldn’t buy it for a minute if you did. You’re going to fight me. And that’s going to be fun.”
“Then I won’t.” And that was when she sounded like a rebellious child.
“I’ll enjoy that too, I bet.”
“I can’t win.”
“No. That’s the point.”
She put her lips together as if to stop herself from saying one more thing. Something that might just push him further. But it didn’t help.
Suddenly, brutally, he shoved her over onto her stomach. He pushed her face into the pillow. She
struggled, but he grabbed her arms and held her by her two narrow wrists with one hand. With the other, he reached for something beside him. She heard a tiny rustling. He lifted her head by her hair to let her breathe for a moment, then shoved her face down again. Shockingly quickly, and with only the lubrication of the condom, he invaded her ass. He moved fast through the first, worst part, getting through the sphincter. Once inside, he stroked back and forth rapidly, roughly. He leaned forward with a hand on each of her elbows, pushed flat onto the bed. After a few seconds, he put one hand on the spot between her shoulder and the back of her neck, effectively paralyzing her and stopping the thrashing of her head. He let her leave it to one side of the pillow. She was sputtering and howling. Her feet beat against the mattress. She was trying to reach him with her hands, until he pushed them both under her stomach, keeping them there with his weight. His strokes were longer now and harder. Her sounds alternated between gasps for breath and grunts of pain. When he came this time, it was with a little howl of pleasure. He pulled out finally and let himself fall on top of her, then slowly rolled to the side. He put his right hand on the back of her neck and rubbed it affectionately. When she tried to scramble out of the bed, he moved his hand to her throat again and pulled her into a spoon position inside the curve of his body.
“Mmmmmmm,” he said.
“You motherfucker,” she snapped. She was still struggling, so he lay one leg firmly on top of hers.
“And I haven’t even touched these beautiful breasts yet,” he said, caressing them with his free hand.
She screamed, not a sound of fear but of full-on frustration.
“Shhhhh,” he said, as if to a baby. “Shhhhh.”
She actually quieted. But she continued to breathe heavily.
“Now, are you going to tell me you didn’t enjoy that?” he asked, with another of his stomach-turning smiles. He really wondered what she would say.
She managed to turn her head to look up at his. He winked.
“I’ve had better,” she spat out, and turned away.
He leaned in and kissed the back of her neck. She shuddered.
“I’ll give you some time to think through your strategy,” he said. From somewhere, he took two sets of plastic cuffs and cuffed first her legs together, then her hands to the bedpost. “Daddy needs to get a little rest.” He added, in a completely different tone, as he moved to his side of the bed and stretched out. “Fuck with me, and I’ll really hurt you.”
She said nothing. She just stayed where she was and thought.
She thought about two things.
She thought about the helplessness, which was the thing that could destroy her – the gut-twisting awareness that he could do whatever he wanted to her, that at any moment he could do anything, anything at all, no matter how terrible.
And she knew how terrible people could be.
The next thing she felt was rage. Sheer, mind-numbing rage. Well, that was interesting. She hadn’t felt anything like that, or really anything at all in such a long, long time. Nonetheless, she cut it off, she cut it off almost immediately, before it could destroy any chance she might have to get out of this in one piece. Anyone who’s had a small child knows how to do that. It wasn’t long before the bitter, caustic self she knew so well re-emerged, ready, as always, to do pointless battle. All she was left with was the determination that she was going to come out of this alive, not because she had any particular desire to go on living, but because she sure as shit wasn’t going to let this asshole or any other be the one doing the deciding. Whatever he may have thought about the issue. That’s all she knew.
The decision having been made, it became all about how. And how meant doing the opposite of everything he expected her to do. Everything he was prepared to handle. Without throwing him off his stride so much that he just killed her outright even at the loss of his own anticipated fun. It came into her head immediately, what to do. Scheherazade. She would tell him some good stories. Some of them might even be true. Maybe all of them. That wasn’t important. The only thing that mattered was keeping him more intrigued than annoyed. That shouldn’t be too difficult. She’d always had this weird ability to keep her head in a crisis. She couldn’t help thinking. She was betting he would like that, would like the challenge, someone who was on such an obvious ego trip as he was.
Like this. Like the worst thing in the world was to wake up to find his dick up her crotch. Not that it wasn’t disconcerting. And quite frankly, an almost forgotten sensation. But she had a vivid imagination and a wide knowledge of the horrors of the world. In the greater scheme of things, this was nothing. And how proud of himself he was. He thought he was so original to add on that lovely fillip about her having to come before he could or would. She had to hand it to him; it was clever. Some might call it diabolical. It would definitely upset the uninitiated. But he was so very, very pleased with himself. He was all vanity. And vanity was a giant target.
She had to be different from the others, but not too different. Shocked, angry, anything but stupid. They’d always said she’d had a heart of ice. Only two people knew differently, but neither one of them was here now.
She knew she’d given this man a shock. Yet she also realized that to demonstrate right away that she was not like the others was also to let him know that she was capable of a self-control and a capacity for rational thought at a time when few were. He wouldn’t make the mistake of underestimating her. But then again, he would continue to overestimate himself. She could see that right away. And also that she couldn’t afford to second-guess herself. She didn’t have the attention to spare. She needed to do what her calculating mind told her to do, and if she went too far in a wrong direction, she’d have to play it from there. It’s not like she’d ever done anything like this before. Just thinking about what lay ahead, she was already exhausted.
She’d left herself wide open for this. No. She couldn’t think about that now either. She’d always known their line of work was dangerous. And while there’d been something worth protecting, they had taken great care to do so. But she’d let the security go lax after what happened, especially here, at her solitary, bayside getaway. It just hadn’t seemed to matter. Well, as it turned out, it did. But there was no time for self-recrimination now. She just needed to keep her head when appropriate, appear to lose it when appropriate, and find out what she could about him. And she might just keep herself alive.
But at what cost?
Well, that didn’t matter, did it? It wasn’t about her life really, was it? It was about winning and not letting the other guy win. Because she could tell right away, this guy really needed to lose. She’d be doing the world a favor, and, unlike usual, not even charging for it.
And she knew, knew with a completely non-rational certainty, knew the moment she felt him inside her, that she was one of the few people who might possibly be able to do this.
He knew it too, she could tell. Not that she could undo him. But that there was something. Something different about her. Maybe even a level on which they could connect. These things were chemical. They were palpable, if you knew how to face facts. He only had an inkling right now, that she was something special. She’d have to really work to prove him right.
The next challenge presented itself almost immediately. And she reacted the way any woman would. It was a purely physical response anyway. The first attack had been the introduction, devilish and, in its own way, subtle. The assault on her rear was about pure domination. She was his, and he would do what he liked with her. And what he liked would hurt. Cry, she told herself, cry hard. It was what he would want. It was against all her, for lack of a better word, instincts. In her current state of mind, that is, the state of mind she’d been in up until a few moments ago, the most natural thing would be for her to shut down, turn inward, feel nothing. The way she had done for years. But he had to think she had feelings. He needed to see them; that’s what his sort fed on.
She couldn’t help thinking of a line from an old British movie with Peter O’Toole: “I stand outside myself, watching myself watching myself. I smile. I smile. I smile.” If you just substituted scream for smile, it was dead on.
She lived too much in her head, she thought. That’s how she could get to this point, able to react and think about her reaction at the same time. She’d always been made to feel a little guilty because she could do that. Why couldn’t she be more authentic, more in-the-moment? More like everybody else? Only her husband had understood. Only he had been capable of making her feel safe enough to suspend the incessant protective activity of her brain, and allow herself to feel. And she
had
felt. Boy, had she felt. With him and, always, with –. No. Stop there. Stop there.
And how had that worked for her?
She was better off being what she had previously been, what she was once again. “Cold bitch.” That’s what they’d called her. What a laugh. Part of her was still burning, still smoldering from the conflagration that had turned her life into a sea of ash seven years ago. Well, fuck them all, and fuck him. She would out-think him and out-emote him. She would use everything. Everything that was left. And she would beat him. And he would be the one to die.
Because whatever he said, she knew the truth. One of them had to.
“So tell me about yourself,” he said comfortably, after a light doze. Somehow, the sharpness of his presence made the blue and yellow flowers on the sheets and pillowcase beneath him seem even more faded than they already were. And yet for the first time in a long while, she noticed them. “Why am I here?” he asked.
“You’re asking me?” she replied.
“Yes.”
“Don’t you ask that when you get the job? Don’t you wonder? Don’t you have any natural curiosity?”
“No, no, and no. I was just making conversation.”
“What
are
you?”
“Not human.”
“You’re human. ‘You. You’re barely human.’” She said the line in a dead tone. “That’s from a movie.”
“And it’s true.”
He’d freed her legs, but her arms were still cuffed to the bed. She wouldn’t ask him to let her go.