His(66)
“I’m sorry.”
“I’ve stopped looking for him. Maybe he’s dead already.”
The silence between us was so intimate. I wanted to lean forward and kiss him, hug him, pull him into my arms and tell him that it would be alright. But there was nothing that would be alright, not with him. Not with me.
“Your turn,” I whispered.
“What can I do now?” he asked. He didn’t expect an answer - it sounded more like a cry to heaven than a real question.
How could I answer him? I didn’t know what it was like to be a killer. I didn’t know what it was like to want to murder people, to have that dark of a need. I reached up and took his hand, brought it to my lips. All the while I looked into his eyes.
If I was never going to escape this place, I could do this for him.
“I want you to take it out on me,” I said. “Everything.”
His desperation turned into something else. His eyes boiled with emotion, so strange after seeing him blank for so long. The room was growing brighter with the rising sun.
“I don’t want to kill you,” he said, his voice cracking.
“Don’t kill me. Come close. Hurt me. Here.”
I lifted my wrists to him. What was I asking him?
For exactly what you want.
There was a part of me, long hidden, that had desires. Dark desires. When he’d bound me by my wrists and tortured me with his tongue, they had come out. When his hand spanked my skin red, they had screamed with pleasure. I wanted this. I wanted him. I wanted to be his.
“Tie me up,” I said. “Do whatever you need to do. I want it too.”
He looked up at me.
“You don’t want it. Not really. If you knew what my shadow wanted—”
“You’re not the only one with the shadow,” I whispered.
He paused for a moment, his eyes searching mine.
“I wanted to die for so long,” I said, my voice hoarse with emotion. “I didn’t feel anything but a numb kind of pain. When I’m with you... it goes away.”
“I’ll hurt you.” He said it so softly the words felt invisible.
“I want you to hurt me.”
“Badly. I might leave marks.”
I turned my wrists around, showing off the only scars I had.
“I’m already marked. Besides,” I said, “who else is going to see them?”
Gav
Take it out on me, she said. And here the shadow slipped, revealing an emotion I haven’t felt in a while.
Fear.
Her wrists defied me to hurt her. How could I hurt her more than she had already been hurt?
“Why would you do this?” I asked.
“I’m trapped here.”
She stopped trying to beg me. Stopped trying to plead. Instead, she spoke calmly and rationally. Prescribing a course of action for my disease.
“Is there any other alternative?” she asked. “If you don’t want to kill me…”
“I don’t want to hurt you.”
That was a lie. I wanted to turn her flesh red and make her scream. But I wanted to please her at the same time. I wanted to plunge myself into her. I wanted to shatter her and put her back together.
“You’re too late. I can’t be hurt anymore. Not by you. Not by anyone.”
I took her wrists in my hand and pulled them up over her head. Her eyes went wide with fright. She was right to be frightened. I was frightened by what I was going to do.
“We’ll see, kitten,” I said.
Kat
I couldn’t stop looking at him as he got out the rope.
“Put out your hands,” he said. I did. I was obedient, a good pet, playing along even though it wasn’t a game anymore. The rest of my life was here with him, and I told myself I might as well enjoy it. But there was no need to pretend. When he wrapped the rope around my wrists four times, a thrill ran up my arms.
As he tightened the knot around the middle, I couldn’t help but smile. I was scared. I was already thinking about what he would do to me once he had me all tied down. Before, I was ashamed, thinking about what people would say if they knew I went along willingly. But there was a lightness that I hadn’t felt in a long, long while. Nobody was here to see me, nobody was ever going to know.
Nobody would know that I wanted this. No one except him.
The knots tied my wrists together this time, and he wrenched them above my head.
“Why are you smiling, kitten?”
His free hand slid down roughly over my body.
“Because I want this.”
For the first time in a long time, I let myself feel desire. The ache between my legs grew as his hand slid down between my thighs, and I embraced the ache, let it grow.
He kissed me roughly, insistently, his lips tearing the breath away from my lungs. I gasped as he broke away from the kiss.