“No, kitten.” He stood up from next to the bathtub. “Do you need me to help you undress?”
“No!” I nearly screamed the word. I couldn’t risk him finding the razor in my bra. “No, I’ll—I’ll get undressed.”
Turning away from him, I stripped quickly, balling up my bra so that the razor was well-hidden. My mouth was dry as I turned around, completely naked. I could feel the heat coming from my cheeks where I blushed hard. I hated being naked in full-light.
Stupid, maybe, to be self-conscious standing in front of a serial killer. But I couldn’t help it. His eyes swept over my body, over every roll of fat, every lumpy part that wasn’t supposed to be lumpy, over my unshaved legs and my unshaved…well, you know. I waited for him to tell me how disgusting I was, to order me into the bathtub.
Instead, he licked his lips.
“You are… incredible,” he said.
My jaw dropped. I tried to hide my surprise as he reached out and helped me step into the bath. As soon as my feet touched the water, all of my other thoughts disappeared. I slid down, letting my body sink down into the deliciously hot water. Steam rose in white billowing clouds around us, fogging the bathroom mirror.
I closed my eyes. My feet rubbed against each other underwater. It felt so good. I could almost forget where I was, who was with me. When I opened my eyes, though, he was watching me intently. He coughed slightly.
“Thank you for being obedient,” he said. “Now another trade.”
Another trade. My heart beat faster. What was he doing to me? I had never responded like this to a guy before, any guy. But the low rumble of his voice sent my heart into palpitations like I was some horny teenager. The confidence in his voice, the way he moved, the way he spoke with such sureness. There was nothing I could do but clamp down on it as hard as I could, to try and push the feeling back.
“You let me wash you, and in return I’ll put on new bandages for all your cuts. Yes?”
“Yes,” I whispered.
He took a washcloth and dipped it in the hot water. The bar of soap he picked up was one of those luxurious handmade soaps, cut like vanilla fudge. It smelled just as good, too. When he touched the washcloth to my back, my lips dropped apart. I couldn’t hold back a long sigh as the cloth moved over my shoulders, rubbing my skin in long slow circles.
“Good, kitten?” he whispered. I shook my head yes. Obedient, that’s what he wanted. That’s what I would be, until I had my chance.
He washed my back, then my neck, being careful around the silver chain. For some reason, he hadn’t asked me to take it off before bathing. I supposed that it was real silver.
The bandages peeled away without hurting, and his hands moved carefully around the cuts on my arms. The hot water only made me wince a few times, when the washcloth came too close to the fresh cuts made by the glass window. I wondered if the cuts made him think about how I had tried to escape.
He unwrapped the bandage off of one of my hands and washed around it. His fingers massaged my fingers one by one, the cloth cleaning between the cracks. The feeling was so sensual that my pulse began to quicken. He massaged the thick heel of my palm just under the deep cut, the cloth clouding the water with soap. Then he stopped, his hand still holding my wrist.
“Your wrists are the only places on your arms that you didn’t cut,” he said. He held them up higher in the light, and I knew then what he was seeing. Fear turned my blood cold. I tried to pull away, but not in time.
“They were cut before, though,” he said. “There are scars here. Along both wrists.”
He took my hand and ran his thumb over the white seam. I watched him carefully, looking for signs of anger. Instead, when he turned his face up, there were tears in his eyes. He blinked them back, but not before I could see them.
“What is this, kitten?” he asked. His voice broke my heart, it was so tender. I had to remind myself that this was the same man who had used a saw to cut a body into pieces on his kitchen table.
But this man was different from the one I had seen through the window. He seemed... gentle. Despite myself, I felt my heart opening up.
“I— I tried to commit suicide once,” I said.
“When?”
“When I was fifteen.”
He paused, and I tried to read the emotion on his face. His eyes shone a deep blue-gray in the fog of the hot water. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking. Was he pitying me? Was he annoyed with me? I wanted desperately to know, but as soon as I saw a bit of him open up, he pulled back and wore a mask of indifference.
“Was that why you ran away? Because you tried to commit suicide and failed?”
I turned my head up sharply.
“How do you know about me running away?”
“How do you know about that?” he repeated, mocking me lightly. “Come on, you work in a library. I looked it up.”
I pulled my wrist away from him and he let my hand go. The scars throbbed as I remembered the day I had tried to commit suicide. The note. The knife.