The rope was nylon, thick and red. She screamed as I tied her wrists with the thick loops. She kicked as I did the same with her ankles. Stronger than she looked, but not as strong as me. I secured the knots tightly to the bedposts. I’d practiced them for a long while, and the more she struggled, the tighter the rope would pull.
Her arms and legs were spread apart, each one tied to its own bedpost. Like the man in DaVinci’s drawing, a perfect specimen of humankind. Her body arched against the bed as she twisted to try and escape, sobbing all the while.
Would it be surprising to know that her cunning made me want her even more? Such a smart girl. Such a beautiful woman. She had brains under that soft delicious body, and I smiled as I stripped off my shirt, stanched the blood coming from my chest, and put on a bandage. When I came back to the bedroom, she had stopped struggling, her limbs stretched out tightly.
“Please, no,” she said. “Please. Gavriel.”
“You’ve been very naughty, kitten,” I said. It stung me that she had tried to kill me, stung me more than the time she’d tried to escape.
“Please. I’ll do anything. Don’t hurt me. Don’t kill me. I promise I won’t try anything else. I promise I won’t try to escape. Please—”
“You lied to me, kitten,” I said, sitting on the bed next to her. Her dress was torn at the top, exposing the black bra where she’d hidden the razor. I slid my hands over the fabric to make sure that she had no other surprises waiting for me. She bit her lip as my hands touched her body, cringing back from me.
“I won’t—”
“You tried to kill me. Tsk, tsk.”
“Don’t kill me,” she sobbed. Fear brightened her eyes. It was good; the shadow was nowhere to be found. “Please. I’ll tell you whatever you want to know. I’ll do whatever you want me to do. I’ll be good. We can do a trade. I’ll—”
“No more trades,” I said. I took hold of her dress and ripped it down the middle, tearing it off of her. Under the green fabric, her body was pale and beautiful as I had seen it before.
“No more trades. No more begging. You tried to take what you wanted. Now I will take what I want.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Kat
He stared down at my body, and I could see the reflection of myself in his eyes. They had gone dark gray, but there was no anger in them, only a horrible, terrifying calm. Blood was smeared across his bare chest where I had cut him with the razor.
I was going to die.
It had taken one second, one bad decision, one moment’s hesitation, and that was it. I closed my eyes and willed myself not to scream. Maybe he would end it quickly. The ropes bit into my wrists and ankles and my arm screamed with pain from where he had squeezed it.
“Kitten,” he said. “Kitten, look at me.”
I felt his weight shift on the bed, leaning over me. Terror seized me and I opened my eyes. He was there, hovering just above me, his eyes matched with mine.
“Are you scared to die now?” he asked.
“Please don’t—” I started, but he brought his finger to my lips and stopped my begging.
“Do you want to live?”
Another game? Or was this a real chance that he was giving me? I nodded yes, slowly.
“Then I will let you live,” he said. “See? I am not quite the monster you thought I was.”
I let go of the breath I hadn’t remembered holding in. He reached over and opened the drawer from his bedside table.
“First, though,” he said, “I told you I was going to take what I wanted. You call it torture, I think. But I rather enjoy it.”
From the drawer he pulled out his knife.
I began to scream.
I screamed at the top of my lungs, twisting away from him as he brought the knife up to my chest. I thought of the professor, of the pieces of skin stripped away from his body. Everything around me went black - the beautiful room, the expensive decorations. In the dim light my eyes could not stop staring at the point of the knife.
“Stop moving, kitten,” he said, his voice calm under my screams. He pressed one hand down, his fingers spread across my collarbone. His leg braced against my leg and no matter how I tried, I couldn’t move.
He slid the knife under the middle of my bra, between my two breasts. My screams turned ragged as I ran out of breath, trying not to let my chest heave. The air had been sucked out of the room, and there was no oxygen left. I would black out. I would—
He twisted the knife up and cut my bra in half with a single quick movement.
The noise coming from my throat now wasn’t a scream. It was a high-pitched whine, a keening while I tried not to move. The blade of the knife was cold against my skin, and he slid it down slowly, down over my belly. I imagined one more twist, my guts spilling out of my body.
Instead the knife kept moving down, down, until he had slipped it under the fabric of my panties. It rested cold against me and then he moved again, yanking the knife up. I screamed again, once, but the blade only slit the fabric.