But I had to keep playing it. Sucking in a whimper, I watched as she attached the end of my chain to a solid leaden ring on the wall, checked it twice, three times, securing it with enough give so I could just settle myself on the narrow metal cot.
She reached for the hem of the stupid shirt that was getting exactly what it deserved, revealing the defaced wreck of the body my old masters had started and Noam had helped along.
My trousers were next, the once-luxurious suit material I’d been so impressed with sliding down my legs, a mere blood-soaked rag. I stepped out, laid bare. I quaked, trying to keep my face impassive, while she bounced on her heels, eyes glinting with delight as she stepped away.
I drew in a sharp breath as she kicked some of the chains aside with her tall boot, the sound echoing like the moans of those who had worn them. But her attention, to my relief, was elsewhere.
I sat, the mattress creaking under my weight. The room was still, save for our breathing. Hers excited and uneven. Mine measured. I hoped.
Her hand pressed against my bad shoulder. I lay back, heart hammering, spine rigid against the thin fabric as her hands explored curiously across my chest, fingertips forming depressions in my scarred skin and tracing the contours of my muscles. They dug deeper, nails grazing the wounds on my face and collarbone, the ones Noam had ripped open and she had carefully treated. Maybe I could do this. Maybe if it only got this far.
No chance of that. She’d take everything. And until I could get out, I’d have to let her. In the meantime, since I couldn’t act, I’d have to leave. My mind would, anyway. Maybe if I closed?—
“Oh, and keep your eyes open, Starling.” She smiled.
“Why, ma’am?” I breathed. “So I don’t think of her?”
“No.” She sighed delicately into my ear. “I know you will anyway.” She leaned even closer, her tongue delicately flicking the outer corner of my eye. “I’ve just always wanted to see what golden tears look like.”
Then, like the strike of a match, she raised her head and threw one leg over my waist to straddle me, painfully grabbing my mostly useless arms and pinning my limp wrists above my head on the metal bedframe as she shimmied silkily out of her flowing blouse, revealing a half-moon of pale skin, lightning flashes of white scars.
“Eyes open, remember.”
I was already squeezing them shut, but I popped them open again as she gripped my wrists tighter, lifted herself, and mashed herself down again on my face, squeezing our bodies together, nearly gagging me on the salty dew that had formed between her legs.
Of course the last thing I wanted was to profane Louisa by taking her here. Putting her here, even theoretically, would be a sacrilege.Ihad been made for this place. Louisa hadn’t. Louisa was citrus perfume and pink velvet chairs and Paris art prints and soft golden lighting, and all the things they hadn’t allowed me to touch then, and I wouldn’t allow myself to touch now. But my breath hitched and I closed my eyes tightly, thinking maybe if I could reduce her to elements—a flyaway curl, a bare shoulder, a tiny mole, an outline of a girl I no longer dared to fill in completely—I could selfishly have her with me, still. Because I’d never needed her more.
Resi’s weight ground more heavily down on me, her breath hot and ragged. Meanwhile, she twisted behind her to latch her fingers onto my dick, which was betraying me. Fucking weak, the way all men were weak, and it stood rigid, a faithless column of straight-up fuck-you to my heart. Resi curled her long fingers around it, her laughter muffled in my neck as she rocked hard, roping her fingers in my bloody, coagulated strands of hair and shoving me still further up, sending some kind of sickly lavender scent up my nostrils in place of the equally horrid stench of the mine.
“Good boy.” The tendons in her neck stood out like cords as she strained against me, unaware or uncaring that I wasn’t moving of my own accord. The rattling of chains and the slapping of our bodies filled the room and echoed in the empty spaces of our tawdry crypt.
Her vanilla nails etched the vaguest traces along the curves and lines of my muscles, just enough to make my nerves twitch, to break past the numbing effect of the opioids, which I suspected would wear off in a matter of minutes.
All I could see were the shadows along the ceiling, on the flickers of light from the greasy yellow tubes overhead. On darkness. On nothing.
Look, even while being used and exploited, I’d always prided myself on finding ways to enjoy sex. But now she was even fucking stealing that, breaking it down into a pile of rotting, twisted trash, like everything else in my life she’d ever got her hands on.
My muscles trembled, trying so hard to remain still and impassive, to feel nothing. Her hand slid down my chest, fingers tracing the V of my abdomen before dipping lower. I gasped, gulping for the toxic, chemical air of the mine. Because at least it wasn’t her.
Resi chuckled darkly. “Thinking of her yet?”
I swallowed and blinked, vision a wet blur, focusing my face on the moldy ceiling, and let out a mewl, all the more pathetic for how I tried to shove it down.
“Still so quiet. Okay, how about this? Let me tellyoua story. A story of a brave girl out in the desert, fighting her way back to you. No food, little water. The dust gathers in her hair and eyes, digging agonizingly into the raw burns covering her body. Thirst grips her throat, hinting at death. A girl who grew up in luxury, who wasn’t made to endure such things. But she presses on, for you.”
Where the fuck was she going with this?
“And what does she thinkyou’redoing right now?” Resi continued, sliding wetly up my thigh again to straddle my midsection fully, leaning down until our noses touched in a parody of cuteness. “She’s thinking you’re fighting for her. That all those cute little gears in your head are turning. That you’ve got a plan. A plan to get back to her.” She hummed and giggled. “Come on now, help me out. Keep it going. What do you think she’d say if she saw what you’re really doing? Saw you likethis?” She giggled ecstatically, wriggling her hips on my dick. “If she saw how hard you are for me? Would her heart break? Would she scream? Would shecry?” Her voice grew more and more excited, relishing as my whimpers grew more and more strangled, desperately trying to suck in every emotion I’d ever felt. But it was no use. “No shit. She always cries. The question is,will.You?” She punctuated each word by scraping her sopping pussy violently up and down my shaft, that for all its wetness felt hard and abrasive as any wound.
From my eye and down my cheek, it slipped. Then another and another. Fuck me, after all that, I wascryingbecause of her, just like she wanted, and hungrily, she lapped them all up like a kitten with her little pink poison pill of a tongue.
“Areyou?”
A groan ripped from deep within my chest—pain, pleasure. Who cared?
“Areyou?” she repeated. “Speak, now.”
It was all worthless now.
