She was dead.
And it was my fault.
But even that was robbed from me.
“Sleep.”
Those hands began to tremble with the burden of their lie, quaking at the effort to uphold the illusion, even as a feminine voice tried to promise and appease.
A laugh raced up from the bottom of my lungs. Some dying morsel of rebellion desperate to be vented, before that too, was snuffed out. Choked, horrible madness seeking an outlet before I cracked and gore spilled through the gaps.
Iwantedto laugh.
Needed to scream and claw and fight and rage until there was nothing left but a blessed wash of nothing that I’d tasted in a mass of seething, panicked Caledonians. My truest nature unleashed.
Again, my fingers twitched, but that was all.
Except the light of the wall, growing ever stronger as it feasted on everything I might have been, before I wasnothing.
It matched me beat for beat. Spinning a gossamer web of lies around every part of me, he wove commands through my sinew. Installed failsafes that were so much worse than the leash I’d handed over myself, for these were commands that were etched into bone.
He countered my every attempt to escape before I couldn’t tell the difference between my thoughts and his—and he did it with a breathtaking ease I knew to fear even then. Even as I was herded back,down. Into the dark, where I was freed of the burden of my empathy.
Where I could be numb.
Just as I’d wanted.
The last thing I heard before the screaming dark washed over me was the sound of his voice. Murmuring words I couldn’t understand. Low and deep. A rumble that engulfed me with a blanket of oblivion.
5
Liquid heat pulsed through my blood.
Hot. Savage.Desperate.
It was a lure.
One I couldn’t help but take, for it pulled me up from the muck and the mire. A gentle tug, the shifting of sediment slipping off heavy, useless limbs, and I was able to take a breath. Lids fluttering open to find that I was not alone in the gloom.
He was watching me with a dark intensity amid a swirling backdrop of mist and fog. Face a careful, indifferent mask that couldn’t hide what was lurking just beneath the surface. In the unforgiving gleam shimmering in that inky, walled off glare. It was there in the quick, shallow breaths, and the electric tingle singing through my blood.
Want.
Frustrated, furious, futile need.
It was a poison. Rot, spreading through my veins. Leaving aching fever in its wake.
Cheeks hot, my back grew tight. Muscles twisting until I arched with a raspy, guttural groan. Clenching, my head tilted back to expose the length of my throat in a display I made with unconscious ease.
His grin was predatory.
Unblinking, alien, and utterly fixated on my helpless posturing, for I couldn’t hide what he could plainly see. What he could sense down in the dark, lurking in flushed skin growing slick and swollen.
Need.
It echoed in each and every flutter of my heart. Answering his call, my body wept for attention. For touch that would stretch and burn and remake even as it eased the ache of neglect. Forgiving the years of lonely solitude so I might learn this new way to burn.
Punishment, for all that I was. All I’d done.
