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  “Tell me, kitten,” he said, still smiling boldly at me, “why exactly did you try to kill yourself?”

  Gav

  Delicious, her body. The water turned the pale skin pink, reddened her cheeks in the white fog of the water. She held her arms up obediently on either side of the tub, the bandages only a few inches above the waterline. I kept waiting for her hands to slide down accidentally toward the water, but they never did.

  She was perfectly in control of her body. I could see it from the way she moved. Carefully, her toes tested the water, slipped in only when she was sure that it wouldn’t burn.

  I wouldn’t burn you, I wanted to say. I wouldn’t hurt you.

  Of course, that wasn’t quite true.

  “Why did you try to kill yourself?”

  It was a simple question, but from the way she reacted I could tell that it was one she hadn’t had to answer in a long time. Her plump pink lips parted, her chestnut hair darkening almost to black at the roots from where her sweat had moistened it. A strand of hair lay stuck to her neck, and I wanted to brush it away and kiss the spot it had left.

  “I was bored,” she said.

  “Of life?”

  “Yes.” The word slipped out past her lips, and she stared as though watching it go. I was silent. I wanted to listen. I wanted to understand.

  “I hated my parents,” she said. “My stepdad was horrible, and my mom didn’t stop him when he…”

  She waved her hand at me as though I knew what was in that lacuna - a lifetime of abuse, maybe, or some kind of emotional torment. The memories choked in her mouth, and she looked down. Was she looking at her body under the clear hot water? Or was she trying to find her reflection there between the ripples?

  The silence was broken by a single drop of water falling from the faucet into the tub. Her head jerked up and she continued as though reawakened.

  “I didn’t like anything… anything at all. It was like the world was empty, black and white instead of color, like you said. Mostly black.”

  “Black?”

  I thought of my shadow creeping in on the edges of my life, narrowing my focus until I could think of nothing else but how to get rid of it.

  “Nothing looked like it used to. Food didn’t taste like food. I’d eat an apple, and halfway through I would realize that I had been eating it. I would go out with my friends, and they’d all be laughing and happy. I’d laugh, too, because I didn’t want them to know that there was this thing that was wrong with me. But there wasn’t anything inside. I imagined my heart inside my chest, and there was nothing but a hole there.”

  She looked up at me, the shine that meant sadness in her eyes. Lifting my hand, I wiped her cheek as solemnly as a priest. Saying nothing. This was her confession. She swallowed, all the while searching my face as if I had the answer.

  “And I was curious.”

  “Curious?” I raised one eyebrow, encouraging her on.

  “To see if there was anything else. Anything more that happens after… this world is over.”

  I lowered the washcloth.

  “And?”

  “And?”

  “Is there anything else?”

  I realized that I had been holding my breath as I asked the question. As though this girl, this beautiful young woman in my cage, could give me the answer to something I had long decided had no answer. Strands of hair fluttered loose as she shook her head.

  “I didn’t actually kill myself. My parents found me before I could die.”

  “But did you see anything at all?” I leaned forward. Her eyes were deep pools; I could trust her. Had she found truth, somewhere beyond this world? It was what I hoped, what I feared. “Did you get close?”

  Biting her lip, she blinked away the last of her tears. My pulse was pounding, and I thought that she could hear my anticipation, so loud was the beating of my heart. The seconds drew out; I clenched the cloth in my hand.

  “No,” she said finally, looking surprised at the emotion in my face. “No. There’s nothing after this.”

  I turned away from her to breathe out my disappointment. The stone of the granite tub felt warm under my hand, like a living thing.

  “Gavriel?” she asked.

  My face snapped shut as I smiled at her. No more. I would draw her out as much as I could, but I could not risk drawing myself out.

  “You remind me of a poem,” I said. “The last lines of a poem. Would you like to hear them?”

  She nodded. She was confused. So was I.

  “The shooting stars in your black hair, in bright formation, are flocking where, so straight, so soon? —Come, let me wash it in this big tin basin, battered and shiny like the moon.”

  Picking up the bottle of shampoo, I squeezed out a dollop into my hand.

  “Come,” I said. “Let me wash your hair.”

  Her legs tucked to her chest, she faced away from me. I cupped handfuls of water over her hair. My hands stroked her head, massaging her scalp down to the tops of her trapezius muscle. The shampoo rose in clumps of thick white foam on her dark hair. Her shoulders settled against the cream granite as I worked the shampoo through her hair, her skin smoother than any polished stone.

  When I rinsed the lather from her hair, she tilted her head back into my cupped palm, the way I had held her when she was on the kitchen table. She was beginning to trust me. The curve running from her neck to her shoulder was exquisite. I longed to run my fingers over her whole body. Soon, very soon.

  After so much talk of darkness, I did not realize until after I had finished rinsing her hair that the shadow had retreated from the edges of my vision.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Kat

  The water stopped steaming. Gav’s hands were in my hair, his long fingers teasing out the knots slowly, carefully. He slicked my hair back with more hot water, and all of the thoughts that had been drifting through my mind slowly washed away with the remnants of the shampoo.

  My suicide. It felt like forever ago. How long had it been? Seven years?

  I’d lied to Gavriel. My stepdad had been horrible to me, sure. He’d beat my mother and me too, sometimes. But the numbness had started creeping through my body long before then.

  The first emotion to go was happiness. It went hiding one day, and I thought it would come back, but it didn’t. I searched for it for a while, then one day I stopped searching. I had forgotten what it felt like, or why I was searching for it in the first place.

  Then I couldn’t feel sadness. No sadness, no frustration. When bad things happened, I would have to force myself to frown, as though I cared whether or not our baseball team had lost, or whether or not a character in a movie died. I didn’t care when my tests started coming back with failing grades.

  Anger was the last one, and I clung to it for a while, yelling at my mom for my stepdad’s faults. Then even the anger left, and I was alone with nothing but a barrier in my brain that kept me from feeling a thing.

  Some people can’t feel pain on their skin, I read once. They touch a hot stove and don’t even notice. It was like that, but with everything. It’s not that the feelings were gone, really. They weren’t. They were just buried so deep inside of me that I didn’t even want to think about what would happen if they came back.

  Sorrow and happiness both, sunken into the tissue of my body. Hiding under layer after layer of skin, invisible. Like an empty box wrapped and put under the Christmas tree to tease.

  Unwrap me and there’s nothing left.

  Gavriel’s hand was moving down my neck, now, the washcloth cleaning off every inch of my skin. Here, trapped in this house, trapped in this bathtub, I had nothing else to think about but the sensation of his hands on my body. I wasn’t worrying about getting enough hours for work, or being able to pay off my bills. The only thing that my mind had to think about was him.

  And oh, God forgive me, he felt good.

  Was he evil? Truly evil? Was he good, as he claimed, killing only evil men? I didn’t kno
w, and my body didn’t care.

  His hands moved down and over my breasts, and I let out a small gasp as the washcloth grazed my nipple. Gav leaned forward. I could hear his breathing in my ear, and his dark hair was partially reflected in the ripples of water. But he didn’t say anything.

  No, he said nothing, but his hands said it all. As he switched the washcloth from one hand to another, his fingers cupped my breast, sliding back and forth, letting the weight sway in the water. Then his thumb moved up, tracing a circle over my already erect nipple.

  He knew how I felt. He had to know. My breathing was shallow, and he’d done this before - back on the table. Now, though, he was more gentle, his strokes like a soft breeze over my skin. He cupped another hand of water and held it to my collarbone where the silver hearts lay against my skin, letting the hot water drip down slowly.

  Before, I had struggled against him. Struggled against the straps that held me down. Now there was nothing holding me down, and yet I did not struggle.

  What could I have done? You might ask this. You might forgive me for giving in. There was nothing I could have done, not really. But the truth was that I had spent the last of my willpower in our conversation, and I did not want to fight any more.

  No, it was that I did not want to fight this. Not when the washcloth stroked my nipple so slowly, not when he squeezed my breast slightly and made me moan in the back of my throat. The ache that I had not yet gotten rid of surged between my legs, swelled in the hot water.

  At the sound of my moan he nuzzled the side of my head, his mouth against the bottom of my ear. His arm crossed over my chest and held me tight as he kissed me on the neck just below my ear, and made me moan again.

  I was melting in this bathtub, melting under the pressure of his hands and the heat of his breath on my skin. He kissed me again and his tongue curved out, caressing the bottom of my earlobe, sliding hot and wet until finally he sealed his lips around the lobe and sucked, his tongue still teasing the strip of flesh between his lips.

  “Ohhhh.”

  In my mind I was already making excuses, constructing a story that I would tell the world once I escaped.

  I did it to make him trust me, I would say. I wanted to trick him into thinking I was attracted to him. It would be a good story, and maybe I would be able to make myself believe it, later.

  If I had to stand before God, though, I would not be able to lie - I wanted him badly, wanted his tongue on more places than just my ear. Wanted him inside of me, this murderer, this kidnapper, this monster. I wanted everything he had to offer me and more.

  This, too, I would lie about: when his hand slid down between my thighs, I parted my legs to give him access, I arched my back and groaned again as his fingers found me and slid down, curved, pressing perfectly against the spot where I needed relief.

  Tension licked through my nerves as his mouth moved down to my collarbone, licking, sucking, breathing alternately hot and cold on my neck. His two fingers slid into my body and I whimpered as he let his teeth graze my shoulder, his lips soft and delicious and sinful, oh so sinful.

  He moaned along with me as his fingers thrust deeper, then out again. His breath matched my own. It had been my choice to kiss this man and I had chosen wrong, and the penalty was the ache that he sent running through my limbs as his fingertips pressed down into me, the ache that rose and rose, never bursting, no, every time I was close he retreated and I twisted in his arms, unable to find release.

  He kissed the side of my jaw as his fingers worked into me, the pressure inside of me mounting and mounting, like heat would expand out the air in a balloon. I was stretched thin, my nerves vibrating with pure desire. God, I would never admit this later, but the desire that tore at me cared nothing about the man making me desire him, cared nothing about his innocence or guilt. It wanted only release. So much pressure. So much.

  My hips bucked against his hand, water splashing at the sides of the tub. Suddenly, he was gone. I gasped as he pulled his hand back, his fingers one second there and the next second not, and my body felt so empty, so open. I clutched for his arm but he was already drying off.

  “What… why…” I stammered. He gazed at me levelly, and my protests died in my throat. Who was I to ask him for satisfaction? Guilt flooded my body, and my cheeks turned hot, hotter than the water in the tub that was already cooling off. We had been in the bathroom for a long time, and the suds from the shampoo had already been absorbed back into the bathwater.

  “Why did you do it?” he asked.

  “What?”

  “Why did you try to kill yourself?”

  I bit back a thousand replies. He had already gotten an answer from me, but apparently that wasn’t the one he wanted.

  “Why do you care?”

  “I’m so used to people begging me to let them live. It’s interesting to see that you swing the other way. You want to die.”

  “I don’t,” I said. Tears welled in my eyes - more from the ache still racking my body than from any kind of emotion. I needed release, and I wasn’t going to get it, and damned if I was going to beg him. “Not anymore.”

  “What changed, kitten?” His voice was soft, sympathetic, and if I didn’t know what he was I would have loved him then, even as I hated him for bringing me to the edge and leaving me there.

  “Death wasn’t going to make things any better for me,” I said bitterly. “I decided to stay alive. I was going to leave my family. I was going to go to college. Get a good job. Get a good life. Of course, that was before a serial killer locked me in his basement and tortured me.”

  “Hardly torture. You flatter me.”

  I stared at him, mouth agape.

  “You tied me up—”

  “And what? Brought you close to the best orgasm you’ll ever have? Such torture. I didn’t let you finish? Come, now, kitten. Don’t tempt me to show you what real torture is.”

  I clamped my mouth shut. I had no doubt that he knew how to torture. He had tortured that professor for days before killing him. My mind saw again the body on the table, the slashes, and bile rose in my throat. How could I have let this monster touch me like that?

  “You wouldn’t try to kill yourself again, would you?”

  “Maybe,” I shot back. “How long are you going to keep me prisoner here?”

  “You’re not a prisoner, you’re a trespasser on my property. You’ve fallen into a hole in the forest. You probably won’t ever get out. It’s not bad. It’s just life.”

  “Life in a cage is not a life.”

  “You’re mixing your metaphors, kitten.”

  “I’m not your kitten,” I spat. “You can dress me up and feed me and give me baths like I’m your pet, but I’ll never be your pet.”

  He held out a towel to me, and I grabbed it and wrapped it around my body quickly. The ache between my thighs made my legs shake as I stood. He chuckled.

  “It’s a good thing your wrists aren’t hurt, kitten.”

  “Why?”

  “We’re not going back to the basement.”

  Gav

  She dried herself off quickly, then knotted the towel under her armpit. Her body was wonderful, the curve of it under the terry cloth. I licked my lips as I thought about how she would taste.

  “Are you going to kill me?” she asked. Her voice was trembling, but there was still a hint of desire in there, as much as she tried to hide it.

  “You keep asking me that. Does it really matter?”

  “Of course it matters,” she said.

  “This entire time in the bathtub, you were talking about how life doesn’t matter. How boring it is.”

  She bit her lip. Oh, my. I would have to kiss her right there. I wanted to bite her lip, too.

  “I don’t want to die.”

  “I don’t want to kill you, kitten,” I said, smiling kindly, or so I hoped. “Behave, and I won’t have to.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Kat

  Would he do it? Was he going to kil
l me? Dizziness overtook me as I stood up from the bath, the heat turning my head fuzzy.

  His hand clamped over my wrist, and I followed limply as he led me back into the bedroom. My eyes lingered on my bra lying on the bathroom floor. If only I’d used the razor when I’d had the chance. I wouldn’t make that mistake again, I decided. I only hoped I had the chance.

  Leaving me next to the bed, he opened his closet and pulled out an armful of clothes. There must have been a half dozen different dresses, and an equal amount of silk lingerie.

  “Here,” he said. “Try something on.”

  “Did you get these for me?” My fingers stroked the fabric of the top dress, a satin gown that looked more expensive than my last car. Beads glittered across the bodice. The dresses looked to be my size. Had he bought them specially for me? There was no way. But he looked up at me with a bright look in his eyes. Hopeful. It made me feel ill.

  “I want you to wear something nice tonight,” he said. “Something pretty, like you.”

  “I’m not pretty,” I mumbled.

  “You are very pretty,” he said dispassionately, as though correcting me on a fact.

  “Which one do you want me to wear?” I asked.

  “I don’t know what color you would like best,” he said. “So I got a few.”

  He certainly had. The second dress was a scarlet red sheath that felt even silkier than the first. And there was a whole pile of them here.

  “I… I don’t know.” He had me completely confused. Threatening to kill me in one breath, then offering me these presents in the next? Was he dressing me up so that he could cut me to pieces? It made no sense. But then again, neither did anything else he had done with me.

  “This one,” he said, pulling out a long strapless green gown. The fabric was gauzy, slipping through my fingers as he laid it in my arms along with a hanger of black silk lingerie. “And these.”

  “I—thank you,” I stammered.

  “Go try them on,” he said.