“Ask for it.”
He mouths her ear, and after his breath is cold on her wet lobe. He is panting huskily with each eager thrust, aching to hear her voice.
“If you stay quiet, I’ll keep on like this forever. I’ll fuck you until we’re both dead.
Ask for it. Ask for my finger.”
He knows she will. To end it. Her whisper comes, almost indecipherable.
“Please.”
“Please what?”
Her mouth twists in a sob as she moans, “Give me your finger.”
“Tell me to put my finger up your ass.”
”Put your finger up my ass.” Her voice is wracked with misery. Or arousal.
He is still teasing that hole, knowing the sensation there is magnifying everything rubbing and fucking and bumping her cunt.
“You want my finger in your ass?”
“Yes.”
“Beg me.”
Her words ride out on successive waves of sobs and moans.
“Please. Please finger my ass.”
He pushes his finger in, just an inch.
“You want more of it, don’t you?”
His fucking is an ultimatum.
“Yes.”
“Tell me.”
“Please give it to me. Put your finger up my ass.”
“All of it?”
“Give me all of it. I want your whole finger in my ass.” He is humping her in tiny tense thrusts, sliding up against her clit again and again and again and as she talks she can’t breath through it, resist it, any longer. The length of his finger slides in, gliding against her inner walls, filling her ass with a thrilling, frightening, pleasing pressure. Her breathing alters, her body tenses and he knows she is going to come soon.
“You like that finger in your ass?”
“Yes.”
She sounds sincere and her voice breaks on the word.
“Now,” he says, “beg me to fuck your ass.”
She begs him. There is real desperation in her voice.
“Please. Please fuck my ass.”
“You need it.”
“Please. I need you to fuck my ass.”
He slides his finger out against the clinging grip of her, stirring nerve after nerve after on his way out, pumping gently into her pussy with his prick all during that slow descent of his finger. Then his fingertip glides up and down her slippery crack once more, getting wetter and slicker before it forces her open again, fills her again, makes her moan again. He is on her, in her ass, in her cunt, taunting her nipples, filling her ears with whispers and her mouth with moans and her nose with the scent of his body and their fucking. Her flesh is quivering and no longer hers it is his because he is 83
controlling it and she can’t and she will come soon and he knows as he rides her and quivers her and fingers her bottom.
“Now say ‘fuck me.’”
“Fuck me.”
“Louder. Fuck me.”
“Fuck me.”
“Fuck me!”
“Fuck me!”
Their voices are two facing mirrors reflecting an infinite series of fuck me’s as he feels her finally give up and surrender and shudder beneath his writhing body, pulsing and spasming around his cock and his finger and she is coming and having won he gives up resisting and moaning he comes and she feels him flex over her and hears his climax ride out on a surging moan and a dying breath.
She is dying of shame but comforts herself with the thought, the promise she promises herself, that he will untie her now. That it is over.
But it isn’t. She feels him lifting himself off of her, but no hands at the ropes on her wrists and ankles. She leaves a scream unformed in her throat as he tightens the gag anew between her lips. Then she hears the rhythmic thump of his feet traversing the floor between the bed and the door and then the door closes with unendurable finality.
THREE: Cabin Fever
Fuck. These twisted fantasies had to stop.
As he cleaned up he fell into his usual post-orgasmic dolor. The nausea welled up again. So, this really was who he'd become–a man whose dick got hard thinking of scaring and hurting someone that way.
There in his remote cabin the only thing protecting Devan was his own sense of shame, and his will. Physically, she was defenseless against him, and he didn't trust himself anymore. What if he should pass her in the narrow hallway by the bedrooms, what if he succumbed to an urge, gripped her arms suddenly…There would be nothing she could do. He shuddered, cold and queasy.
But his prick twitched back to life.
When he emerged from his room, sated and guilty, when he was near her, he was as careful as he had always been, all his life, with everyone. Maybe more so, because of the guilt. When he could he avoided her completely. It made no difference.
He was still tormented by his dark fantasies.
Then, one day, as he sat, absentmindedly fingering the strings of his guitar, his head bent over a few sheets of stubbornly wordless music, he realized that there had been a shift. Stealing glances at her from under his brow, he watched her where she sat, gazing out the window toward the woods, looking lost in thought. Her delicate fingers were lazily, sensuously tracing a path up and down the smooth pale skin of the inside of her forearm. He caught himself. He was imagining her fingertips feathering over his own arm, picturing his own fingers following the invisible path she was drawing 85
on her skin. When he came back to himself he found his breath fast and shallow. And his dick was hard.
Damnit. What the hell was she doing there? She wasn't like any die-hard fan he had ever encountered, much less…It made no sense. She didn't even seem interested in him, really. Yes he caught her watching him once in a while, but it was never one of those creepy devouring stares he'd been trapped in so many times. Besides, he watched her, didn't he?
Less and less was he forced to creep off to the seclusion of his bedroom to answer dark fantasies. But more and more he found himself thinking of her. Not as intruder. Not as scapegoat. Her, Devan, this person he was trapped with. Wondering who she was, wondering what she was thinking when she smiled as her eyes moved over a passage in the book in her hands.
His fantasies, first fueled by thoughts of cruelty and coercion, dissolved into hazy images of twining fingers, warm embraces, tender kisses. And the change caused Vaughn fresh anxiety.
Devan hated this—the strain between them, the thought that he believed she had come with the intention of spying on him. Or worse. She understood the pain of that kind of violation and to be the cause of it was unendurable.
Especially now. It wasn't like that first night, when he'd been so angry. Almost violent. Now he did not seem brutal, or mean. He seemed…sad.
And he was wary and distant and they rarely spoke except when they were brought together by his stiffly polite hospitality. He prepared every meal for two and always checked to be sure he was making something she would like. In an effort to do 86
her part she always washed up after and helped out with small chores when he would let her. But he was obviously trying to steer clear of her.
But he still frightened her—even if, under her fear there was that perplexing urge marked by the dull ache that throbbed in her sex and in her belly whenever he was near. Every day, some glaring look of his, or some pained expression on his face would push her almost to tears. It was just too much, after all she'd been through. She could never relax. Her body was always tense, her senses constantly straining to detect some threatening move, her mind constantly working out how she might run or defend herself if he tried anything. She was strained to her limits.
She noted, though, with a certain detachment, that she was not a quivering mass, twitching nervously, eyes darting around her all the time. All her painful tension was on the inside. Outside she was soft, still, quiet. Her soul and her body barely touched. And, except for a moment of weakness the night he had caught her, she had never let him see her cry. And she never would.
Devan woke in the hazy light of late afternoon and realized, after a few dozy moments, that she was alone in the cabin. Hard and sudden, anxiety struck her. She tried to keep it vague, keep it at a distance, not put it into words or images, but she couldn’t keep away from the thought that it was Conrad. That he was close. That he’d done something to Vaughn. She felt a strange, urgent concern for Vaughn. Even telling herself she was being paranoid, she was compelled to find him, just to prove everything was all right. She checked his room and the bathroom, just to be sure she wasn’t imagining the total, disconcerting silence that meant he wasn’t there with her, then she 87
peered out the windows, one after another, scanning the perimeter of the house, hoping to find Vaughn returning from a walk in the woods, or doing some chore outside. But there was no sign of him.
A sickening dread took hold of her. But it was silly. Everything was fine, there was no reason to fret just because Vaughn had left the cabin. The man had a right to get out, get some air, move around.
But she couldn’t get Conrad out of her mind, couldn’t stop picturing him closing on her, on them, doing something to Vaughn to get him out of the way and take her back with him.
Frightened as she was of Vaughn, she couldn’t bear the thought of him being hurt on her account.
In a fever of anxiety Devan bolted out the back door. As soon as the chill afternoon air hit her face, her arms, seeped in through the thin t-shirt she was wearing, her hysteria ebbed and she was left with quiet terror. It was pointless to go traipsing off into the woods in hopes of finding Vaughn. He might have gone in any direction, he could be anywhere, close or far. The only little thing for her to do was to circle the bit of clearing there by the cabin, then go back inside. And wait.
Of course he wasn’t chopping wood, or near the septic system, or the generator.
The final possibility was the little outbuilding on the north edge of the clearing. She had no faith that he was there, but the task of checking, at least, would delay her return to the cabin and her solitary wait there. As she turned toward the little building one fat, heavy drop of rain pelted her cheek, cold and hard. In that second, as she felt the icy wetness slide down her cheek, she felt a new twinge of fear, and suddenly she was 88
terrified to approach the shack. Like she was bound to find something awful there. Or be found there. But this was dumb, too, just like her terror over Vaughn’s un-extraordinary absence.
Just fucking go and see if he’s there, and when he’s not, just go back and read or
something ‘til he gets back
.
She went up the few steps to the door and knocked. Then listened. Then knocked again. Rain was splatting on her back and shoulders, tumbling noisily on the roof, thumping softly into the dirt and plants. She knocked again. The longer she waited, the more desperately she needed to see inside, even as she felt like she was watching a bad horror film, shouting at the screen, no, idiot, just go back to the house! She tried the door. Of course it was unlocked. She opened it, actually hoping to hear Vaughn shouting at her to get the fuck out and leave him alone. But it was dark and quiet inside.
She called Vaughn’s name in a pathetic, questioning tone and the expected silence came back to her. She was sure now. Positive that something was wrong. She just felt it. Dying of fear she stepped inside among the vague forms lining the walls, barely lit by the fading daylight sifting through the dirty windows. She was too focused, too frightened, to even wonder what they were. Her skin was absolutely crawling as she moved farther into the room and she made out a little cot against the far wall, lumpy with blankets. She almost cried out because the shape looked to her like a person, and now she was getting image after image—Vaughn asleep, about to wake to her prowling around his little hideaway-within-a-hideaway; Vaughn, dead, murdered by Conrad; Conrad, hiding, waiting for her. She was about ready to pass out from terror, but had to 89
prove to herself that the form on the little cot was just what it had to be—a pile of blankets. Nothing more.
Suddenly a voice sounded behind her.
“Devan.”
Vaughn had been dying to get the fuck out of the cabin, and away from her. But each time he thought of going out, taking a walk, going to the workshop out back, he couldn’t put the thought of her there, alone, free to riffle through his things, out of his mind. Finally that afternoon when she fell asleep on the sofa, he decided to take the chance that she’d be out for half an hour or an hour, and slipped out. He’d meant to go for a walk, but in his haste and stealth he hadn’t dressed for it, so he’d ended up in the shop. Not much later, he’d needed to pee, and had gone a little distance into the woods.
It was when he was coming back that he'd noticed her walking, slowly, holding herself as if she were cold, up the steps to the door of the shop. He’d lingered behind a tree, watching her, wondering what the fuck she could possibly be up to, coming out there to bug him when she’d had the pleasure of his company non-stop inside the damned cabin. When she opened the door and went inside he was amazed that he was amused, and not filled with the expected violent loathing. Not sure what he was going to do, he crossed the clearing and stood at the bottom of the steps to watch her tiptoe toward the far end of the room, toward the cot he kept there to lay and think and doze when he was bored of the cabin and tired of working. What did she think she was doing, sneaking up on him? Was she going to try to seduce that pile of blankets? And why was he so fucking entertained, when he should be ready to kill the bitch for stalking him like 90
that, hunting him down, not just to his cabin in the woods, but beyond that, out to his work shop? No doubt it was the few whiskeys he’d kept warm with out there. Sort of softened the unforgivable crime of trespassing.
“Devan.” He deliberately half-shouted, meaning to scare the piss out of her, just for fun. “Looking for me?”
He laughed to himself at the way she jumped at the sound of his voice, but then, when she turned around, she looked so shaken up he felt guilty for being such a prick.