Jeremiah Quick (17 page)

Jeremiah shook his head. "Not naughty
enough. Pinch your nipple, or touch between your legs."

She almost smiled. He liked the naughty. She
fought to maintain the pout, and let her fingers trail along her
hip bone, squeezed it – proud to find it so prominent after giving
birth multiple times – then across her soft little tummy, down her
pelvis, across her clitoris, and settled it between her pussy lips.
Mmmmm
, she moaned, silently to herself. If she had her
voice, she would have moaned it for him to hear, but she didn't
want to lose. She was tired of suppressing thoughts, questions,
exclamations of shock and pain. Moans of pleasure.

She wanted her voice.

"Two. I like it," he said.

She nodded, then traded the finger in her
mouth for the one that had been between her legs, and he hissed in
a breath. She sank to her knees, still sucking on her forefinger,
and reached to take his hand, press it against her heart, which was
beating fast. She was embarrassed to be getting turned on posing
for him… because she was choosing what to do, because she was naked
and he was clothed. Because he was in control, and she was
compliant.

She shook away the embarrassment, turning
away from him, went to her hands and knees. Arching her back and
looking over her shoulder, she tugged her hair loose from the braid
and shook her head until her hair fell across her face. She peeked
at him through the strands.

"Three," he agreed.

She faced him again, rested her butt on the
floor, leaned back against her elbows, and let her legs sprawl out
in front of her. She shifted her weight to one elbow and lifted one
leg with her hand, holding it, straightening it, until it was in
the air, exposing her wet center, so wet it almost begged for a
fucking.

Damn. This was hot.

"Four."

She found other poses that pleased him, some
he asked her to hold for longer than it took to think of what to do
next, but for the most part he was content to watch, to comment on
the lines of her body – not the stretch marks, not the lines he'd
drawn – but the length of a limb, the sharpness of her collar
bones, the fact that he could see every rib when she arched a
certain way, despite the fact that she was nowhere near starvation
skinny.

Some poses were variations of others, but
apparently were acceptable, because he kept count, and when he
reached ten, Pretty felt a rush of relief from her head to her
heart to her toes, and had to stop herself from dropping her head
down to kiss his feet.

She almost laughed, stopped herself, and
then laughed anyway. It was over, right? The torture of having no
voice was over.

"That's ten…" he said, and her face must
have looked comically startled, because
he
laughed, held his
hands up in surrender, and grinned just a little. "You may use your
voice."

"Thank god," she said, and for some reason
talking made her feel naked and ridiculously shy. How had she not
understood that having no voice gave her some privacy? She tried to
recall the names she'd been going to call him the minute he let her
talk again… but couldn't remember a single one. When she looked at
him, she didn't see a callous bastard. She didn't even see her old
friend. No, she saw… Jeremiah Quick, her mentor, her maestro. Damn.
When had that happened?

"Well, you've been dying for your voice,
don't you have a million things to say?" he asked.

"I – huh. I thought I did."

That awkwardness again. It was hard to speak
to him as an equal when she was naked and he was not. And maybe
because she knew there was no 'equal' – he was the one in
charge.

Chapter 16

T
here was
no measure of time. It could have been weeks that Quick spent
drawing on her skin, it could have been a few days.

All she could judge about time came from
cramped and tired muscles that had been tied into one position for
too long, the growl of her stomach, the urgency of bowel and
bladder, though she seemed bothered by such trivial human things
less and less.

There were periods of Jeremiah's presence,
lights on, his pen dragging sharp lines in her skin. He gave her
water before and after, and once in a while the warm grainy-sweet
cereal.

And there were bleak, empty periods of
darkness without his presence. During these, she tried to sleep as
much as possible.

She didn't try to escape. She didn't fight
him. He was capable of thorough and brutal punishments. He had the
tools, and knew how to use them. But that wasn't even why, although
it was hard to articulate the why, even inside her own head.

He didn't always tie her, and in fact, when
he was working on her shoulders and upper arms he sat her facing
the back of a ladder-backed chair, pushed up to the table, and he
gave her an ashtray, a cigarette, and a cup of coffee.

It was okay to talk to him now, but she
often didn't. There was something spiritual happening here that she
clearly felt, even if she didn't understand it.

His pen, his hands, and his lips touched her
everywhere, exploring, knowing, tasting.

Sometimes she wanted to rip him out of his
clothes and write her name across his back, his sharp hip bones,
his thin chest.

He was making her belong to him, and she
wanted to do the same.

There was nothing in the world but this.

Most of the time she didn't think about or
worry about her family, her husband, she just waited in the dark,
dreaming of Jeremiah's hands and longing for his return.

When she didn't speak for three drawing
sessions, Jeremiah put music on, loud enough that it was pointless
to talk. Pretty didn't know the songs or the artists.

Some he played more than others, and she
started learning the words, feeling the essence of the noise in her
muscles, her bones. Her fingernails. And when he left her in silent
darkness, she would hum them to herself, or even sing softly.
La
la la loooove
... and other bits and pieces of the ones he
played the most. She came to love them, these dark, rich, sad
songs.

She'd stopped crying, although she often
felt she was on the verge of tears.

This was something… she didn't… understand,
because he wasn't hurting her, he wasn't scaring her, and when he
did speak, it was almost always with kindness.

When he drew on her back, he put her
face-down on the table and pulled up a chair, as if seating himself
for a meal. She felt him tracing a steady, particular line along
the right edge of the tattoo on her left shoulder blade, and his
pen never moved to the left of that line, never interfered with the
feather pen and inkwell that were the symbol of herself.

She'd watched him take great care around her
forearm tattoo, as well, the one with the names of her children. He
held her still and drew whorls and patterns just to its edges,
never letting his lines cross the lines of her ink.

He didn't bathe her during the drawing
phase, which she started to feel self-conscious about.

The lines on her inner thighs and legs were
faded after two mortifying instances wherein she'd peed herself and
he'd had to clean her up.

When only her throat, face, and neck hadn't
been drawn, she suggested a brief shower, but Jeremiah shook his
head.

"Will you at least wash my hair?
Please?"

He'd looked startled at the idea, and then
thoughtful, and then left for awhile. He returned with a square
plastic container, a bucket, and a bottle of shampoo. He filled the
bucket with warm water, then helped her onto the table, positioned
so her head hung over the edge. Then he spent a long time washing
her hair, scratching and massaging her scalp, being infinitely
careful to keep soap out of her eyes.

And, finally, he started talking.

"Three people," he said. "Do you
remember?"

Of course she did. It was one of her
clearest memories of them all.

He closed his eyes for a second, then opened
them, watching her face when he said, "The other two are dead."

She composed her expression, not wanting to
look horrified or shocked. Was he telling her he'd killed them? Was
he telling her he would hurt her, hurt her until she no longer had
breath or heartbeat?

"What happened?" she asked, her voice choked
and pitched high.

His laugh was cold, his eyes colder. "I
didn't murder them outright, if that's what you're thinking."

It wasn't reassuring.

"Three kills makes a serial killer, though,
did you know that?"

His eyes stared into her, and then his
finger traced a line from her lower abdomen all the way up to her
throat.

"You're fucking with me," she said, and
tested a half-smile.

He nodded. "Some. But before I can tell you
what happened to them, you need to understand why they're important
to me. And maybe even why I had to take you."

That caused her to suck in a breath. Both
his hands were in her hair now, folding and smoothing shampoo in,
her hair hanging over the plastic box that rested on the seat of a
chair positioned beneath her head.

She wasn't tied and there was no music.

"Did you take me? Is that how you see
it?"

He nodded.

"Against my will?" Did he not remember? Was
he crazy, or on drugs?

He no longer met her eyes, but picked up a
cup and rinsed her hair with warm water from the bucket, letting it
stream into the plastic box, watching his own hands.

"You were coming with me that night," he
said finally. "One way or another. I didn't know if it would be
easy or hard. I was prepared for either."

A plethora of sudden quick thoughts stormed
through Pretty's head, marching one on top of another, the hours of
guilt she'd suffered here, thinking it was a choice.

"Bastard," she said, but it was a soft cuss,
and she didn't mean it.

He grinned then, and it was as real of a
smile as she'd ever seen. And then he laughed, just a little, very
briefly, before he said, "What, you thought you had a choice?"

Jinx,
she thought to herself, but
didn't say out loud. Instead she asked why. Why me, why now?

"That would be getting out of sequence," he
said. "And I don't want to do it that way."

He finished rinsing her hair, and pulled
something out of his pocket. He let her see it, a tiny bottle of
conditioner.

She closed her eyes as he worked it into her
hair, and then he cupped his hands under the back of her head,
cradling it, giving her neck some relief.

His hands were strong, and she felt more
safe now than before she'd realized she was his prisoner.

She could only guess the reason for all this
time of silence, but she had a strong feeling all that was over,
and now would come his real purpose.

He talked.

"Her name was Corrie McKnight, and she saved
my life.

"I had no trust in women, none, ever. My
mother took off for parts unknown before my first birthday, and I
don't remember her. I know she was a talented sketch artist, and I
think she would have loved me if she'd have stayed, but she didn't
stay.

"My father's endless stream of girlfriends
were addicts or alcoholics, strippers, and cocktail waitresses, all
hardened and bitter with their lots in life, and if they paid
attention to me, it was to ridicule me for being an odd child. Or
pretend to be nice to me because they thought it would impress
him.

"I was odd, there's no doubt about that.

"I was… observant and exceptionally bright.
Don't laugh – I know I was going to graduate at the bottom of my
high school class, if I managed it at all – but that was a choice,
right up there with refusing to conform with anything else about
society. You know how I was. How I am, even. Surely you
remember."

"I do," Pretty said, as he picked up the cup
to rinse the conditioner away. "You were all 'Fuck Them, fuck
society, fuck expectation'."

His smile was quick. "Terrified you a
little, didn't I? Because you were all good girl, conform, meet
every expectation and make them proud. You had no idea what to be.
You had no opinion that was genuinely your own. Until I came along.
Taught you how to think beyond what They were feeding you."

The way he said it made it sound like she
was stupid, and as he wrapped a towel around her hair and helped
her sit up, still on top of the table, she felt herself flush with
anger. "I would have learned in college."

"Maybe," he said. "But maybe not. Admit it,
you were – and always have been – glad that I opened your eyes.
It's even in your poem."

Oh. That again.

But he was right, in a broad sense. "I
thought you were fascinating. So brave."

He shook his head. "I wasn't brave. I was
scared all the time. I got the shit kicked out of me constantly.
What you don't understand, never understood, was that I had no
other way to
be
. If I conformed, I would die. That's what I
knew."

"You couldn't wear jeans and t-shirts and
tennis shoes?"

He rolled his eyes. "Did you end up in black
boots, black eyeliner, and black fingernail polish? Because I kept
waiting for that, pseudo baby punk."

She shook her head. "It didn't suit. I'd
have felt ridiculous."

"And that's the answer to your own question,
Sunshine. No, I couldn't walk around wearing a suit that wasn't me.
It was enough that I had to conceal my hatred of all of Them all
the time. Just that took most of my energy. So long as I stuck with
Chill, the two oddballs together, things seemed to roll along a bit
more easily. But then you…"

His words trailed away, and this sense of,
well, Pretty wasn't sure what it was exactly… pride, somehow, rose
up in her, warming her. She'd pushed her way in. Bullied her way
in, even, and he'd let her stay. Pretty Loberg. No one else.