Tabula Rasa (15 page)

There was no time for me to change my mind, as if I could bring
myself to. I was terrified of him and what he was capable of, and yet
I needed him to fuck me more than I’d needed anything since I woke
in the pirate ship.

He tossed me on the bed and began tying my hands to the headboard
much like he’d done in the motel room that night. I still couldn’t
believe I’d handed him the rope. But in only a few moments he’d
created a gnawing hunger inside me that I knew only his cock could
satiate. I needed him inside me like I needed air.

I was certain that no amount of touching myself in the darkened room
down the hallway would ever calm the desire he’d ignited. I needed
to be perched on the knife-edge of living and dying. I needed to be
so swept up in the present moment that I had no time to worry about
the giant pieces of nothing inside my head or the giant pieces of
lies Trevor had put there.

This was the only space and place in which I could be free of all of
it.

Shannon spent a good ten minutes securing me to the bed frame, spread
out before him like a buffet he would no doubt take his time with.
Briefly, a panic settled over me, some primal deep thing... maybe
something attached to a memory. I didn’t know. Because whatever it
was refused to crystallize into a fully formed vision or thought.

“Elodie,” he said calmly, his hand pressing gently over my belly,
stilling my movement.

I looked up sharply, trying to shake off the weird feeling. “Yes,
Sir?”

“Do you want me to fuck you?”

“Yes, Sir.”

“Then this is the way it happens. Or not at all. Do you
understand?”

“Yes, Sir.”

He didn’t have to sell me on this. Really, he didn’t. If he
wanted to sweetly make love to me in what I assumed was the standard
normal way, I would have probably found it unappealing in general,
judging from what had just happened and the way I’d reacted to it.
Despite my wild attraction to Shannon, I had a sneaking suspicion
that much of that attraction was this dark sexual layer that I may
not have seen consciously, but somewhere, deep inside my mind, in the
places untouched by the amnesia, I’d recognized... something.

I might not have my memories, but I still knew in a very basic way
what I liked because what I liked was formed and reaffirmed each
moment I existed. I didn’t need decades of remembered history
behind me to tell me grapes were delicious or sunsets were pretty or
that I liked sex mixed up with a little bit of danger—or a lot,
depending on an outside observer’s tolerance for risk. It seemed
apparent that my tolerance for it was endless, despite this brief
moment of visceral fear.

“I’ll leave your feet free as long as you don’t try to kick me.
If you kick me, things will get ugly. Do you understand?”

I nodded quickly. I wasn’t sure what all that entailed for someone
like Shannon in this particular situation, but I was one hundred
percent sure I didn’t want to find out.

Instead of stripping off his jeans, he sat beside me, his hip
settling into the groove of mine, the scratchy denim rough against my
skin. He leaned over me and tweaked my nipple hard between his thumb
and finger.

“Ow!”

He merely smiled in return. Unlike over by the wall, I could actually
see his face now and how much he liked every drop of pain he
delivered. My self-preservation finally kicked in, and there was
nothing I wanted more than to get away from him.

I wanted to go back to the moment in the castle, the moment when he
was going to call his friends and the police and get me some help. I
closed my eyes and tried to remember it, the smell of burning flesh
from the fireplace, the smell of Trevor’s blood. The smell of my
fear.

Shannon was right. This was too dangerous, this fire I played with.
He wasn’t some regular guy who liked a little slap and tickle with
silk scarves. I twisted away, jerking hopelessly at the ropes.

“Let me go. I changed my mind.”

He looked angry. His hand moved up to wrap around my throat and he
squeezed...just enough. Just enough to let me know the danger I was
in, how completely I was at his mercy.

“Why?” he practically growled at me.

“I’m scared.”

“I know. I
like
it. I like it so much that I never want it
to end. So if you’re worried I’ll just snap and kill you or do
serious damage, you can put those fears aside. I would never do
anything to endanger my ability to do this again and again.”

“It’s too dangerous.”

Shannon’s eyes narrowed until all I could see were slits of pure
evil. How could I have trusted this man? What was broken in me that I
thought Shannon could give me safety?

He took his hand off my throat, and a whimper escaped my mouth. The
second it was gone, I wanted him to put his hand right back where it
had been. But it wasn’t safe.

“You gave me the rope. I was going to take the high road.”

“I know.”

“I told you if we crossed this line we weren’t going back.”

“I know. I’m sorry.” I was so fucking stupid. It was like
giving a bottle of whiskey to an alcoholic or asking a junkie to hold
some heroin and syringes for a few days.

“No,” he ground out. “I told you not to come downstairs, but
you came down anyway. I was going to let you go back to your room,
and you put the rope in my hands. Do you want me to fuck you, Elodie?
Don’t lie. I can’t abide liars.”

I wanted to say no, but if I lied to him, he would see right through
me, and God help me if I ever betrayed him.

“Yes.”

“Do you want me to make sweet romantic love to you that we both
know is a lie?”

I shook my head. The thought made the bile come up in my throat. It
was too much like the sham with Trevor.

“Good. Because I don’t make love. You know you’re mine, right?
You were mine the moment I laid eyes on you in the castle.”

My pulse fluttered harder in my throat.

“Answer me, Elodie.”

“Yes, Sir.”

“Now, I’m going to fuck you, and I’m going to do it my way.
Unless you are in genuine distress you will not speak another word
until I’ve come inside you. Are we clear?”

“Yes, Sir.” There was a small crazy voice inside me that said if
death was the possible price for having his hands on me, then let it
come.

I closed my eyes and jumped into the gaping chasm where Shannon had
already set up a life of comfortable darkness.

He didn’t remove his jeans, just undid them. My hips surged upwards
as he drove into me, his fingers digging hard into my hips. Somehow I
knew he wanted to flip me over onto my stomach, but the intricate
knotwork he’d made wouldn’t allow for such spontaneity mid-game.

“Shannon, please, the ropes hurt.”

He fucked me harder causing them to pull and chafe even more. “Good.
Cry for me.”

My eyes were still closed, and the tears slid from the corners of
them, down my cheeks, and onto the sheets. The ropes dug and burned
into my wrists like a branding iron, but I wasn’t crying because of
that. I cried because despite the overwhelming relief of Shannon’s
body moving inside of mine, of all the tiny nerve endings he awakened
with this relentless friction, I was convinced I was going to die.

What if, at the last moment, the known killer in bed with me decided
killing me
was
better than fucking me after all?

A moment later, I felt a warm tongue on the side of my face, licking
up my tears as I cried them. It startled me enough to make me open my
eyes.

When Shannon pulled back to look at me, that intense expression was
back. It was the look that made me wonder for brief seconds at a time
how I could ever fear him. That was the look of a man who wanted me
to live forever. Just so he could keep doing this.

That final thrust made me gasp, and pushed me right up to the edge of
my own pleasure.

After a few beats, he pulled out of me. I was going to let it go.
Even without completion, even with the moments of abject terror, it
was far and away better sex than the droopy display with Trevor had
ever been. But Shannon knew I hadn’t come, and he wasn’t having
it.

He still straddled me, one hand gripped my throat, forcing me to look
at him. The other snaked between my legs, stroking me in a slow,
steady rhythm until my release came, causing a scream to tear out of
me like nothing I’d ever heard. At least not in my known memory.

We stared silently at each other for several minutes. Somehow I knew
he’d fucked a lot of women, but whatever emotion he felt now, it
was new. It was mine. His face was filled with the same awe as a baby
discovering his own hands for the first time.

Shannon untied my wrists and pressed a kiss against the rope-burned
skin. He got up and retreated to the bathroom then came back with a
tube of something and some gauze and medical tape.

The way he rubbed the cream into my wrists and wrapped them, it was
obvious he’d never done this for someone else before. It must be so
baffling trying to heal when what you most craved was to do harm.
Like a lion nurturing an injured gazelle back to health.

Finally, he finished. He put the supplies up along with the rope and
paddle. Everything in its place. Then he got back into the bed with
me and pulled the covers up around us.

“Shannon?”

“Yeah?”

I wasn’t sure if my next question was wise. It might be sensitive.
It might make him angry. But I had this burning desire to try to
understand him, to find some kernel of something human and
sympathetic that I could use to justify my growing attraction to
someone who did terrible things to others, and would be doing another
brand of terrible things to me. Admittedly things I’d probably
like, but I still didn’t want to think too hard about that.

“Were you abused as a kid?” I asked, all the while wondering if
maybe
I
had been abused as a kid. Never mind what was wrong
with Shannon. What was wrong with
me
?

“Why would you ask such a thing? I have zero appropriate social
skills, and even I know that’s out of line.”

“I’m s-sorry, I’m just trying to understand what made you like
this.” If I could understand what made him like this, maybe I could
figure out what made
me
like this. Because I thought I
probably wasn’t a sociopath, but Shannon and I seemed like two
sides of the same coin. He was the perfect predator; I was the
perfect prey. I was the fucked-up prey that wanted to be ensnared.

He seemed to be trying to decide how much he was prepared to tell me.
At least he didn’t appear angry.

“No,” he said after another moment’s thought. “I wasn’t
abused. That’s not why I kill people. I didn’t kill small animals
when I was young or burn the wings off of flies. My parents are good
people. They raised me in a good environment and taught me good
morals. They loved me. I’m sure they still do. I know whatever it
is that they feel toward me, it’s something real, even if I
couldn’t understand it or feel it myself. I knew even when I was
young that there was something very wrong with me—at least by the
general population’s standards. I don’t know how I knew, but I
knew I had to keep it a secret, so I pretended the best I could and
did what the others around me did. But I never felt the things they
claimed to feel. And I wasn’t even sure if they were lying or not.
I just wanted so much to fit in and be like the other kids.”

“But how could you become this way if something bad didn’t happen
to you?” I’d wanted to uncover something in his history that
would make me understand so I could say,
Ah, that must be it. So
much pain almost had to turn him into a monster.
Then I could
feel pity for him. I could be this light of salvation. Maybe I could
heal him. And even if I couldn’t, I could claim that my motives
were virtuous. I could pretend I didn’t just like to stand a little
too close to the fire.

“It’s not all nurture, Elodie. There are predators in this world,
and I’m one of them. There’s nothing I can do to change that.”

“Would you if you could?”

“I don’t know.”

I wasn’t sure how long he was going to put up with this probing,
but I wanted to find out as much as I could while he tolerated my
questioning. I had no way to know that anything he told me was true,
but given everything else I’d experienced, I knew that sometimes a
story was all you needed—something that made sense. And I
desperately wanted to find a way to make sense of who Shannon was and
how he got to be that way.

“W-when did you kill for the first time?” I asked.

“Not until the military. I couldn’t afford college, and my
parents couldn’t afford it either. Instead of taking on debt I
might never get out of, I decided to join the armed forces. I wasn’t
scared of anything, so I thought I might be useful. Turned out I was
right. They test you in all sorts of ways, and they’re always
watching, trying to figure you out. I fit a certain profile. I was a
tool they could use. A weapon. I could be put to use doing the less
savory jobs that most other soldiers can’t handle or can’t
justify, the things most private citizens would be horrified by but
which still must be done to keep us free and safe.”

I waited, wondering if he would say more. He seemed to be weighing
whether he should or not. Finally, he did.

“The first time I killed someone, I felt... something. It was this
rush and this sense of joy. Before that moment everything had felt
dull and dead, but in the kill, I came alive. When I got out of the
service, college was forgotten. I started taking lucrative contracts
in the private sector and never looked back.”

The way Shannon described taking a human life was not unlike how a
normal person might describe the experience of eating a really good
hamburger or going on an amazing trip to Europe.

“If I hadn’t begged you not to make me face the police and you
hadn’t had to dispose of Trevor’s body, would you have let me
go?”