She found Gavin sitting in the armchair she had sat in, when he told her the terms of this new, horrendous game. His head was tilted back and his eyes were closed. She doubted he was sleeping, though.
The scar tissue was pink and shiny under the light and it struck her as a particularly vulnerable position for him, of all people, to be in. Baring your throat was submissive behavior. An appeasement display. Gavin had been quick to tell her as much.
His trench coat was crumpled in a heap on the ground. He was wearing a thermal Henley, the two topmost buttons undone. A few stray curls of chest hair poked through the gaping fabric.
He stretched, then, pulling the fabric taut, and regarded her through half-closed eyes before letting his hands fall back on the armrests. Like he was posing for her. She watched him sourly, resenting the stirrings she felt whenever she looked at him.
Resisting him felt as if she were trying to swim against the tide. She knew he was death, and yet she continued to court him ceaselessly, recklessly.
She could have killed him for that.
Yes, in that moment, she could have killed him, because he made her want the very things that she hated most in herself.
Gavin straightened a little as she approached, his posture relaxed but ready as she straddled his lap, compressing his muscular thighs with her knees.
He looked up at her, and said, “What are you doing Valerian?”
She took hold of his wrists, using him to brace herself more firmly on the chair. Boxing him in. There was a note of warning in his voice she chose to ignore.
“I'm doing to you what you do to me.”
His eyes narrowed like a hawk's, but he didn't say anything. Didn't even resist when she kissed him, though he didn't kiss her back. She bit his neck, and he didn't flinch. His eyes were cold when she pulled back again. “Enjoying yourself?”
“No. No, I'm not.”
She knotted her hands in the fabric of his shirt and pulled, hard, scattering the buttons with several small, muted pops. It must have hurt, had to have hurt, but he continued watching her steadily.
“I don't recall giving you permission to touch me.”
Fear sparked through her at the look in his eyes. She was playing with fire—but part of her wanted to be burned. “Since when have you ever given a shit about permission? Or consent?”
“Don't be crude,” he said coldly.
Val ran her fingers down his chest, over his stomach, and felt the muscles beneath the skin bunch and tense. “Why not?” He inhaled sharply when the tips of her middle and index fingers traced the tops of his pants, almost but not quite dipping below the waistband. “Why the fuck not? Why shouldn't I be crude?”
Another man might have thrown her off. Gavin remained seated in his throne, crowned by his own peculiar brand of cruelty. “This is most unbecoming.”
Val tossed her head, scoffing. “You really don't want me to touch you? Or is it just that it's no fun when I'm willing?”
“I don't think you want to play this game with me. You won't win.”
“Oh no?”
He leaned in. “No.”
She gave him a smile that was all teeth and slid her hand down his pants. His pupils contracted to small points as he made an involuntary sound that appeared to be a cross between a growl and a moan.
He was hot and hard to the touch. She could feel the veins pulsing in time to his heartbeat. She ran her thumb over the damp tip and squeezed, laughing in his ear, “You're a goddamn liar.”
“I warn you, there will be severe penalties if you do not cease this disgusting display.”
“What are you going to do to me?” She tightened her grip on his penis just to see him wince and felt a rush of heat as he shifted uncomfortably beneath her. The slightest hitch entered his breathing.
Yes, she thought, see how you like it.
“My grades…are shit. My family…thinks I'm crazy. I have…no friends. No support. No dignity.” She punctuated each bit of emphasis with another squeeze. “Oh, and some psycho wants to kill me. Besides you, I mean.
“I have nothing, absolutely nothing. I spend most of my life wishing I would die. So tell me, Gavin, what will you use against me? What do you have left? Your body? Well, it looks like I've beaten you to the punch.”
He was breathing hard. “You have five seconds.”
She gave him a swift, smooth jerk that made his hips buck.
“Two seconds,” he ground out.
“Fuck you.”
“Very well.” He got to his feet, yanking her up with him. She stumbled and had to grab on to him to
keep from falling. His mouth mashed against hers and she winced as his teeth dug painfully through his cruel smile. “We'll play it your way.”
“I'm leaving.”
“No.” His fingers dug into her sides. “You're going to finish what you started.”
She tried to pull away. “Touch me, and I'll kill you.”
“Try.” He swung her around, trapping her against his body. “It's midnight.” He yanked the ribbon on her bodice, ripping it, and slid the two pieces out of their laces. His fingers stroked down the center of her ribs, slipping neatly into her underwear. “Of the third day.” Val tried to back away, but there was nowhere to go, and he half-walked half-pushed her to the mattress. “You're mine.”
She couldn't break free from his mouth to protest or scream. The two of them fall against the sheets in a tangle of limbs. He rucked the hem of her nightgown up to her thighs. His fingers, outside her panties now but no less tortuous because of it, hooked in the waistband and pulled. Val winced, and then cried out when the stitches broke with a snap, lashing painfully against her hip.
He slipped his hand into her nightgown. She winced as he explored the tender landscape her body had become. “Did you really think to conquer me? To kill me?”
Val made a low, helpless sound.
“Did you think you would succeed?”
“Go to hell.”
“Oh, yes. We shall. Your hell. Wreathed in pleasure twined with pain, thorns and roses, all of them weeping blood. Once a flower is picked it immediately begins to die.” His lips curled into a sinful smile, laced with simmering anger. “Fitting, wouldn't you say?”
She spat in his eye.
“Of course, all that requires obedience, which must be cultivated like a hothouse flower.” He rolled her over. One of his hands cupped her breast, twisting and pinching the nipple in time with each painful thrust. “Precise measurements, to be meted out as necessary, signifying the difference between life—” he used his nails, and she let out a hoarse scream “—and death. You still think you can kill me?”
“Yes.”
His belly slapped against hers as he slid deeper, the cords on his arms standing out in stark relief. His hair was damp, and stuck to his forehead with a curl not present when dry.
“Really?”
He laughed—his temper restored the moment he took her—and her body was nothing more than a cavern to echo his amusement. In that moment, she saw what it would be like, being his.
A voiceless creature trapped in glass, beautiful but possessing no freewill.
It would fight, but only because a fight was required; after perfunctory effort had been expended, it would collapse in defeat, opening itself up like a flower.
That was what he wanted.
Deep down, she had always known, just as she knew she would have bruises, and an aching tenderness that would not abate for days.
His drive was terrifying, and seemed to know no refractory period.
He was a Darwinian nightmare. Survival of the fittest. Nature's Perfect Storm.
As with each time, she thought, I will kill him. And if a divine being had appeared to hand her a weapon, she would have, too.
Chapter Nineteen
Cypress
Val hated that these serial one-night stands were starting to feel routine, but they were.
She changed back into the black skirt and gold la
ce shirt. In the bathroom, as before. The day she gave him permission to look upon her was the day she acknowledged that he owned her.
Gavin was doing up the buttons of his shirt when she opened the door. He glanced her way when he heard the squeak of the hinges without stopping. He looked so ordinary—and deadly, all at the same time.
Maybe her brain supplied those lethal attributes, filling them in like a coloring book. Confirmation bias. Top-down processing.
“You shouldn't look at me like that,” he said mildly, straightening his cuffs.
He was right, only not the way he thought.
“You put the 'sin' into scintillating.” He walked around behind her and retied the knot of her halter, kissing the skin beneath the bow before letting it fall back into place, eliciting a cascade of sensation down her spine. “I only have so much self-control.”
She whirled around. “You have no self-control.”
“All the more reason not to tempt me.” His hand around her wrist, stroking her pulse point.
Not affectionate. Proprietary.
She knew that, and knowing did not bother her nearly as much as it should have.
She was no longer in possession of herself, and it seemed only logical that someone else would be.
So this is madness.
It was like slipping into a silk robe.
He reached into his jeans pocket and produced a ring of keys. He played with them, swing them around on his finger, like a child or a cat, making a jangling sound that grated on her fraying nerves.
She had difficulty calling what transpired between them “sex.” It was bestial, rough and often painful, bereft of affection. There was pleasure sometimes, but a horrible perversion of it. A kind of pleasure that made Val want to scrub herself for hours with steel wool, flaying apart her skin until she came to that foul place inside her that was aroused by such dreadful depravity.
Fucking , Val thought. Or maybe rutting. Rutting had an almost mechanical sound, greasy, dirty, filthy. Yes. Rutting was good.
She nodded at the keys. “Are you checking out?” “So eager to be rid of me.”
“Yes.”
He smiled, and other piece of her splintered off and fell away. “I'm sorry to disappoint you. But no, I'm not.”
He looked down at the keys he was toying with. “Actually, I believe these belong to you.” He lobbed them at her.
She caught them, awkwardly. Once in hand, she recognized them immediately; they were the keys to her dorm, the ones that had been missing all this time. Yes, there was the fob she had purchased from the student bookstore, made of soft foam in the school's colors, gold and blue, and the faded H.
“You stole my keys.”
“I merely borrowed them.”
“Why are you acting like this?”
Gavin tilted his head. “What way is that?”
He was right; she was exactly the same. She was the one who had changed.
“Perhaps you should go,” he said.
Val stood, frozen.
“Mm, but first the matter of payment.”
Her mouth dropped and she felt heat rise up her throat to color her cheeks. “Don't say it like that, you bastard. I'm not a whore.”
“Your clue, Val, is protection.”
“A rook,” she said automatically. “The castle; it's a fortress.” It was such an easy clue. Too easy. She clapped a hand over her mouth. Was that the point?
“Yes,” he said. “Rather ironic, considering.” “What are you talking about?”
“Now my dear, don't play coy.”
“I'm not.”
“Could it be—do you really not know? Oh my. I knew that you were naïve, but I never once imagined that you were stupid as well.”
“Tell me what you mean.”
“Haven't you felt at all different?” He ran the back of his hand along her belly. “You certainly taste different. Sweeter, almost. Riper.”
“No,” she said, “no.”
“What's the matter, Valerian? Don't you think I'd make a good father? I do so love children. Of course there remains the question of what to do with you. I could marry you,” he mused, “but that would be according you too much dignity, wouldn't it?” “I would never marry you,” she snarled.
“You would,” he said, with a deathly calm. “But you will get nothing but what I choose to give you— and what I give will only be given when you come asking on your knees. Who else do you have? As you told me, you have no friends, no family, who do not believe you to be either deranged or psychotic or both.”
She struck him, hard enough to make something crack. She hoped it was his nose. Probably not. The windows rattled in their frames long after Val had slammed the door behind her.
▪▫▪▫▪▫▪
I can't be pregnant.
But she could. That was the thing. She could.
Val was the only passenger on the bus. Most students didn't go this way, and it was too early for the afternoon commute. She watched Sequoia Ave shift to 1:05 P.M. on the LED display.
Time had ceased to hold any real meaning a long time ago. She often felt as if she were in one of those nightmares where an entire semester had passed in the blink of an eye only for her to realize at the end that she had neglected to attend any of her classes.
When she saw the college parking lot she reached up to yank the stop cord. Some functions, at least, were preserved by sheer automatism.
The drive pulled up beside the curb and the swinging motion matched the butterfly swarm in her stomach.
But is that all there is to it? Or was he lying?
Lying or not, Gavin had never used protection. Even if she wasn't pregnant, she could have—all sorts of problems. It simply had never occurred to her to buy a morning after pill or go to Planned Parenthood for an STD screening. It had never occurred to her because that would be admitting to herself that this was really happening, that it wasn't a nightmare.
But the nightmare had happened anyway; in the face of all else, she had failed to take care of herself and now she was reaping the consequences.
Was she now paying the price?
“Hey—you pulled the cord. Are you getting off or not?” The bus driver sounded impatient, and Val flushed with unhappy embarrassment.
“Actually…where's the nearest clinic?”
The driver gave her a look that was equal parts pity, sanctimoniousness, and scorn. “You'll need to get on the downtown express line.”
The women at the clinic were very nice, kind and brisk in their efficiency. They drew some blood in a vial, made her pee in a cup. They gave her a pap smear, asked about her period, and studied her breasts. They took down her cell phone number and told her the results would be ready in a few days. They gave her pamphlets she could not focus on, and advice it was already too late to heed.
Maybe she was infected. Maybe she was rotting from the inside-out. Syphilis did that, didn't it? Ate away at you from within, made you crazy.
Stop that, she told herself. You stop that right now. Was she crazy, or was she sick? What was insanity if not an illness of the mind?
She returned to campus feeling as despondent as ever. Now here she was, feeling as though she were traversing across two great extremes—one real, one surreal. At the moment, she was unable to tell the difference.
She was taken aback by the sight of a police car. Several police cars. Like a horde of sharks that had just picked up the scent of fresh blood, they were circled around the lot facing the campus green belt.
A crowd of students and teachers were standing idle watching as the men in blue uniforms crawled around the area like ants. Val turned to the nearest person at hand, a heavier girl in a Jimmy Eat World shirt. Hesitating, Val said, “W-what happened?”
“They found a dead body in the creek.” Val sucked in a breath. “Dead?”
“Yeah.”
“Did they say who?”
The girl's eyes flicked over her. “I have no idea,” she said crisply. She wa
lked away to the other side of the lot where a group of similarly attired girls were standing, leaving Val stinging from the slight.
Mary came bounding up out of nowhere, pushing through the crowd. Startled, Val stood frozen like a deer in the headlights as the black girl wrapped her arms around her. Mascara ran down her cheeks in soupy black streaks.
“Val! Oh, thank God. Val—when you didn't show up last night, I thought you were with him.” “With who?” Val yelped. “What happened? What's going on?”
A stone formed in the pit of her stomach where it sat conspicuously as Mary looked at her with pity. “Jade. It was Jade. The Nature Club found his body on their morning hike. He's—dead.”
Dead?
“Val?”
Her lips mouthed the word silently—dead—as if it were a curse or incantation too horrible to be spoken aloud.
“Val?”
Her name seemed to be coming from the other end of a tunnel. She disregarded it.
He was alive just a—
When? When had she seen Jade last? She had heard nothing—nothing—from him for days. All this time, she thought he had been angry at her, and yes, maybe he had been at first, but this…this was worse than anything she could have anticipated.
And then there was the box. The horrible box with the mutilated bishop, overflowing with fake blood. The warning.
Beneath her feet the ground began to slant. Her ears rang. Val tried to block out the terrible sound. This was no accident. Jade had been murdered.
Because of her.
Because she couldn't solve the grandmaster's stupid mind games.
“Val!”
The words were even fainter now, almost inaudible. That incessant buzz had taken on the earsplitting quality of a mosquito's high-pitched whine.
A bad smell sliced through the fog. Val opened her eyes, which she could not remember closing, coughing, and took in a cloudless sky and Mary's worried face. A man in white uniform stood by, replacing a small brown bottle in his bag.
“Are you all right?”
Val shook her head. Her eyes were watering, and it wasn't entirely from the ammonia. Oh God. “You should lie down,” Mary said, “that paramedic, he said you were in shock.”
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