“If you had dared to do such a thing, I would have screamed!”
“I would have enjoyed that.”
“I would also have been furious! In fact, I already am!”
She attempted to walk past him again, but this time he wouldn’t stand for it, and pulled her back against him. Realistically, she knew she had no chance of stopping him if he tried anything. The dream was under his control, and there were no exits other than waking, which she didn’t know how to accomplish.
However, staying within his reach still seemed ill-advised.
“And you never answered me,” she said. Maybe, if she kept his mind on other matters until sunrise, he would be less tempted to tempt her into sin. She glanced down at his arms, pondering what would be the best way of getting herself out of them before his hold became too comfortable to break. “I’d like to know how it was that you arrived here, and what measures I should take to keep you away from my dreams.”
“To keep me away?” he repeated, sounding like she’d just presented him with a concept he found troubling to parse. It was the third time something she said prompted that reaction, but the fact that he kept having it hinted that defiance wasn’t something he encountered often enough be used to it. “You needn’t do much. I only returned to you this soon because last night went so well. If I was mistaken in thinking so, and you wish me to leave, I will leave.”
“Truly?”
“Yes.”
“Excellent.” She placed her palms against his chest and gave him a light shove. “Leave. Shoo.”
“However, if you ask me to leave right this moment, I will not be able to tell you how it was that I entered your dreams.”
Rose moaned softly. There was that, yes.
Worse, he’d phrased it so meaningfully that he couldn’t be unware of how much it killed her to not know. It wasn’t just her always lingering curiosity, which reared its head every time something begged a question. It was also the fact that she had slept with this smiling, infuriating man, possibly in more than one sense.
It didn’t matter that it had happened in a dream. During the day there were two people walking around who recalled having done it with each other, so the relative realness of the event seemed like an unnecessary quibble. He had taken her maidenhead, and she didn’t know the first thing about him besides his crimes.
“How is it that you seem to know everything about me?” she asked. If the things he had proven he knew about her were the sort that could be gleaned by following her around, she would have accused him of that, but would also feel secretly pleased with the mundane explanation. They weren’t, however, and that needled her. The only way he could know was through mind reading. A disturbing thought. “Can you break into my heart as well as my dreams?”
“One question at a time,” he chided her. Rose was taken aback by how different that reply was from the one she usually got — an irritated ‘Mind your own business, girl!’ was usual fare when asking Mrs. Cross something. It was hard, sometimes, to step back and remember that the rest of the world wasn’t Mrs. Cross. “Come along. I shall tell you everything along the way.”
“The way where?”
“Perdition.” It was a tasteless joke, given the circumstances, and she told him so, mostly because she needed him to confirm that it was a joke. He grinned, put an arm around her shoulders and waved his other hand at the wall. She missed what happened next because she was busy giving him a disbelieving look, but when she glanced aside, she saw the wall had opened into . . . into . . . “Beautiful, no?”
He said ‘beautiful’ the same way he’d called her beautiful the night before, which Rose found completely inappropriate, considering that the sight made her hideous in comparison. Ahead of them, framed by the jagged leftovers of the palace wall, lay a canyon, that the light of the setting sun had colored a rosy pink. It looked ancient and majestic and fantastical, and the walls sloped down until her sight wasn’t able to follow them anymore. Further ahead, a mountain shaped like a pinecone climbed up into the sky.
Suddenly, there was also a bridge. It connected to the rock edge where the palace stopped and the canyon started, but after that, it didn’t seem to go anywhere. Rose squeaked, realizing that he meant for them to cross it. The canyon was intimidating enough from a distance. Passing over it sounded like an effective way of inducing a swoon.
“Last night I told you that all of this happened because we locked eyes.” Had he? She couldn’t seem to remember, or focus enough to remember. All that she could think of was that they were moving, him confidently, as if he owned the world, she dolefully dragged along. His arm remained wrapped around her, as if he owned her too. The feeling that gave her was impossible to identify. “That is the key to it all, eyes. The things you can do, if you are able to look into them and see something besides circles and colors . . .”
As they stepped onto the bridge, she was at once grateful for the weight of his arm. In fact, she had to control herself to avoid clinging to the rest of him. It was likely exactly what he wanted, the very reason why he’d made a bridge. It seemed like a sound tactic. Scare her, then provide her with safety that was dependent on physical contact.
A little bit too sound, she thought, fighting back a wave of electric shivers.
“Anything can be found in them, if you know how to search. A path into the soul. Levers to pull, desires hidden. All of a person’s life and what is left of it.” She felt a change in his stance, and couldn’t identify at first what it had changed to. She’d kept her eyes closed until then, to avoid looking at the chasm under them, but she dared to sneak a peek at his face. The melancholy in it was overwhelming. “That was how I found you. I remembered your path, came to you—”
“How?”
“I’m afraid there is no way to explain without getting into the method, which—”
“Yes.”
He explained the method. It began sounding like sorcery, but as he droned on she began to think that it sounded more like a recipe; a list of things, followed by a list of how to use the things. By the time he’d finished telling her what should be done with the gold and the lead, Rose had decided that it was all too simple to be the truth.
“Try it once yourself,” he challenged, when she said so.
She shook her head. She wasn’t going to muck about with magic, even the sort that was almost ordinary enough to sound tedious.
“Why did you bother to remember my path, then?”
He blinked. Then he schooled his features into forced cheer, and kissed the top of her head.
“I always remember the paths to the pretty ones.”
“You, sir, are no gentleman.”
“I can’t recall claiming to be one.” His front of studied carelessness waned into something a bit more genuine, and he stopped, so suddenly she lost her balance. Since she didn’t want to fall, she resigned herself to holding onto him for dear life while he elbowed her. “You have yet to look down, after the effort I made to provide you with some enjoyable scenery. Why is that?”
“It’s high!”
He had the grace to look embarrassed.
“Ah. My apologies. I should have thought of that.”
“There are people who are frightened of heights,” Rose added, feeling it was her duty to inform him, just in case that fact had managed to escape him somehow.
He nodded, his features a picture of regret. She felt less angry than when she thought he’d made the bridge and dragged her over it to frighten her into submission, and she did find it nice that he had apologized, but his behavior worried her. He seemed incapable of considering how his actions would affect her until she voiced a complaint.
That was also a disturbing thought.
“It is difficult for me, sometimes.” He made a rapid, frustrated gesture with his hand. Rose recognized the struggle of someone trying to put something unexplainable into words. “To recall the basics of human interaction. So much of it appears to be rooted in that innate drive to consider t
he feelings of others, something I rarely think to do unless I have a vested interest in the outcome. Still, it’s a pity that you have to miss out on the view.”
Humoring him against her better judgment, Rose glanced down. He hadn’t exaggerated about putting in effort. From the bottomless canyon, shimmering blue and purple ivy rose up, climbing into arabesque designs and strangling passing clouds. Rose kept looking long enough to see a flock of glowing jellyfish pass them by. Then she buried her head in the killer’s shoulder again.
“Wonderful,” she agreed. “But still very high!”
“I see. Is this better?”
They were back at the palace, standing beside the pool. Rose nodded cautiously.
“Yes.” She disentangled herself from him, mortified for needing to do so to begin with, and looked down at herself. He’d changed her dress along with the scenery, and she couldn’t find it within herself to complain, since it was the loveliest piece of clothing her skin had ever come in contact with. It almost didn’t weigh on her, like it had been woven of clouds. Without thinking, she added: “Thank you.”
“Would you like me to return to your questions now?”
“Of course.” She furtively massaged her shoulder, in an attempt to erase whatever invisible mark his arm had left there. It felt as if it was still laying on her, weighing her down and making her knees weak. “I have a question about the eyes. The ones you took, from everyone you murdered in my town.”
“Ah, yes. I gathered you would. How far would you like me to go, with explanations? I still hold some hope of bedding you tonight, and it would be unfortunate if going into too much unpleasant detail ruined my chances with you.”
“Do you eat them?”
He cocked his head. Rose met his gaze levelly, although she was trembling. She didn’t know what to do with him, or with the situation they were in, or with what had passed between them, but there was one thing she did know. Namely, that she would feel much better with the assurance that she hadn’t kissed a mouth that had had eyeballs go in it.
“I must confess,” he said, after a few seconds, “that is not a thing I’m asked very often.”
Rose kept looking at him expectantly. She even tried meeting his eyes, but that worked as well as it had the previous times, so she shifted her gaze to his nose, and then, inevitably, to his mouth. It curved, to her relief. Less to her relief, he tried to take her hand, and then he managed, although she’d had plenty of opportunity to pull it back. It was his godforsaken smile; she’d gone and drowned in it. She knew she shouldn’t have done that.
“Do you, then?” she repeated, for lack of anything else to make her lips do.
“I would like to show you something.”
He motioned her towards a door that she didn’t remember seeing before. It looked strangely misplaced, seeing as it lacked the glossy sheen of prettiness everything else in the dream possessed. The level of detail was, however, the same, even if most of the details in question were imperfections in the wood and long crevasses reminiscent of claw marks.
She stepped through after him. He didn’t close the door, easing her nerves somewhat. Perhaps it wouldn’t turn out necessary to have an exit to flee through, as until now, he had minded her objections every time he actually bothered to notice them. Still, the knowledge that it was there for her made her feel a lot better about being stuck in a room with him.
Then she looked around, peering through the dimness to identify the objects that surrounded them, and ‘better’ stopped being a word that applied to her feelings. Her stomach turned painfully, all of its contents twisting sideways and trying to climb up her throat. Cold sweat began to form on the small of her back. Her legs went limp and useless, and when the killer came up behind her to break her impending fall, she screamed and screamed and screamed.
“I don’t eat them,” he said. As if that improved things, somehow.
“I can see that. I can certainly see that!”
There were so many shelves. So many jars on them, and flasks and warped, formless glass containers. So many unseeing eyes floating in liquid. Knowing that she was still dreaming didn’t console her, as she knew at once what this was. The night before he’d spoken of imperfect shadows of real places, and this room could only be one. They might be standing in a reproduction of it, but it was real, somewhere.
And so were the eyes. Why were there so many of them, and why did it upset her so much that there were that many? She knew before she’d dreamed with him that he was responsible for a score of murders that went into double digits. She had seen his work first-hand.
It was just so hard to reconcile this room of horrors with the man who had kissed her and bothered to make her pretty things. It seemed impossible that both could coexist in one person.
“Do you have any further questions?”
Oh so many.
“What are you?” There was no other way to put it. She’d asked before, when she’d accused him of being a demon, but back then he’d acted evasively and she’d had better things to do than press on. “What made you so twisted that you have a room full of the remains of your victims and think nothing of it?”
“I do think much of it.” He sat her down, on a chair that was both abnormally solid and absurdly uncomfortable, and started pacing around her. Something appeared to trouble him. “However, what you are asking for is knowledge that should come with a price. If I am to share my history with you, I would like—”
“No,” Rose said. She had the feeling she knew where he was trying to go. In fact, it was more than a feeling, and the inviting smile he offered her consolidated it into a certainty. He hadn’t been shy about admitting his goal for that night. Since not even a room full of eyes was enough to shake her strange conviction that he wouldn’t outright force her, it wasn’t an unreasonable assumption that he’d make another attempt to manipulate her, and this must be it. “If the price is that I . . . I . . .”
“Fuck me?”
Rose glared at him.
“. . . do something forbidden and wrong . . .”
“Strange, how you were perfectly capable of doing the deed but have such trouble naming it.” He leaned forward and ran a long finger down the bridge of her nose, to her mouth and to her chin, which he then grabbed. Rose tried to pretend her heart didn’t skip a beat. “Are you still a child, Rose? After all the effort I went to in order to make a woman out of you?”
She glared again, but she couldn’t be too angry with him, because he said it affectionately. She wasn’t too used to affection. The only people who were ever affectionate towards here were kindly elderly customers who called everyone ‘dearie’. She didn’t know what to do with affection that came from someone who had a roomful of murder trophies, though.
Taking a deep breath, she went on.
“. . . that will doom me to spend the rest of my life praying and repenting to avoid Hell . . .”
“You have an unnatural obsession with that place.” He got up and released her chin, yawning. “I don’t deny that it would be convenient if you spent the night with me in exchange for a story. Still, I feel it wouldn’t be very sporting to propose a deal like that. I’d like to do something else to you.”
“What, then?”
“To spank you.”
He said it very simply, as if it were the most natural statement in the world.
Rose’s face turned into a sequence of question marks. That he wanted to hurt her wasn’t a surprise, given what she was sitting in the middle of. It was the how. Spank her, as if she were some naughty child? Why? He had a knife. He’d defiled her and made her bleed. A spanking seemed like a major step back in terms of severity. It wasn’t that she wasn’t grateful for that, but she was struggling to understand his motivation.
“That . . . seems like an odd thing to want.”
“Not at all.” He kneeled down before her and rested a hand on her thigh, as if that, too, were a natural thing to do. “You are beautiful. Surely I’ve told you that before.
And surely you can see how I would find you more beautiful still if you were draped across my knee, moaning and writhing, while I paint your backside bright red.”
Oh.
Rose felt like she should be having a reaction a little more dramatic than ‘Oh’, but it was truly all she had left in her. That was where they were going, then. Now that she thought about it, it didn’t seem so unexpected, considering his conviction that there was something inside her that believed that pain and pleasure were the same. In fact, it was not all that different from what he’d done to win her over before. The same principle, but approached the other way round.
She fought the urge to smile.
He’d lose. This time, he’d lose, because incredibly, this time she had experience on her side. She had been spanked at the orphanage, for some inconsequential things, and she most definitely hadn’t liked it. Those spankings had been humiliatingly public events, and more than the sting of the hits, she remembered the other children laughing at her. Solidarity was a thing rarely found somewhere where every other child was seen as competition for potential roofs to live under. There was no way that he would be capable of seducing her with something that brought her memories that bad.
“I know what this is.”
“Good. Does that mean that you accept?”
“Yes. The spanking,” she added. “Only the spanking.”
He nodded once, politely, predictably. Why should he take issue with her statement? He was nothing if not self-assured. His belief that she would end up submitting to him was iron-clad.
The killer got up. His expression went clouded, distant. Story-time was apparently about to start.
“We come from the old country,” he began, his expression going distant. “Although there isn’t a nation that remembers us today, there was a time when my people owned much of the world. And like any land that is large and powerful, we had enemies. Enemies that sought our destruction, and eventually achieved it.
“They seeded a plague among our people. Not one of us escaped it. Those who died, they burned. Those who lived long enough to see them arrive, they tortured. As for me —” His voice caught. Rose almost felt a temptation to tell him to stop, if the recollection was as unbearable as that, but refrained. She could be merciless too. “They marked my body and tore out my eyes, but did not rob me of my second sight, and in the throes of agony, I tore out their lives. I freed myself, and took one of those lives for my own to heal myself from their plague.”
The Darker Side of Love (A Dark Erotica Boxed Set) Page 46