by Sam Mariano
At least this I can answer without worrying I’ll come off too nice. “My fuckdoll.”
She rolls her eyes, torn between embarrassment and faint pleasure. That’s interesting. “Okay, but even that—I mean, it’s just bizarre to think about.”
I tug her closer and look down at her. “What’s so bizarre about that?”
Of course I know what’s so bizarre about it; I just want to see if she has the guts to say it to my face. I know I only have myself to bet against, but I put my money on no.
She can’t look directly at me; her eyes drop to my bare chest. “Because you’ve made it incredibly confusing. Or, I guess maybe I have, too, I don’t know. I was just trying to follow your lead, but it led me somewhere really fucking weird.”
I fail to stifle a light laugh at that assertion. Her gaze darts to mine. She’s relieved and my reaction gives her the confidence to go on.
“On one hand I was there the other day so I know what you did…” She lets go of the rest of that sentence, shifting gears. “But then you did all this strange stuff and made it confusing. You cuddle me after, you make me kiss you—or, I kiss you. I don’t even know if you make me anymore.” Now her brow furrows, her brief bout of relief pushed aside. This distresses her. The possibility that she’s not kissing me because she has to, but maybe because she likes to. “And then earlier today….” She shakes her head, looking at my chest again. “It’s not like you had a gun to my head that time. I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t know what this is. I’m so confused about everything.”
I wait to see if she’s done. When she doesn’t say anything else, I ask, “Does it matter?”
Wary blue eyes regard me. “Does what matter?”
“Most experiences in life are some blend of good and bad, happy and painful. Experiences are rarely just one thing or another; they’re different classifications at different times. You fall in love and that’s fun. You get your heart broken and that’s not. Someone important comes into your life and it feels exciting. You lose someone close to you and it’s excruciating.”
“Right,” she says, following so far.
“I raped you,” I state, since she’s clearly afraid to accuse me herself. “That was painful for you. Right now, other than confusion because you’re unnecessarily reviewing and trying to process the situation, you seem relatively content. That’s good for you. Why do you need to know which box to put every experience in? Are you keeping a running tally of how many good and bad things happen to you over the course of your life? Your experiences don’t need to be confined to a box. Boxes don’t make people happy. Don’t worry about what you’re supposed to feel or how you’re supposed to react. How do I make you feel now, in this moment? If it’s better, then go with that. Let go of your rules and just live your life.”
I made her nervous when I blithely referred to what I did to her, but by the end she seems introspective. I wonder if this is her ceiling—if this as hard as her mind resists. Generally speaking, she’s quite easy to handle, but since she’s so worried about her own reaction to me, she’s hung up on the thing that doesn’t quite fit the picture she’s trying to paint. She doesn’t seem hung up on her own image of herself though, so I can probably get her over this hurdle pretty simply. People with big egos or excessive insecurity are very concerned about their own self-image. Mia’s not overly concerned about herself at all. It’s the strangest thing. It doesn’t even feel like the effect of some psychological trauma; it seems so natural, like it just doesn’t occur to her. Like somehow Mia was born without the instinct of self-preservation.
For someone who accepts direction so well though, she sure is struggling to maintain control of this particular experience. I never considered that I could talk her out of her own opinion on this matter—mostly because there’s no reason to; it directly opposes my plans—but my mind is significantly stronger than hers. My will eclipses hers already, and it shouldn’t. I really haven’t exerted much effort, but this girl follows my lead like she was born to do it.
“But I don’t know if I’m still—You had a gun to my head, you threatened to kill my family. It was pretty clear what it was the first time. But you’ve confused me. I don’t know if I’m being victimized or courted,” she finally blurts.
I don’t know if my uncontrollable grin is at how horrified she looks at having said that to me, or how appropriate a thing that is to be confused about. Logically, my brain sends several appropriate responses my way, reminders that I don’t want her to get more comfortable with me—I want to make her hate me. I should say something mean in the interest of furthering my own agenda, but it’s fucking funny.
“They’re not necessarily mutually exclusive with me,” I tell her, wryly.
That doesn’t answer her question, so she keeps trying to work it out on her own. “On one hand, the fact that you want to kill me should help clarify that,” she reasons.
I shake my head. “Not necessarily. I told you, it’s not personal. Just business.”
Covering her face with her hands, she shakes her head. “You’re insane.”
“So I’ve been told.”
“I’m never going to tell on you. If I live to be 150 years old, I will never tell any of your secrets.”
“Right,” I drawl, really emphatically, just to be a jerk.
Narrowing her eyes at me, she says, “Can’t you just tell me what you’re doing to me so I know what I’m dealing with?”
She’s literally asking me to control her. How am I supposed to resist this?
Smiling faintly, I say, “So you know which boxes to put your experiences in?”
“I guess I need boxes,” she states.
We’ll fix that.
I frown at myself, since no, we most certainly will not have time to fix that. My own (ordinarily sturdy) brain keeps misfiring, so I guess I shouldn’t be too hard on hers.
I bet she considers this bizarre, since she’s so confused by everything else, but as I hold her in my arms like a lover, I tell her, “It’s simple. Do you have a choice in any of this? Try asking me to stop one of these times and see if I do. Maybe I didn’t hold a gun to your head today, but the threat didn’t have an expiration date, did it? If I tell you to do something, do it. You do what you have to do to get by. If you can find some physical pleasure in that, you should. Why deny yourself? For whom are you doing it? Not for you. Not for me. It’s no one else’s concern.”
“It is for me. I’ll feel guilty.”
“Why?”
“Because… that’s fucked up,” she says, a bit at a loss.
“Says who? Furthermore, who cares? Who’s keeping score, Mia? Is there an invisible judge somewhere, critiquing you on how you respond? Embrace a world without boxes. If it feels good, let it. Who cares what other people expect you to feel?”
After regarding me with a narrowed gaze for a moment, she finally says, “You have an interesting mind, don’t you?”
“It doesn’t work quite the way most seem to,” I admit.
“I’m intrigued,” she tells me. Then, smiling more playfully than one would expect given the conversation up to this point, she adds, “You should tell me more things so I can have a bigger glimpse.”
I roll my eyes indulgently. “Which soul-deep question would you like to ask next? Which superpower I’d pick, my perfect first date, or my dream vacation spot?”
Mia pokes me in the chest with her index finger. “Don’t mock me. I didn’t know what I was allowed to ask. My questions seemed safe.” She misses half a beat, then asks, “But actually, which superpower would you pick?”
I catch a lock of her hair and wrap it around my index finger absently. “The ability to read minds. People aren’t terribly difficult to figure out, but just being able to listen in on their thoughts would save me a lot of time.”
Mia nods. “I can see how that would beneficial, given your position. I don’t think I would always want to know every unguarded thought people have about me, but I can see
why you would. I would choose healing powers.”
“That’s a good one. That way I could try to kill you over and over but it would never work. Look at you, thwarting my plans.”
She pokes me again and I catch her finger, trapping her hand beneath mine and pinning it to my chest. She doesn’t seem to mind. “Could we go one night without revisiting your horrible plans to kill me? Just one?” she asks. “And that wasn’t what I meant by healing powers. I didn’t mean I’d be invincible. I didn’t think of that, actually. I meant I could heal people. Like, if someone got hurt, I could just wave my hand over the wound and magically heal them.”
I stare at her blankly. “If you could only have one super power, you would choose the one that couldn’t possibly benefit you?”
“It would benefit me,” she argues. “It’s not pleasant to watch loved ones in pain. Plus I would request the top-shelf package that includes the ability to ease emotional pain. Not make it go away completely, people need good and bad experiences to grow and all that, but I could just touch their heart or something and absorb some of the pain and ease their burden.”
It’s not lost on me that her hand is, at present, resting over my heart. She seems to notice too, her gaze dropping to her hand. Looking back up at me with feigned solemnity, she asks, “Is it working? Do I have secret super powers?”
Smiling faintly, I tell her, “Maybe.”
A smug little smile plays around her mouth. “Ha, I knew it.”
All I can think about in this moment is kissing those smiling lips. I shouldn’t, so I rain on her parade instead. “Of course, emotional pain doesn’t actually come from the heart. That’s just a bunch of cutesy bullshit. If you want to ease emotional pain by touching the source, you wanna go with the brain.”
“Stop trying to ruin it,” she tells me.
“I can’t help myself.”
“Whatever. I have superpowers. Maybe you do, too. Here, touch my head and see if you can read my thoughts.”
“I do not need to. You’re not even an open book, you’re a billboard.”
She wrinkles her nose up with displeasure. “I am not a billboard.”
“You are. There may be a few unsolved mysteries tucked away in there, but you can’t hide your feelings to save your life. Literally.”
Mia shrugs. “I don’t need to be mysterious. If you want to know something, just ask. You should consider adopting this policy, at least for me. I have a lot of questions.”
“Well, I enjoy the quiet, so I’m ecstatic that I invited a chatterbox into my bed,” I state.
Snorting indelicately, she says, “Invited. Right.”
Nonetheless, she falls quiet. I release her hand but she leaves it over my heart. She could move away, but she remains curled up in my embrace.
It’s nice.
[SATURDAY]
Much the same as every morning now, I wake up to Mia curled up against me, her arm thrown around my waist. Last night she fell asleep in my arms, but even when she doesn’t she seems to wind up here.
It’s still dark out so I ease over to grab my phone, checking to see what time it is. I still have a half hour before my alarm goes off. I replace my phone on the bedside table, my gaze catching on my untouched gun. I left it out when I came to bed last night—it’s not loaded, obviously, but Mia wouldn’t know that.
As much as I doubt she would even possess the capability of shooting me, you never know what a person will do when they feel cornered. Sometimes people fool you. I wanted to know if she’s a better actress than I give her credit for, if she loathes me but tries to soothe me to save her own hide. Wouldn’t be able to blame her for hating me, of course, but as I told her before, it doesn’t matter how she feels about me. She can fall in line, or else. If she had crept out of bed, keeping an eye on me as she tiptoed around to my bedside table, and grabbed my gun, that would’ve been strike one. If she managed to shakily lift it and point it at me, strike two. And if she could’ve run through the memories of what I’ve done to her—to the world, really, she has no lack of inspiration if she needs to lighten her conscience—and convinced her finger to squeeze the trigger, well, that would have been strike three.
I made sure the gun was empty and the ammunition tucked away so she couldn’t find any, just in case, but even in my imagination she could never manage to shoot me. Maybe she would think to use it as protection to get out of my house, but then where would she go? There’s nowhere this penniless girl can go that I can’t reach her. No, to escape me she would’ve had to shoot me, and I don’t see her pulling the trigger. Holding the gun on me, perhaps, her whole body trembling with terror. Me, I’m not one to fuck around when a woman gets false ideas about what a badass she is. I wouldn’t raise my hands and try to talk her down; I would just step forward and take the gun away from her.
Nothing I haven’t done before, to be honest.
Beth thought she was a badass once. Beth failed every damn test, and I wasn’t even obsessed with testing people back then. I trusted her.
Thoughts of Beth sour my mood, so I turn them back to the new woman in my bed—the one who didn’t even bother grabbing the gun, let alone pointing it at me. Instead of doing the justifiable but ultimately foolish thing, she remained in my bed like a good girl, curled up against my naked body.
I really like her. I wasn’t supposed to like her. I almost wish she had tried something stupid, that way she could cure me of this bullshit. It feels like it’s spreading.
If she were to try something, I figured this would be an ideal time. I wasn’t sure how she’d take all the participation I forced on her at lunch time yesterday. Victimizing a person and using brute force is one thing, but forcing them to participate in your crime against them is another level entirely. It shifts blame and fucks with their mind. I’ve already made her kiss me from the first, blurred lines until she’s completely discombobulated—but forcing her to participate the way I did yesterday, exercising no real physical force… she could sink under the weight of that. All Adrian’s joking about her trying to kill me made me wonder what she’d do if she had the chance. So, before I climbed on the bed and fucked her, I left my gun out in the open, letting her think I was distracted and forgot.
But she threw me entirely by following up the forced sex with a bonding session, then ignoring the weapon I made available to her and curling up beside me to sleep.
She’s so bizarre. I really like it.
Smiling fondly, I drag my knuckles down the curve of her naked back. Her skin is so soft and smooth. She’s not a light sleeper like I am, so the caress doesn’t wake her. It’s only been a few days, but somehow this already feels like a routine I’m getting attached to. I like to wake up before she does. It provides a little unguarded window to simply enjoy her presence—her quiet, unquestioning presence.
I like her much more than I expected to. We couldn’t be less alike, but maybe that’s why I like her. I’m by no means full of self-loathing, but given she is my opposite in every way, she does surprise me sometimes. People don’t ordinarily surprise me, so it’s refreshing. I can think of things from my perspective and many other perspectives—but not through the eyes of the innocent. I don’t think I’ve ever been innocent. If I was once, I can’t recall the feeling.
In a way, she highlights the broken parts of me. It should rankle, but she’s so bizarrely accepting that it doesn’t. Beth was never really accepting. I fooled myself that she was in the beginning. Well, she fooled me that she was, but I was blind enough not to see past it. I never saw it when she was alive, not even at the end, but Beth saw me as a golden ticket, not someone to love. I should’ve been more suspicious of how eager she was to get pregnant; it was too soon for a normal, well-adjusted person to be ready to start a family with someone new. I needed an heir so it didn’t matter to me if she got pregnant, but she saw it as much more than that. Of course I loved her and was happy to have Isabella even when she turned out to be a girl, but Beth needn’t have had a child to secure a
future with me. All she had to do was be a better fucking actress. Let me believe she loved me, even after the limerence wore off. I treated Beth like treasured gold; it would’ve been the most lucrative job she ever could have scrounged up with very little required of her.
She couldn’t do it, though. Infatuation doesn’t last long with me. I’m full of distrust; I need to poke and prod at people until they’re fed up with me. Even if they really like me to begin with, I eventually convince them not to. I eventually become too much to handle.
My gaze drifts to Mia’s arm stretched across my torso. It’s the strangest thing that she sleep cuddles me. Obviously we were getting along well enough when we went to bad last night, but even the very first morning she woke up in this bed when she was drained and completely miserable about it, she woke up with her arm around me like this. What makes it stranger is that she doesn’t always wake up this way with Vince. I even double checked the footage to be sure. About half the time she does, but not consistently.
It’s been consistent with me.
Like a moth to a flame, Mia is helpless to resist my pull.
With Mia, it almost seems like my pattern is working in reverse. She began a few days ago betrayed and hating me, worn out, wishing to be away from me. With each passing day, instead of pulling away from me, she drifts closer. Instead of beginning the relationship with enthusiasm and growing miserable, she began miserable and is convincing herself to gain enthusiasm.
Not that this is a relationship, obviously. This is only supposed to be a practice in manipulation. Strangely enough, I didn’t think I would have to worry about either of us liking the other. The rape should have been enough to put her off, and her innocence should bore me to tears.
It doesn’t, though.
I’m not sure why.
For once, I don’t feel like thinking. I just want to enjoy her. So, even though she’s asleep, I shift her weight and tilt her face back, leaning in to brush my lips against hers. Like a cursed princess from a fairy tale, her eyes flutter open.