“I want...” I gulped and went for it. “Freedom.”
“But what sort?” He withdrew his hands and rearranged my dress. “Who is ever free? When we think we are, we’re mostly running on treadmills. Everyone dances to someone else’s tune. The best? When you make that tune yours, because that makes you live.”
Then he kissed my neck and said his last words to me as if they were something he’d lifted from a statue, an inscription of truth.
“We’re never free. We can only dare to run the line between destruction and glory.”
Goosebumps were still shivering across my skin when he rose to his feet.
Confused and a little dazed, I looked up at him. Was that it?
He offered me his hand and I took it.
Destruction or glory? A white picket fence and 2.5 children wasn’t exactly my dream, but there had to be something else in between?
On the way back, he collected flowers and twisted the stems together until he had a circlet.
He placed it on my head as if it were some beautiful crown, adjusting my hair so it stayed on. Funny, it really affected me, having him this friendly.
I shot him a coy look then asked my big question, again. “When are you letting me go?”
“Never.”
Dang. Same answer, same nonchalance in the reply, but it didn’t fill me with fear as I should. Like this, I could handle Wolfe.
Chapter 19
Kiara
When I could do it without being seen, I cleaned those bones until they were white. I kept them in my pocket as some sort of talisman. Maybe they’d help me think. When I got him to say sorry, that’d mean he regretted what he’d done, which’d mean he agreed he shouldn’t do that to me again...
Which would mean I would be fine with giving him a huge dose of Keppra until he could barely walk, let alone think. Because that would stop him doing things to me.
Then I could escape. Correct?
Theoretically. It gave me an aim.
But he never said sorry. Every time he sneaked down to town, he did however remind me: Don’t do anything I wouldn’t like.
Scared to alter it, I kept the dose as constant as I could, and I gave him pre-dosed food to take with him, just in case he was stuck down there.
I had a few close calls where I thought he’d seen me adding the drug to his food and it left me anxious. I was going to run out eventually. He was the only person who could get more. When I was down to four doses, I’d tell him. That gave me time to talk and think, to connive, to follow up clues about Magnus. All the dusty empty photo frames intrigued me.
And the way Wolfe acted while on this dose intrigued me too.
He fixed up things at a steady pace. The tank water running into the sink was clean looking, though we still boiled it. The roof was clear of debris. The insides of the cabin were getting cleaner, more ordered, less dusty, though that was more my doing.
We had a double quilt on the bed with frickin’ cherries on it!
Little, red cherries. It looked so cute I wondered when the matching curtains would turn up. Of course laundry was a task and a half. A bear wandered across the front yard one day, disappeared, and I never saw it again. The countryside sort of meandered into my life when it felt like it.
Next thing, we’d have pots of bright-colored geraniums on the window sill and neighbors coming in to have a beer. As if we had any neighbors. When all the shutters were open, on the sunny days, the cabin was a place to warm your soul.
And with me was the man least likely to win daddy-of-the-year award, or husband.
If he turned bad again...
I tended to some cuts on his hands once, though they were likely to heal no matter what I did. Still, blood spotting the earth as he walked toward me had made my caring heart go lub dub dub. Treating his wounds made me feel useful.
He’d been bringing me flowers. Chocolates from the town, once. Lindt chocs. OMG.
I sat in the sun after that, eating them with him, drinking coffee, turning this all over. I mustn’t become complacent.
I couldn’t find anything in the cabin that told me much about its previous inhabitant. Wolfe seemed calmer, but otherwise his daily walks alone yielded no revelations – or none he told me about.
Then one day, and I had no idea anymore what day of the week it was, Wolfe brought the gun to me and he told me: “I’m going to teach you to shoot.”
Fear entered me at the same moment he took me by the hand. Was there some hidden reason? He was giving me the gun he’d forbidden me to touch.
Wolfe led me across that little hollow field to the place above the creek. Our feet crunched the grass underfoot, bees buzzed, the birds made their melodious sounds, and I feared.
Guns were not something I’d ever like. They killed. They were made for killing people, worst of all. You didn’t hunt duck with a revolver.
I wore jeans and a tank top. It’d rained yesterday, like it did half the time here, but today was warm enough to get a tan. So normal.
“Here.” Wolfe showed me the gun. “Put out your hand. I’ll show you how to clean it, strip it, another time. Hand?”
I couldn’t raise my arm and ended up giving him a quizzical look, half embarrassment, half scared. He’d told me never to touch it.
From the twisting lines on his face, he hadn’t figured it out. Then his face cleared. “Oh. You can do this, Kiara. I give you permission to shoot the gun.”
At that, I found I could take it from him.
“This is the safety. You turn it off like this. Or on. Then raise it and use the sights...keep your wrist...”
I listened, feeling distant. Why didn’t he expect me to shoot him? Had he been that sure of me, or was he not thinking things through?
The rest of the lesson went in a blur, though I did what he asked and shot at some cans he’d set up. Since we were on a slope, it wasn’t simple. There was elevation to consider, and wind, and possibly the price of eggs in China. I hit a few targets and he took the revolver back to reload it.
“Why are you doing this?” God damn, I’d been dying to ask.
“Because...” He looked up from his task. “I want you to be safe.”
From who?
“People might come here while I’m gone. You know?”
Ohhh. Safe, safe. Not...so that I could shoot him if he went nuts again.
He hadn’t made a move on me in ages. Crazily, as seemed often the case when it involved Wolfe, I kind of missed sex with him. And that I couldn’t remember us ever having what I’d call normal sex? Yup, scary.
I had the dose down to an exactitude now. He never varied in behavior. I’d ventured a smaller dose TID not BID. For some reason, it worked well. His system might metabolize the drug faster than most?
And right when I was thinking through all that, and Wolfe was readying the gun, from behind him something rustled straight toward us through the grass, burrowing and making this rasping sound. Then that something barreled into Wolfe’s legs.
It went up on its hind legs and scratched at his jeans.
The something was small and rotund, black and white, with cute poppy eyes and a tongue as long as an unrolled rug. It leaped about barking and scratching some more, then it ran in circles about us both, weaving through our legs.
“A dog?” Wolfe said, incredulously.
“A Boston Terrier?” I added, just as astounded.
“Where in hell did you come from?”
We both looked around but no one else could be seen or heard.
Wolfe checked the gun’s safety then holstered it and went to one knee. Grinning at the creature’s antics, I went to my knees also.
From the way she behaved, as we both patted her, pats were in short supply.
“You think its owner’s around?”
“Don’t know.” Wolfe put both hands on it and found a weathered collar. “No tag. No phone number. Maybe a camper lost her. She reminds me of a dog I once had...”
“Oh?”
“Don’t do anything I wouldn’t like,” I recited.
“Yes. That. And be safe.”
“You going to leave me the gun?” Haha. I raised a brow and put hand to hip, challenging him.
“I will.”
Wow.
At that Lily 2 bounced onto his lap then jumped again to lick his mouth. The spluttering commenced and I almost fell over laughing – had to prop myself off the ground with my arm. Wolfe, grinning, gave me a shove and I toppled over backward into the grass.
It wasn’t meant to happen, obviously...I was beginning to think his libido was zero on this dose, but...he leaned over me, with his arms to either side, and he crawled up my body.
The dog must’ve been puzzled or curious, or exhausted, as she flopped down and watched.
I hadn’t had this man being sexually attentive for ages, and yet, despite everything, he revved me up in one second flat – as soon as his groin pressed onto me. Soon as he observed my mouth when I licked my bottom lip...when he put a finger to the neckline of my shirt and traced it from my shoulder, tickling me, making me breathless, all the way to my cleavage.
Wolfe had ravaged me, tied me to a tree, and fucked me senseless, and here I was urging him onward with my hand on his jaw and the other to his shirt.
Buttons, why did he have buttons?
From the way he tugged my jeans button loose, he had the same problem.
I laughed as he kissed me and helped him shrug me out of my shirt and wriggle my jeans past my butt, then further. Eventually they were off entirely and we’d exchanged hot kisses, warm sighs, some curious gazes as we admired each other’s bodies. I shuddered when he shifted between my legs and moaned as he entered me.
He didn’t stay inside me after a few thrusts. He was a thoughtful lover.
When he came, I guess it was a minute after he’d brought me to orgasm too, with his fingers and mouth on my pussy. I lay there afterward, with the dog a yard away snoring, and when the word nice came into my head I realized how apt that was. The lovemaking had been nice and almost satisfying.
Almost.
I snuggled deeper into his arms and wondered if the grass would leave me itchy. At least we had that creek to wash in, though it’d be freezing.
Nice.
Dammit. I was feeling disappointed and I knew why, couldn’t ignore my own reasons.
I expected more from Wolfe. I’d wanted him to fuck me like there was no tomorrow, riding that line between destruction and glory, leaving a burning line on the world you could see from the heavens. Something like that. I twitched my mouth. I was being silly.
But as I felt him plant a kiss on my nape and stroke my hair, my dismay mingled with a ridiculous amount of sorrow.
I guess that’s when I made a little jump and fell into some surreal other world, because the thought I’d just had run through my head couldn’t have been mine.
What if...what if I lowered the dose just a bit, to get him...less tame?
It was something to muse over. No hurry.
Another thought sidled in too. Holding the gun had jarred a memory into being. Being told not to touch it had left a scar, somehow, and had obscured something that I really should’ve followed up on. The charred journal and the cigarette case were waiting for me.
Chapter 20
Kiara
No one had come looking for the dog. When Wolfe went out on his solitary walk, she trotted along beside him until he scooped her up. Bostons weren’t made for jogging, exercising, or anything that involved breathing hard. He’d be doing a lot of carrying. I levered myself away from the kitchen door jamb and made a beeline for that drawer that held the journal.
With butter knife in hand, I settled on the floor, with a folded rug under me to cushion my butt. Wolfe would be a fair while, and I knew the noises to listen for now. It was unlikely he’d surprise me. Besides, I wasn’t doing anything wrong.
The front of the book was a list of stuff someone had bought, maybe? Prices, dates, etcetera. Only toward the end did it turn into a diary of sorts. A short one, with the pages burned in half.
I read page after page about this Magnus waffling on about how fantastic some woman was, then it degenerated into strange statements, one per page, then it stopped with the oddest of them all, and I sat back.
I did something terrible.
I’m sorry Amelia.
That was it.
Had he done something terrible to her? Or was this him apologizing to her for doing that terrible thing?
No way to tell. Maybe I had her fingers in my pocket. Now that’d be really strange and gruesome.
He obviously didn’t live here anymore. Wolfe wasn’t the least concerned his pal would turn up.
The cigarette case was next. I stood and checked out the window. It’d not taken more than twenty minutes to slice open the burnt edges, sweep the ashes from the pages with my fingers, and read Magnus’s careful handwriting. I had time.
The case was thin and thoroughly distorted at the seam and hinges. When wriggling in the butter knife only bent the knife edge, I found a heavier knife. Then I stared at it, turned it over. It was some sort of hunting knife Wolfe had left on the counter top.
He was so sure of me that he left lethal things lying about. Or he didn’t care if I tried. If so, he was fatalistic. It might also be a test.
I shook my head and set to trying to lever open the case. Finally, it cracked. A small piece of hinge flew across the floor. I put down the knife and bent the case open all the way. Inside was more paper, only these were photos. The heat from the fire had destroyed some of them, or left only tattered and shriveled things that might’ve been pictures of UFOs for all I could tell. A few from the center of the pile were mostly intact.
Eleven recognizable photos in all.
I laid them in a row on the floor, then picked up each one and scrutinized it, front and back. A few had a dates or names on the back. One photo was of someone called Amelia. Her name on the back was inside a sketched heart and written in what seemed to be Magnus’s hand.
She was a pretty redhead, with short hair and a wide smile of the sort that looked model girl. Happy though. Magnus couldn’t have been too awful. Another photo had birthday party written on the back. The front showed a table with several people sitting at it. Two men had their arms around their girlfriends or wives.
The other woman, by herself, was her. Amelia.
She was smiling at the camera, in an intimate way. She held a wine glass and hanging from her wrist was a pretty gold-and-amethyst bracelet. I adored that purple gemstone. A third of the photo was gone. The burned edge showed only part of the chair beside her and on it was probably a small dog. I could see the hind leg. Black, like Lily? Was this Wolfe’s previous dog? If a friend of Magnus, he might’ve been there.
“Hmmm.”
Being Detective Kiara was the most fun I’d had for days. Wolfe was once again in eunuch mode.
Another four, undamaged photos: a group of different people; a view of this cabin from the outside; a photo looking down the hallway where Amelia posed in a black catsuit. The catsuit had a chunky zip that ran all the way down between her legs and her breasts were bared. The photo was floodlit, somehow, from above. The last photo was a close-up of the bracelet. Perhaps it was her birthday and this was her present? The catsuit too, perhaps. Kinky.
* * * * *
The library at night, with the fire crackling, with Wolfe in the big, old armchair, and myself sitting on the sofa with his sketches on my lap and a glass of wine in hand...it was eerie. Too quiet, too normal.
A snore interrupted my thoughts and I smiled. Lily was terribly amusing with her scatterbrained, doggy centering on her master – Wolfe. She’d adopted him and was curled up near his feet, in her makeshi
ft bed made of old shirts and a towel.
Nine days left to go before I ran out of drug and nobody had turned up to claim her. So far I had kept Wolfe normal...relatively normal. I peeked at him. He was reading. A whole pile of books was at his elbow on the same table my wine glass used. To the side of the fireplace, the glass pane rattled and pattered with rain. A heavy storm had rolled in while we’d eaten supper. Roast beef and vegetables, all done in the wood-fired oven.
The tree limbs danced in the storm and the moonlight sent their straggly shadows swaying over our walls.
This situation was surreal.
Once upon a time...
Some mornings, I half expected to wake and find a thorn barrier growing out there, or for a little red riding hood to wander in and join us for breakfast.
I had the Wolfe already.
Difficult, to picture him at the rehab village. He had changed so much. His hair had seemed to take on a life of its own – stragglier, thicker, more beastlike. I could’ve sworn his shoulders were an inch wider too. No fangs yet, thank god. His cock might be bigger too. I snorted at that image popping into my head. Sex would be problematic, if he’d managed that.
Not that sex was likely.
I’d taken to masturbating whenever he wandered away, but it was a totally unfulfilled, unfinished sort of event. I couldn’t come without him, it seemed. More than a few days, I’d flopped on my back on the bed, underwearless and frustrated, to swear at the ceiling. Maybe if I’d had a real vibrator I’d have vanquished my needs...maybe. I doubted it.
Sighing, I took a sip of wine, settled deeper into the musty upholstery then turned over the last sketch. Most were of me, naked or barely clothed. Somewhere inside, he harbored lustful thoughts. I smirked. I’d been startled when I’d seen the first few drawings but now I was used to being his subject, even if he had some whimsical imaginings, and some evil ones. This latest sketch, in particular. I wasn’t sure I appreciated being turned into the elven slave of an orc...or whatever he was. The pointy ears looked fun, though, and I was slim yet had the largest boobs ever.
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