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He exhales audibly but doesn’t bother to answer. Instead, he shifts his hand, the one without the bandage, turning me over onto my belly.
“What are you doing?”
His hand rests on my back for a moment, just caressing the bare skin of my upper back and even now, even at this soft touch, I feel his power. His strength.
He takes hold of the zipper and begins to draw it down slowly, so slowly and purposefully. I still, feeling that strange electricity that sparks whenever he touches me.
When the dress is unzipped, he turns me over so I’m facing him again.
“What are you doing? Uncuff me.”
He doesn’t bother to answer me. Instead, with two quick tugs, the straps are ripped free. He drags the dress off me, eyes locked on mine as he does it—again slowly, again with purpose—until I’m lying there almost naked. Just a skimpy bra and panties between us.
When it’s gone, he stands back and looks at me.
I’m panting, but he’s not even a little out of breath. His gaze roams over me. It hovers over my sex for so long I remember what he did the last time. How he smeared the blood from where I scratched him over it. A sort of marking. And now, I swear I feel the burn of his gaze on my skin.
I squirm and try to turn, but he puts his palm on my stomach to stop me. It’s so big it spans the whole of my belly. I wonder if he notes this difference in size between us too. Maybe the difference in our skin tone, my paleness next to his deeper olive tone.
Does he also register how vulnerable I am? How helpless he’s made me.
He walks away then, and I’m confused. But he disappears into the bathroom, and I hear water run. When he’s back he’s holding a damp washcloth.
He sets a knee on the bed, and without speaking, expression serious and eyes dark, he attempts to clean me. First my face, then my neck where I’d cut myself. I wince, but he’s gentle. He runs the washcloth over my chest. I’m bloody from him and me, but he can’t get it all off. I’ll need to shower to do that. To scrub. He does my legs last, where the wine feels sticky.
Without a word, he’s off the bed again. He goes into the bathroom. I know he washes his hands because when he returns, he’s drying them on a clean towel.
“What are you going to do?” I ask.
He doesn’t reply, just stalks toward the bed.
“Please.”
“Please what?”
I watch him as he looks me over. When he returns his gaze to mine, the look in his eyes is different. There’s a hunger inside them. Something dark and endless. Something like the other night but more charged. More sexual.
I lick my lips even as goose bumps cover my exposed flesh as I try to press myself deeper into the bed even knowing there is no escape. Not now, bound as I am and probably not unbound either.
My life belongs to him. It’s what he believes.
Might makes right. And he is mighty.
“Please what, Cristina?” he repeats, tone a little more irritated. “Fucking finish your sentence.”
“Please don’t hurt me,” I say in a small voice.
He looks almost surprised by my request, but how can he be? He sits down, his hand a little lighter on my stomach. Maybe he’s realized I’m not going to pull away.
“Why shouldn’t I? You hurt me.” He holds up his bandaged hand as if I didn’t know.
“I…I…”
His eyes narrow. “You…you…what?” He’s taunting me.
I narrow my eyes too.
“Are you sorry?” he asks.
It’s coming, my punishment, and I can’t help myself. “I’m sorry I didn’t put the knife in your heart.”
He snorts, mouth curving up on one side. He leans closer, eyes locked on mine. “There’s my girl.”
“I’m not your girl.”
He straightens again. “Where did the eye color come from?”
“What?”
“Your eyes.”
“Why does it matter?”
“I’m curious.”
“I thought you knew everything about me.”
“Humor me.”
“My grandmother on my mom’s side.”
He shifts his gaze back to his hand on my stomach. I watch as he caresses the skin there with the tips of his fingers, his touch soft as he draws ever-widening circles on my belly.
“I should punish you.”
I squirm, trying to pull up in my bonds. There’s nowhere I can go, though, and my body isn’t reacting to his touch the way it should.
Repulsion, I tell myself. Feel repulsed, I command.
It doesn’t work, though.
His eyes follow his hand as he glides it under the elastic band of my panties. My belly flutters at the sensation of rough fingertips on my skin.
No one’s touched me like this before.
No one’s even seen me like this.
“Stop,” I squeak.
He glances at me, and I wonder what he sees. Deer in headlights, I guess.
What I see is clear.
Darkness.
Desire.
Carnal want.
And a man with too much experience.
