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“And youkeep finding new ways to change the subject.” She was wearing a thin camisole, made out of such thin satin that it left very little to the imagination. “When, Donni?”
She let out a breath. “Tomorrow.”
“Really?”
“Yes. After dark.”
“Good.” He stretched his arm over the back of the couch, letting his fingers just brush her bare shoulder. Neither of them were making any pretense of watching the movie now, despite the sprays of blood. She was staring at nothing, and he was staring at her.
“Why were you watching my movies alone in the dark?” she asked the wall incuriously.
“I couldn’t sleep. It was the first thing that didn’t look stupid.”
Donni scoffed again. “It’s pretty stupid. Some critic gave it an F.”
“Was that the one who wrote an entire paragraph about wanting to see your tits?”
She glanced at him. At first, her face was tight with annoyance, but then it softened into something a little less forbidding. “I stopped reading my reviews,” she said. “I used to think I’d learn something from them, but most of the things they complained about were out of my control.”
“And that would have made it different?” he asked intently. “Having control, I mean.”
“Maybe.” She turned to watch herself on the TV and her robe slid a little further down her shoulder. He wondered if she was doing this on purpose. “Maybe it would have made it worse.”
A bearded man paused outside the window to watch the young couple having sex in their cabin. Behind him, the wolf loomed. One minute, it was a dog with eyes that had been doctored with CGI to be snake-slit and yellow. The next, it was a looming animatronic.
Rafe laughed in spite of himself when Donni’s convincingly frightened face appeared in the window at the sound of the growls. “How did you manage to look so scared ofthat?”
“I used to be scared of dogs,” she murmured.
“Really? But you have—” he waved his hand “—that one.”
“I was afraid of the big ones.” Her jaw ticked. “He mocked me for it in front of the whole cast—the director. At one point, he grabbed my hand and put it on the dog’s muzzle and I cried, because I thought it was going to bite me. So whenever they needed me to look scared, he just told them to sic the dog on me, and since the dog thought it was all a big game, of course it always went for it.”
She glanced at the TV again and then away.
“All the fear on my face in those scenes is real.”
“Jesus.”
“Some people get off on fear. You seem to.” Her eyes darted to his again, cold now in the dark. She’d caught him studying her breasts. “What you write about—isn’t that what gets you off? Force and suffering.”
“I’m not going to force you.”
“Are you going to hurt me?”
Rafe leaned in and she sucked in. “I saw the way you touched yourself,” he said, just barely repressing the urge to touch her. “That didn’t look like someone who wants gentle.”
He saw her register what he wasn’t saying. The pulse in her throat seemed to jump in agitation.
“When I read your books, it felt like you were punishing me.” She spoke with effort now, avoiding looking at him or the screen. “Like you wanted to see me bleed.”
For a moment, he wasn’t sure what to say. “So you think I’m like Makarov? The sadist?”
“What am I supposed to think?” she said. “You told me Madison wasme.”
“I said she was inspired by you, because she was. I wrote the books because I was pissed at you. God,” he said, with a bitter laugh. “I was so fucking pissed. It was the kind of anger where you’re not sure what you might fucking do. Have you ever been that angry, Donni?”
Her eyes burned in the dark. “What do you fucking think?”
