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I’d always thought I’d want to go outside eventually and interact with the three-dimensional world of people, places, and things, but I’d been content to remain shielded for a while, secretly hoping my memory would return first, so when I did venture out, I didn’t feel like an alien from another planet.
“Thinking of jumping?” Shannon whispered in my ear. He’d been like a ghost, silent as mist wafting through walls.
“N-no.”
He threaded his fingers through mine and guided me back inside. There was a coil of rope and a paddle on the bed.
“First I’m going to paddle you for coming downstairs and interrupting my party. Then I’m going to tie you up and fuck you.”
I wanted to protest, maybe negotiate my way down to a light spanking and missionary sex with the lights off. Give me the illusion of love and caring. But the way his face lit up when he spoke and thought about doing these things to me... I’d never seen him look more like a real human being before.
There was no coldness in his expression now. It was all warmth like the sun. It was the closest we’d gotten to that first night when he’d felt pity for me. At the time that emotion from him had been awful. In hindsight, knowing more about him, I realized what a rare gift it was—to make him feel something like that. To make him feel anything.
He was still aroused, and I couldn’t help the way my eyes continued to stray over him. But when I finally was able to tear my gaze away from his erection, I saw that he was equally captivated by me. His gaze roved over me, soaking in each detail he’d denied himself all these weeks starting when he’d turned his back on me in the castle so I could dress.
“If you wanted me, why didn’t you take me at the castle?” I asked.
“Ididtake you.”
I rolled my eyes. “You know what I mean. Why didn’t you just fuck me there? Why did you turn around to give me privacy to put clothes on? You could have done whatever you wanted then.”
“I didn’t know what I wanted.”
“Oh.”
“And if I’d fucked you then, you wouldn’t have wanted it. You would have been too scared and upset. You were still processing the death of the man you thought was your husband. You would have screamed and fought me. No way would I have been able to get you to come with me peacefully out of the park. I would have had to kill you.”
It was good to know Shannon wasn’t impulsive. But then, I’d already known that. Absent necessity, he didn’t do anything without a plan and probably a thick dossier on whoever the plan involved.
Shannon stepped over to his closet and pulled out a pair of freshly pressed jeans. Yes, he ironed his jeans. I feel like that should be in a list of psychopath traits somewhere: doesn’t name his cat, irons his jeans. He pulled the jeans on and zipped them.
I raised a brow. He fucked with his clothes on?
“I like the power imbalance: you nude and helpless, me at least partly dressed. I could go outside right now without calling any odd attention and without putting another stitch of clothing on.” His gaze moved over me again. “You, not so much.”
He sat at the foot of the bed and dragged the paddle up next to his thigh. “Elodie?”
I still didn’t know how we’d gotten here, from basic safety and food and shelter and polite indifference to... this.
“Shannon?”
“Yeah?”
“What if I hadn’t come down to the party? Would this still be happening?”
“Probably not.”
“So then, aren’t you glad I interrupted your party?” I asked hopefully, thinking it might buy me some... something.
He smiled, a real smile that made me forget everything he was and everything he wasn’t. “Yes, I’m glad you interrupted.”
“So why punish me?”
The smile remained on his face, but it twisted somehow as the rest of his face seemed to fall into shadow. “Try negotiating with me again, and you’ll get more. Do you want more?”
I shook my head quickly, already certain that I didn’t, even without any experience to base that feeling upon.
So this was how it was going to be? I’d fantasized about Shannon, but my fantasies had never been like this. Though realistically, I didn’t know what kind of sex I expected Shannon to be into. Once I’d decided he wasn’t into it at all, I could think about any silly romantic thing I wanted. If it wasn’t happening ever at all anyway, why worry about what he’drealisticallydo? Who cared? Realism wasn’t required to come.
