I shook off the sand. I could have left it there but was feeling less sadistic than my usual. “Mouth.”
She opened it, but I paused to look. I couldn’t resist the allure of what stood before me, a female I’d had and given to others in every possible combination. Yet this tainted and degraded woman drew me.
Why?
Because. Because sometimes the incomprehensible possesses us. I did not know why. This connection between Red and me simply existed. Nothing I could do would break it – nothing short of killing her.
For days I’d been feeling my way through the correct dosage of Keppra. After only a short time under its influence, I recognized this as a crux point. Wolfe was right.
The drug did work a miracle on mesmers.
And whatever dosage I had taken, at this very point in time, it had me where I wanted to be.
As pure mesmer, the world was dull and simple. Seen through the eyes of my monster, the nuances and excitement of living was crushed. I had taken Red and used her like a toilet roll to assuage desires, then thrown her away until I wanted her again.
A human man was more than lust. Should be more.
Yet the sadism called me. The blushing reds striping her ass. The minute trickles of blood. The straining of her mouth and her whimpers as I whipped her then made her come in almost the same second.
“Red,” I whispered.
The curves of her breasts were criminally covered.
I dithered between stripping her here or doing it later.
“Arms before you. Wrists together.”
Having crammed my fist into her hair, I leaned in.
“You ran from me. Do you deserve punishment?” The thrill of this was making me so hard I was hurting, and I reached down to adjust my dick, giving it a squeeze before I caught both her wrists.
“Answer me.”
“Yes.” Such a quiet, squeaky reply.
“Why’d you run?” With my nose buried in her hair, I inhaled.
Before this, before the drug, she could not defy me.
She tried to shake my fist loose. Defiance? Defiance, I decided, was wonderful.
I smiled into her hair and bit her ear, listening to the abrupt hiss and shake in her breathing.
“Don’t do that. Answer. Unless you want to try fucking yourself on a tree branch.” Not that I would ask that of her, but it was an interesting threat.
And an even more interesting image.
I wouldn’t. But still.
“I thought, maybe, you were weaker.”
“From the drug?”
She nodded. “I saw it on the table.”
I twisted my hand in her hair, felt her wince, then released it and wormed the panties between her lips. I wedged them deep, pressing back the corners of her mouth. Then I spun her and knotted the cloth at the back of her head.
“Let’s get this dress off you, then maybe I can string you up with it before I fuck you.”
Slowly, I stepped away, never taking my eyes from her, from this shaking, fearful woman as I did so.
A vice crunched onto my chest and held on.
Is this it, I asked myself as she drew her dress over her head and offered it to me.
Naked, eyes wide, legs shaking. The crunch of leaves underfoot punctuated the looming night. Darkness was falling. Animals might be out foraging.
Is this what I want?
I was the cause of more fear in her than any wild animal.
Was this it? My life’s aim?
Crap.
Loudly, I sucked on the inside of my mouth.
Was keeping her shaking so enticing?
I knew it was the Keppra that altered my view, the same as it was the mesmer infection and not me that had created this version of me that stood in my skin and tugged at me even now.
Don’t. This way lies death.
Did it, though?
Crux point. Pivotal point. Go this way or go that way.
Is this what I wanted?
I didn’t like the fear I saw in Red. Or the amount of fear to be precise. I liked fear, just not this stark intensity.
I did not like the me that had made this happen.
Stopping myself, though, was entirely different.
I eyed her, naked, unwilling but also willing – she would do anything for me. I could smell her arousal and imagined a string of it, dripping between her thighs as I teased her.
I lusted after the idea of fucking her, strung up, hands bound high, toes spinning on the sand.
Lust was mesmer. Yes. Power over females was mesmer.
Why would any sane man not wish that power?
Thinking, I licked along the slit of my mouth. I moved in again and yanked the makeshift gag far enough backward to loosen the panties from her head and strip them off her.
One step backward… Two.
“I want you, Red, to do something else. I want you to help me become human, again.”
Her eyes stayed wide and uncomprehending.
CHAPTER 5
RED
Jesus. Was he serious?
Human, again – he had said that.
Which meant he thought he wasn’t human.
That alone was a surprise. I’d never made the leap to thinking he wasn’t human. He was just horribly distorted, damaged, and evil.
And I was being so very kind giving him that human label, seeing I was standing here, dress limp in my hand, trembling, panting for breath, and naked, after being chased down the track. This was my own private horror movie.
Which had lasted years, and yet… and yet he asked me this, while staring with those cold eyes. They were blue, in close-up, and he’d stared the same way while hurting me tens of, a hundred times.
How dare he ask me. How fucking dare he. A sob built in the back of my throat and nose. This had to be a
