EMMA

"I think my stomach is going to explode."

Leaning back against my seat, I deserted all the ladylike manners my mother had practically beaten into me as a child. Clasping my hands over my distended abdomen, I breathed out in hopes that less air in my lungs would make room for the food sitting in my stomach.

Ethan was still finishing the last of his steak, his eyes cast in my direction. Every so often I'd felt a tingle against my skin, the sense that I was being watched. I'd look up to find Ethan staring across at me, his gaze fixed on my lips after I'd taken a bite of food, as if he were inwardly counting how many times I chewed before swallowing. He missed nothing. Saw everything. Recorded each detail in that mind of his, but for what purpose, I wasn't sure. He was the definition of a voyeur, his picture most likely included in the dictionary beside the word, his image staring back at the reader - watching.

Guilt had ridden me the entire meal, and if I'd had pockets, I would have slipped some of the food inside them to take back to Melanie or the other women purposely kept weak by the diet offered to them.

Plate clean, Ethan shoved it away, anticipation lighting his gaze now that his stomach was filled. Standing from the table, he didn't have even a tiny bulge in his abdomen for as much food as he'd shoveled down.

"How do you do it?" I asked, again losing a battle against the curious thoughts tumbling about in my head.

His eyes pinned me in place, but not with rancor for the incessant questions. It was a familiarity I couldn't name, a part of him that was so much like me that it drew us together despite whether we understood why. "Do what?"

"Stay in perfect shape. I assume with how busy you are filming, finding time to work out must be difficult."

His brows drew together in bemused thought. "How do you do it, Emma? Bounce from one random subject to the next with your questions? You're like a kitten staring at a crawling bug, wondering everything there is to know about the creature with no rhyme or reason between one thought and the next."

I didn't respond and he filled the silence to answer the question I'd asked. "I don't work out, I just never stop moving. My mind runs too fast, ideas constantly spinning and demanding my attention. I'm too driven to sit still, too focused to lie about like a pig in shit while the calories attach themselves to my thighs. If it's possible for thinking to be a workout in itself, then I assume that's what keeps me from becoming soft like many men in this world."

Gliding into the living room to fiddle with the remote he'd left on the side table near the couch, he shot a glance in my direction. "Are you feeling better now that you've eaten something?"

"Yes," I replied honestly, "much better."

"Good. You'll need that strength tomorrow."

Don't ask. Don't ask. Don't ask...

"What's tomorrow?"

Dammit.

"You're filming. It's like I said earlier: you're in demand, and our viewers are clamoring for more." Pausing, his eyes shot up from the remote to lock with mine. "Several have offered exorbitant amounts of money to be allowed into the studio to be on stage with you. They want to see if they have what it takes to subdue the studio's feisty actress."

My eyes closed slowly. I breathed in, breathed out. It did nothing to settle my racing heart. "And did you accept one of those offers?"

"That's not my decision. I'm sure one of the studio heads did. I simply create the art with the tools they provide me."

Opening my eyes, I dared peek out at him from beneath heavy lashes. "It's not art, Ethan."

"That's where you're wrong. Why are you still in the dining room? We're done eating. It's time for the entertainment portion of our evening." Patting his leg as if he were calling a dog, he smiled and demanded, "Come here, my beautiful Emma. You'll like this. I promise."

I wished I hadn't eaten. The food was churning in my stomach at the thought of what he believed would entertain me. He held the remote, so I assumed it was a movie - my movie, to be exact. The pain beneath my ribs was extraordinary, like my intestines were closing off so that the food had nowhere to go but up. "I don't want to watch the movie you made of me. I can't watch it."

Setting the remote on the table with a soft click of plastic against wood, he approached me on furtive steps. "You will watch it. And you will enjoy it. Why deny yourself truth when it's right there at the click of a button?"

Desperate to halt his forward motion, I threw out my question from earlier. Would it dampen his mood? Probably. Did I care? No. Perhaps by pissing him off, I could avoid this depraved part of the date.

"How did you end up like this? Directing filthy smut and disgusting snuff?"

If nothing else, the question worked for the reason I'd intended. Ethan's feet came to a grinding halt, his eyes searching my face with what looked like hurt rolling behind them. That couldn't have been possible. You would have to be able to feel to be hurt, and this man did not feel a thing. I was sure of it.

"Are we back to that?" he asked softly.

"We never moved away from that," I answered just as gently. "At least, on my end we haven't."

It was an error in judgment to think the question would hold him back for long. I'd barely had time to blink an eye before he was directly in front of me, his hands locked over my shoulders as he lifted me effortlessly from my chair.

Holding me balanced on trembling legs, he studied me for several long seconds. I nodded a symbolic hello to time, noting how it had retaken its throne to slow down this moment. Every beat of my heart echoed in my head, every soft inhalation and exhalation of our combined breathing like a soothing harmony against the heavy percussion of my pulse. He was so close that I felt the heat of his body pour over me, the scent of his rich, earthy cologne wrapping around me like a sultry blanket.

My body weakened and all the questions that had whispered inside me were silenced. All I saw in the moment - all I knew - was this enigma of a man who should have been monstrous but wasn't. A flicker of attraction blinded me, the revolting truth of how he made me feel was a hidden tack beneath a soft mattress. It poked me in the back, warning me, but still I snuggled down into the soft warmth of the bed. I wanted to pull away from him, but couldn't.

Ethan did the strangest thing at that moment, he answered me with pure, undiluted truth.

"I've told you before that the subject of these films does nothing for me. Rape doesn't get me off, Emma. But truth does. Emotion does. And you won't find those things in Hollywood movies. Every person in front of that camera is only a replica of what the character should be. They're not real. The emotion they portray is false and imperfect. But not here. Every film I make contains a true depiction of the world around us. There are predators and there are prey. It's inborn, as if we were identified and set to our natural side when we first emerged from our mother's womb. Hollywood makes the world look pretty, but it's all just a glamorous lie. Why waste your time on that fantasy when you can truly look life in the face with the films I make? When you have the opportunity to stare it in the eyes and say 'I see you, but I'm not scared'?"

Tears leaked from my eyes. There wasn't a vein of doubt inside him. He believed in these films despite their horror. The realization was a deluge of sorrow inside me - for the women destroyed by his deluded vision, and for him.

"But that's not what the films are used for," I argued on a weak voice. "They're used so that filthy men can get themselves off by watching them."

Leaning down, his face was nose to nose with mine, our mouths so close they became a disturbing temptation. "How my films are received isn't important. Only my intent in making them. And my intent is pure, unfiltered, raw truth. You don't get off on watching them. You genuinely see what I'm showing you." Pausing, his eyes shifted as if he were studying and dedicating the fear in mine to memory. "I want to know your reaction to what you've done. What I gave you no choice but to do on that stage. You will watch the film. And if I have to drag you over there, I will."

"I can walk," I bit out between clenched teeth.

"Good. Then see to it that you do. Walk over to the couch and sit down on it. I'll wait here to ensure you follow instructions."

Releasing me, he stepped away, just enough for me to breeze past him on uncoordinated steps. I felt like a prisoner walking to execution, my last meal eaten and my hope for any kind of future gone. Time was a bastard to slow down each step, to give me the opportunity to feel each vibration of my heel against the floor shimmy up my body, but eventually I made it to the couch and sat down.

Ethan walked toward me, all long, powerful strides and a prowess I'd never witnessed in another man. Lifting the remote from the table, he took a seat behind me, turned me with a rough grip and laid my back down against his chest. Stretching one long leg out beside me, he rested comfortably in a pose intended for lovers relaxing after a long day - not that of a man forcing a woman to watch her greatest horror.

"What are you doing?"

His deep voice was a vibration against my back, his breath ruffling the stray hairs at the side of my face. "I'm getting ready to know your reaction."

Clenching my hands into fists, I fought not to scream. "I thought you only watched."

A moment of silence slipped between us, pregnant with my anger and his lack of concern. "To know your reaction, Emma, I can't simply just watch. I need to feel it, too. How your body tenses at certain scenes. How your pulse picks up to hammer against your skin." As if to demonstrate his meaning, he slipped a hand around my throat to tap the tip of his finger against the artery.

"I want to know you, inside and out," he added on a slick tongue and compelling baritone voice.

With that same hand, he gripped my chin and forced my eyes toward the screen. The tropical paradise disappeared with the click of a button, replaced by my image coming to focus on a bed.

He'd created a war inside me so easily. My mind hated him. My body and heart screamed out their opposition from behind whatever line had been drawn in the sand.

"No, please don't make me do this," I begged, the words barely coming out as a whisper.

"Shhhhhhh," was his only response, his thumb moving to brush over my trembling lip before he lowered his hand to rest a finger against my pulse.

I thought about clenching my eyes shut, but I was caught by the image, spun tightly in the sticky web of witnessing one of the most horrifying moments of my life. And while my heart began to hammer as my lungs struggled to draw air, Ethan sat behind me, his chest a lazy, rhythmic motion that betrayed the lack of emotion inside him. He was merely watching with his finger pressed softly to my pulse.

Time didn't move as slowly now as it had on stage. What had felt like a man crawling toward me through sluggish soup, was actually a man walking at a normal pace, his gaze trained to me while I turned to stare at the camera. I remembered the soft whir of those machines, the heat pulsing off the blinding lights, but none of that was here now - just an image of a girl on a bed waiting for her attacker to approach her.

But still, despite the absence of what it felt like on that stage, I remembered it and felt it again. Every step. Every beat of my heart. Every sticky bead of sweat that dripped down my face. I felt the crushing of my very soul when I'd looked to Ethan for help and only found him standing among his cameras...watching.

I took a breath and saw the man lunge toward me on screen. Not the man. The seventeen year old kid that wouldn't see eighteen because of me. I moved to shift my weight over the couch and Ethan's hand tightened over my neck to hold me in place.

Given no other choice but to sit still, I felt panic crawl up my throat as the kid tore away my negligee, as he revealed me for the larger cameras off stage and the one floating above me. It recorded every detail of my skin, took its time on my breasts before sliding down my abdomen. It didn't pan away until whoever was watching the film got an up close and personal shot of a thick cock forcing itself into my body.

My body stiffened in response to the shot, Ethan's body unaffected behind me.

Dizzy again, I cried as I heard all the horrible things that bastard had said while raping me. I tensed at the sound of my screams tearing from Ethan's hidden speakers, I felt my heart stop when a look glared from my eyes toward the cameras - toward Ethan. It was the moment the orgasm burst through me, the moment I'd felt the worst form of betrayal, the betrayal of my own body against me.

Ethan's thumb must have hit pause. The moving images stopped and my betrayal was staring back at me on freeze frame.

"There," Ethan whispered, "it was right at that moment when your rage came to life. I saw it from where I was standing as this was filmed and I prayed that it was caught."

I knew my pulse was a drumbeat beneath the pad of his finger, knew he'd felt my reaction against his body. The evidence of it was laced into the tone of his soft voice. Soothing, yet excited, he spoke, his breath a cascade of warmth against my cheek.

"I hate you for this," I hissed, not finding the strength to add any volume to my voice.

His hand slipped from my neck to run over my shoulder, down my arm, and to brush the side of my breast. A shiver coursed through me just as his thumb and finger softly rolled the tip of my erect nipple from over my shirt.

"Do you?" he crooned, his voice so deep, it was seeping inside me. "Hatred doesn't cause this reaction."

My teeth slammed down on my lip to keep from screaming, the rage at this moment building just as quickly as it had on stage. How dare he use my body against me? How dare he point out that my breasts had tightened at his touch and then tried to claim it was the movie that did this to me?

How dare I try to lie to myself by refusing to acknowledge what Ethan did to me when we touched?

What the fuck was wrong with me?

A moan tore from my throat as he palmed the weight of my breast. His voice a whisper against my ear as he taunted me. "Hatred doesn't make a woman's body ready itself for sex. It doesn't wiggle its hips against my cock or breath in short little excited huffs. It doesn't still to a slow crawl as a man's hand runs down its body. No, Emma. That's not hatred you're feeling. It's something else, something that tells me if I were to explore farther down and brush my fingers between your legs, they'd come away wet with your anticipation."

"That's not because of this horrible movie!"

He laughed, a strong bark of sound against my back. "Then what caused it?"

The truth slapped me in the face.

Ethan had caused this, just for being so close.

Refusing to admit it aloud, I said, "Just start the damn movie and get this over with. And get your hand off my tit."

Laughing softly, he did as I asked, returning me to a film that I had no interest in seeing. Before hitting play, he whispered again. "Be sure to pay attention, or you'll miss the best part."

The best part, indeed. More like the worst. As soon as that bastard flipped me over and ripped me apart, pure fury poured from my lungs, the volume of that scream rattling the speakers. I watched with anxious breath as my hand crept down the side of the mattress and I had to struggle to keep from clenching my eyes shut to avoid witnessing the slaughter.

But my damn curiosity walked up to take a seat beside time. It rounded my eyes as a victim turned feral, held me in place as the images transitioned from a girl being raped to one driving a knife in her attacker's stomach. The blood was so red against the white of the bedspread, a deep crimson against my skin as the rapist fell backwards and I jumped on top of him. Sickened by that thing I was witnessing on stage, I didn't recognize my own humanity as I plunged the knife into his chest over and over.

It wasn't just me who was reacting to the film. Not this time, at least. I felt the hard length of Ethan's arousal pressing against my back, the truth of what turned him on.

Not rape.

Blood. Death. Destruction. That's what made his heart beat as quickly as mine.

The film ended on a shot of my face turned toward the camera, my eyes wild with righteous anger while the blood slid down my pale skin. Ethan and I both sat motionless at that moment, him in wait for my reaction, and me wanting to point out what I now knew about him.

Allowing an arm to slide down beside us, I bent it in such as way as to force my hand between our bodies and stroke a finger down the line of his cock that was a hard, pulsing truth against my back.

"So, it's blood that turns you on, is it?"

His voice was dangerously sleepy, gritty and rough. "No. Not blood. What I see in you is what turns me on. Not the actress, Emma. The warrior that hides just beneath your prim and proper facade."

Shifting so that I could turn to face him, the breath was dragged from my lungs to see heat blazing behind his heavy eyelids. He appeared drunk, the intoxication that flooded him reaching out to smother me as well. Both our chests beat hard with breath and I was sure if I pressed a finger to his pulse, I'd find it raced in time with mine.

"I won't do it again," I warned. "I'll die on that stage the next time you force me up there."

Blinking away the lust that was so obvious in his eyes, he reached out to run a finger down my cheek and along my jaw. "You will do anything I ask of you, my beautiful girl. I have ways of bending your will. It would be in your best interests not to push me to use them."

"Is raping me one of them? Is that what you plan to do to me now?"

His lips pulled into a sleepy smile that perfectly matched the danger in his eyes. Lifting his head so that his lips brushed over mine, he said, "I don't fuck actresses."

The door to his suite burst open, a guard walking in with his trusty gun held tight to his chest. My eyes darted between the guard and Ethan in surprised confusion. Ethan simply raised the remote and shook it. "This small device has so many uses."

Without pulling his eyes from mine, he ordered, "Take her to the room tonight. Not the cages. She'll be performing tomorrow and will need her strength."

Before I could protest, I was jerked to my feet from the couch, spun toward the door and practically shoved through it. I barely managed a backward glance at Ethan before being forced down the hall at a breakneck speed and deposited in the small room with its sink-toilet combo and a mattress that was lumpy.

The door slammed shut by the time I'd gathered my bearings, my mind stuck in shock by how quickly everything had changed from one moment to the next. What the hell just happened back there?

Dropping to the bed, I curled over myself as tears poured from my eyes. Everything I'd seen, everything I'd felt and Ethan had used against me, came thundering back at such a speed that I was caught in the tidal wave that crushed me. Violent sobs tore from my throat, pure sorrow leaking out on hot tears that wouldn't stop coming.

I cried myself to sleep that night, sobbing so damn hard that by the time I fell into fretful dreams, they were of me drowning in my own endless heartache.