He’d left a subliminal command inside me.

Fuck.

What else could he do? The ramifications might be endless. The instructions he could give...

Should I believe him? I couldn’t help wondering, but I must forget that and concentrate.

Freedom. Maybe. He hadn’t answered me properly, yet it was the best answer I was getting. Freedom or my tongue cut off. Though only a threat – he might not carry through, he might be making the worst, sick joke, ever – I didn’t know.

“I have to convince you this is wrong?”

Isak nodded. Behind me, his man waited for God knew what.

While I thought this through, I crept my arms forward to cover my breasts. If ever I needed a calm mind, it was now. How impossible was this? He was the judge and executioner. The bias was clear as day.

“Immoral. It’s immoral.” Obviously. How could he argue against that?

He huffed a harsh laugh. “Morality? Yours or mine? And take your arms off your tits.”

To obey or not to obey. Rhetorical.

He watched as I obeyed. Resisting was as difficult as shoving an elephant uphill, though I could feel the shift of power when I tried.

An errant tear trickled from my eyes. I cleared my throat. “It would depend on that but surely in an argument like this the majority should rule? If you judge any statement by the standards of a pigeonhole society that’s perfect for your case, you could say anything was fine and moral. Killing a whole nation of people? Fine if you’re an ancient Roman or a gestapo member in World War Two. Making women subjugate themselves to you...or to your men, is immoral by the standards of almost any society.

BAM. I had him. I had him.

His eyes narrowed. With his shoeless foot on the edge of the table next to my face, he rocked his chair back and forth.

“I’ll give you a tick for that one.”

The glow of victory bathed my heart in joy for about one microsecond. I suppressed a derisive smirk. Best not to rile. “Good.”

“So instead of the other thing I thought up, I’ll just let Vitor fuck you.”

Stunned, I stared back.

“Ass or pussy?” I heard Vitor say from behind my shoulder, as if he were ordering a meal.

Get up. Run!

My inner thoughts had no link to my limbs and I lay there confused and angry, but unable to move. A piece of spaghetti would have more backbone in the face of Isak’s lumbering mental presence that pressed on me, constantly.

“Whatever you choose.”

Was this punishment for winning the argument?

The center of my forehead ached in a pre-migraine. I heard pants being unzipped. Hands hauled at me and slid me closer to Vitor’s side of the desk. I heard him spit, felt him smear his saliva on me.

“What a good argument you made.” Around Isak’s eyes crinkled, as if he thought to smile but couldn’t recall how to. He placed his forearms on the table and slid his chair nearer.

“You,” I managed to croak.

“What?”

“I want...you. Not him.” God that had taken so much determination to say.

“Really?”

“Yes.” Cultivating the enemy. Self-preservation. And a wish to limit my humiliation. “Please.”

I tensed for the invasion as Vitor’s cock-head probed at my asshole.

Though I squeaked and grabbed the edge of the desk, his man squeezed inside me at least a half-inch. I gritted my teeth.

“If you didn’t amuse me, Red...” Isak covered my hand with his, grabbed my throat with the other. The ownership went far deeper than a normal man’s.

As a mesmer, he sifted deep into my soul, into my head, particles of Isak were like stars seeking the center of the universe, sparking, heating me. My eyes rolled back. The feel of Vitor shunting back and forth, striving to enter deeper...

It was good, but...painful.

Good. Pain.

Then he thrust farther and I screeched.

I hadn’t had sex of any sort for years. “No,” I whined.

“Shhh,” Isak soothed with his masculine wiles, his voice as potent as a quart of whiskey tossed down in one gulp. “Be a good girl. Take his big cock. I’ll even let you come.” His hands tightened on hand and neck, and air became a scarce commodity.

I gurgled through constricted throat, arched back into the thrusts. My asshole burned with fire but I cared little for that when the momentous build of an orgasm had constructed itself in seconds, from one syllable to the next, from one thick, fucking spear of cock to the next.

“Wait. Get out of her, Vitor. Out.”

“Sir?”

“You reminded me of my ritual, correctly. Get out. Pull out. Go.”

“Of course.”

Whatever his reasons, I was grateful, catching my breath, wincing as the last of Vitor left me, then slumping to the desk. I listened to the diminishing footsteps.

Why?

“Look at me.” Isak’s new claw-hold on my jaw lifted my head and made looking mandatory.

I found blue eyes examining me. “Why?”

“Because. I loved seeing your face when you got fucked, but letting him do it first...no. And what’s in your head has made me think.”

Oh fuck. I wondered what he’d seen.

“Crazy man,” I whispered, blinking away sweat as it seeped into my eye.

“I saw what Wolfe did. The break in you.”

Wolfe? I remembered that name, Magnus Wolfe. The man I was chasing in Cuba. He must be a mesmer like Isak, though Isak had never said. It made everything add up.

If I’d been broken that meant I could’ve been normal, if they’d left me alone.

Sadness overwhelmed, left me rocking on a sea of might-have-beens.

Damn them both.

“Let me show you my ritual. It helps me keep myself under control.” Said the man who stole away women’s minds and bodies. The gorgeous hunk of blond-haired Viking man with the scars on his forearms from cutting – including one fresh one. With the twitchy wild eyes. With the big hands that scared, because I felt sure he’d strangled or hit or killed with them. He had a ritual to keep him sane? It didn’t seem to be working.

“Yes, please.” I tried to look Bambi-eyed, calm, interested. “Show me.”

It might be ammunition. Either way it gave me space, what with my ass still feeling the effects of a man trying to shove himself in uninvited.

After getting me to scoot backward, he pulled out drawers and stacked things along the edge of the desk. I pushed up onto my forearm, and my breasts reminded me of their presence by their weight. His eyes followed my nipples.

I had writing on me there. When? What had he done?

Ignore, ignore. Later I would look.

“Show me,” I repeated. This was like urging a child to a task.

He brushed back hair from his face and placed another item between us, on the glass – a few begrimed, stapled pages with the corners curled.

He tapped each and recited. “The account of the day in Cuba when I first met you and Wolfe.”

So Wolfe was someone new to him, back then.

“The drug he uses to control his urges.”

“Why not –”

“I’m good without drugs. Not good with them.”

Oh shit yeah, you really are good as you are. Asshole.

The unopened blister pack would tempt a saint who hadn’t been mauled by Isak. If I could get him to swallow them, would they work? How many?

He kept them in this desk.

“Your photos.”

God, that was me, younger, less worried, less raped. And me, looking like I’d been at a party for porn stars, with cum on me. Lovely memories.

“The knife. I cut regularly, because it helps.”

He went from one object to the other, touching, murmuring. His ritual. The whispers, the whispers. The sounds of a horror movie where something dark waits around the next corner, or the next.

Open-mouthed, I considered that he cut himself. I knew people cut but for him to do it to stop himself from going even crazier, it seemed more bizarre than ever.

I shivered.

Stress made ants crawl my skin, buzzing. My lips seemed numb, my brain at times blanked with violent nothingness. I was falling, falling, and couldn’t stop myself. Fall too far and I’d be gone, like the other women he talked about.

“Now...” His hand found my face and he caressed me gently, though his eyes telegraphed little. “I have the real you and you’re much better than a photo. I should never have let you go.”

A chill sank deep, occupying my bones.

“I’d rather leave. If you like me that much, let me leave.”

“Shhh. I’m still considering what to do.” His fingers found my breast and grasped it. The pressure grew until I was hissing my pain through my teeth, and wincing. “Come with me.”

The relief as he let go...I grabbed at my breast, as if that would protect me from more assaults. His fingermarks were outlined in red.

Taking my hand as courteously as a prince with a princess, he helped me down from the desk. He held my hand as he led me toward the brightness that was the outside and the deck. Naked, I padded forward. The sky, the ocean, the wind was out there. For all I knew there were people too.

I hesitated at the brink, where room transitioned to deck. My bare feet felt the lip where the cool of the tiles gave way to timber. The deck was mostly in shadow since the sun lay behind us. Sea to the West, sun to the East.

After one glance, Isak laughed and towed me out. “There’s nothing out here.”

Laughter was so incongruous.

The roof above was part sailcloth, part timber and mottled glass – a modern architectural statement. The colors were Mediterranean – white, blues, and aquas, with hints of gold.

“Sit.” Isak lowered himself to a cane lounge then pulled me onto his lap. Still naked, I felt vulnerable to anything – men, neighbors, the weather, an oncoming tsunami. A seagull could startle me after being messed around with by the man I came to kill.

After sitting a while, waiting for something terrible to happen, I allowed myself to relax. Or did I? Was it him making me? What was my own volition and where did his will begin?

I’d experienced this before, at the room in Cuba. The world had slowly blurred from my existence, and I’d wondered if with enough time I might vanish altogether and become nothing. Push me to the wall and I blend into the paint.

Perhaps he had women he’d done that to.

“There.” He kissed the top of my head. “Maybe you’re not my talisman, maybe you’re an angel from above. Maybe you’re a cure. I’m tired of my monster.”

His monster – as if he were two people.

He wrapped his arms around me and squeezed gently, for a man of his size.

This transformation into kindness was more surreal than when he’d told Vitor to fuck me.

“I don’t think I want to be your cure.”

“No? The tool does what it’s told to do.” His hand found the cleft of my ass. His fingers lingered in the region of my asshole, circling, though I squeezed myself tight.

There were times I could resist.

He heaved himself upright, wrapped his fist around the back of my neck and dragged me with him as he walked to the steel railing. I staggered in his wake. Wrist-thick rope decorated the steel wires, woven into idle patterns. He pulled me past bronze statues of cranes with their beaks held low as if they fed from the deck.

“Look.” He gestured at pure blue sky and sea. Miles away, clouds sullied the perfection. “I want to be out there. You stopped me. You.”

Out where? On the sea?

I’d gone from talisman to what? Ballast? Yards below, the tide slopped back and forth, froth sailing past on small eddies and waves. I could see another deck down there. If I jumped, I could swim away.

He swung me, turned me, until my back hit the railing. I was a doll, forced by will and muscle into position – on my knees with my arms to either side, as if I were crucified. Carefully he tangled me in rope and steel. He roped my throat. I coughed at the pressure, though the rope did no more than lie across the front of my neck.

Wriggling, I found my fingers liked the feel of the steel cable.

“Fucking stay.”

His words were harsh yet his tone was calm, as if he contemplated whether the lawn needed mowing.

He stalked up and down, slowly, looking at the predicament he’d placed me in. At times, he kneeled and brushed his hands across my breasts, stirred my nipples, or ran his hand between my legs. The sounds when he deigned to penetrate me...

My eyelids threatened to shut until he commanded them open.

“So very wet.” When he smiled, all I saw was his mouth.

Whispers... He whispered to my neck, things I could not understand. Eyes widening, I stayed quiet and still, finding myself growing ever more aroused.

Questions began. Small questions, or they seemed small.

“Why are you here?”

“To kill you.”

“Why?”

“You ruined my life.”

“Will anyone miss you, search for you?”

“Yes. I used the database search function illegally.”

“Your employer will look for you? The CIA?”

Hadn’t he asked this?

“Yes.”

My eyes stayed wide. I couldn’t blink, so fascinated was I by his movements back and forth.

“How long before they find you?”

“About seven days minimum. They may take longer. I covered my tracks.”

“Good. You can blink now.” He paused before me then walked back into the bedroom.

He returned with a handful of leather and chain, used a leather collar in place of the rope, clicked the end of the leash to the wire.

“Open your mouth.” Slow, I was slow, my brain like sludge. He tapped my cheek with a few fingers until I opened.

Hands on the railing to either side, he looked down. I breathed in time with him, eyes at half-mast, feeling sated. His thoughts fucked me.

“You look good, Red. Beautiful. My monster likes you.” He leaned down to kiss me, mouth as possessive as the bondage, his tongue going deep. “I need to feed it or it gets angry. Forgive me, won’t you?”

How casually the syllables of forgiveness rolled from his tongue.

I nodded, blinked.

His thick fingers probed my mouth, thrusting inside, moving along my tongue. He spread saliva over my lips then kissed me roughly, sucking out thoughts, soul, maybe my heart, for I felt it thrashing in my chest.

His thumbs hooked into the corners of my lips and stretched my cheeks aside until my mouth felt as if it might split. “I’ve got you now. No thoughts of killing me? Shake your head.”

I shook it slowly, a clown at a fair, waiting for someone to roll a ball into my opening.

Then he unzipped and stuck his cock in my mouth, fucked me there against the wire, with the steel strands pressing into my shoulders, cold on my skin, his cock warm in my mouth.

His grunts and final groan echoed the gush of cum. I swallowed some, the rest dribbled and splashed onto my chest. Then he kissed me again, crushing my lips.

“Next time you can come. Now my monster is happy. And my cum makes you mine again, doesn’t it?”

I licked my lips, tasted remnants of him. “Yes.” It was true; I could sense a deeper resonance with this powerful being. He had a monster or he was a monster?

When he released me from my impromptu bondage, I fell to hands and knees, watching a string of drool spill.

I surfaced from the absentminded stupor and rolled to my back. I saw white sailcloth. He’d fucked my mouth and somehow hypnotized me beyond what he had before. Guess he’d practiced some, since Cuba.

Leave me here. I’ll slink beneath the wire and be gone, into the waves, splash into the depths.

His fingers hooked at the collar, dragged me on my back some inches across the boards; his knuckles on my neck shocked my body.

“On your knees. Follow.”

The leash jangled. Though more aware than I had been, I crawled after the swinging line of metal. The deck hurt my knees.

Think.

Becoming a zombie was not good for my health. It seemed I had little time to get out of here before my mind succumbed.