Walking on the beach below his villa helped me think. There was despair. There was also hope. I might be mentally the equivalent of a drugged-up addict much of the time with him but I did recover.

When allowed. When he allowed me to think.

I bit my lip until it hurt and stared at the suck and surge of waves further out and to the side, where the villa’s decks hung over the sea. He wanted an argument from me and I was afraid. The aftermath last time had been not at all logical. I’d won and he’d done bad things.

“Come here!”

He stood a few yards higher, among the sea grass, feet sunken in sand, arms out, hands making a come-hither motion. A big man made bigger by his position on the land, by his supremacy over my mind.

Bravery was doing something even when you’re afraid. I pulled in a ragged breath and trudged up the dune, to stand before him in the red bikini he’d given me.

He took both my hands, smoothing fingers and thumbs over my palms. I shuddered, watching his heavy, ink-stained fingers move over my skin, hating this forced gesture of intimacy. The ink was still showing on me. He’d showered me, let me swim even, and still I had his writing on me – pretty and elegant letters written by this bastard.

Felt like I was some element of a magic spell, with incantations lined up and waiting to be spoken.

“Tell me your next argument.”

“And you’ll let me go?”

“Did I say that?”

“Yes. Sort of...you said maybe.” But he was also planning to keep me back then. Now, I wasn’t sure what he meant by not being able to keep me. “Are you going to let me go anyway?”

His cheek twitched. “I’ve arrangements pending.”

My hands chilled. “Then why should I bother with saying anything if it’s decided?”

“Because I want you to and maybe it will make me change those arrangements.” He leaned in to say quietly, “Because if you don’t I will get distracted by other things.”

Other things was ominous.

His thumbs inscribed never-ending circles on my skin.

“Follow.” With his hand at the small of my back, with his will solidly in place, he drew me higher to where a blanket waited.

Past the paved driveway and the parked and polished cars, the white wall of his compound cut off the sky. Palms planted at the base of the wall waved in a breeze. I could run and climb the wall.

“No, you can’t,” Isak whispered, kissing my neck then pulling me to the blanket, to sit between his outstretched legs. He wrapped his arms around me.

Kisses were for lovers, not for enemies. How could he simply kiss me?

Waves roared and sucked the sand into its embrace. The sun baked my legs. Wearing a bikini, sitting on a beach in a beautiful place, and all I wanted was to be gone from here.

I slumped my shoulders, swallowed my misgivings and fear.

“You want words from me? Illegal. Keeping me here, making me do things I don’t want to, it’s illegal.”

“Is it?” He kissed my back then my nape, and drifted his fingertips from my shoulders and down my arms, making the fine hairs rise in goose bumps. “The law revolves around proof. Let’s say I’m a cop, or someone asking you about what happened here. Can you tell them anything?”

When I breathed, his hands on my arms rose and fell, trapping me gently.

How could I do that? I knew from the past that I couldn’t.

“Red, can anyone prove anything?”

“You said...you have a girl trapped here, in your lower levels.”

“She’s here voluntarily and that’s what she will tell anyone who might ask her. There’s no crime if they want it. Bing. Fail. On the other hand...”

Oh the way his tongue wrapped his threats in that Swedish accent. I knew why the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo movie did so well, because everyone wanted to fuck the Man with the Sexy Accent.

“You tried to shoot me with a rifle. Your prints are on that weapon. You bought it illegally. We can prove you meant me harm. You’d even admit your intent to murder me. What do you think a judge would do to you?”

Bad things.

“I hate you,” I whispered. If I said that three times and clicked my heels, what would happen? I stared downward. Bare feet today, coated in sand.

“I know. And that gives me a thrill that goes straight to my balls.” He drew my wrists behind me and made me wrap my fingers about the head of his cock, squeezed his hands over mine until I felt the pulse of his dick. “You lost, Red. What should I do to you? Shall I fuck you and let someone else into your cute little dirty orifices? The longer I stave him off, the darker and meaner my monster gets.”

I ducked my head. My shivers peaked in my nipples. “Stop him then. Your monster. It’s just you.”

“Sometimes I can’t. If I try to hold back the tide, I drown, you drown, everybody drowns.”

Then he raised my wrists higher at my back until I squeaked at the pain in my shoulders and had to bend at the waist. I felt his teeth sink into my left palm and bite. Harder, harder, until my little keening scream became a babble.

“Pretty pain,” he murmured, from around his mouthful of me.

“Stop, stop, stop, please.” A quick breath then... “Please.”

He stopped biting and instead rose above, pulling me backward then rolling me onto my stomach with his foot. My face was in sand until I turned my head sideways. “I’ll stop when I want to, won’t I?”

There was a stone-hard precision to his words when he got nasty like this. Maybe this was when his monster came to the top.

“Yes.” There was sand on my lips and tongue. I grimaced and spat. The spit only made more sand stick to me. Stay calm. If I panicked this would get worse.

“Can’t breathe? That’s how my monster makes me feel if I stop him. I’m going to let him out, a little, tonight. Just be glad he’s on a leash.”

We returned to his room and he prayed at his altar to the past. As if he sought penance for sins. Maybe he was doing it in advance. I didn’t believe he was sorry or repentant, no matter how he rocked on his knees or muttered over his relics.

One of those sacred relics was a picture of me, freshly marked with cum. I watched him from my position curled up on the bed, collared and leashed, though he’d not attached me to anything, yet. I wished he would do something more painful to himself – like whipping his back while he sat on a horse-sized, spiked butt plug...or blowing his brains out with a 45.

The latter, yeah. Definitely the latter.