The Dark Arts

by Kitty Thomas

But they both knew she wasn't worried. Though it did cause Ari to worry because while there had been moments when he thought she might not have it in her to kill him—even though she had to know the price of not following through—now there was the new concern. She might accidentally kill him. She could give him too much of whatever drug she was dosing him with. One of these times when she was feeding him or injecting him with whatever, he could just... never wake up.

  It sent a cold wave of anger running through him that she played with his life this way. He wasn't her enemy, but she seemed dead set on turning him into one.

  “I know you can't control your smart mouth, and I don't want to talk about last night,” she said, explaining the tape.

  He nodded and remained silent. He knew the pointlessness of trying to speak behind the tape. Ari was beginning to feel more helpless than he'd yet felt while under her control. He couldn't even talk to her. Or try to reach her. And he wanted to. He had no idea what he'd say after last night, but he needed to talk to this girl.

  The previous night he could have forgiven her for what she'd done to him. Those helpless agonized screams would be seared into his own nightmares for a good long time. But now? With the way she was looking at him and whatever she might be about to do to punish him for hearing? He wasn't so sure.

  Ari flinched when her fingertips skimmed over the scar on his chest again. What he wouldn't give to know what she thought that scar meant.

  Her gaze panned over his naked body, and she flinched. Oh shit. Yeah, he still couldn't control his body's reaction to her. Damaged or not, she was exactly his type. She was everything he'd wished Holly had been. That sweet and fragile look just did it for him. Except that despite her fragile exterior and how she hung to the edge of sanity by a thread, this girl could fuck his shit up beyond recovery. He knew that now. It was probably better she'd used the tape. He needed to buy himself enough time to figure out the drugging pattern. And after last night she was far too volatile to risk any of the million wrong things he could say right now.

  Both times she'd drugged him, it had been in the beef stew. Probably covering up the taste of the drugs. So then the other foods shouldn't be drugged. Though she wasn't a stupid woman. She'd no doubt send him some decoy stew so he could never be one hundred percent sure which meals were drugged and which meals weren't.

  His eyes widened as a hard slap connected with his face. His gaze flew to hers. He thought she'd smacked him because he'd zoned out, but the next words out of her mouth proved otherwise.

  “You sick piece of shit. You can have a hard on until the end of time but you will NEVER touch me again, do you understand?”

  He nodded quickly. It wasn't as though he could help his physical reaction to her. She was so goddamned gorgeous. There was no part of Ari that liked being dominated. It wasn't her act of being in control that affected him. It was the tragic vulnerability that threatened to escape out from under her mask of calm, cold retribution.

  The mask had already slipped when she'd whipped him and fallen into sobbing fits on the floor. Some absolutely insane part of him had wanted to comfort her in that moment. Both of them were playing games they were ill-equipped to handle.

  He didn't do well without the control. His smartass remarks were a way to deflect from the very real distress over not being the one with the power. He didn't even like the minor defiance of a brat sub, let alone being in a position like this. They were in the wrong roles here. She should be on her knees at his feet, and he should be the one holding the whip.

  She paced back and forth across the cell, watching him carefully. Finally she snapped her fingers in front of his face to get his attention—as if there was anything else in this room he could give his attention to. She was in too deep. They both knew it. She was breaking apart at the seams even as she broke his skin with her whip. He needed control of her. And he needed it soon. Before this went too far.

  In one swift movement, she ripped the tape off his mouth.

  “Owww, motherfuck!” he growled.

  “I changed my mind. We should talk,” she said. “Does it give you a thrill to know you can get into my head in my dreams? I bet you just love that I'm still fucking running from you even when I've got you helpless and at my mercy. Do you like that? Is that why you're so hard?”

  Ari sighed. “I'm not him. I'm not the man from your nightmares.”

  Those calm words earned him another hard slap across the face.

  “Stop. Fucking. Lying to me! We both know the truth. You have the scar. You look the same. You're HIM!”

  She began to pace back and forth, her eyes wild.

  “I don't know what you want me to say. You're not going to believe it anyway so what's the point?” Ari said. She might become even more erratic if she knew how he'd gotten the scar. And if he made up any other lie he was sure she'd read it on his face. It was both risky and pointless.

  She gripped his throat and held him against the wall. Even chained he could probably buck her off him, but if she got injured with him confined like this it wouldn't help anything. And despite how crazy he knew it was, he didn't want to hurt her. He wanted to take her out of here and fix this.

  He just had to figure out a way to escape her inescapable fortress cell.

  She squeezed harder against his throat. He would no doubt have a bruise if she didn't just kill him. He wished he knew her name. He needed something to call her. How could you reach and reason with a person if you didn't even know their name? He was sure she wouldn't respond favorably to any of his standard pet names. Calling her Doll might get him castrated.

  Finally she released him and went back to pacing.

  “I think this is hurting you more than me,” Ari said, knowing even as he said it, that it was probably the wrong thing to say.

  She laughed. It was a bitter sound that bounced eerily off the walls of the cell. “Right. So... me letting you go... that's for my benefit. You are an evil fucking piece of work.”

  He captured and held her gaze in his. “Yes. I think letting me go is for your benefit. It will destroy you if you take a life. You and I both know it. You don't have it in you. You don't have to do this. I won't go to the police. I'm not going to hurt you. I know it might seem that way, but I'm not him. Do I act the same way?”

  “You're the one in the chains! Of course you don't act the same way. You have to act reasonable. You have to trick me! You think I'm dumb enough to let you trick me into my own grave?”

  Ari took a slow calming breath and tried again. “If I was the type of man who would have done unspeakable things to you, do you really believe I'd still be calm right now? Wouldn't I be yelling and threatening you?”

  “You DID threaten me, the first day!”

  Ari shook his head. “That was before...”

  “When you thought you'd been taken by a man? Am I supposed to be charmed by the patronizing sexism?”

  “Tell me your name,” Ari tried again.

  “Fuck you!”

  “Is that the way it's printed on your birth certificate?”

  She pulled another piece of duct tape off the roll and slapped the tape over his mouth. “We're done talking. You're not getting inside my head. It's bad enough you can still do it while I'm sleeping. You will never be in control while I'm conscious.”

  Ari raised a brow. Wanna bet?

  Claire stood in front of the monitor watching him. He'd just woken from their most recent session. He calmly cleaned the wounds but he seemed near his breaking point. Or maybe that was what she wanted to believe. Her hands shook as she looked down at his blood on her hands. Just a few small splatters from the whip. She touched her face and realized there were a couple of drops there as well.

  Without warning, her stomach roiled, and she ran headlong for the bathroom. She collapsed in front of the toilet, throwing up the contents of her stomach. She spent another fifteen minutes dry-heaving, her body unwilling to give her peace.

  That goddamned bastard was right. She was
the one breaking. Claire flushed the toilet and went to turn on the faucet. She washed her face and took a sip of water and brushed her teeth. She gripped the edge of the counter and was caught off guard by her reflection.

  She looked... haunted. He was doing this to her—or hurting him was doing this to her. How could hurting the man who'd destroyed her cause this much pain? Why was he so different in the cell from when he'd kept her in the basement?

  You know why. Because he doesn't have the power anymore. It's all a trick. If he gets free, you'll die.

  He seemed so reasonable. Like he understood her pain. Like he wasn't the one who'd created it and turned her into the dead thing she didn't recognize staring back at her out of the mirror. She'd give anything to turn back the clock and not do this. Some fantasies were meant to stay fantasies. She'd already learned that lesson once.

  Yes, she'd wanted revenge. He deserved all of this. But she hadn't anticipated the way all of these vicious violent acts would carve away pieces of her soul until she hated herself. She wanted to go back to the girl she'd been before this, before the basement. When everything had been so simple. When her biggest problem had been being caught carrying a bag from last season.

  How she longed for those shallow worries.

  And if he got free, he probably wouldn't immediately kill her. Without clothing he'd had no way to hide the hard length of his erection from her. The thought of it terrified her. When she'd seen it, she'd almost run from the cell as memories of the blindfold and him inside her had come rushing forth.

  She'd hurt him until he'd gone soft, until the threat of him had passed. After she'd injected him with the drug to make him sleep, she hadn't been able to stop shaking as she'd taken away all the things she'd brought into the cell and left him a fresh bucket of water.

  What the fuck was he doing to her?

  24

  Claire held a glass of champagne at her parents' annual Christmas Eve party. The elegant ballroom at their estate was filled with all of their important friends. People Claire barely knew. Thanksgiving and Christmas day were just family. Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve were big impersonal parties filled to the brim with all the people her parents wanted to impress.

  A string quartet was set up at one end of the room, playing Christmas carols. The party spilled out onto the back terrace. It was particularly cold—even for December, a thick blanket of snow coating the ground outside—but it didn't stop the guests from going out to appreciate the winter wonderland. Large outdoor space heaters had been set up all around the terrace, keeping the space surprisingly warm, all things considered.

  “Oh Claire, darling, you look fabulous!” her mother cooed in her normal fake cheery tone. She hugged her and gave her air kisses on each side of her cheek as though Claire were some casual spa friend she saw on Thursdays for mani-pedi day instead of her daughter. “Have you lost weight?” her mother continued.

  “Maybe a little,” Claire said. She wanted to extract herself from the awkward exchange with a woman who only seemed to know her daughter in passing, but her mother had barely heard her answer. She'd already turned her attention to someone else on the far end of the room.

  “Mary Alice!” her mother called out, waving. Then she disappeared back into the crowd without a goodbye or backward glance.

  Claire would blame all the excitement and noise and activity, but it had been like this at Thanksgiving, too. And maybe she had seemed more alive at Thanksgiving, with the revenge fantasies still swirling through her head, unfulfilled.

  But she felt dead now. How was it possible that her mother could be so distracted that she couldn't see her own daughter's pain? And what was she even distracted by that was of such fucking importance? Claire hadn't even bothered flagging her dad down. He was on the back terrace talking stocks and drinking brandy next to one of the heaters with his golf buddies. He'd be even more distracted than her mother.

  She escaped out of the crowded ballroom into the closest guest bathroom and locked herself in. She held onto the marble counter top for support and took a long, steadying breath. She'd thought about not even coming tonight. But even though her parents seemed oblivious to her emotional state, they would notice if she made them look bad by not showing up.

  They didn't want to see her pain. They didn't want to be inconvenienced by it. So they pretended she looked fabulous and never allowed an opening for her to really talk to them to discredit that theory—not that she could have brought herself to speak of the secret shame of forty-three days in that basement. Or the shame of what she was doing now.

  They wouldn't understand. Even if they had the emotional capacity, they still wouldn't understand. And the pain of that disconnect would be worse than what she felt now.

  Claire splashed water on her face and stared into the mirror, willing her reflection to change. She looked pale, and the circles under her eyes were starting to creep out and become prominent again. The nightmares barely let her sleep anymore. No matter how much she broke him down, he only rose up stronger and more terrifying in her dreams. If only she could find a way out of this chain of events she'd set into motion. But there was no way out.

  She wondered what her parents would think if they knew at this very moment she held a man captive in a cell, that she took out all her pain on him, beat him, threatened him. She wondered if they would still be talking about her apparent fabulous weight loss plan.

  Here's the fucking plan, Mom. Destroy your own soul by torturing someone else. The weight will melt right off.

  Claire opened her makeup bag and reapplied her lip gloss, a bit more blush, and then some concealer under her eyes. She took a step back and assessed. There. Almost human now.

  She went back out to the party and ran into Roman. Literally, ran into him. He was a childhood friend, and she wished she could be happier to see him. A few months ago, she would have given anything to run into him again. It had been years. Since... before everything.

  Roman grabbed her elbow to steady her. “Whoa there,” he said. Then he took a step back and got a better look at her. “Claire!”

  He hugged her tight, and it took everything inside of her not to start bawling on his shoulder and spill all her secrets. Roman might finish that fucker off for her so she wouldn't have to, but she couldn't bear for him to know the things that had happened. The terrible ways she'd changed. To him, she was just a sweet girl he'd grown up with.

  Not a kidnapper. Not a torturer. Not a killer.

  He took in her appearance, and she couldn't meet his eyes.

  “You look like shit, Claire.”

  She laughed. She couldn't help it. Even with her makeup touch-up, Roman whom she hadn't seen in so many years could still see through her. It was dangerous to let him see her. If she stayed here, she'd end up telling him everything, and as much as she wanted to believe he'd be on her side and help her, deep down she knew Roman wasn't a killer.

  And Claire knew all too well just how much these dark deeds could break anyone who wasn't a true sociopath.

  “Thanks, love you too,” she replied sarcastically. “I think I'm going to get out of here. I'm tired.”

  He clearly wanted to push, but he only nodded. “Maybe we can catch up at New Year's. You're coming to the party, right?”

  “I always do,” she replied, and then made her escape from the suffocating throng of party guests.

  But she didn't show up for New Year's Eve. Instead, she called and made her excuses, feigning the flu. Her mother had made the appropriate sympathy noises and told her to get better. She'd watched the big ball drop on a screen next to the monitor with her captive pacing, oblivious. He had no idea the old year was slipping into the new and that he would never see it in the daylight.

  She'd drunk down an entire bottle of champagne by herself and had collapsed on the bed, gaining one blissful night free of the nightmares.

  Now it was a week into January, and Claire knew she couldn't continue like this. She kept trying to prove she could handle i
t...she'd find the hard edge within herself again, and she'd ride that fucking edge until she finished him off. And then she would have peace. She would be free.

  Where was the girl she'd been when she'd first taken him? She'd been nearly giddy at the prospect of breaking down the man who'd tortured her. She'd loved the idea of slicing his throat open with a knife so similar to the one he'd planned to use on her.

  It had felt like some fucked-up movie reel inside her head. The fantasy. Taking her power back. But the reality was nothing like the fantasy. Reality was never ever like fantasy. It was always so much worse.

  The nightmares kept coming night after night without pause, punishing her for becoming the monster.

  She'd gone days at a time feeding him but leaving him alone in the cell, watching him on the monitor as he tried to get her to talk to him. She was convinced if he'd behaved according to the script in her head this would have gone the way she'd wanted. But he hadn't. He'd maintained his innocence like an inmate on death row.

  Claire had almost asked him to explain the scar, then! If he wasn't the guy, explain that fucking scar! It was the one beacon that always drew her back to the truth that this man deserved everything she'd given him.

  She'd whipped him over and over and over until he bled for her each time. She always wanted him to scream or beg for her to stop just like she'd once begged him, but he never did. He never gave her that empty satisfaction.

  He never fucking broke, no matter what she did to him. She always gave him a few days to heal. Then she repeated it. But she'd lost her taste for this sad vengeance. Every time she hurt him, she fell apart crying in a pathetic sobbing heap in the cell. She'd managed to start timing her meals so she at least didn't lose her food anymore. Though she wasn't eating nearly as much as she used to.

  Each time he tried to soothe her and told her that it was okay. It wasn't too late. She could still let him go. He wouldn't go to the cops. He wasn't the guy. He wouldn't hurt her. All lies. She wanted to believe every single one of those lies so badly.