Make Me: Twelve Tales of Dark Desire

by Aleatha Romig

I don’t know how much time passed, though I know the sun was beating down on us, because the air got hotter and thinner in our container—like a sauna, really. I was starting to feel like I couldn’t breathe.

  That’s nothing but panic, I told myself.

  I heard rumbling nearby at one point and I banged on the wall and yelled, but nobody came to investigate. Afterwards, I collapsed on my knees, faint from the effort. I wasn’t entirely sure my mind was working right.

  Well, they hadn’t killed us. Did that mean they had a use for us? Would they come back when Zeus awoke? And what then?

  Again I stretched out next to Zeus, monitoring his breathing, like if I didn’t pay attention, he might stop. I don’t know how many hours had passed when he finally grunted.

  “Zeus!” I kneeled, put a hand on his forehead. “Zeus! Wake up!”

  Nothing.

  I shook him and lightly slapped his cheeks. “Zeus!”

  He defended himself drunkenly, pushing weakly at my arms. “What’reyadoing?” he mumbled, running the words together.

  “Zeus,” I said. “It’s me! Wake up!”

  He said nothing more. I massaged his hands. “Come on!” Then I massaged his shoulders, his arms, getting the blood flowing. Clearly he’d been drugged—I figured blood flow would be good. Maybe.

  “Whererewe?” he said.

  “I don’t know. Some sort of sealed container, like a locked metal box. I think this is the railroad yard, but maybe not. It’s so hot, I feel like there’s no air! Sorry, I don’t mean to alarm you, though.” That wasn’t constructive. I forced myself to concentrate through the heat and the dizziness, to describe everything I knew in complete detail. We could put our heads together.

  He was silent for a long time more, then, “Whererewe?”

  Okay, he probably hadn’t gotten any of that. I rested my forehead on his chest, feeling dizzy. The sweat poured out of me. I wanted to cry.

  Deep down, I knew our predicament wasn’t like on Batman or something where Batman and Robin would be tied on some contraption that they could escape from. We were in real trouble. The men who’d put us here were dangerous enough to strike fear into the hearts of my very capable criminals.

  And it was hard to breathe. The too-hot air felt painful inside my throat and lungs…that couldn’t be good. In fact, it seemed dangerous. The more I thought about it, the more freaked I got.

  We could boil to death. Our insides would be jelly!

  I shook Zeus some more—violently. I was officially freaking out. “You have to wake up!”

  Nothing.

  I put my head to his chest and began to sob. Suddenly I felt his arms come around me. He held me tightly. “You’re here…can’t believe you’re here!” His voice sounded thick, words slurred. Then, “I’m sorry, I’m so, so sorry, baby. I can’t believe you’re here.”

  “I couldn’t just leave,” I said. “I couldn’t leave you like that.”

  “Why?” he grated out. “Why’d you leave?”

  I pressed my face to his chest, confused. He’d instructed me to leave. Walk left and get lost, he’d said.

  “Why?” he grumbled out in the darkness. “Did you give one thought…one thought…to those you left behind?”

  I felt drugged by the heat, by the pitch-black darkness. All I could hear were my sisters. What about us? Why did you leave us?

  “Did you even think of that?” he asked.

  Was he talking about my sisters?

  “Did you?” he pressed.

  “Of course I did!” I said. “You think I don’t care? I know that’s what you think and you couldn’t be more wrong.” I began to cry. I wouldn’t see my sisters again. “Fuck!” I said.

  “Shh, I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” He smoothed a hand over my hair, which amounted to matting it down because it was so utterly wet with sweat. “God, I’ve been so lonely without you,” he said. “I couldn’t believe you were gone.”

  With a start I realized what was happening: He thinks I’m Venus. He was talking to Venus.

  “I’m sorry,” he continued. “I controlled you. Suffocated you. It’s my fault.”

  Naturally his words made me think about the message on the site. We miss you, we suffocated you. Things will be different. I’d left my poor sisters behind to suffer, to blame themselves. I’d never get a chance to tell them it wasn’t their fault, that I’d found some real happiness.

  “I’m so sorry,” he continued.

  He was saying the part of my sisters.

  Tears tickled my cheeks. I said, “I wanted what I wanted.”

  Things were so surreal there in the extreme heat and darkness, the physics of it felt dreamlike, as though in some weird way I really was talking to Vanessa and Kaitlin and Candy.

  I said, “It wasn’t about you controlling me or suffocating me—I just needed to leave. I wish I could’ve told you. Made you understand. I needed to be free!”

  “Not like this!” he said.

  “Yes, like this,” I said hazily. “You need to get that! You have to forgive yourself!” It was everything I’d wished I could’ve typed on that blog post comment. My need to say it felt urgent, like the only thing that mattered.

  “I was selfish,” he said. “I pushed you.”

  “Nobody was pushing anybody.”

  He shifted around there on the hot metal floor in the darkness. I couldn’t see him, but I felt his breath heave out, felt his big body in front of mine. I reached out and touched his face, and realized that he was lying on his side in front of me. He grabbed my shoulders and pressed his forehead to my chest, between my breasts. The heat seemed to intensify as I laid my hand onto the back of his head, holding him, pulling him fully to me.

  “I didn’t want you to go,” he said.

  “You had no choice. We were all just surviving the best we could,” I said. “But it’s all okay now. You have to get that in your head.”

  A harsh sob jolted his powerful body, then another, and another—it was as if a floodgate opened in him—one so monumental that this man was weeping.

  Everything was wet—our sweat, tears, the air—reality itself seemed drenched. I felt as if I were breathing in his relief, taking it in great gulps.

  “It’s all okay. You can let it go.”

  My sisters would never hear what I had to say, but I was saying the words nevertheless, and it shifted something in me. As though saying my part to the universe counted for something.

  And Zeus hearing it counted for something. His being relieved counted for something.

  “I would do it again,” I said, holding him. “You needed what you needed. It wasn’t your fault to need what you needed. We were all victims. I just needed to be free. And there’s nothing to forgive. Do you understand?”

  He seemed quiet. Peaceful. I knew that he understood.

  The world inside our hot metal box seemed to be spinning, shifting. Zeus straightened, touched my hair. Then he touched my hair differently, patting it. Not that gentle touch. “Isis?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Jesus! What the fuck?” He pulled away from me. “What the fuck? Where are we? Why are you pretending to be Venus?”

  “I didn’t mean…I didn’t…”

  “Where the fuck are we?” His voice reverberated loudly in the darkness.

  I tried to explain where we were—it was an easier question than why I was pretending to be Venus; even I couldn’t quite articulate that one, but he was already up, exploring the walls from what I could hear. Pounding on them. Maybe kicking them.

  “Son of a bitch,” he said after one loud bang. “Son of a fucking bitch!” I wondered if he’d hurt himself. “And you’re in here like you’re Venus? Let me tell you something—you’re not Venus.”

  “Yeah, I know I’m not Venus!” I said. “I think I got that.”

  “Then why the fuck were you pretending to be her? You come into our gang and you try to take her place, running all over and trying to erase her tracks—”


  “I wasn’t trying to erase her tracks—”

  “And now you’re in here talking like you’re her from the dead? You think it’s funny to mess with me like that?”

  “I wasn’t trying to mess with you! Christ! Excuse me if I’ve been locked in a pitch-black sauna with you for five or ten hours and a little freaked. Excuse me if you’re completely checked out except when you’re saying the stuff my sisters would say, who I’ll probably never see again, who I feel totally fucking guilty about leaving, contrary to your assessment of it. Excuse me if I have some weepy thing to say back, sitting in this hellhole with you.” I sounded totally incoherent, even to myself.

  “You knew I thought you were Venus. You should’ve said something.”

  “Well, guess what? I didn’t because I’m feeling just a little flipped out right now. So fuck you,” I said.

  “No, fuck you,” Zeus said. I heard him move around the perimeter of our hell-cage.

  “Oh, yeah, that’s creative,” I snapped. He rattled something on the side we’d come in. “That would be the padlocked door,” I said. He rattled it some more. “And I’ll tell you something else,” I continued. “I bet you she’d say the same stuff I was saying. You didn’t make her kill herself, Zeus. Nobody makes anybody kill herself. So you can get off your high horse. You’re not a god.”

  The rattling stopped. I wished I could see his face. His eyes.

  I said, “You may be the center of the universe in your mind, and you’re the center your pack, but you think you’re so powerful that you can drive a person to suicide? People do what they want to do. She made her own choices. Let her have that, Zeus. Let her have it!”

  I heard his footsteps near me in the darkness. I sniffled as he sat beside me. Did he hate me? Maybe, but it’s the sort of thing I’d have wanted my sisters to know.

  I felt his heavy hand on my knee, my arm, fumbling upward for my shoulder where it rested.

  Was he trying to comfort me now?

  “Hey,” he said.

  “What?”

  “They just love you, that’s all,” he said. “Your sisters love you.”

  I didn’t bother covering my face, which I knew to be crumpled up with crying—one of the few advantages of being in abject darkness. “I love them, too,” I gasped out. “But I needed to be free, and I loved being free. I don’t think they’ll ever understand. Well, they sure won’t now.”

  “Fuck, come here.” He pulled me to him. I fought to get my sobs under control, wiped my face of tears and sweat.

  He smoothed back my hair some more. “I understand,” he said. Then, finally, “I’m sorry.”

  I sniffled. “Are you saying that to Venus or Isis?” I asked.

  “Both,” he said after a long silence. “I guess both. Are you okay with that?”

  “Of course I am,” I said. “Are you?”

  He pulled away. I knew he was looking at me there in the dark, felt his eyes, imagined their intensity. “You would’ve really said that to them? To your sisters?”

  “Yeah. Blaming themselves for a thing I did? It’s just not right. On any level.”

  “But they pushed you. They made you stay, took too much from you. You said so once.”

  “They did that, but there are other responses than leaving and taking up with robbers. That was my thing, not their thing. Or jumping off a cliff. That was Venus’s thing.”

  In the intense silence that followed, I wondered if I’d hurt or angered him.

  “It helps me that you say that,” he said.

  “It helps me that you understand.”

  He let out this breath, this labored exhale, as though he’d been holding it forever. We sat there in silence that droned on. Machinery sounded outside in the distance, then faded.

  “Thanks,” he said after a while.

  “Back atcha.” I felt strangely connected to him. And a little bit better, even. It was as though our guilty souls had been washed together.

  I felt him sit up. He smoothed back my hair again. Drips of sweat rolled off my forehead, rolling along my hairline.

  “We have to get the fuck out of here,” he said.

  “Where you were last, I’m pretty sure that was the door.” I found his hand and pressed it to the floor, moving it in the direction of the door. “That way.”

  He crawled to the door side of our box. I heard him feeling around and banging at the metal. “I wish they hadn’t taken my shoes.”

  “No, here!” I fumbled around until I found his shoes.

  He put them on and banged at the door, presumably with his feet, trying to get it open. I didn’t hear him peel off his shirt, but I heard the soft clop when he threw it. I put on my shoes, too, and fumbled my way over to him. We sat on our asses together in the darkness, ramming the door with our feet in unison until I thought my heel bones were cracked.

  “No go,” he said finally.

  We collapsed back, side by side.

  I wished I could see him. I thought back to that day at the bank, the way his eyes looked behind that mask, the connect I felt. I flashed on his gaze that day in the hot tub—all that hunger and disdain in his eyes, but still the intensity was there. The connection.

  “I never meant to erase her tracks. I never wanted that.”

  “I know,” he said.

  We didn’t talk about the air. I still wanted to believe there was a pinhole letting some in.

  “I’m sorry to have pulled you into this,” he said.

  “This again? This apology shit?”

  He snickered softly. I felt him go up on his side next to me. I closed my eyes as a finger slid across my wet forehead. “That sorry was for you,” he said. “Not her.”

  “Well…you get the same response. I chose it. So you can just respect that.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Anytime,” I said.

  Another breathy little laugh in the darkness. He moved closer. In spite of the heat, I liked to be touching him. I needed it. I snuggled closer, enjoying his calm—that calm of a large animal that he had.

  And his maleness.

  He slid a hand down my arm, and I felt the tickle of drops run ahead of where he stroked, like he was pushing rivulets of sweat down to my wrist, wiping them right off me. Slick, everything slick. He shifted, then, and I sensed his face nearing mine in the darkness. Lightly, he kissed me on the cheek Then he found my lips.

  This wild swell of desire came over me as we kissed. I needed him like I’d never needed anybody.

  “You are so beautiful,” he whispered into the kiss.

  I wiped the stinging sweat out of my eyes. “You probably say that to all the girls in a pitch-black deathtrap from which there’s no hope of escape.”

  During the ensuing silence, he passed up the opportunity to give me hope. He didn’t think we’d get out, either.

  “I don’t say it to all the girls in a pitch-black death trap.” He sounded serious now. “I say it to you. I always thought it. I thought it that first moment at the bank. Like you were beautiful. Different.”

  I touched his soaked chest. I supposed we would run out of sweat at some point, but for now were like slick fish in a strange pond.

  His hair tickled my cheek and his lips came down on my neck. Everything was new between us. I snaked my hand over his shoulder, feeling so close to him, as though we had been rendered completely porous to each other.

  He kissed my neck, moved his lips to the base of my neck, that tender center part. His lips there felt as intimate as fucking. He kissed me on the lips then, cupping my cheeks.

  “You know what it’s been like?” he breathed. “Watching you with them?”

  I snaked my hands around his chest, skin hot and slippery, feeling so connected to him now, like he was revealing his heart.

  “When I saw you on the couch that first day with Thor and Odin, I wanted to tear you three apart,” he said. “I hated them for bringing you in and having you take her place. The thing is, in some ways, it was a relief whe
n Venus died.” He was silent for a while. I could feel how hard it was hard for him to say it. “I always hated myself for feeling that way, but was so bad at the end with her in that downward spiral. No way to help her. I was cruel to her because I wanted her to shape up. Then suddenly she was dead. So it was this grief and guilt and relief, all mixed together. You know? Watching you three together, it made me feel twice as fucked up about her. You three were together and I felt left for dead with my fucked-up feelings. I wanted to be with you, too, but I couldn’t get past how I felt. You came and brought all this life to us, brought the feel of our family back. God, I wanted you so badly, but I hated you for stirring it all up again. But I couldn’t stop wanting to be with you, Ice.”

  “I didn’t know.”

  “Do you still feel fucked up about it?”

  “Yes. But less.”

  I touched his cheek, feeling grateful for that.

  He slid his hand down my wet shirtfront. There were no words—just his touch.

  I reached up to his chest; I wanted to touch him everywhere, to be naked with him. “Be with me now,” I said.

  “Ice.”

  “Please,” I whispered.

  He let out a great, gusty breath and yanked open my soggy shirt. I heard buttons ping nearby.

  I barked out a laugh, half surprise, half thrill.

  “What the hell,” he whispered, running his hands over my breasts. “We’re rich bank robbers. We can buy all the shirts in the world.”

  The blackest humor. Because of course, it didn’t look like we’d be going anywhere.

  I wrestled out of my pants—I couldn’t get them off fast enough; I wanted to be under him, to be taken by him. I pushed him to the warm metal floor and pulled his pants off.

  Dizziness came over me as I tossed them aside, but I didn’t stop. I stroked his thighs, slippery with sweat, crawling up over him, slicking my hands up, up, up in the darkness until I reached his rock-hard, wet cock. I stroked him, loving touching him, so hot for him.

  He groaned and rose, flipped me over, came over me, loomed over me as I stroked him. I had this thought he should stay lying, to conserve his energy.

  But…why?

  He growled and bit my neck, all wolfish, then licked and kissed and bit his way down to my breast, sucking, tonguing, as I wriggled under him, cock in hand, awash in a maelstrom of sensation. I lost contact with his cock as he moved his lower half out of my range, but there was so much more of him for me to touch and squeeze, and I did it, my hands roving all over his strong arms and shoulders, his chest.