But thinking about Rob always brought thoughts of the virus. She had to tell André she might be a carrier. No matter who he was or what he did, it just wasn’t fair to him. She would force herself to bring the subject up tonight so he could protect himself.
Just as the downstairs clock struck midnight, she heard a key in the lock. She jumped up, feeling foolish, knowing there was a big grin on her face.
André stepped into the room and immediately bolted and chained the door behind him. He stared at her. His look caused her smile to die.
He strode across the room and ripped the towel from her body. “I told you to stay undressed! Are you defying me already?”
She wanted to tell him that she was doing what he wanted, it was just a towel, but something savage in his eyes kept her from speaking.
He saw the broken chair leg immediately and black anger settled on his face. “That look!” he snapped. “It’s always there. Which is it, tenacity or rebellion? Over there!” He nodded towards the bed.
Carol began to panic. Her pulse raced and she had trouble breathing. Still she tried to lighten things up, turn his mood around. “I had a good time last night. Didn’t you?”
“My pleasure’s the only reason you’re here, or have you forgotten? I said, over there!”
Carol couldn’t move. Her eyes darted to the poker by the fireplace, not two steps away. Instinctively she turned towards it but apparently he read her mind. With laser speed he blocked her, grabbing her wrist. His hand felt like a bracelet of icy metal, threatening to crush muscle and bone. She looked into his eyes and saw the turbulent grey Atlantic before a storm and intuitively understood the violence that would occur if she resisted. He pointed across the room and she felt a tension in him on the verge of exploding. “Maybe you like being tied up.”
She shook her head.
“Then move. Now!”
In a daze of fear Carol walked across the room. Out of the corner of her eye she saw him unbuckle the wide leather belt he was wearing.
“On your knees. Turn around!” His voice was inhumanly cold, scaring her to paralysis. “Back up.”
She turned and moved back until her knees were at the edge of the mattress.
“Head down! This is a crash course in submission.”
She lowered her head but he pushed her face right into the mattress, forcing her bottom up into the air like a perverse offering. Carol felt completely exposed, utterly vulnerable, yet unable to believe what was happening. “Why?” she asked, trying to keep her voice from quaking, struggling to make sense of this.
“Why what?”
“Why are you doing this? Just because I was wearing a towel?”
“Trying to break our agreement so soon? Just say so. Stop whining and save us both the time and energy.”
“It’s not that.” She felt like a child berated for some minor infraction of the rules, an imagined transgression. But she was convinced that if she fought him the outcome would be worse. “I just want to know why, that’s all,” she said weakly.
“I’m sure you do! What if I tell you there’s no reason, I’m cruel to women by nature. Can you accept that? Still happy to give yourself ‘willingly’, Carol?” His tone was mocking.
As he finished undressing behind her he said, “You can influence me, you know.” His voice held a peculiar inflection.
She felt set up but asked, “How?”
“Try begging!”
Again Carol’s intuition told her that if she did what he suggested she would regret it. She had already picked up that he despised people who pleaded. She didn’t feel she had any choice but to endure what he was going to do and try not to break down. “I’m not going to beg,” she said in a whisper, barely able to speak.
“You’re strong, all right. And controlling. And a bitch, like all women!”
Hard leather cracked across her bare flesh. A loud gasp burst from Carol’s lips and her body jerked. But before she had time to really experience the intensity of the pain, the leather smacked her again. For long moments she was too stunned to react. Pain and humiliation piled on top of terror and the combined weight forced tears from her eyes.
The leather stung her increasingly tender skin a third time and she clamped her teeth hard into her tongue, stifling any words.
But the fourth stroke was unbearable and acting brave seemed less appealing. She opened her mouth, ready to let the pleas slip between the sobs, but, to her horror, words refused to form. It was as though a stubborn part of her rebelled at the idea of complete debasement.
Then suddenly something deep within, beyond her control, gave way like a small craft forced off course by rapids. As if she had split into two people, Carol heard herself screaming incoherently, crying, hyperventilating, rapidly floating out of her mind.
Later, she remembered at some point he had ordered her to open her eyes. She couldn’t see him through the film of tears but heard him remark, “So, it’s tenacity after all. That’s too bad.”
When he was finally finished, Carol lay on her side sobbing, head bent low, knees pulled up against her chest, arms protecting her body, curled into a tight ball. She didn’t hear him leave. When the darkness gave way to daylight, she didn’t hear the maid bringing food. She didn’t want to hear anything.
Chapter Five
Carol stayed in bed all day and into the night, sleeping in fits and starts. She twisted and turned so much that by evening the top sheet looked like a giant white snake entrapping her body. But when she heard a key in the lock she woke completely, to terror.
It was not André but the older woman, the one who looked a bit like him, bringing a tray. Carol watched her place the food down carefully on the coffee table next to last night’s tray and cross to the bed.
She sat down and leaned over Carol in order to stroke her hair. “Poor darling,” she said in a soothing, motherly way. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here last night. André shouldn’t have done this to you. He’s not adept at mastering his passions. He’s insecure.”
“He’s a monster!” Carol said.
“Not a monster, ma chère. You don’t understand. But how could you?”
She turned Carol’s head so that they were looking at each other. “Now what good will it do to stay in bed? You’ll just make yourself feel worse and probably enrage him further.”
“What’s the difference,” Carol said bitterly. “It doesn’t matter if I do what he wants or not, does it?”
“Come, my dear,” the woman said, lifting Carol to a seated position with surprisingly strong arms, brushing her hair back from her face. “You’re not a child. You’ll live. I’ll help you into the bath.”
Carol didn’t bother to protest. She felt awful. Most of the night she couldn’t sleep. And when she was completely honest with herself, she realized that what was as bad as the physical pain was the pain she felt because of the way he had turned on her. She couldn’t understand it. And now she didn’t care if she understood. She hated him and didn’t much like herself for being so naive as to get trapped in this situation in the first place. She should have taken her chances and fought harder back at the docks. She probably would have lost her life but at least she could have died with dignity.
The woman ran a bath and helped Carol into it. The water wasn’t very hot and it didn’t hurt her injured skin too much. The older woman used a floral soap to wash her arms and shoulders, her chest and back, and a pleasant herbal shampoo on her hair, just the way a mother would.
“Why are you doing this? You’re on his side, so what are you up to?”
The woman paused. “So distrustful, for one so young. You must have been hurt in your life.”
“I’ve been hurt right here in this house. Why should I trust you?”
“And why not? I only want to help.”
“Why?”
“Let’s just say that I love André dearly. He’s like a son to me. I want to see him happy.”
Carol laughed bitterly. “Well, just give him a whip
and some chains. He’ll be in heaven. Or doesn’t this cult believe in heaven?”
“You don’t understand, dear. He’s charmed by you.
Fascinated. I haven’t seen him like this in a long long time.”
Carol laughed her bitter laugh again. But then she felt desperate. “Please! Let me go.”
“I can’t do that. We cannot interfere with one another. André has found you and only he can decide your fate.”
The woman helped her out of the tub and patted her dry with a soft terry cloth towel. “I have a natural remedy which will relieve the discomfort.” She pointed Carol towards the corner with a mirror on the side wall. “Go look in the mirror.”
Carol walked across the room and turned in front of the full-length mirror. Her buttocks was marked with four bright pink stripes. “You see?” the woman said. “You’ll be fine by tomorrow. The skin wasn’t broken.”
“Gee, I guess I should be grateful.”
“Come in and lie down. That’s right. This will feel cold at first.”
As the woman applied a thick clear gel, Carol realized that the soreness was diminishing. She could feel how knotted and constricted her body had gotten. She tried to relax. “What’s your name?”
“Chloe.”
“You’re like him—you drink blood. You all do, don’t you? Like vampires.”
“Words are powerful, Carol. They can frighten or fascinate and should be used carefully. Let’s just say that we four are a family.”
“You mean a cult.”
The gel felt cool, soothing, and soon Carol’s soreness was gone. She sighed deeply.
“What about the maid. And the chauffeur?”
“They are not part of our family.”
“What do you do, pay them off?”
“They are not... how can I put it... acutely aware of our peculiar habits. There. You’ll be fine now. I’ll put some aloe vera on again tomorrow night. In fact I’ll leave this here, just in case you want to use it later, all right?”
Carol turned over. She was naked but didn’t feel embarrassed in front of this woman. “Chloe, I’m not sure why you’re doing this...”
“I told you, dear, I want André to be happy.”
“Well, whatever the reason, thanks. I appreciate it.”
Chloe took Carol’s face in her hands and kissed her on the forehead. “You’re very sweet. I can see why he’s enamored.
“Now,” she said standing. “I’ll leave so you can do what you need to do before André arrives.”
She placed the jar on the night table, walked to the coffee table, picked up the previous night’s tray of food, then headed towards the door.
Carol suddenly felt terrified at being left alone to wait for André. “Please, you’ve got to let me get out of here! He’s going to kill me.”
Just before Chloe went out she turned. “Carol. May I call you Carol?”
Carol shrugged impatiently.
“I cannot let you leave, but if I can make a suggestion? About André.”
“Why not? I can use all the help I can get.”
“Well, it might be better if you didn’t mention what happened last night. Don’t bring it up, you understand?”
“Right. Let my scars speak for themselves.”
“What I’m getting at is, I don’t know exactly what your arrangement with André is, but this I do know; he’s peculiar, in a way. More distrustful than you are. Extremely lonely. Bored.
Jaded, perhaps. In some respects he’s still a child. I think he’s at a loss with you. He doesn’t know what to do.”
Carol turned away. She didn’t give a damn about his loneliness. But she kept quiet and listened to the rest of what
Chloe suggested.
“I’ve known him a very long time, since his birth, and I believe I know him fairly well. The best way to deal with him is in the moment. Forget the past. Don’t bring it up because he can be more brutal than you’ve seen. Just take him in the moment, as he is, the good and the bad. It’s the best way.”
“Sure. I’ve read the psychology books too—men who can’t face the fact that they’re brutes. Never throw a misogynist’s past in his face.”
Chloe sighed. She turned towards the door and opened it.
“I’m only trying to help. Both of you. Do as you must.”
After Chloe left, Carol got up and went to one of the windows. Outside in the twilight the ocean pounded furiously against large immovable boulders. The immense slabs of granite seemed rooted in the ocean floor. Constantly buffeted and ravaged by the violent Atlantic and other more impervious elements, the rocks looked powerful to Carol but resigned to an eternity of endurance. This room was so quiet it felt like a tomb. Her tomb. Where she was buried alive.
She thought about what Chloe had said and decided she must know something about André; maybe it was the best approach. If I’m not receptive to him, she thought, he’ll interpret that as breaking the agreement. He might kill me. Kill me! He can do that at any moment. How can Chloe think he’s so fascinated when he keeps threatening me, not to mention what he did last night? He would hurt her at the slightest provocation, or even if he wasn’t provoked.
She thought he must be insane, and everyone else in this house too, and that scared her. For all his problems, at least
Rob had been relatively normal, ordinary, boringly so. Their life together had been simple and straight-forward, if passionless. And then she realized how strange things had gotten for her to be comparing her former husband—a man who had betrayed her—to a violent blood-sipping lunatic. Maybe I’m going crazy myself, she thought.
She heard the clock downstairs chime ten o’clock. Suddenly she panicked.
Carol hurried to the fireplace and quickly got a fire going then sat down gingerly on the chair beside it. On the table was the food Chloe had brought. She lifted the lid: chicken, wild rice and broccoli. She was hungry but could only nibble at it; her stomach was tight. Nervously, and for lack of anything better to do, she tried the door; it was locked. Everybody has a key, she thought. Everybody but me.
Carol waited pensively, trying to get herself into a mental state where she could pretend that nothing brutal had happened the previous night. But, when she heard the lock click she stood and darted behind the winged armchair, feeling a need to keep a barrier between them.
Tonight he was dressed conservatively. He wore a sedate grey suit, grey shoes, blue shirt and blue and grey tie. As soon as he bolted the door he turned, his smile reserved.
“I see you’re still among the living.”
So much for Chloe’s advice, she thought. He’s brought it up.
He walked to the table and lifted the warmer off the plate. “You haven’t eaten again. That’s two meals in a row. Trying to starve yourself, or gain my pity?”
He stared at her and Carol shrank under that look. She tried to speak but her throat was dry. Her heart roared in her ears and she thought she might faint. Finally she was able to say, “I’m not hungry.”
He dropped the warmer onto the plate. “Good, because I’m not capable of pity.” He came towards her.
Her body began to tremble. “I’m glad you’re afraid of me,” he said, “otherwise I’d think you’re psychotic. I’ve had my doubts already. You mortals believe you can hide your feelings. Come over here!”
Hesitantly Carol moved from behind the chair. Her legs felt rubbery. She was on the verge of crying.
“I won’t bite. Unless you’d like to break our agreement.”
He grabbed her hips, pulling them into his. “Still think you can give yourself to me? Or do you want to renege?”
“We have a verbal contract,” she said softly, avoiding his intense eyes, focusing instead on the straight line his lips made, afraid she would burst into tears. “I’ll honor it.”
“Modern women are so sensible. Ever think of becoming a lawyer?”
“I tried.”
“And?”
“I failed the bar exam.”
He led her to the bed. When they got there he undressed and lay down, pulling her onto him. “You’ll be more comfortable on top, counselor.” He maneouvered her so that eventually she sat astride his hips. When he had stimulated her, he eased her onto him then moved her up and down until she understood the rhythm.
He stayed longer that night, taking her three times, all in the same position. He was gentle and steady but Carol had to struggle hard to forget the past, as Chloe had suggested, so that she could be in the moment, open, willing, so that she could save her life.
Just before daybreak, as he was leaving, he kissed her lovingly, lingeringly, and then he was gone again. As soon as Carol was certain that she was alone, she finally let the tears flow.
Chapter Six
By the next day the redness on Carol’s bottom had completely disappeared. The emotional scars were more persistent.
Each night André came earlier and stayed later. He was always assertive but usually gentle enough. Most of the time he was slow and patient, leaving room for her arousal, although she had a difficult time feeling anything remotely sexual with him.
But sometimes he just took her cold, like an adolescent boy unable to savor the sensations. No matter what he did, Carol never fully lost her fear and distrust of him. Twice she had even become actively afraid—both times he made her kneel at the edge of the bed.
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