The End

by Charlotte E Hart

  I smile slightly at those last words, remembering the times he’s made me ask. It’s been constant the entire time. The need for agreement, the offering, the withheld touches until I nod or present myself accordingly. For a man who has founded a gravestone because of his actions, his self-restraint has been exquisite. And he’s done that for me, hasn’t he? Trained himself. Suspended himself. Limited his thoughts, put them under quarantine maybe until such time as I accept it all.

  “Did you bring those flowers?” I’m not sure why I care, but I do. Some sentiment of romance maybe. Some lingering hope that dates will still reside when I let myself plummet without care to the exploit he chooses. Slut, whore. Alana. Little Dove and Brat. Each one of me ready to offer myself without prudent choice or rebellion as to why or why nots. Just his. To do with as he sees fit, just as long as he gives me that ocean once in a while. That and the feel of his arms around me on occasion, his heartbeat against my back.

  “Yes.”

  “You’ve never brought me flowers.”

  It’s an absentminded drawl of words, as I stare into chocolate eyes, his frame filling my vision. He’s never brought me flowers or presents. Never given me gifts, chocolates, niceties. Never even really said the words most lovers long to hear constantly, announcing their affirmation of worth to each other. One date in all this time. One night of romance, his kind of softening, and even that hindered by the realisation of this place beneath my knees now.

  He picks the bunch of roses up and throws them to the floor in front of me, a raise of his brow showing his disdain for my thoughts of romanticism. So I look up, searching the sky for my bird and wonder if she made it home, or whether the cold froze her mid-flight. Perhaps that’s what happens when you brave the wind on your own, no hand to help pull you through it. Or perhaps you fly harder until you get to the place you want most, strengthening yourself against whatever tries to stop your descent to the nest that waits. Either way, I won’t be kneeling on this grave any longer for anything. If I ask for it all, if I give him that, it’ll be somewhere other than the cold slab of the last woman he chose to destroy.

  Chapter 20

  Alana

  I smile as we walk into a bar I don’t know, the effortless rhythm of his footfalls behind me giving me a sense of calm to travel within. He still surrounds me, regardless of the fact that I’m in front of him, somehow casting his shadow out around me so I don’t have to fear what’s coming. You’d think I’d be pissed about all this, confused, certainly after nothing but silence from him as we drove away from that graveyard, but I’m not. I’m neither trying to rationalise this anymore nor trying to pick my opinions apart. We’ve just walked all afternoon after the drive back to town, pottered really, with him reaching for my hand and linking his fingers tightly with mine the whole time.

  We’ve gone wherever my feet have taken me and he’s followed, letting me guide the routes and consider my responses to this morning’s events. Insanity and death. Something I never thought I’d be dealing with in real life. In books maybe, but not here in the world I reside in. But then this is my book, isn’t it? My story. One written by Alana Williams on an old typewriter, as the man I love shoved the tale through me for the world to read. Although I don’t know if the world should any more. They’re our chapters to travel through now. My beginning to our end.

  He sits me down, ensuring I’m comfortable, still no words coming from him as I look at his face and wonder what our first words will be going forward. There’s only a smile coming back at me, the more relaxed version I’ve seen on occasion, before he nods and turns to walk away. I watch him go, his body weaving amongst the patrons, until he disappears into the fray and leaves me sitting here alone. I don’t know why. I’m not concerned either. He’ll be back. He’ll never leave me now, not unless I ask him to. He wants me in his life, in his home. Needs me. Loves me enough to tell me everything he has done.

  I turn to the bar and fold a napkin, my fingers needing something to do now he’s not holding them. I haven’t even asked any more questions, nor have I tried to probe him more for conversation about insanity or murder. I don’t believe the first, not truly. And the second means little to the here and now. He’s told me the truth, and let me understand the two elements of him that kept us distanced. That’s all that matters to me. He’s let me all the way in, and in that, he’s shown me how much I’m loved. What more could I need than that? Commitment? More words, explanations of in-depth psychological discussions? Why? It makes no difference to me. Nothing will change this internal instinct that keeps me needing to be beside him, under him.

  Whatever he was before me is less relevant than what he might become with me. His words proved that. They told me I am worth more than Eloise. That I’m more than she ever was. And time has moved on, anyway. It’s fixed us together, the bond between us becoming more trustworthy as it has. We’re in tune now I know it all, a mix of two people slowly flattering one another either in spite of, or because of, the reasons why. We have become a new wave—one that still waits for the crash perhaps, but we’re both unable to deny the strength of the current regardless. I certainly am. And I’m tired of fighting what I am or have become because of him. What happened with Cole was all me. What happened with Bree was all me. He might have been the instigator of those types of thoughts, fed them to me, but it was me who acted on those instincts, and me who let them come. If he is insane, it’s an insanity I adore. An insanity I’m now a part of, for better or worse.

  “Have you decided?” he asks, his hand suddenly on the back of my neck. I chuckle and look back at him, my neck craning round and upwards, desperate to see that smile of his again. It’s not there anymore, though. He narrows his stare at me instead, a slight hesitation in his lips before he speaks again. “Drink?” He doesn’t mean a drink. He’s doesn’t care at all what I want to drink. He wants an answer as to whether I’m going home with him or not. Whether I’m asking for a life with him.

  It makes me gaze over his face, looking for any reason not to. Searching, in fact, for the slightest hint of fear still lingering inside myself. There’s nothing there, just as there’s not the slightest withdrawal of that offer from him.

  “I’m hoping you know the answer to that, Blaine,” I eventually reply, my legs swinging round to him as he sits on a stool next to me. “I’m tired of thinking about it in all honesty.” My hands fiddle with a napkin on the glass topped surface again, nervously trying to find something else to say because of his lacking smile. “It is what it is, don’t you think? I’m not running scared because of you. So it’s got to mean I’m agreeing.”

  His brow rises as he removes his jacket and begins rolling up his sleeves, still no sign of a smile from him. I don’t know what else to say. I don’t even know what right minded individual would consider any of this reasonable, let alone be asking for more of it. Perhaps it’s just unique to him and me, or others like us maybe. I don’t know. I just know there isn’t anything else without him now, dead women or not. There is only his sea, my words, and the vast expanse of a life without him to consider. I can’t do that. I won’t, not now I know my life with him.

  “That’s not good enough for me, Alana,” he says, turning to the bartender and pointing at something on the menu, holding two fingers up at the same time.

  I snort, amused at his hostile tone. Not good enough? What the hell else does he want? As it is, and irrespective of feelings, I’m all in simply because I can’t be out. Perhaps I haven’t got the balls or intuition to find myself without him leading me, and perhaps I just don’t want to try. Either way I don’t care. I just want his hands on me, leading me. Showing me a life I didn’t know before him and giving me a sense of freedom because of it.

  “Well, it’ll have to be.” That’s all I’ve got for now.

  I turn away, my body swiveling before I’ve given him a chance to respond, and watch the bartender doing whatever he’s doing. It is what it is. Possibly not right or normal, but it is here inside
me now and I’ve nothing to fight it with anymore. The tranquility that rushes through me as I stare forward is borderline insane. All in. All in his hands and not caring for whatever that might hold. The thought makes me smile again as the bartender tinkers with various concoctions of alcohol, mixing them as he does and clinking glasses. Who would have thought it of the Alana I was a few months ago? I wouldn’t. I’m not even sure where it’s come from or how it’s happened, but this man beside me knows, and he knows what’s best for us because of it. He might not know my dreams or aspirations, might not even know what I want from life, but he knows how I work, and how I need to work because of those facts. He’s inside my brain quicker than I am.

  Two dark green short glasses are brought back to us, one of them slid towards him before mine’s offered. It immediately makes me glance around the space we’re in, searching for other people so I can discern where the hell I am.

  “Drink, and then get on all fours,” Blaine says, his tone steady and sombre.

  I stare around again, glancing at couples to see if we’ve entered a rabbit hole I wasn’t aware of. It doesn’t seem it. Couples are dressed immaculately, high heels and elegant clothes, the cut of their cloth enough for me to assume designer and expensive. Everyone’s sitting normally, talking like regular people rather than arses in the air and sounds of spanks and screams. I twist slowly to look back at him, another flick of my eyes over his shoulder towards the back of the long room.

  “You said you were asking. Why are you questioning me, little dove?” he asks. I’m not that I’m aware of, only checking out what’s become so fascinating about the view. Its dark down there, and the occasional flash of a light draws my attention to it again, as he smirks and sips his drink in my eye-line. “The time for questions is gone. You said you were ready for me. All of me.” I slide from the stool, transfixed on the quickening strobe that seems to be pulsing up the room towards us, Blaine’s back blocking it. “It’s time to prove it now.” He stands slowly, his head inclining towards the floor, his original quiet order still intent on being obeyed. It makes me look at him and then the floor, a slow smile spreading at whatever he’s got planned this time. At least we’re together this time, I suppose. I’m not being thrown into something with no knowledge, like the theatre.

  “Just you?” I ask, the thought of others touching me troubling. I’m not sure why given my penchant for fucking friends in store cupboards, but it’s unnerving regardless.

  He doesn’t answer, giving me nothing other than that stare of his that means he’s getting pissed at my hesitation. I guess I won’t know what’s happening until it happens, and I don’t care really. I don’t. I trust him. And more than anything, I trust me now. I trust this feeling inside me that hasn’t baulked one inch from his order. I feel my knees lowering, my fingers reaching for the carpet without removing my eyes from him. Irrespective of the woman he killed, this is us now. My wants. My needs. He’ll give them to me and I’ll take whatever he delivers, love helping us both contend with what the other conveys.

  He smiles as I hover, my hands relaxed as I get my knees ready to crawl the distance he asks. It’s down there, whatever it is. I know it is. I can see it in the pulsing light that keeps coming at me, tempting me into something I haven’t felt before.

  “Are you sure, Alana?” he asks, as the back of my dress is slowly zipped open. It makes me gasp a little, but the warmth of his hand on my skin soon replaces the exposed sensation. I nod in reply as he comes to crouch in front of me, his fingers lifting my chin to face him. “I need to know this is real.” I smile at that, listening to the slight quiver in his tone as he gazes intently.

  I just keep looking at him, focusing in on the eyes I know so well. There aren’t any words necessary now. There’s no point in them. We don’t need them anymore. He knows this look, knows my commitment to him. He asks, I do. That’s all there is to this. No questions. No concerns. Just blind trust and the feel of him near. It’s in the air somehow when he’s close, like he’s the other half of me, the dominant half. He leads and I follow, guiding me forwards and stripping me of tension.

  “Sir, in here, yes?” I nod at that, too, as he rises back up, a dirty smile beginning to wrap around his lips, as he begins to walk away. It’s the same look I get post fucking, one that fills me with assurance as his fingers tap his legs to tell me to trail him.

  My knees hardly feel the floor as I watch him move in front of me and follow, the flash of the strobe continuing to pull me down along with him. It’s like a tunnel, the light getting smaller and smaller the closer we get, speeding up and leading me to fuck knows where. It’s just one crawl after the other, the shine of his shoes and the tempo of his steps keeping me engrossed. And I ache already, my thighs clenching with every movement, the flex of my back making my arse undulate along this high end fuck tunnel. It’s coming in there, isn’t it? Pain, exhaustion, the feel of hands and whips. The sting of a belt, the broken gasps for air. The orgasms crashing. It’s all coming for me and I couldn’t be more turned on by the thought if I tried, my legs pushing me into it, into him. I’m mesmerised by it. Caught in this magical web of sin and self-discovery, barely able to think of anything but fucking and sweat, the tearing of fabric, the grip of manly hands and their delinquent bite into me.

  I lick my lips, watching his trousers as they come to a standstill, his hand levering a card into a slot by a door. I could make myself come right here, sink my fingers in and warm myself up for him, make my skin more flexible for whatever he’s going to do.

  “You dare and I’ll cage you for a week,” he says, his hand slapping out at my cheek gently. The shiver that rides me is almost enough to make me come without any help from fingers at all. So much so that I lick out at his finger in the hope of drawing it into my mouth. He chuckles at me, allowing me a seconds worth of power over him before he pulls it away and turns to glance back at me. “Last chance to back away, little dove?” I smile at him and lick my lips again, not needing any chances. Chances are for those who don’t know what they’re doing. I do.

  The heat that hits me as the door slides open is like entering the tropics. I hover, trying to get my bearings as I stare into the gloom. There’s nothing to focus on. It’s a blur of bodies, all of them writhing and moaning, the stench of sweat drifting back to me before I have chance to draw breath.

  “Move,” he snaps, a slap coming at my cheek again to make me focus on him. “You stay right at my feet. Don’t make me show them.” I nod quickly, snatching in a breath and trying to ignore everything around me. It’s doesn’t work, no matter how I try to zero in on him again as we begin moving. Every next transfer of my arms is bewildering, my hands hovering in each further reach. It’s a riot of fucking, whips and chains whistling the air, screams and howls echoing back to me. Men and women everywhere, subs strapped into positions with tears rolling down their faces as they bellow out. I snatch a look back at the door, nervously looking for an exit. It’s not there anymore, the steel frame shuttered closed behind me.

  “Blaine?” It slips out before I’ve thought about it, and the slap that rings across my cheek sends me crashing to the floor, sticky carpet grating on my skin as I land.

  “This is the last time I ask nicely,” he growls, his shoes nudging my face. I blow out a breath, sensing some comfort in the feel of his frame beside me again. Oh god, it’s one of the most screwed up sensations I’ve ever felt, as I pull my body back up. It’s like I need that force, need it to realign me, rearrange the sense of love into a usable fashion. “I love you. Hold onto that and follow me.” His words make me pull in my exhaled breath, letting it fill me with strength and courage for what’s coming, adjusting whatever fucked up part of me needs bringing through my hesitation.

  I crick my neck and look up to find him smiling slightly, his eyes crinkled under his frown. He nods once, another small lift of his lips to clarify those words again, then turns and taps his thigh again as he walks. Hold onto that and follow me. I asked, and this
is the result. It’s all of him he’s offering. This is his world I’m in now, a part of him I have to accept as part of me. It’s enough for me to do exactly as he asks, my body crawling the sticky floor with little care to what I’m crawling on. It’s not relevant; where’s he’s leading me is. And I can only hear the noises now as I focus on his legs again, the screams dimming to muffled sobs and groans for some reason.

  His legs stop suddenly, his voice talking quietly to someone above me. I don’t look. I just keep looking at the legs that own me, rather than the new pair in my eye-line, and then follow again as he moves off a few moments later.

  “Up,” he eventually says. So few words now, more simple commands. It’s easier like that, and makes me stand up without thought. He gazes at me and then points at a wall with a chain hanging from a high hook a couple of feet in front of it. I walk straight to it, unconcerned by the rusty manacles dangling from the end. Nothing matters, only his pleasure and my happiness. I’ll find it there under him. I always do. Pain is only relevant for the first few minutes, and then it disperses, bringing the calm I crave along with his idea of adoration. I glance around a little as I raise my hands, waiting for him to put me in the cuffs. People are watching, a few of them taking a seat to view the show of this famous sadist of mine. Fine, let them have their fun. It doesn’t bother me anymore. Nothing does other than ensuring he keeps smiling at me, his hands finding their peace on me. It’s what one does for the love of a good man. They give their all, waiting for it to be returned as and when it’s deserved. And I’ll get it later. I know I will. This right here is my last show of compliance, my obedience to him. I smile at the thought, imagining his beach and the sea that waits for me to go home to it. No other person here gets that. And no other woman gets to wake up in his arms. Only me. He’s more mine than I am his in some ways. Who else gives him this but me, telling him they love him as they do? No one.