“You’re going to punish me for running away, but not for killing a man?”
“Precisely.”
This is fucked up. Then again, so am I.
Chapter Twelve
Darko
I give Chloe a few days to settle in and become re-accustomed to me. I am not concerned about her leaving again. She has nowhere to go except the great wide forest, and even if she did, she’s no longer nearly as afraid of the Order as she is of herself.
She wants to be punished. She’s craving it. But I am in no hurry. I want her mind to settle. I want her body to finish processing the adrenaline of her escape and the act of killing. That does not happen right away. It can take many days for a body to return to baseline after that much action and death. Hell, it can take a lifetime.
But Chloe is resilient. I already knew that about her. From the moment I took her, she has been proving her strength. As I watch and wait, she begins to come back to herself. I know how it will be for her. First, the memory of the killing will fade. It will begin to seem like something somebody else did, not something she was responsible for. It will seem as though the gun had a life of its own. She may even start to believe that the whole thing was an accident. She didn’t mean to kill him. She just meant to scare him. The mind finds myriad defenses when a good person does something so dark they cannot reconcile it with their sense of self.
Our relationship began with my taking her captive. Now it has transformed into something else. Now I must walk her through the dark pathways of what it is to have taken life, and how it is to live with yourself in the aftermath of it.
Some days she cries, and I hold her. Other days she rages against me, and I am impassive to it, taking all that anger. This will not last forever. Her punishment is coming and she knows it. Sometimes she begs for it. Clings to me and whispers for me to make it better.
“Just hit me. Tie me up and take a cane to me. Make me hurt, Darko.”
“Soon,” I say to the girl curled up in my lap, her eyes lit with the desire of the deeply guilty.
“Why are you making me wait?” She lets out a little sob.
“You’re not ready.”
“How could you know? I need it, Darko. I need the pain.”
I am not going to lift a finger to her now. She needs to feel what her own mind is inflicting on her first, and second, she needs to be more recovered before my punishment begins. If I do it now, she will be too welcoming of pain. She will let me hurt her, badly, and not make a sound. I do not trust her reactions. Every look, every word, every breath is another lie she tells herself.
* * *
A week later…
“I’m bored.”
I lift a brow as Chloe walks into the lounge that looks out over one of the most beautiful wild forest vistas in the United States. There’s a pout on her face, and even the way she walks is petulant.
“Bored?”
“Bored,” she confirms.
“Oh, now, I can’t have you being bored, Chloe. Can I?”
Bored is good. Bored means the storm has settled and she has found her equilibrium. Now it is time to do what must be done. It has been far too long since I had Chloe. I have missed her tender flesh, the way she cries out in pain and in pleasure. I have missed her tight little holes, the surrender of her body. I have missed it all, but I will not miss any of it for much longer.
* * *
Chloe
He looks at me with that malevolent yet sexy stare. “Do you want me to un-bore you?”
I want to feel something. Since being saved from my own fucked-up actions, I have felt strangely flat. My despair melted into nothing and left me empty. I’ve been waiting to feel better, but right now, I would settle for feeling anything at all. I can no longer tell if Darko is my enemy or my friend. I can’t tell if I hate him, or if I love him. This twilight state of affairs needs some kind of direction. I can’t ask him to love me, but I can always ask for his pain.
“Please,” I say. “Hurt me.”
“Oh, you ask for it so nicely,” he purrs. “You know how much punishment awaits, don’t you. You know I have stored up everything you have earned from hitching a ride on that helicopter, refusing to do as you were told when I called you, and finally, the act you actually feel sorrow for. You have pain coming, Chloe, do not worry about that for a single second.”