The Dark Forest: A Collection Of Erotic Fairytales(136)

That part of her was evil.

She had to fight it.

Swallowing, Rebecca leaned forward and picked up the plastic cup, sipping water carefully before she set it back down. One, two, three, five, eight lights. Eight cameras. Eight like the number of legs on a spider, and this was the web. This room a cocoon of silk he’d wrapped her in so he could devour her slowly. Bit by bit. Destroying her at his leisure.

And, worse, she was letting him.

“Stop it,” she whispered to herself, a harsh growl. Where was the girl who walked into meetings with her head up? Where was the woman who had presented her Bachelor’s thesis to a bunch of smug professors who had doubted her, who had taken one look at her and sneered? The same woman who had then impressed them with her discussion of Titian, and Caravaggio, and Gentileschi? She was still that person.

Even naked and bruised and welted and violated.

She could still be smart, could still be strong.

The memory of the year she had spent on her thesis came out of the fog in her brain. Paintings flooded her mind, vivid and dark at the same time, and she fixated on one she’d referenced several times in her thesis. Judith Slaying Holofernes. An ancient story of a woman taking revenge on the man who raped her. Beheading him in the most brutal of fashions. The way Gentileschi had painted the blood with abandon, the horror of the blade slicing skin as Judith and her servant had held the man down—it had been powerful. Breathtaking.

Even Caravaggio had not pulled back from the violence of it, although he’d painted Judith more timid, more serene in the slaughter. Caravaggio had done it well, but Gentileschi had done it better. She had not softened the image, she hadn’t hidden the horror of it. She had reveled in it. She had understood what it was like to be a woman up against a man.

Whether fierce or elegant, Judith was a symbol of vengeance. Bloody vengeance.

A testament to the unbreakable spirit inside all women.

Water splashed into Rebecca’s stomach with a force that made her sit up, pressing her spine into the concrete wall. A tiny flicker of strength surfaced in the dimness of her thoughts, the color of Titian red. It brushed across the inside of her mind, called her forward to claim her strength. To be brave. To be unbreakable. To seek vengeance.

She could be like Judith if she tried. She would be.

She would not be a damsel in distress, a princess trapped in a tower. She would change the story.

Staring at the door, Rebecca thought of her own Holofernes. The mask, the hard body, the hard— With a shake of her head, she took a deep breath, and drew strength from some unknown well inside her. She had to act or she was going to dissolve in this cocoon.

“Hey!” she shouted, glancing up at one of the cameras with a kind of reckless abandon that on some level only further confirmed her loose grip on sanity.

Why are you summoning the monster back?

“I want to know what you want! What are you doing? What do you want my father to do?” As she rattled off questions, emptying her brain of the twisted cloud of thoughts, the camera lights started to tick off one by one. Her muscles tensed, fear zipping up her spine, but the tingle was there too. A warm, buzzing, hungry sensation in her lower belly.

Stop it. You don’t want him. You just want answers.

No more red eyes staring down, cameras off, but the lights at least stayed on.

It was only a moment later when the grating sound of the metal lock filled the room, and then he was there. No shirt, no gloves, no pants, no shoes. He was in black boxer briefs, molded to him so closely he may as well have left them behind, and—of course—the damnable mask. Every tanned inch of him was power, and she stared as he leaned his head against the doorframe. “You called, princess?”

“What—” She jerked back because there was a warm, rumbling slur to his voice. “What the fuck? Are you drunk?”

“I’m celebrating.” He stepped into the room, a large bottle of some dark liquor in his other hand. The door snapped shut beside him, but he barely twitched.

“Celebrating what?”

“Your father is finally taking me seriously, and I am pruning the tree of his empire branch by branch.” Raising one hand, he mimed scissors cutting through the air. “Snip, snip, snip.”

“What do you mean?”

The man had let his gaze drift to the side, but he looked back at her when she spoke. He shrugged. “I’m taking everything. Just like I promised.”

“You’re not making any sense,” she whispered and he walked towards her with slow steps, his bare feet padding across the floor, the muscles in his legs and abs shifting in time with his movements. She fought the urge to run, driving her nails into her palms to stay seated.

No more games.

“You are beautiful.” He stopped close to her and set the bottle down on the floor, lowering into a crouch. “Even more so than you are on TV. I think it’s the fire inside you. You always look like a lifeless doll on television. But… you’re not.”

“Not what?” She dodged his hand as he reached out to touch her cheek.

“A lifeless doll,” he answered flatly. A low laugh rumbled in his chest as he moved and sat on the other end of the thin mattress. “I thought you would be.”

“A doll?”

“Empty.” His words made her forehead crease, her brows drawing closer together, but her eyes stayed on the bottle.