Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Marena hated a lot of things. But if she had to list them, “summer” would be very fucking near the top, and “summer in the Southern United States” would be right next to it. She hated the way the sun beat down like an anvil. She hated the sticky, suffocating humidity that draped itself over everything until it felt as though the entire world was sweating. She hated the waves of heat that emanated from the ground, even in the dead of night. She hated that even the fucking ocean provided no relief; she’d nearly gagged the first and only time she’d attempted a midnight swim, the water curling around her ankles like tepid bathwater. She wanted to peel off her clothes, shave her head, wriggle out of her skin. She wanted to crawl into a freezer and wait until winter, but that season didn’t seem to exist here in the armpit of the world, so maybe she’d stay there until she was dead.

There were no freezers to be found in the swampy vegetation bordering the empty road she followed. There was, however, an abundance of gnats, flies, mosquitoes, and other nameless biting, flying things so great that Marena was seriously considering setting herself on fire just to kill them off. She’d been on the road for weeks. Her feet were blistered. Her stomach was starting to eat itself. If she had to comb any more spanish moss out of her hair she was going to scream. But she kept going, one foot in front of the other, because it was better than turning back. And she stayed in this stupid sauna of a country because it was better than what lay across the ocean.

Marena walked, and dreamed of snow.

***

The car was a temptation. Shiny and black, it gave off an impression of speed even while sitting still. And it was gloriously unattended. Marena had been watching it for nearly fifteen minutes and had seen neither hide nor hair of the driver.

Her court-appointed therapist in Miami had said that a lot of her problems stemmed from a lack of impulse control. Marena thought that was bullshit. She could control her impulses just fine when she wanted; it was just that she so rarely wanted to. With a mental Fuck You to Dr. Call Me Linda, she pulled the wire hook out of her bag and popped the car’s lock in a matter of seconds.

The rest of the job was not so simple. The car was a newer model; the dashboard alone had enough electronics to power a small rocketship. At first, it resisted her efforts, almost as if it didn’t want to be stolen. Her nerves felt like a live wire as too many minutes stretched past, expecting the owner to return. Two screwdrivers and broken nail later, she resorted to swearing and brute force.

“Come on you piece of shit suka blyat’, START!” she snarled, forcing screwdriver number three into the keyhole with her fist and cranking it as hard as she could. The engine roared to life, the radio blaring a hip hop dance remix she’d heard outside at least half a dozen clubs. She slammed her hand against the power button and froze, the only sounds now the purring of the engine and the incessant insect chatter. Scarcely believing her luck, Marena slid into the leather driver’s seat and carefully shut the door. She tapped the gas pedal and grinned when the engine revved in response. Cranking the air conditioning and easing out onto the road, Marena let out a triumphant whoop and floored it.

***

The sky was turning a dusky, pre-dawn blue when the car slowed to a stop.

“What?” The tank was still half full. Marena stomped on the gas. No response. “Chto za khuynya? What the fuck?” She punched the steering column, punched the dashboard, succeeded only in scraping her knuckles. The car shut off. “No no no no…” The cooling engine ticked mockingly at her. “How the fuck…?”

The screen on the dashboard flared to life.

NOT YOURS, PIGGY

Marena’s very heartfelt Fuck! froze in her throat. She had to get out. She had to get out now. Eyes still on the screen, she pulled at the door handle. Locked. When did that happen? And why couldn’t she unlock it? Rage bubbled up in her chest as she yanked at the handle, rage at whatever bastard was controlling the car, and at her own stupid mistake for stealing a goddamned remote control car, of all the dumb fucking…. Marena forced herself to stop before she did something else idiotic, like ripping the handle off the door. Took a slow breath. In through the nose, out through the mouth. She scanned the futuristic dashboard. Too many buttons, probably not enough time to push them all, assuming they’d even respond to her touch.

Come on, Masha. You love to break shit. Duh. Marena pulled her only spare shirt out of her bag and quickly wrapped it around her elbow, planning to smash her way through the window.

The guy with the crowbar beat her to it.

***

The first thing Marena noticed when she came to was sweet, blessed cold, the kind one felt in warehouses with industrial AC systems.

The second thing she noticed was that she was chained to a chair. Literally chained; she could feel the links chilling her wrists and ankles. Another chain dug into her hips like a too-tight airplane seatbelt. Whoever tied her up knew what they were doing then; metal couldn’t be frayed or worked loose like fiber rope. And the restraint across her lap prevented her from bucking or contorting into a more favorable fighting position.

Speaking of fighting… all of her knives were still in place. Wrists, boots, back, pockets. Which meant one of three things:

1. This was a rush job.
2. Her mystery abductor was half an idiot and didn’t check her for weapons.
3. Her mystery abductor knew she was armed and didn’t do anything about it because they knew she wouldn’t be able to beat them in a fight anyway.

Marena really hoped it wasn’t the third one.

A quick mental check revealed that she was still fairly intact. Her muscles were stiff, her head ached, and she had a nasty case of dry-mouth, but she’d had hangovers worse than this before. The lack of a massive head injury meant she hadn’t been beaten unconscious, so she must have been drugged. She tried to think past the car window shattering, but couldn’t remember being forced to swallow or inhale anything. A needle, then?

Marena heard heavy footsteps approaching, then the rustle of fabric as someone settled in front of her. She briefly toyed with the idea of playing possum, but the need to face whatever was about to happen head-on won out. Not weak. Not anymore.

She opened her eyes and came face to face with a grinning skull.

Well, it was a mask shaped like a grinning skull, attached to a head that was most probably human. The mask shined in the weak light of… wherever the fuck she was. It was meant to be intimidating, distracting, and Marena forced herself to look away and take in the other details of her captor.

The guy was a beast. Crouched as he was, he was still eye-level with her. He’d dwarf her standing. Shaved head, black tailored suit (why though), black gloves (too thin to be leather, latex maybe?). The red light of a camcorder blinked from a mount on his right shoulder. She caught a glint of metal near his waistband but didn’t let her gaze linger long enough to identify exactly what type of weapon he was packing.

That familiar destructive urge, the need to kick and claw and tear, crept through her veins. Her fingers wanted to twitch. Her teeth wanted to clench. Marena forced herself into stillness. Not yet. Wait for the right time. Patience. The skull stared at her, motionless, expressionless, so she returned the favor. He pulled out a cell phone, typed something, and held it up for her to see.

HELLO PIGGY

Years of practice kept Marena’s face blank while a litany of choice curses flew through her head.

“This is about the car,” she said. It wasn’t a question. The skull nodded anyway, and reached for her.

Fuck it.

Marena lunged.

Chapter Text

The local cops had started sniffing a little too closely around one of his warehouses, which was why Chromeskull found himself burying his most recent piggy deep in the woods outside town. College girl in a tight little dress, drinking her daddy’s money away, but she’d sobered right up when she saw the first knife. Body disposal was normally his underlings’ responsibility, but this one had put up an admirable fight and his adrenaline was still running high, so he opted to do the honors himself. He was tossing the last shovelful of dirt over the remains of her face when he heard the roar of a car engine.

His car.

He sprinted through the woods, making no attempt at stealth as he crashed through branches and underbrush. But by the time he reached the road, the car had vanished, not even a trace of headlights. If he’d had a voice, he would have screamed. He settled for driving a knife into the trunk of the nearest tree. Then he pulled out his cell phone. He could have stopped the car remotely, tracked the thief down on foot, and gutted them on the side of the road. But the insult - the audacity - was too great. That dark little thing inside him, usually sated after playing with one of his piggies, snarled to life. He would take his time with this one.

He texted Spann, who promised to be there in 15 minutes with a new car. In the interim, he pulled up the feed from the dashboard camera to get a better look at his thief. Much of the details were obscured by shadow, but he could make out enough to determine that the brat was small, dark-haired... and female .

He grinned savagely behind his mask.

Oh, little piggy, I am going to have fun with you .

***

The bitch was even tinier than expected. Chromeskull doubted the top of her head would reach past his sternum. He’d needed only one hand to drag her from the car after jamming the needle into her neck. The crowbar was unnecessary - he controlled the locks, after all - but he’d wanted to give her the split second of fear before knocking her out. Besides, the car was obviously defective if this scrawny little piggy had been able to break in. Spann, who had wisely remained silent thus far, was leaning against the passenger side of the second car and tapping away on a tablet.

“Someone will be here shortly to take care of the car,” she said. “I can stay here and wait for them. Police activity is less hot around your facility two towns north if you want to take her there.” She gestured at the girl slung over her boss’s shoulder. Chromeskull nodded and dumped the thieving piggy unceremoniously into the trunk. He slid behind the wheel and drove off, mind already racing with plans for the coming days.

***

He could’ve stripped her while she was unconscious, but he wanted to watch the growing horror in her eyes as he slowly removed all of her defenses, starting with those little knives he’d felt strapped to her wrists when he chained her up. He circled her slowly, gleaning what details he could from her unmoving form. Her clothes were dark, plain, and covered her neck to toe. Ragged and cheap except for her leather boots, which were too nice to be anything but stolen. She had a ridiculous amount of thick, tangled hair. It would make an excellent handle when he dragged her kicking and screaming across the floor.

Chromeskull turned his attention to the shabby backpack he’d taken from the passenger seat of his soon-to-be-scrap-metal car. He upended it with a clatter on the long metal table next to the meat hooks. A quick glance showed his little piggy slumped in the same position. Either she was not yet awake, or she was extremely good at faking it. No matter. He had plenty of time.

He rooted through the contents of the bag with a slowly growing curiosity. Four screwdrivers, two of them broken. A wire hanger bent into a hook. A small lock-picking set. A flashlight. Two pairs of underwear and socks, just as boring as the clothes the girl was currently wearing. A switchblade and a machete, both clearly well-used. A one-liter reusable water bottle and a fifth of vodka. The former was about half full and the latter mostly empty. Chromeskull gave a small smile as he read the top shelf brand on the label. At least the piggy had taste in something , because it sure as fuck wasn’t clothes. He considered taking a swig, but he’d always been more of a whiskey and cognac man. A small, battered notebook gave him a brief pause; he riffled through it, but all the pages were blank, though some had clearly been torn out. He tossed it aside, next to one of those plastic lighters you could buy at any gas station for a dollar.

Conspicuously absent was any form of identification. No phone, no license, not even a library card or a fucking receipt to say who she was or where she’d been. Where were you running to, little piggy?

Impatience made his jaw twitch. Enough waiting. Either the bitch was awake, or she would be very soon. He abandoned his table of toys and sauntered over to crouch in front of her, careful to keep his movements deliberate and controlled. It never did to let his piggies see how eager he was to play with them.

At least, not at first.

A heartbeat passed. Two. Three. He was debating where to deliver a stinging wakeup call via knife when the bitch’s eyes snapped open and looked him dead in the face. Eye, really; the left half of her face was obscured by hair. He waited, as her gaze danced over him, for questions, for pleading, for terror , but she gave him nothing. Just an infuriatingly blank face and an odd light, at once familiar and unnameable, growing in her visible eye. Fucking bitch wasn’t even hyperventilating.

Nice try, piggy, but I will make you squeal.

He pulled his cell phone out of his pocket, typed a greeting, and held it up in front of her face.

HELLO PIGGY

Her expression remained motionless. The only hint that she’d even read the message was a shifting, an intensification of that gleam in her eyes, and damn it if he hadn’t seen it someplace before…

“This is about the car,” she said. Smart piggy. Her voice was thickly accented. Chromeskull raised an eyebrow behind his mask; you didn’t hear a lot of Russians or whatever the fuck she apparently was around these parts. He nodded slowly and reached out to push the hair out of her face-

The fucking cunt bit him.

Hard.

Her sharp little teeth cut through nitrile and skin, drawing blood like a hungry dog. Rage bloomed in his chest like the pain in his fingers. He wrenched his hand away from her whore mouth and backhanded her hard enough to send piggy and chair toppling to the floor. The clatter of the chair couldn’t quite drown out the smack of her face against the concrete, but still she didn’t scream, didn’t cry. Red flickered around the edges of his vision. Wasn’t that just like a whore pig to think she could just flutter her pretty little eyelashes and get away with anything ? Chromeskull flexed his bloody fingers and grabbed a fistful of hair, hauling her upright. She wasn’t looking him in the eye anymore, she was staring at the ground, at his feet, because she knew, she knew, she knew … She knew why they needed him, needed his knives, those sluts who thought they could cruise through life with their tits out and their faces painted, thought that slit between their legs entitled them to anything , and that’s why they needed him, needed that reminder that pretty was nothing and flesh was just meat and their power could be cut away in a matter of seconds. Sure, maybe this one thought she was better , was smarter , with that charade of modesty, but underneath the fabric, underneath the skin, way down where muscle met bone and blood pulsed and there was no beauty to be seen except for those tides of crimson, she was the same, they were the same, they were all the same same same…

The piggy lifted her head and spat a wad of bloody saliva at the lens of his camera with devastating accuracy.

And once again she was on the floor, this time with his hand around her throat as he straddled her waist. He’d seen grown men piss themselves with less provocation, but there was still no fear on her little piggy face, even as blood flowed freely from her nose and mouth where the impact had split her skin. She was breathing heavily, at last, but so was he, so it was no real victory. His pulse roared in his ears, and he could feel hers jumping in her throat like a rabbit kicking against a snare. For a moment there was nothing but heartbeat and breath, brown eye boring into blue, and there was something a bit dangerous in the way her knees brushed against the back of his thighs. With his free hand, he unsheathed his knife and slowly pushed aside that stupid mane of hair, pressing the tip in just hard enough to leave a thin line of red in its wake.

Her left eye was a noticeably lighter blue than the right, a starburst of ice radiating from her pupil. And it was surrounded by a web of scars. Silvery lines stretching from cheekbone to hairline, bisecting her eyebrow in several places. The tip of his knife danced over them, catching on a small ridge that almost looked like a tooth mark…

He pulled her upright by the throat, barely waiting for the chair to settle before he slashed the knife through her thin shirt and boring, utilitarian bra, leaving another stinging red line in its wake, but she still didn’t complain, and he wouldn’t have listened if she did, because what lay bare before him was nothing short of a masterpiece.

One of the oldest and deepest scars started just below her left collarbone, curving above her breast and coming to a stop in the valley of her sternum. Three more began near her left armpit and clawed their way down to her right hip bone, jagged and thick and purple like she’d been ripped open by some monster and sewn back together. Two pale circles, one in each shoulder, he recognized as bullet wounds; he had a few of his own. Another deep line, clearly a stab wound, nestled between two of her ribs. And carved deep into the side of her neck, somewhere between a cut and a brand, a single word in Cyrillic.

He traced a bloody knuckle along one of the claw marks, feeling the girl's stomach muscles contract involuntarily and leaving a stark red mark against her skin. A white hot bolt of something zinged down his spine and settled hot in his stomach and groin, danced down his fingers like flecks of lightning. His stone-faced piggy was no piggy after all. She was a map of pain and one of the most magnificent things he’d ever seen. And now he knew, he knew, what that light was in her eyes. It was fury and bloodlust and hunger and death, and he knew it because he carried it in his own eyes like a raging fire.

Well. This certainly complicated things.

Chapter Text

She woke up wearing nothing but her underwear. Her knives were gone. It was dark. And it was fucking hot. Marena’s head and neck throbbed with bruises, and her nose was sore but not broken. She prodded her mouth with her tongue, wincing slightly when she passed over the cut on her lip, and noted with some relief that all her teeth were still present.  The cuts on her cheek and torso were itchy and starting to scab. Judging by the nausea twisting her stomach, she’d probably been drugged again, too. She hadn’t even noticed the needle; the second that fucker had ripped open her shirt, she’d retreated into greyspace, the empty place she went in her head when her brain didn’t want to observe what was happening to her body. (Dr. Call Me Linda had called it traumatic dissociation. Marena had told her to shut the fuck up.)

She attempted to sit up and immediately hit her head on something hard, like wood. The fuck…? Feeling around with her hands and feet, she tried to identify her surroundings. Long, rectangular box. Satiny fabric lining. A coffin? That fucking… SkullBitch had put her in a fucking coffin?? Rage and bile rose in her throat and Marena had to fight not to vomit. Think, Masha. Observe. A dull, mechanical roar grumbled continuously, and every so often the coffin rocked and rattled gently. Unless SkullBitch had buried her beneath a construction site, she was likely above ground, maybe in a vehicle. Her mind recalled a snippet of a cartoon movie she’d seen bits of once, about zoo animals packed into boxes and shipped across the world. Maybe she would end up on an island with talking monkeys, too. Marena felt a sudden, wild urge to laugh. She choked that down as well, knowing from experience that laughter was a razor’s edge away from screaming or crying.

Instead, she focused on keeping her breathing slow and steady. Ignoring the way the fabric clung to her bare, sweat-sticky skin… Ignoring the increasing staleness of the air… Ignoring…

...the way her nails broke and her knuckles split as she threw herself against the door. The smell of burning dust. The roar of the furnace. The rising heat. The sound of skin hitting skin, of bones breaking, of screaming, screaming, screaming….

“ FUCK! ” Marena shrieked, slamming both fists against the lid of the coffin. That was over. It was over . Now matter what level of fucked her current circumstances were, she wasn’t there anymore, and she never would be again. Never again for as long as she lived...

Which, admittedly, might not be long. It was getting harder to breathe, the stifling heat pressing against her like a physical weight. All she’d done, everything she’d survived, and she was going to cook to death in this fucking box. Fuck this. Fuck him. Fuck them. Fuck everything.

Marena let herself slip back into greyspace.

***

An unforgiving concrete surface slammed into her like… well, concrete, punching the air from her lungs. Somebody had dumped her onto the floor like a sack of potatoes, but she was too busy sucking in as much cool air as her aching throat would allow to be angry about that. After a few moments of rather undignified coughing and gasping and spitting out strands of hair, she became aware of a presence in the room with her. The scars on her back seemed to crawl and writhe under the weight of unseen eyes. Shiny, chrome eyes that she would just loooove to dig her fingers into. She couldn’t see his face, but she just knew that bastard was smirking at her.

Marena pushed herself unsteadily to her knees. Her limbs felt like quivering jelly, and she could feel every cut and bruise throb in time with her heartbeat. I am a pain jello . Again, that lunatic need to laugh. She bit her cheek until she tasted blood and glanced around the room. There wasn’t much to see. A folding bed with a scratchy-looking grey blanket was pushed against one wall. A drain was set into the floor in the opposite corner. The rest was empty, just sickly fluorescent light and blank concrete. And the asshole lurking behind her. Right. Him. With great effort, she rose to her feet and turned around.

And sure enough, SkullBitch was standing behind her with his stupid fucking mask and his stupid fucking suit, holding up his stupid fucking phone so she could read his stupid fucking message.

SLEEP WELL?

A fresh wave of anger, irritation, and exhaustion swept over her. The only reason she’d smuggled herself into this country was specifically so she would not have to put up with bullshit like this anymore… 

At that moment, Marena noticed he wasn’t wearing gloves anymore. Her stomach dropped. If he wasn’t worried about leaving fingerprints, that meant he was in complete control of their surroundings and was confident they wouldn’t be found. And she most likely wasn’t going to be leaving.

Which, in turn, meant she was free to do whatever idiot thing popped into her head. Like snatching the phone out of his gloveless hands and typing her own message.

FUCK OFF

SkullBitch tilted his head. Marena watched the muscles in his throat twitch, but with his face hidden she couldn’t tell if he was pissed or trying to hold back laughter. It was taking all her concentration to keep the tremble from her body. Some combination of the drugs, adrenaline, and the fact that she’d been living off vending machine snacks for the past week. Oh, and almost dying of heatstroke. Her thoughts fluttered wildly, like cracked-out butterflies, impossible to hold onto. 

Don’t shake don’t laugh don’t scream hurt him stay still try to run just let it fade don’t feel slip away -

She was jolted back from the precipice of greyspace by the heated touch of skin against skin. Skullbitch had grabbed the phone, along with her entire hand. His own hand was lightly calloused and large enough to swallow Marena’s entire fist with ease. He was close enough now that she’d need to crane her neck to see his face. She consciously decided not to do that, focusing instead on the buttons of his black dress shirt. Heat poured off him like a goddamn human furnace. When his other hand - the one she’d bitten - touched her face, she barely stopped herself from flinching. Under any other circumstances, Marena would have felt a bit of smug satisfaction at the sight of his gauze-wrapped fingers. But here, now, in this concrete box of a room, she was hyper-aware of her body in a way she hadn’t felt in years. It felt like someone dragging matches down her bones. Like her insides had turned into live insects. Like her skin was turning inside out. Exact words failed her, but it was nonetheless deeply unpleasant .

Skullbitch traced his thumb over her split lip, pressing down slightly and smearing blood down Marena’s chin like fingerpaint. The way he cradled the side of her face was almost mockingly gentle, a facsimile of a lover’s caress. He traced the shape of her lips, ran his fingers over her cheekbone, before sliding down and settling over the hand-shaped bruise on her throat. He kept his hand there for a long moment - not squeezing, just letting the weight of his hand rest over her pulse like a reminder of what he could do. As if I could forget . His fingers twisted into her hair, thumb sliding up to caress the scar on the side of her neck-

OH HELL FUCKING NO

Marena jerked backwards  and kneed him in the groin. She missed, of course; the fucker was way too tall. But the impact of her knee against his thigh startled him enough for her to shove him back a step. Then she did the only thing she could think of and ripped off his mask.

The clatter of metal against the ground hung in the air like a gunshot.

Nu der’mo .

Judging by the blank shock in Skullbitch’s eyes, he wasn’t expecting that move either. Eye, actually. His right eye socket was nothing but a knot of scar tissue. The rest of his face was scarred as well, though not with any noticeably distinct injuries. It was more like somebody had peeled his face off and put it back on slightly crooked.

Marena stared. Skullbitch stared. The tension in the room thickened. Marena braced for a punch. Another hand around her throat. A knife to the gut.

She was not prepared for him to kiss her.

He lunged forward - surprisingly fast for a man his size - fisted the hair at the nape of her neck, and crushed his scarred lips to hers with such force that their teeth clicked together. They stood frozen that way for a few seconds - him bent nearly double, her balanced on the very tips of her toes. Then he hooked his free arm around her hips and hoisted her as if she weighed no more than a rag doll. Marena instinctively wrapped her legs around his waist. Her heart had turned her entire body into a drum, staccato rhythm pounding everywhere from her head to the tips of her fingers.

She bit him.

He bit her back, and then - god - slid his tongue into her mouth. She twisted the lapels of his jacket in her hands as though she could throttle him through the fabric alone; he dug his fingers into her thigh hard enough to leave fresh bruises. The atmosphere in the room had turned electric. They both gasped for air, tongues twisting in a slick and desperate dance, nipping at each other until their mouths filled with blood.

Marena didn’t realize they’d moved until her back hit the bed. Skullbitch’s hand was moving up her thigh, fingers sliding between the parallel scars marring the skin. His mouth left hers and began to trace a path down her jawline with lips and teeth and tongue. Her breath stuttered when he sucked on the tender spot just below her ear, his wandering hand now tracing along the crease where thigh met hip. The combined heat of the body above her and the fire growing in her chest was searing the air from her lungs. She felt certain she’d crumble into ash as he trailed a line of hot, open-mouthed kisses down her neck…

...and sank his teeth directly into her scar.

Terror immediately flooded her system like a long scream carved into her veins with ice. Marena’s head filled with a panicked, wordless !!!!!!! as she lashed out with hands and feet until she felt her heel drive home between Skullbitch’s legs. He doubled over, and Marena barely had time to process the pure murder in his eye before he slammed her head against the wall. Once. Twice. Three times. Bright lights burst across her vision with each hit before giving way to black sparks. She was on the floor and couldn’t remember how she got there. Skullbitch moved away; the door closed with an angry slam that barely but through the ringing in her ears. She slumped against the cheap metal bed frame and wondered idly if she was dying yet. The lights snapped off, plunging the room into utter blackness.

Alone in the dark, Marena raised a trembling hand to the fresh blood dripping down her face and laughed.

Chapter Text

None of this was going the way he’d planned.

Granted, the plan was fairly light on details - most of which revolved around turning the bitch into a human Picasso - but it was still a plan, god damn it , and none of those details involved him sulking in his office and pretending the ache in his balls was just from her well-placed kick ( lucky hit ) and not the lingering taste of her blood in his mouth. For someone who was all skin and bones, she was surprisingly strong. Put a little meat on her and she’d probably be a tiny terror. And despite how scrawny she was, he had to admit she’d looked positively fucking edible like that, all pink-flushed and trembling (even if it was just heatstroke). Small wonder he hadn’t been able to keep his hands off her--

Fuck.

There were already rumors floating around the organization that he was going soft, thanks to that cocksucker Preston. Some quick knife work had easily convinced the man to drop the subject, but whispers had a way of... lingering. The organization was still recovering from the Miami debacle a couple years back. It had taken more money than he’d liked to make that particular police investigation disappear.. Between the amnesiac hooker melting his face off and Veronica blowing her brains out in FBI custody, the last thing he needed was to be seen slavering over yet another piggy like a horny teenager.

Fucking Veronica.

She was the last time he’d taken work home with him. The mind games had been fun at first, and having clean pussy on demand was a definite plus. But he’d grown tired of playing at domesticity, of making blatantly false promises ( of course I don’t touch the other girls, baby, only you ). Boredom led to stupid choices. A kid? Jesse was a man of many talents, but fatherhood was not one of them, especially with a simpering little ex-piggy as the mother. Veronica’s suicide was probably the only good thing to come out of that mess.

But he hadn’t thought of Veronica in over a year, and the fact that he was now just served to piss him off even further. The situation was rapidly spiralling out of control. He had half a mind to storm back down to the basement and snap the bitch’s skinny neck, just to be done with all of it. He was almost out the door when his computer chimed with an email notification.

From: [email protected]
Subject: Found her

Attachment: marpol.zip

And just like that, boiling rage gave way to an intense, almost electric curiosity. After the initial encounter, he’d sent a picture of the girl to his team with orders to dig up everything they could about her. Now, it seemed, they’d hit pay-dirt. With a slight quiver of anticipation, Jesse eased himself into his leather desk chair and opened the email.

Name: Marena Polunochnaya

Age: 23 (alleged)

DOB: Unknown

Place of birth: Unknown (native Russian speaker)

Relatives: Unknown

Education: Unknown

What the fuck? That was it? Jesse snarled, ready to throw the laptop across the room and put A. Gallagher’s head on a pike. He clicked open the attachment with a little more force than necessary and was surprised when dozens of files, arranged chronologically, appeared on the screen. The earliest file (a brief police report about an altercation outside a south Miami bar) was dated from four years ago. Before that, nothing. 

Little miss Marena Polunochnaya, it seemed, was half a ghost.

And the other half was a little hellion , he mused, scrolling through what seemed like an inordinate number of police reports. Theft, both petty and vehicular, vandalism, street racing, underage drinking, trespassing, assault and battery, minor arson, justifiable homicide…

Wait, what?!

He couldn’t open the file fast enough. Apparently, the girl had been the victim of an attempted mugging three years prior. According to the court reports, she had killed the mugger in self-defense, sustaining a stab wound in the process. And there was video footage: a security camera outside a club caught the entire thing.

Click.

The footage was surprisingly high-quality for a security cam, although the low light still made the picture a little grainy. A familiar little dark-haired figure walked into the alley and was grabbed by a larger figure with a bandana wrapped around the lower half of its face. The mugger pinned the girl to the wall with his forearm and pulled out a knife. There was no sound, but Jesse didn’t need dialogue to enjoy the show. The girl was making placating gestures with her hands, likely promising cooperation. The idiot eased his hold on her and was immediately gifted with a frankly beautiful left hook. His knife hand lashed out, he staggered back, and the girl was doubled over with the knife buried in her rib cage. By body language, the mugger seemed shocked; he probably hadn’t been expecting a fight or planning on actually using the knife for more than intimidation. The girl stumbled forward a step, hand held out as though pleading for help.

And then.

God.

She pulled the knife out of her chest and slammed it home in the mugger’s throat, ripping it open in a glorious arc of arterial spray. The mugger dropped, convulsed a couple times, and was still. The girl leaned heavily against the wall and pressed a hand against the growing dark patch on her side, presumably staying there until the cops arrived on the scene.

Son. Of. A. Bitch.

If he hadn’t been hard before (he had been), he sure as fuck was now . Jesse watched the video again. Again. Again. He dragged a hand over his growing grin, trying to ignore the uncomfortable tightness of his slacks. He was only about a quarter of the way through the files, and curiosity won out over arousal. He kept scrolling.

After the failed mugging, Marena was admitted to some do-gooder program for “at-risk repeat offenders” under the sponsorship and care of one Dr. Linda Malloy. The program’s website sported pictures of gleaming dormitories and spacious gardens, along with promises of education, vocational training, and therapy for “reintegration into society.” The whole thing was disgustingly optimistic and upbeat, and Jesse almost laughed at the thought of the scraggly wildcat in his basement sitting in one of those plush offices.

Dr. Linda Malloy kept extensive notes. Two and a half years’ worth, to be exact. Many of them were dense with psychobabble and medical jargon that Jesse didn’t have the patience to decipher, so he skimmed them, letting his attention fall on whatever caught his eye.

“...shows clear signs of PTSD - insomnia, night terrors, mistrust of authority, violent reactions to unexpected or unwanted physical contact, frequent dissociative states - but refuses to share any information about the events which may have caused her condition…”

“...had to be sedated after refusing to sleep for four days straight and threatening a staff member with dismemberment…”

“...locked herself in the maintenance shed and was found trying to sharpen her teeth with a screwdriver and a metal file…”

“...continues to meet all overtures of friendliness with aggression or by resolutely ignoring the other party…”

“...refused to speak English the entire session. Later translation shows she was parroting my questions back to me in Russian….”

“...did not move, speak, or make eye contact for the entire session…”

“...regarding her habit of ripping pages out of her journal and burning them after writing on them. I asked her about it one day, and she said 'Hana' had taught her. When I asked her who Hana was, her eyes widened, as though she had made a mistake, before her entire manner turned cold and she walked away….”

“...had to lock her in her room at night to keep her from breaking into and sleeping in the walk-in freezer…”

Jesse had never been one for novels - couldn’t see the point in spending hours reading about fake shit - but he could’ve read this shit all day . Amazing how so much fucked-upness could fit into one tiny person. He wondered how she’d ever conned her way into getting discharged until he read a little further and saw that funding for the program had been cut, forcing the “residents” out into the world despite the many protests of the staff.

Information was light after that. She paid for a shitty studio apartment with cash that she must’ve gotten from an under-the-table job. Her run-ins with the police were few and far in between. Jesse didn’t blame her for keeping a low profile after escaping Mayberry Asylum. He wouldn’t want to be stuck in a hellhole like that either. (Of course, now she was stuck in his basement, which probably seemed like another hellhole to her. Oh well.) The final file was dated from three weeks ago.

It was a warrant for her arrest on charges of quadruple homicide.

Jesse inhaled so sharply he nearly choked on it. His eyes darted over the preliminary report. Girl seen entering a penthouse apartment with four men. Noise complaints from downstairs neighbors around 4 am. Police arrive on scene to find three corpses, one almost-corpse, and no girl. No one had seen her leave.

There were pictures. Jesse’s hands were practically shaking with excitement as he opened them.

The first corpse had been pushed down the stairs, his neck bent at a terrible angle and blood seeping from his crushed skull. The second had been stabbed repeatedly with a broken bottle until his face and throat looked like raw hamburger. The third was a mess of chemical burns. The coroner’s report said he’d been drowned in a bathtub full of cleaning chemicals. The fourth man had been bludgeoned with a wooden baseball bat, half the vertebrae in his neck and back shattered. He’d died in the hospital two days later.

Oh, someone has been very, very naughty.

The urge to cleave her little skull in two was rapidly being replaced by the urge to rail her until she forgot her own name. It probably wouldn’t take long , he mused. The name was bigger than the girl. He pulled up the video feed from the basement and was greeted with the sight of her retching miserably over the grate in the floor. Right. Head injury. Drugs. Dehydration. She probably wouldn’t survive the fucking she had coming to her in her current condition, and Jesse now had a very keen interest in keeping her alive. He sent a quick message to his medical team before turning his attention back to the footage of the failed mugging.

The best way to regain control of the situation, after all, was to admit that the situation had changed.

The relief he felt as he freed his aching cock was nearly as powerful as an orgasm. Jesse couldn’t remember the last time he was this hard. He ran his thumb over the head, letting out a shuddering breath as he gathered the precum beading on the tip. He began to pump the shaft in slow, firm strokes and let his imagination run wild.

He’d tie her down, of course. No way his devious little doll would remain still long enough for him to fully enjoy her. He’d trace his tongue over every goddamn scar on her body, over her hardened nipples and the sharp points of her hips and that handy panic button carved into her neck. Then he’d turn his attention to her tight little pussy, keeping her on the edge until she was writhing and swearing and begging for it. Then, only then, he’d make her taste herself on his lips as he slid into her tight, wet heat, fucking her hard and fast until she screamed herself hoarse.

Jesse came with a silent groan and the first real smile he’d had since Princess Fuckin’ Gemstone obliterated his face.

Marena Polunochnaya.

He rolled the name over his tongue. It tasted like blood.

Chapter Text

It wasn’t the worst night Marena had endured - not by far - but it still sucked. A lot . At some point between the beginning and end of her bout of hysteria, she’d gone from sitting upright to lying sprawled across the concrete floor. Her throat felt raw, her face wet with blood or sweat or tears, or maybe all three, and her limbs didn’t even have the strength to tremble anymore. The room seemed to lurch and sway like the berth of a ship in some terrible storm, like the ship that had taken her away from...

Her stomach clenched violently. She tried to stand, but somehow found herself face down on the ground. Long past any semblance of dignity, she dragged herself in what she hoped was the general direction of the drain she’d seen in the corner. Her fingers brushed cold metal moments before her empty stomach revolted, retching up thin strings of spit and bile. This went on until it didn’t, and then her arms gave out, and she was curled up on her side, and her brains were probably leaking out through her eyes and nose.

She felt… split. Outside of herself. Like there were two of her, one limp on the floor and choking on occasional hiccups of laughter, the other suspended in air and looking dispassionately upon her wretched counterpart. An abyss was opening in the back of her skulls, filled with the fog and static of greyspace. Her heads throbbed, the gaping emptiness yawning wider and wider with each pulse.

The lights snapped on like a dagger to her eyes. She tried to flinch but couldn’t figure out which body to move. There was a sense of motion, of lifting . She swatted blindly at the hands grabbing at her with all the strength of a milk-drunk kitten, digging her nails in when they encountered soft skin. A sharp pinch in the crook of her elbow. Marena tasted blood and fell back into the grey.

***

Two black-haired girls stood face-to-face in a stark grey void, twin reflections like a mirror. The one on the left shivered in a threadbare linen shift.

“Please.” Her voice was barely a whisper. “Help me.”

The one on the right stood silent, stoic in her heavy hooded cloak.

“Then let me die,” the Left One pled.

The Right One pushed back her hood, letting the cloak fall to the floor. Her flesh was cracked like porcelain, meat and bone showing through the larger gaps. Black blood oozed slowly from the wounds like tar..

“This is nothing but what you deserve.” Blood dripped from her mouth and eyes.

The Left One shuddered as her skin began to crack in patterns mirroring the Right One’s. Orange firelight glowed in the fissures, burning brighter by the second. Black smoke seeped from the Left One’s wounds, poured from her mouth and nose. The Right One bled faster.

They reached for each other, and crumbled to dust the moment before their fingers touched.

***

She was handcuffed to a hospital bed. An IV was in her arm. And she was clean . She could feel, without opening her eyes, that someone had scrubbed away all the sweat and dirt, bandaged her cuts, even neatly combed her hair. And it was that, out of everything she’d been subjected to over the past few days, that almost broke her.

Marena was no stranger to abuse. She was deeply familiar with it, almost used to it, if one could ever get used to the kind of violence she’d survived. She knew how to switch herself off during a beating, how to hold back the pain until she could get to a safe (as if safety was something she’d ever known) place to lick her wounds. But the thought of having such tenderness inflicted upon her, especially while she was unconscious and vulnerable, made her want to rip her skin off. People were never gentle without ulterior motives, and she felt sick thinking about what those motives might be.

An impatient shifting drew her attention to the man sitting in the chair next to her bed. He was unfamiliar to her. Unlike SkullBitch, this one had a full head of hair, a wicked Glasgow grin across his pretty-boy face, and although he was sitting, Marena could tell he was a normal human height, unlike his freakish giant of an associate.

“Sleeping Beauty awakes at last!” One thing Marena had learned fairly early on was that Americans were obsessed with referencing fairytale princesses in daily conversation. It annoyed the shit out of her every single time. She fixed the man with a blankly impassive stare and waited. His smug grin shrank with each passing second of silence until he looked as irritated as she felt.

Good. No one gets to enjoy themselves, suka .

“You’re not his usual type,” he said, switching tactics. He dragged his gaze over her, but it felt impersonal, like a farmer at the meat market. “Not sure if that makes your chances better or worse.” His smile held a malicious edge this time as he leaned in conspiratorially. “You’re his new Veronica.”

Marena lunged at him, teeth snapped shut a scant inch from the tip of his nose as he jerked back. She hadn’t really been trying to get him; she just wanted him out of her face. The brief flash of panic in his eyes was a nice little bonus, though. He shot to his feet with a poisonous glare, trying to look menacing, but he was too much of an open book to be a real threat, even though Marena’s hands were literally tied.

“You little--”

“Preston!” The sharp voice startled both of them. A short brunette stood in the doorway, a lanky figure in scrubs hovering behind her. “You aren’t authorized to be in here. Leave. Now .” To Marena’s surprise, Preston, as he was apparently called, didn’t argue. He gave Marena one more murderous look, then stalked out of the room with his fists clenched at his sides. The small woman sighed once and smoothed a non-existent wrinkle from her slacks.

“Sorry about him. He’s a pain in the ass.” The woman strode forward with a placid smile that reminded Marena of Dr. Call Me Linda, the “let’s be friends even though you have at least five reasons to kill me” smile. She stopped next to Preston’s vacated chair and folded her hands behind her. “My name is Spann. How are you feeling?”

Of all the dumb fucking… Marena couldn’t have formulated a response to that if she’d wanted to. Unfazed by the lack of response, Spann continued.

“You had a nasty concussion, as well as--”

“Stop.”

“Excuse me?” To Spann’s credit, her courteous expression barely wavered.

“I don’t give a fuck what’s wrong with me. Just shut up.”

Spann was probably excellent at poker.

“I know this is a difficult situation for you, but after your little stunt in the basement, a little gratitude wouldn’t be out of place.”

This bitch is delusional.

“Gratitude.”

“Yes. Very few people have seen my employer’s face and lived, let alone been left in one piece.” Marena chewed on that for a moment, though she was mostly fixated on the “employer” bit. She briefly wondered if she’d fallen into the hands of the world’s most melodramatic bounty hunter, then decided that it was unlikely and also that she didn’t care. 

Spann appeared to be waiting for an answer.

“If he was on fire and I had a hose, I’d strangle him.”

Marena didn’t get to see the other woman’s composure slip, as Spann chose that moment to turn and gesture the person still lurking in the doorway forward. He was a lanky, nervous-looking man with glasses. He was carrying a metal tray, and when he set it down, Marena could see a syringe with an intimidatingly thick needle, and a black leather collar.

“The syringe has a microchip with a built-in tracker,” Spann explained. “The collar also has a tracker. Pick one.” Marena eyed the tray, a tense ache rising in her chest and throat.

“Is quick death an option?”

“No.” That infuriating smile had returned to Spann’s lips. The man in scrubs shifted on his feet. “I recommend you make up your mind quickly. None of the others were even given the option to choose.” Spann gave her a pointed look. Fucking gratitude again . The ache grew sharper.

“The fucking needle,” Marena spat between clenched teeth. Spann raised her eyebrows in mild surprise but said nothing as she gestured at the man again. Marena fixed her eyes on the ceiling and barely flinched as the needle slid home just above her collarbone. It was over in a heartbeat; the man dabbed a spot of blood away with a cotton pad, placed everything back on the tray, and left. Spann was halfway to the door when Marena couldn’t hold her silence any longer.

“How many?”

“Pardon?” Spann glanced back over her shoulder.

“How many other girls in the house?” Forcing the words out was like pushing boulders up a hill.

“None,” Spann said, seeming confused. “There’s only you.” Marena shut her eyes briefly and swallowed hard.

“And how often do I...” The question stuck in her dry throat, the threat of a revolving door of faceless men looming over her. She didn’t need to finish the sentence for comprehension to dawn on Spann’s face.

“Mr. Cromeans is not in the habit of sharing,” the brunette replied. “It’s just you and him.” She walked out, the door clicking shut behind her. Marena sagged back against her pillows and tried to focus her breathing.

She was not reassured.

Chapter Text

Truth be told, Jesse was a little disappointed she hadn’t picked the collar. He’d already gotten himself half-hard imagining how the black leather would look around her throat, the way she’d stumble as he strung her up with a silver leash… He could always force it on her anyway, he supposed, but ultimately he decided it would be more entertaining to maintain that illusion of choice. 

There was time. There was plenty of time.

He hovered just outside the doorway to the medical room, fiddling with the strap of his eyepatch as he debated his next move. It felt strange to abandon the mask so quickly. He’d worn it for months around Veronica before he even hinted at letting her see his face. But his Tiny Terror had literally ripped that option away within a day of meeting him. She’d also cracked Spann’s unbreakable composure in under a minute. Clearly, she was a formidable opponent, even if she didn’t intend to be.

That wasn’t why he hesitated, though. No, Jesse was trying to figure out how to exist in a room with her without immediately pouncing and taking everything she could give. He hadn’t jacked off this much since he was a teenager, and for the first time in his life, his libido was becoming what he would consider a problem . The gratification of a long-term game would be so much sweeter, but he was having a hell of a time convincing his cock to listen. And more than that, he needed to prove to himself that he still had some fucking control. The last time he’d acted this impulsively for this long, he’d wound up mostly dead on the floor of some shithole gas station. He could not - would not - fuck up that badly ever again. But then, what was the point of keeping the bitch alive if not for his own personal enjoyment? And why was there a hint of possessiveness that went beyond his normal predator/prey dynamic whenever he thought of her as his ?

Maybe things would be easier if he just stopped thinking so goddamn much.

Frustrated in a myriad ways, Jesse glided into the room on silent feet. The girl was so still, he would’ve thought her dead were it not for the shallow rise and fall of her chest. The bruises on her face and neck had blossomed into florid reds and purples, adding a lovely rainbow of color to her otherwise bloodless complexion. He could think of a few places to add some new ones , he mused as he trailed his gaze up her legs and over the stark line of her collarbones, preferably with his mouth . 

Her own gaze was oddly vacant. Jesse waved a hand in front of her eyes and she didn’t even blink. It was like she had gone away from herself, or retreated backwards into her own head. He’d seen that look on her before, in the warehouse. Maybe it was that dissociation thing the shrink talked about in her notes. He’d look into it later, but right now he wanted her to un -dissociate, or re-associate, or whatever the fuck the proper term was. He settled into the chair that had held Preston’s annoying ass a few hours earlier, then reached over and poked the scar on the side of her neck.

The reaction was almost comically instantaneous. Marena bolted upright like she’d been tasered. Her eyes darted blindly around the room, landing on Jesse but not quite seeing him as a thousand unidentifiable emotions flickered through their depths. Then, with a long, slow blink, her focus sort of… snapped into place. The tension in her muscles lessened ever so slightly, but she still looked tense enough to snap under a single touch.

Jesse gave her his most winning smile. It was a move that had lost a lot of its effectiveness along with his face, but old habits died hard.

“GOOD MORNING, KITTEN.”

“Is it?”

Marena’s voice was as cold and flat as a sheet of ice. If she was unsettled by his custom text-to-speech program, pieced together from the voices of past piggies, her face didn’t show it. Her fingers, however, were twisting at the links of the handcuffs. Whether it was a nervous tic or an “ I really want to hit you but I can’t right now ” tic, he couldn’t be certain. Either way, Jesse’s thoughts were quickly veering back into pouncing territory. He forced his eyes away from her hands and thoughts of how they’d feel wrapped around his cock.

She was watching him watch her, still as a statue.

I HAVE A PROPOSITION FOR YOU , he wrote, switching back to static text. A GAME.

“I don’t like games.”

OH I THINK YOU’LL LIKE THIS ONE.

Marena did not respond for a long moment.

“What sort of game?” she asked grudgingly.

I ASK YOU A QUESTION. IF YOU GIVE ME THE ANSWER I WANT YOU GET A REWARD.

“...And if I don’t?”

I’LL STILL GET THE ANSWER AND YOU GET NOTHING.

“This game feels very rigged in your favor.”

IT’S MY HOUSE DOLL.

The silence that followed was positively glacial. Marena’s jaw was clenched so tightly, Jesse swore he could hear her teeth creaking. Small crescents of red started to form where her nails dug into her palms. If looks could kill, Jesse would be rotting on the floor.

But they couldn’t, so he just got uncomfortably horny instead.

“I will play your game,” Marena finally ground out, “with one condition.”

Oh? Jesse gestured for her to continue.

“You. Will. Never . Call. Me. That. Again.”

Jesse leaned in conspiratorially and held up the phone.

ARE YOU REALLY IN A POSITION TO BE MAKING REQUESTS LITTLE GIRL?

“That was not a request ,” she snapped. By this point, Jesse was grinning with unabashed delight.

I ACCEPT YOUR CONDITION. BUT YOU HAVE TO EARN IT!

“Ask your fucking question then.” Marena pulled back, breaking the intimate space between them.

It occurred to him at that moment that he didn’t actually have a question in mind. He could ask her why she had such an apparent aversion to dolls, but that was obvious and therefore no fun.

While he mulled it over, Jesse finally, finally allowed himself to touch her. He started at the injection site, circling the red spot where the needle went in with a single fingertip. He kept his touch feather light as he moved along her clavicle, admiring the goosebumps that rose in its wake. Marena was watching his hand the way one would watch a spider that they were unsure was dangerous, but didn’t try to shrug him off. He traced along the strap of the silk nightgown he’d given her in lieu of a hospital gown, then pushed it aside to cup his palm over the curve where her neck met her shoulder. His hand engulfed her easily, the sight of it sending a thrill up his spine. He skimmed his hand down to her malnourished bicep, then pressed his thumb decisively into the pale, circular bullet in the soft part of her shoulder. She glanced up at him in question, and he nodded.

“I was shot.” 

Jesse waited for more. When it was not forthcoming, he shot her a look that clearly said fucking really?

“I…” She swallowed hard and fixed her gaze on the far wall. She looked pained. “Can I write it? It’s… easier for me to find words that way.”

Jesse shook his head and tightened his grip on her arm. Not a fucking chance in hell, kitten. He hadn’t expected to get his way so easily, and he was not about to be the stupid asshole who fell for her obvious stalling tactic by rummaging around for a pen and paper.

The girl shut her eyes and took a few slow, shuddering breaths. When she opened them, she had that distant look again, though not as far gone as she’d been when he first entered the room. It was like she was suspended halfway between Here and There, wherever ( what ever) “There” was. If she thought she could space her way out of this, she was in for some unpleasant disappointment. She took one more breath, smoother and deeper than the last.

And, much to Jesse’s surprise, she answered him.

Chapter Text

The House Master offered a great variety of restraints for the discerning Guest. Leather and metal cuffs, chains, ropes of every material, a veritable pharmacy of narcotics. Lower level rooms held a collection of frames and suspension hooks. The voyeuristically inclined could hire additional muscle to pin their chosen girls down. The House Master even allowed those with more… unconventional tastes to bring in their own methods. For a fee.

He is negotiating such a fee now. The Guest is wearing a suit that speaks of spectacular wealth to those who know how to look. The House Master’s own shirt is partially unbuttoned, his tie loose. 

“What lasting harm will it do?” argues the Guest. “The girl is already scarred.”

“That does not mean I want to add anymore,” replies the House Master.

The girl is on the floor. She is 14, or maybe 15. She is mostly undressed. Her cheek is bleeding from where the Guest struck her across the face with his rings. The House Master is not happy about that. The rules against marking are more lax with this girl, but Guests are forbidden from scarring her face. If the cut heals badly, the Guest will have to pay dearly.

“Come now, don’t tell me you are playing favorites, Grigori,” scoffs the Guest.

“I am,” says the House Master. He is unashamed.

The girl has a reputation for unpredictability and disobedience. Some men like this very much, and pay extra for a fight to go along with their fuck. This Guest does not, but he requested her because she is expensive, and to his mind, the only things worth having are the ones with the highest cost. Now he wants her restrained. But he does not like the look of ropes, and he wants her awake so he can listen to the noises she makes. Hence the negotiation.

“600 thousand,” says the Guest.

“1 million,” says the House Master. “Per bullet.”

“Done,” says the Guest. The two men shake hands. The Guest unholsters a very fine pistol with black pearl inlay on the handle.

“Yuri,” the House Master says, grasping the Guest’s shoulder, “If she dies, the price will be more than even you can pay.” He says this easily, casually. He tips the girl a wink and leaves the room. The Guest raises the pistol and pulls the trigger twice.

The force of the impact knocks the girl onto her back, like someone has struck her with a great club. Her ears are ringing. She feels a wetness spreading along her shoulder blades.

The pain comes all at once.

It radiates down her arms and back, a raging inferno in each shoulder that claws its way down her nerve endings. She gasps for air. She tries to sit up. Every small movement is agony. If she were not so stubborn, she would scream.

The Guest ignores the bed. He pushes her back down into the pool of her blood and rips away the rest of her clothes.

Chapter Text

Her reward was a bedroom and a fat, juicy orange the size of both her fists. The orange came first; Cromeans produced it from some hidden jacket pocket and placed it in her lap with exaggerated delicacy. For a half-second, she was afraid he’d leave her there to stare uselessly at the piece of fruit until she caved and asked him to free her hands - or worse, to fucking feed her - but he unlocked her left wrist and… left.

Every instinct told her to rip into the orange before it could be taken away, but she forced herself to go slow. Having gone down the starvation route more times than a person should, she knew that stuffing her face would just lead to everything coming back up a few minutes later. She removed the peel in small, methodical pieces while her stomach growled at her like a rabid dog. Then she neatly sectioned one wedge from its neighbors and, self-control over, shoved the whole thing in her mouth. It was a good thing she was alone because she really didn’t want to cry in front of any of these bastards, but fuck , it was a good orange.

And then the brunette woman named Spann had to ruin it by walking in with another entourage of black-clad assholes. The tension that had marginally left Marena’s shoulders came back full force. Spann smiled at her again. Marena was really starting to hate that smile. It was indulgent and slightly condescending, the sort of subtle smugness that came from a person who knew they had damn well earned the right to be smug.

“You aren’t going to do anything stupid, are you?” Spann asked in a pleasant voice that suggested that she knew the correct answer, and that it would be better for Marena’s structural integrity if she also knew the correct answer. Marena was sorely tempted to spit a mouthful of half-chewed pulp in the other woman’s face, but that would have definitely fallen under the category of “stupid”, and besides, it was a really good orange. Instead, she silently held the brunette’s gaze, blank-faced, unmoving, unblinking, which she had been told by multiple people was “really fucking creepy.”

“Good,” Spann said, like she was praising a child. She nodded to one of the assholes who, to Marena’s credit, looking mildly terrified as he unlocked the other cuff. Marena jerked the newly freed hand into her lap just to watch him flinch at the sharp movement, because she was also kind of an asshole.

“Can you walk?” There was a solid chance that the answer to that question was “no”, but like fuck was Marena going to tell any of them that. She pushed back the sheets, noting with distaste that the sluttish excuse for a nightgown she’d been dressed in didn’t even hit mid-thigh, and carefully swung her legs over the side of the bed. The tile floor was cold against her bare, blistered feet, which was about the only thing that felt good at the moment. The motion had sent her head into a throbbing, nauseated whirl. Her weakened muscles burned and cramped. But she’d done a lot more with a lot worse, so she told her body to shut the hell up and pushed herself fully upright. Her right leg buckled slightly, and she leaned her hip against the railing of the bed like she’d meant to do that all along. Spann wasn’t fooled, but she played along.

“Follow me, then.”

Marena wanted to put up a fight. She wanted to be difficult, and violent, and savage. But she was tired. She didn’t know where she was. She didn’t know what was going to happen to her, although it was probably going to be very unpleasant. And she had talked . A lot . There was a deep, dull ache in each of her shoulders and she could feel the memories hovering around her, waiting for her to fall asleep so they could dive in and eat what was left of her from the inside out. She shouldn’t have caved. She should have let him rape and torture her until she died, and taken all her shitty secrets with her to the grave.

There was also the pride-rankling fact that Mr. Cromeans had gotten more out of her in a matter of days than a trained therapist had in more than two years. Maybe if they taught psychiatrists how to throw a punch, they’d be more effective.

They reached the bedroom by elevator because apparently her captor was the kind of jackass to have an elevator in his fucking house . Spann didn’t say another word, a small blessing since Marena didn’t think she could handle any conversational attempts without making something bleed. Her legs gave out moments after Spann and the Faceless Muscle Squad shut the door behind her. She pressed her face into the carpet (very plush, very soft) and allowed herself to give in to the absolute, soul-obliterating panic for a count of ten. Then she forced herself upright and took stock.

The room was small (by rich people standards) and sparsely furnished (by rich people standards). The carpet was black, the walls painted deep red like a cheesy vampire movie. The bed, dresser, and wardrobe were all carved out of dark wood and were too heavy for Marena to move, especially in her current physical condition of suck . The single window was made of thick, possibly bulletproof, glass, and seemed unopenable. A peek through the slats of the blinds offered a view of a large interior courtyard and a sunset-painted sky. Even if she could get the window open, there would be no escape that way. 

She didn’t bother looking for cameras. She knew they’d be there.

The attached bathroom was almost as big as the main room, with white marble floors shot through with gold. The bathtub and shower were huge, big enough for three people. Or one normal-sized person and one freakishly large person, but if she thought about that for too long she’d start spiralling. At least a dozen different hair products sat in the metal shower caddy, most of which Marena had no idea what to do with, and she’d bet Cromeans didn’t either, since he was fucking bald . Maybe he’d had someone (Spann?) buy them, or maybe they were leftover from the mysterious Veronica that Preston had so obviously wanted to taunt her with. It didn’t take a genius to guess that the woman was most likely dead.

Lucky bitch.

A huge mirror was set into the wall above the bathroom sink, but she didn’t walk far enough forward for it to catch her reflection. Marena avoided mirrors as a general rule; she’d covered the one in her shithole apartment with an old bedsheet. Seeing her face tended to fuck her up on a good day, and in her current state… it might break her, and she couldn’t afford to break right now. She returned to the main room and faced the wardrobe with the trepidation of someone about to open a box that might or might not contain a dead body. The wooden doors mocked her as she stood there, clenching and flexing her fingers. She took a deep breath that wasn’t remotely fortifying and threw them open.

Lace. Lace and tulle and silk because men, rich men, were so fucking predictable it was disgusting. Her gaze caught on a baby blue dress and she slammed the doors shut, staggering backwards until she hit the bed, and then the ground. She couldn’t even look in the direction of the dresser, although she had a fairly good idea of what it contained and it made her want to rip all those pretty dresses to ribbons and hang herself with them. The pain in her shoulders was radiating down her arms and across her back, but she couldn’t rub the ache away without feeling the ghost of the House Master’s touch as he did up the buttons of her dress after Hana changed out the bandages, his perfect pretty little kukolka , and he did always love her in blue... She wanted to scream, she wanted to cry, she wanted Hana back, and the grief was so heavy it was crushing her, like so much dirt over a grave.

Marena curled in on herself and tried not to fall apart.

***

Her well-deserved panic attack was interrupted sometime later when the door unlocked with an electronic whir and a heavy click . She pressed her back against the wall, waiting for someone - some thing - to come through, but the door remained shut. Second after excruciating second crept by with no sign of movement. Marena remained huddled on the floor, fists clenched, jaw clenched, hackles up like a dog ready to lunge.

Seconds turned to minutes, and she got bored.

So much of Marena’s life had been spent in a state of torturous waiting. Waiting for Guests to arrive or leave. Waiting for the villagers to let her out of the river. Waiting for the beatings to stop. Waiting for the various devils in her life to fall asleep so she could slip away for a single moment of solitude. She was tired of waiting, and as much as she didn’t want to face whatever hell was about to be inflicted on her, she could not stand to spend one more moment suspended in this agony of uncertainty.

Pushing herself to her feet, she inched her way to the door, preparing to kick in the fucking kneecaps of whoever was on the other side. But there was only an empty corridor and a piece of paper on the floor.

Fourth door on the right.

The obvious choice was to go to the left, then, where a break in the wall indicated a stairway or another hallway. Or was it obvious? Maybe Cromeans was trying to lure her in that direction by giving her orders to do the opposite, expecting her to disobey. So then the thing to do would be to go to the right, to avoid whatever was on the left. Although that didn’t mean that the right was safe.  Perhaps Cromeans was so supremely confident in her inability to escape that he just expected she’d end up where she was told. She didn’t know the layout of the house, and if the car had been any indication, her captor was a technophile. That meant cameras, alarm systems, remote locks, maybe even booby traps. Was that something people did outside of movies? Okay. So assuming both directions were bad news, why leave any options open? Why not send an escort? Perhaps it came down to obedience. Disobey and you get punished; obey and you deserve whatever happens to you because you went willingly?

Fuck. She hated mind games. She barely had a grasp on what happened in her own head, let alone somebody else’s.

She could always remove herself from the situation completely. Lie down in that nice, big bathtub and take a few deep breaths until everything went watery and dark. Marena’s will to live was driven by spite more than anything else, but it was - save for one or two notable exceptions - iron-clad and unshakeable. She wasn’t afraid to die, but was she ready to make that final surrender?

It was the cameras that decided it for her, in the end. They were well-hidden in the room, but she could see a few small, red lights blinking in the gloom of the hallway. Cromeans was probably watching her right now, and if he really was just a few doors down, then he’d have plenty of time to foil a suicide attempt. And plenty of motivation to rain unholy hell down upon her when she woke. Men like him didn’t like it when their toys were taken away prematurely. Trying to rob him of the pleasure of orchestrating her death would end up very, very ugly. For her.

You don’t get to kill what is mine.

Marena shuddered and instinctively wrapped an arm around her midriff as she pushed the memory away. She was already going to have nightmares about bullets and pearl-handled guns the next time she slept; she didn’t need to add her nasty little suicide attempt to the queue. Of course, it was perfectly plausible that she would die before she got a chance to sleep again, or that Cromeans had something planned that would eclipse either of those in its awfulness. She ripped the note to shreds, trying to find some sense of control in the tiny act of destruction, and headed for the fourth door on the right.

It was some sort of lounge, all dark earth tones and metal accents. The center of the room was dominated by a dark, heavy slab of a wooden table that could easily seat twenty people. There was a lit fireplace to her right (which had to be fake, because who in the fuck could ever feel cold here?), heavy drapes blocking the far wall, something that looked like a home bar, and honestly, all of the details of this god-awful hell house were starting to blur together and she just couldn’t bring herself to give a shit about interior decorating.

A hand shot out from her periphery, slapping another pair of metal handcuffs on her wrists before she could even twitch, and the only coherent thought her overworked brain could produce was “Was he hiding behind the fucking door?”

Cromeans looked terribly pleased with himself as he ushered her towards a seat at the table. He was wearing a short-sleeved shirt that made it very apparent that yes, his biceps were bigger than her goddamn thighs, which was just fucking excessive , honestly. Heavy metal was playing in the background, a looping, ever-shifting soundscape of electric guitar, drums, and male aggression. Marena was normally quite partial to the genre, but a headache was building behind her eyes, and all this “friendly” buildup made her sure that whatever was going to happen to her tonight would be that much worse.

In a testament to how absolutely out of it she was, she didn’t notice the food on the table until she was seated right in front of it. Meat, greens, bread, wine. More of those heavenly oranges. She ate mechanically, ignoring the wine, refusing to look up at Cromeans where he sat on the other side of the table. It all tasted like glue and stuck in her throat the same way. If they were two normal people on a regular date, it would have been the most awkward first date in history. They barely qualified as people , though, let alone normal , and Marena could only wish Cromeans was feeling even a little uncomfortable. Smug fucker was probably having the time of his life.

Her steak knife sat heavy and tempting in her hand, but there wasn’t much she could do with it. The chain between her wrists was about 18 inches long, enough for her to eat without much trouble, but too short to throw a knife or a punch without an obvious and awkward windup. If Cromeans wasn’t such a stupidly big man, she’d try to choke him out with the chain. But she would need a damn ladder to reach around his neck while he was standing, and she doubted she’d be able to get behind him while he was sitting.

Cromeans stood and smirked as Marena clumsily pushed to her feet after him, desperate to close the height gap between them even slightly. He sauntered over to the bar, holding up two empty glasses and quirking a brow in question. Marena nodded. He turned his back to her and started fiddling with bottles and shakers and… cocktail things. She snatched up the steak knife and crept towards him, drawing on every bit of stealth she’d honed while hunting and hiding as a child. He knew she was weak right now, unlikely to try or succeed at any sort of physical attack. His hands would be full with both glasses, slowing his reaction time by a crucial fraction of a second. His right side was a blind spot. She would sneak up behind him and stab him in the throat when he turned around, and hopefully he wouldn’t be able to snap her neck before he bled out.

She drew as close as she dared. Stilled her breath. Stilled the knife, both hands wrapped white-knuckle tight around the handle. He turned. She lunged. Glass shattered. Her arms weren’t moving.

He caught it.

He caught the fucking knife.

Oh. BLYAT’.

If she thought the look on his face after kicking him in the balls was scary, it had nothing on the way he was looking at her now. Blood trickled between his fingers as he tightened his grip on the blade before wrenching it out of Marena’s grasp and tossing it aside.

There was a flash of silver. Moving purely on instinct, Marena threw her hands up, stopping the other, bigger knife he’d pulled from somewhere with the chain of her cuffs. Her arms shook with strain, the cuffs biting into the tender skin of her wrists. With a deft motion, Cromeans twisted the knife, wrapping the chain around its serrated blade until Marena’s hands were pressed together, all slack gone. Using the knife as a handle, he forced her backwards, step by step, until she was pressed against the table. Dishes were sent crashing to the floor with a mighty sweep of his arm, and then she was laid out on the table’s surface. Cromeans stabbed the knife into the dark wood, then yanked her back towards him until her arms were stretched above her head and her hips were at the edge of the table.

Panic opened like a yawning abyss in her chest, the sheer scope of her terror threatening to swallow her whole when Cromeans produced another knife and brought down near the scar on one of her shoulders. But he didn’t stab it into the old bullet wound the way she’d expected. Instead, he sliced through the straps of her silk shift and pulled the fabric down with a vicious tug that left her completely bare to his gaze, which was fast shifting from rage to pure, undiluted lust. He devoured her, drinking in the sight of her naked body like he’d never seen a pair of tits before. She wanted to say as much, but fear - and habit - had her voice in a vice grip.

He forced her legs open and stepped between her thighs as he dragged his hands over her hips, his injured hand leaving smears of blood in its wake. The table was tall enough that Marena’s toes barely brushed the ground; she had no leverage with which to kick him or push herself away. She flinched at the first touch of his hand between her legs, hating herself for reacting but unable to stop it. The first brush of his thumb over her clit was feather-light. The second was firmer and dragged a bone-deep shudder from her. With the exception of an asshole cop who got a little too handsy while frisking her, Marena hadn’t had any prolonged human contact in four years, and her touch-starved body didn’t know whether to pull away or lean into the pleasure. The result was an ineffectual jerk that did nothing but bring an infuriating smirk to Cromeans’ face.

And the knife moved, just a little.

Marena took a deep, shuddering breath, followed by an equally shaky exhale, shifting her hips slightly as though in surrender. Cromeans was tracing tingling patterns around her slit, drawing enough moisture that he could almost slip a finger inside. When she was certain his attention was fixed entirely on her cunt, she wrapped her fingers around the knife and began to work it free. The serrated edges of the blade cut into her fingertips immediately, hot sparkles of pain shooting down her fingers. She ignored it, just as she ignored the inexorable dance of the fingers between her legs and the building heat in her core. She just had to get the knife free, and then this nightmare would be over, one way or another.

So close, so close, so close…

Cromeans’ fist slammed down on the hilt of the knife, forcing it several inches deeper into the wood, and buried his cock in her at the same moment. Marena nearly bit through her tongue at the sudden painful stretch. She couldn’t breathe; he was in her and around her and god why did every fucking part of him have to be so big ? He didn’t give her time to adjust before starting a brutal pace, long, hard strokes that stole her breath and dragged against every nerve ending in her pussy. One huge hand was splayed across her abdomen; Marena thought he must be able to feel himself moving inside her through her stomach. The other wrapped around her throat, tight enough to choke but not enough to let her black out.

She tried in vain to disconnect, to retreat behind the walls she’d spent so many years building in her mind. But Cromeans had added a twist to his hips that brushed against a spot inside her and made her see stars. The jolts of pleasure pulled her back to herself, made it impossible to divorce her mind from her body. Something hot and wonderful and terrible was building inside her. She wanted it to stop. She was being smothered and she wanted everything to stop.

Cromeans reached down to circle her clit once more, and the tension snapped . The orgasm rushed over her like a wildfire. A tsunami. A supernova. Marena was dimly aware of the way her back arched as her inner muscles clenched around Cromeans’ hard length. A strangled, keening gasp that escaped her throat just before he tightened his grip enough to completely cut off her air, pelvis grinding against hers as he chased his own release. Each stuttering thrust sent aftershocks of pleasure-pain skittering through her body. Her vision was starting to tunnel when he bottomed out for the final time and came with a growl that she felt more than heard.

He remained seated inside her for a long minute, breathing hard and supporting himself on one forearm. The hand around her throat eased from a choking grip to soothing strokes, like he could wipe away the lurid bruises already forming with a gentle enough touch. At last, he pulled out and tucked himself away. He wrenched the knife out of the table and pulled Marena into a sitting position. Her body was quivering, boneless; she doubted she’d have been able to sit up on her own. Cromeans pressed a chaste, lingering kiss to her mouth as he unlocked the cuffs. Then he ran two fingers through the mess of cum and blood coating her inner thighs and licked the digits clean with a wink.

He turned his back and poured himself another drink.

***

Marena didn’t remember leaving the lounge. Didn’t remember staggering down the hall. She had no idea how long she’d been standing in the doorway of her bathroom, swaying slightly and staring blankly at the wall. The stickiness between her thighs had mostly dried, smears of pale pink that matched the tender places where the denim of Cromeans’ pants had rubbed her skin raw. Her hands and wrists were covered in drying blood, fresh rivulets still seeping from the angry marks left by the cuffs.

She raised a shaking hand to her mouth, feeling the ghost of his scarred lips on hers, and her guts knotted violently. She lurched forward, dropping to her knees in front of the toilet just in time to vomit up everything she’d ever eaten in her life. Then she turned on the shower as cold as it would go and stood under the freezing spray until her lips turned blue.

Chapter Text

It is March. Snow is melting into freezing mud. Dirty drifts still huddle against buildings and under pine trees, in places the sun doesn’t touch. In the leaden blue-grey of the coming dawn, shadows cling like cobwebs.

The House stands silent, its windows dark. The forest stands silent, its branches still. Between them is a fresh grave, bracketed by two girls. One above it, one below it.

The girl above the earth is 17, or maybe 18. Her fingernails are torn. She is caked in dirt and blood and tears. She has dug with her hands all night and laid her bloody heart to rest in the cold ground. She is tired. She is cold. She is alone.

The girl below the earth is dead.

The living girl is expected back at the House. The House Master still has some use for her. She does not want to go. Part of her wants to crawl in next to the dead girl and suffocate on dirt. Let the worms eat their skin and crawl through their bones. The other part of her wants to run. She has not been in the forest since she first arrived at the House five years ago, or maybe six. She wanted to bury the other girl there; she thinks she could have dragged the body that far. But the men had been watching last night when she started to dig. The House Master and all of his Guests, save for the one lumped under a sheet with his throat torn out. Actions and consequences. They would not have allowed it.

But it is very late, or very early, and the men all went inside hours ago. She feels hollow. The spaces between the trees are perfectly shaped for her.

She walks, and walks, and walks. Maybe in circles, maybe in a straight line. Her feet are numb. They might be bleeding. The sky begins to lighten, but remains an oppressive grey. She does not know where she is going. The best parts of her are in a hole in the ground, and she doesn’t think the rest of her can remain standing around their absence.

She walks, and she does not stop until she sees the bear.

They regard each other, calmly but warily, one wild animal to another. A newly woken bear is very hungry, and will eat almost anything. The bear is likely looking for easier pickings, the fallen bodies of animals that did not survive the winter, but meat is meat, and she did not last this long by being stupid.

The bear stands on its hind legs, looking for something over her shoulder. The girl looks behind her. She sees nothing, but she can hear it.

Human voices. The men.

She won’t go back.

A hungry bear will eat almost anything.

The bear has dropped back to all fours, ready to leave, and the girl does not hesitate. She lunges forward and drives her fist into its tender snout.

The bear’s roar is monstrous, leaves her ears ringing so she cannot hear the alarmed shouts of the approaching men. The bear rears up once more, and she jumps at it again.

I am a threat. Stop me.

She does not scream when the bear’s claws slice through her belly. The bear roars, and the men roar back, and she does not care. Her life is slipping out between her fingers. She lets it go.

***

Her death does not stick. The House Master forces life back down her throat. He hires doctors to sew her up, and his rage fills her sickroom like a black cloud. He paces. He shouts at people outside the door. He digs his fingers into her stitches, into the still-healing scar tissue around her eye, trying to pull a reaction from her aching body. But he doesn’t understand that her soul has withered and been wrung dry.

“You idiot,” he seethes. “You stupid, selfish, foolish girl. You don’t get to kill what is mine. ”

Chapter Text

Jesse leaned back in his chair, luxuriating in the full-body warmth that came from a good fuck. The glass of whiskey sat untouched in his hand; he was unwilling to wash the taste of her, of them , out of his mouth just yet. He’d bury his face in that cunt someday soon and drag a real scream out of her. Just the memory of that little gasp was nearly enough to make him hunt her down for another round or three, but he didn’t. He needed to plan first, to prepare.

Things had, once again, not quite gone the way he’d expected. He’d spent much longer than necessary with his back turned at the bar, waiting for her to move so he could turn around and catch her mid-ambush or mid-flight. Instead, it was only decades of finely honed reflexes that kept him from getting a knife to the throat. He should have heard her move. He should have felt her at his back. It was the third time in as many days that he’d had cause to doubt himself, and he’d been angry. Scratch that, he’d been enraged . He was furious beyond reason at this scrawny little nobody bitch who had upended his life, exposing weakness after weakness. He wanted to gut her at his table and mount her corpse over the fireplace.

Then he’d seen her eyes, that I fucked up fear he’d been trying to get out of her from the beginning, and he hadn’t been able to keep his hands off or her clothes on her any longer.

The floor around the table was a mess: shattered plates, scraps of food, spilled wine soaking into the rug like a puddle of blood. Smears of actual blood were streaked around the gouge left in the wood by the knife. It would be expensive as hell to fix; maybe he would install a cuff ring instead so he could have the girl for dessert whenever he wanted. Worth it. Jesse grinned as he remembered the way her spine had arched as she came all over his cock. That was one thing that remained unchallenged, at least. He’d always been proud of his sexual prowess, his ability to pull reactions from his victims’ bodies whether they wanted it or not, and it was good to see that edge was still as sharp as ever.

Fuck, he was hard again.

He switched his glass to his injured hand, watching the trickles of blood blossom into red clouds where they met the amber liquid. At the rate things were progressing, he wasn’t going to have any damn fingers left by the time this little song and dance reached its conclusion. The thought didn’t bother him as much as it should. He finally took a sip, scotch and copper bursting across his tongue. Swallowing, letting the liquor slowly burn its way down to his stomach, he thought of knives and bullets and pink-silver scars, of hot blood and a crimson halo spreading across the floor around a small, pale body.

Truth be told, he hadn’t expected her to answer him. Definitely hadn’t expected more than a few words. That was, of course, assuming she wasn’t lying through her teeth. He’d have to press her more, later, and see if she’d contradict herself. But the idea of her as a skin trade escapee seemed to fit; explained the skittishness, the black box of her past, the… Russian-ness. (In Jesse’s mind, all of Eastern Europe was an amorphous mass of vodka, fur coats, and hookers.) It kindled a perverse little fire of jealousy in his chest. He didn’t like the thought of so many hands on her, of so many others tasting what was his before he’d ever had the chance. That’s all it was, really: sheer possessiveness. The way she told it, it didn’t sound like she’d been there on purpose; she hadn’t used her cunt to string men along because it was the only thing she knew how to do. She was still very much not a Piggy. The whoring was just an unfortunate hurdle she’d had to clear before arriving at her rightful place in his house and his bed, and that was all easily remedied, as Jesse had both the time and the inclination to fuck the memory of any other man right out of her. He’d imprint himself on her so thoroughly, fill her with his smell and taste and touch, that she’d forget how she could even breathe before him.

The only thing that rankled, that really bothered him, was the age. Jesse Cromeans was a fucked up person who’d done a lot of fucked up things to people who maaaaaybe, by general standards, didn’t entirely deserve all of it. But one thing he’d never done, and never would do, was kids. Didn’t touch ‘em, didn’t look at ‘em, didn’t think about ‘em, unless they got directly in his way, in which case he dispatched them cleanly and efficiently. He’d been called a lot of nasty things in his life (and agreed with quite a few of them), but “pedophile” had never been on that list, and in his opinion, those who fell in that category deserved to be fed their own balls after watching them get cut off. Slowly. With a blunt knife. If nothing else, for their cowardice in choosing such weak and easy prey.

Jesse knocked back the rest of the whiskey and pushed himself to his feet. He swiped a finger through the congealing blood on the table before pinging a member of the staff to clean up the mess before the wine stain had a chance to set. The girl’s door was a siren call as he passed by it, but he pushed down the urge through supreme force of will. He pressed the bloodied fingertip to his tongue and imagined it welling up, hot and fresh and sweet, following the path of his blade.

***

He spent the next three days planning, preparing, and clearing his calendar. Meetings canceled, rescheduled, or delegated to employees; shipments confirmed; necessary communications answered and unnecessary ones told to fuck off. Knives sharpened; chains, cuffs, and frameworks arranged. He kept half an eye on the cameras in the girl’s room to make sure she didn’t do anything drastic. The first night, she had stripped the duvet from the bed and cocooned herself in the corner farthest from the door. After that, she lapsed into a despondent stillness, hardly moving except to eat the meals delivered to her room a few mouthfuls at a time.

On the fourth day, he unlocked her door and waited for her to approach it, mask on, two knives holstered at his hips and a third at his back. The moment she reached for the doorknob, he moved to intercept her in the corridor. Despite the clear skies outside, the hallway was nearly pitch black, two long branches of shadow stretching away from the pool of light at the wide stairwell that led to the first floor. He’d turned off the hall lights and shut all the doors specifically for that effect. Between his customary black wardrobe and the soft-soled shoes he wore for jobs that required stealth, he was practically invisible, and he wanted to see if he could make the girl jump.

She reached the stairs first, materializing from the gloom like an old-timey ghost in one of the most modest dresses he’d provided: black, with long sleeves and a high collar. She’d ripped all the lace off the hem and cuffs, leaving loose black threads hanging around her knees. Her eyes were unfocused, but not in the “lights on, nobody home” way they’d been before. It was more like she was channeling all her concentration into her other senses. Chromeskull shifted his weight experimentally, and her head snapped unerringly in his direction. Hiding place now effectively spoiled, he stepped up to the edge of the light.

He’d had standoffs like this before, a tableau of predator and prey like the ones that had played out across countless species, echoing down countless millennia. The prey would crumble, would plead or flee, and he would silence them or run them down, but he would catch them in the end.

He always caught them. When he wasn’t interfered with.

The girl bolted for the steps when Chromeskull reached for her, his fingertips brushing the ends of her hair as she ran. Halfway down, she vaulted herself over the railing. She landed with a painful sounding thwack , throwing her momentum into an awkward roll before scrambling back to her feet and disappearing around a corner.

Chromeskull laughed. She was so quick , like a little bunny. The short ones were often easy to catch with his much longer legs, but this one might give him a run for his money in an open space. He pulled up the home security system on his phone, making sure all the doors and windows were shut tight. He left one side door unlocked, just to see if she’d find it.

Then he gave chase.

***

He cornered her in one of the side rooms, one of those useless spaces that were little more than an oddly-shaped bit of hallway between the actual functional rooms. Exertion had put some color in her cheeks and disheveled her hair. One ankle was starting to swell - probably twisted it in her leap from the stairs. Every line of her pretty little body, from her clenched jaw to her rigid shoulders to her curled fists, was tense enough to shatter with a touch.

Oh, how Chromeskull wanted to break her.

I HAVE A GAME FOR YOU.

The girl flinched as the shriek of his phone echoed off the walls, but rallied quickly.

“We already have a game,” she said. “The question game.”

Several times over the past few days, he’d had questions delivered to her along with her food. She’d stew over them for an hour or two, then monologue her replies to the empty room. Monotone, blank-faced, but with that odd sing-songy cadence like she was recounting a story she’d heard a dozen times before and was tired of. They were enlightening, but still raised more questions than they answered.

SO WE HAVE! AND YOU PLAY VERY WELL.

He sighed dramatically and pressed a hand to his cheek.

ALAS I GET BORED.

Her eyebrows pulled together slightly as she shifted on her feet, confused and unimpressed by his theatrics. Maybe she didn’t know what “alas” meant.

MAKE IT TO THE FRONT DOOR AND YOU CAN SLEEP ALONE TONIGHT.

She was running before the sentence even finished. By the time he’d stuffed his phone back in his pocket, she was already out of sight.

The front doors were unmistakable, twin slabs of wood and metal detailing that stood nearly twice as high as all the other doors on the property. They were also on the opposite side of the house. He could have chased after her, or tried to predict her route so he could blindside her from another room. Instead, he unlocked the nearest sliding glass door and cut across the interior courtyard, enjoying the faint breeze against his scalp portending an afternoon thunderstorm.

No one ever said he had to play fair.

Leaning against the wall in the foyer, he checked the adhesive on his mask. It was a new model, one with a button cam installed in the socket over his missing eye. The added hardware made it slightly heavier than his standard model and so required some testing before he brought it out in the field. It would never replace his beloved tapes, but it was always good to have a more streamlined option available. Especially for days like today when he planned on stripping down and didn’t want to deal with the harness.

There was no patter of bare feet on tile to herald the girl’s arrival. She just appeared in a blur of black rounding the corner. She screeched to a halt when she saw Chromeskull, an unspoken GOD FUCKING DAMN IT clear as day on her face. He waggled his fingers at her in a playful wave. Her only response was to hunch over, hands on her knees as she tried to catch her breath.

She didn’t retreat as Chromeskull sauntered over to her. He noticed her favoring the swollen ankle; it must be too painful for her to run anymore. She glared at him balefully through the curtain of her hair. He was near grabbing distance when she twitched right, as though to duck around him. When he moved to block her, she dove straight between his legs, sliding briefly on her stomach, handskneesfeet towards the door. In his haste to course correct, spin around, and lunge for her, his own feet tangled with each other and he went down hard. He managed to snag her leg on the way down, bringing her to the floor with him.

Bare toes and fingers scrabbled against the tile as she fought to gain even an inch of distance. It was too late; he already had a handful of dress and hair and was pulling himself up to straddle her waist. She put up a good struggle as he wrangled her arms behind her back, but she was hopelessly outmatched. He adjusted his hold, easily gripping both of her wrists in one hand as the other went to his belt. The girl tried to lurch forward at the clink of the buckle, squirming as he wrapped the black leather tightly around her wrists.

The front door was merely feet away.

Satisfied with the bindings, Chromeskull let a little more of his weight settle onto her thighs, grinning at the way she immediately went stock-still when she felt his bulge press against her back. As if that would make his cock any less hard. Her head dropped to the floor in defeat. He brushed the hair out of her face, petting her like he was soothing a dog, and pulled out his phone again.

I WIN!

The little huff of air she gave could’ve meant anything: resignation, irritation, exhaustion, any number of other -tion ’s. As Chromeskull hauled her over his shoulder, he decided to go with whichever one stroked his ego the most at the moment and in hindsight. He gripped her leg as high up as he could - thumb rubbing against her ass cheek and index finger tucked snugly against her pussy. Her thighs tensed at that, but she made no other move to throw him off. From what he could tell so far, she was an at least somewhat intelligent girl; she had to have realized that if she wriggled free, she’d just land on her head and Chromeskull would scoop her right back up.

Didn’t stop him from wishing she’d rub against him just a little in the elevator on the way to the basement, though.

***

The framework was something he’d had custom-made when he got sick of having to find things for Veronica to stand on so he didn’t have to crouch to fuck her when she was strung up from the ceiling. A stainless steel arc formed an almost-complete circle over a pedestal of adjustable height. Attachments at regular intervals along the arc allowed the subject’s arms to be cuffed in nearly any position while still giving Chromeskull - and the cameras set up around the room - unfettered access to all sides of her body.

The girl was upright, her arms stretched outward and slightly up, like a crucifix. She had to stand slightly on her toes to ease some of the strain on her shoulders.

Chromeskull had given a lot of thought to the lighting and layout of the room. The ring frame stood in the center  and could be removed and broken down, the pedestal recessed to be flush with the floor, if he wanted to use the space. Certain lighting configurations were saved as presets that could be accessed with a press of a button. The amount and quality of camera equipment down here was probably comparable to some professional film productions.

Unsheathing the knife from his back, he trailed it slowly along the row of buttons down the dress’s front, teasing each one with the point of the blade. When he reached the bottom, he gripped the hem, pulling the fabric taut, and slipped the knife underneath the last button. A flick of the wrist, and it popped free, landing somewhere out of sight with a soft plink.

Plink.

Plink.

Plink.

Plink.

The final button rested at the girl’s throat. He took a moment to caress her there with thumb and forefinger, feeling the frantic jump of her pulse underneath the thin skin. She was, once again, steadfastly refusing to look him in the face, gaze unwaveringly fixed at some unknown point over his shoulder as he liberated the last button. He made quick work of the sleeves - two long, clean slices from shoulder to wrist - and tossed the ruined dress away.

The gauzy fabric of her bralette and panties was designed to accentuate rather than cover. Honestly, he was surprised she was wearing them at all, given her apparent aversion to lace. Not that he was complaining, though.

No, definitely not complaining, he thought as he hooked a finger through the center of the bralette. But they were still getting in the way of the places he wanted to touch the most, and the flimsy material tore so easily under his hands that he didn’t need the knife. Almost as if the garments themselves were as eager to leap free as he was.

Chromeskull backed away, admiring the view. A pool of light illuminated the central display, casting the rest of the room into shadow. To the camera’s eye, the girl and the metal frame were the only things in the universe.

And fuck, did she look delicious up there.

He’d seen her naked before, of course. But he hadn’t really looked, too eager to get his cock inside her at the time. Now that he was more level-headed and the girl was secured with leather cuffs that wouldn’t rip her wrists open, he could take the time to really drink in his latest acquisition.

She was still too skinny; a few good meals weren’t enough to change that yet. The shape of her ribs under taut skin flowed with the dark lines of the scars across her chest and stomach. He’d been ready to dismiss the thing with the bear as bullshit, but the marks really were undeniable. He tried to match up some of the other scars with the stories she’d told so far, but the bullet marks were hidden by her curls. The way she’d ducked her head and shaken the hair over her shoulders seemed practiced, the actions of a person who’d often found themselves in a state of undress when they didn’t want to be.

Bruises were already forming on her knees from being dragged to the floor, and the injured ankle was noticeably red. The blooms of color excited him. He couldn’t wait to mark her over and over and over, with knives and teeth and unrelenting fingers, reds and purples and blues and yellows like abstract art on a ragged white canvas.

Still hidden beyond the edge of the light, he began to circle her, slowly. He stripped off his shirt as he prowled, tossing it to the ground next to the remains of the dress. His pants and shoes followed, leaving him in his increasingly tight boxers with a single knife strapped to his thigh. She didn’t crane her head to try to follow him, but her fingers twitched against the chains and he could see goosebumps starting to prick along her skin.

He re-entered the spotlight directly behind her, close enough for her to feel his heat but not close enough to touch. Slowly, deliberately, he gathered up her hair in his hands, brushing his fingertips over her face as he did. When the whole mass was pulled back, he wound it tightly around his fist like a soft black rope until his knuckles rested against her scalp. He gave an experimental tug, tilting the girl’s head up and down. Then he tied the hair back in a loose knot with the shredded remains of her panties.

Her back was a tracery of thin, fine scars like the nearly invisible cracks in a piece of ceramic just before it shatters. One shoulder had a little pink exit wound scar matching the entry wound on the front; the other round must have lodged itself in her body when she was shot.

Hell of a thing, having to dig a bullet out of a little girl’s shoulder.

The knife was like an extension of his hand, and he swore he could feel it when he pressed the tip in at the nape of the girl’s neck. Skin parted and mouth-watering crimson welled up in the knife’s wake as he cut a perfectly straight line down the length of her spine from neck to tailbone. He moved with careful restraint; the blade could easily carve down to the bone with a little added pressure, and that wasn’t on the menu tonight.

Planting the other hand between her shoulder blades, he spread the edges of the incision with his ring and index fingers and ran the knuckle of his middle finger over it, teasing the wound the same way he’d teased her cunt a few nights prior. Blood coated his hand like slick and his cock throbbed in response.

Muscle and bone shifted visibly under the girl’s skin as she fought to tamp down her pained reaction. Inspired, Chromeskull carved two more lines parallel to the first, from shoulder blade to the lowest rib. The streams of blood pooled at the crack of her ass, trickling down her cheeks and thighs to pool on the floor. His mouth watered and he briefly regretted his decision to wear the mask this time. He could imagine dropping to his knees and running his tongue up the bleeding slit, working her with his mouth like he was eating her pussy, blood dripping down his chin and throat.

Another time.

He holstered the knife and un holstered his cock before running both hands down her back. The smears of red across her skin sent a frisson of need up his own spine. When he was coated in blood from wrist to fingertip, he reached around and grabbed her tits, engulfing them easily in his hands. Her nipples had hardened at some point, little pebbles against his palms. He kneaded the soft flesh, then stepped forward to press himself against her, chest to back and not an inch of space between them. It was the most skin-on-skin contact he’d had with her yet, and he couldn’t help rutting against her like a horny teenager. His erection was a living, pulsing thing trapped between them, leaking spurts of precum that probably hurt like fuck when they dribbled into her open cuts. With another squeeze of her tits, he leaned down and pressed the teeth of his mask against the scar on her neck.

She jolted so hard her bad leg gave out, jerking awkwardly in her restraints like a marionette on tangled strings. The iron grip Chromeskull had on her chest kept her from dropping too far, and he hauled her back into him with a silent chuckle. He could feel the twitches as her body tried to fold in on itself protectively. Tendons stood out along her arms and her fingers curled into claws in the air as she pulled uselessly against the cuffs, all animal instinct.

One hand slid down to cup her pussy, leaving behind a trail of sticky scarlet across her belly. She was dry when he fondled her, but that wouldn’t be an issue with such an abundance of natural lubrication at his disposal. He wetted his other hand with fresh blood and gave his cock a few firm pumps until it was slick and red and winking like a ruby in the light. Then he spread her folds and pushed into her tight little hole.

A small, agonized wheeze escaped the girl when the head breached her tight walls. She clenched her teeth against any other sounds, trembling in silent pain as Chromeskull forced his way deeper. When the final inch slid home, balls resting against her bloodied ass, he took a moment to just breathe, nuzzling her sweat-damp temple and pressing a hand to her abdomen where he swore he could feel himself pulsing in her guts. Her inner muscles clenched down on him rhythmically as her body fought against the girthy intrusion. He probably could’ve cum from that alone, if he were inclined to wait.

However, Chromeskull was not a man who was inclined to wait for anything, so he pulled out part way and gave a short, hard thrust.

He would have stuck his fingers in the girl’s mouth for her to suck so he could toy with her clit, were it not for the very real threat that she would bite the damn things all the way off. Her stray dog proclivities meant she would have to deal with the consequences of her behavior and take his cock in her cunt unaided. She was doing a stellar job of it so far; every thrust glided a little smoother and his pleasure was rapidly reaching a crescendo.

With a hand on her thigh, he pulled her leg up and back, opening her up to the camera and leaving her to balance precariously on her swollen ankle. The other hand pressed the knife flat to her neck, forcing her to lean back into him lest she slit her own throat. Every point of contact felt alive. Thighs, stomach, chest, arms slippery with blood and sweat; cock soaked with juices from the most perfect pussy he’d ever fucked.

His balls began to tighten with his impending climax, and his grip on her body tightened, too. Fingers digging into the meat of her thigh, forearm an iron bar across her chest, he lifted the girl completely off the ground as he came: an earth-shattering, vision-obliterating orgasm that nearly made his knees buckle.

For a moment, he worried he might’ve broken her neck in his paroxysm of pleasure; she was so quiet and still in his arms. But then the buzzing started to recede from his head and he could feel her breathing, softer and more even than he’d expected. He set her down carefully, unsurprised when her legs completely folded. His cock was still outrageously hard, but he needed to get her back taken care of before she lost too much blood. He kicked off his boxers - no sense trying to put them back on in his current state - and strode over to switch off the camera and retrieve the key for the cuffs.

Cum dripped from the girl’s cunt to mix with the puddle of blood on the floor. A perfect bloody handprint marked each breast; more red streaked across her legs and torso and a hand-shaped bruise was already darkening on her thigh. Tendrils of hair were plastered to her face and neck, and her head drooped listlessly. When Chromeskull lifted her head by the hair, her face was slack, eyes blank. He pulled out the knife and smacked her cheek with the flat of the blade - nothing.

Oh well, he figured as he undid the cuffs and bundled her unresponsive body back into his arms. There was nothing for it down here in the basement. He had a bottle of lube in the ensuite up in his bedroom; he’d get her cleaned up and bandaged and then see about fucking some life back into her.

Chapter Text

The House Master’s wife is a good wife.

The Mistress, as the girls call her, lords over the kitchens and the housekeeping with an iron fist. She does not tolerate a single stain or speck of dust or overcooked dish.

A good wife knows how to run a tidy household.

The Mistress does not scold or nag. She does not turn up her nose at the uncouth Guests who tramp through the House or complain about the loud noises that echo through the night.

A good wife does not interfere with her husband’s business.

The Mistress does not strike the working girls across the face. Her discipline does not leave scabs or bruises.

A good wife takes care of her husband’s property.

The Mistress knows that her husband takes favorites. She knows he lies with the girls under his roof, and does not say a word.

A good wife knows a man can only be expected to resist so much temptation.

When the Mistress finds her husband with the wild girl from the forest in their marriage bed, she does not direct her anger at him. When her fingers pull savagely at dark hair, when her nails break skin, it is not his.

A good wife does not raise a hand to her husband.

When the Mistress beats the wild girl insensate, the House Master does not try to stop her.

A good wife can be forgiven her trespasses, just the once.

***

The Mistress is a heartless fucking bitch.

She knows full well that her husband has had his way with nearly every girl in the House of Roses. To the stranger’s eye, she is unbothered by her husband’s straying. There are no shrieks of betrayal or poisonous glares, no slaps from raised hands or wooden spoons. But the Flowers know her weapons are the pain of an empty belly, of overworked muscles and too little sleep until the rooms begin to sway and blur at the edges. So long as the House Master keeps his dalliances away from the Mistress’s chambers and allows her her petty vengeances, she is content to play the role of gracious Wife.

***

The girl is seventeen, or maybe 18, and she does not know where she is. She was in the House Master’s bed, and now she is somewhere cold and dark and alone.

The girl did not want to end up in the House Master’s bed. The House Master had called her into the study - the one where she learned her letters and how to use her mouth, where she and Hana would sit like good pets and entertain him with her clumsy attempts at conversation - and given her a glass of wine.

She has not had wine before, only sips of vodka stolen from the kitchens with the other girls. She did not know wine is not supposed to taste chalky.

The drugs did not send her fully to sleep. Just made her loose and pliant, any thoughts of resistance becoming confused and losing their way before they could leave her throat or reach her hands. She still feels everything the House Master does to her when he takes her to bed like a wife, hears him whisper in her ear even though the words slide together like melting snow.

The Mistress screams in rage when she finds them. She drags the girl to the floor by the hair and the House Master only laughs as his wife spits curses and bloodies the girl’s nose with her fist.

Now she is alone in an airless dark that smells of damp and shifting things, and her face is stinging and sticky. She licks her lips with her swollen tongue.

Honey, she remembers. The Mistress smeared her face with honey after she beat her. Blood mixes with it now, metallic saltiness that curdles the sweetness of the sugar.

The lean cellar rat does not seem to care as it takes another bite out of the girl’s cheek.