Jeremiah Quick (27 page)

She obeyed him because she was so
well-behaved, and his fingers slid deeper, and he was lying because
the pain was deeper, too, and bigger, and she wanted to jerk
herself hard away, to escape it. She couldn’t escape it. The
whimpers morphed into cries, a combination of helpless noises that
she couldn't seem to help or stop.

"Look," he said.

She turned her head.

He held his cock in one bloody hand, the
fingers of the other still buried inside her, and she was taken
over by a shudder because he was red-smeared and grinning, happy in
a way she'd never seen him.

He held eye contact, hand leaving his cock
to rise to his mouth. He licked his fingers, tongue lingering in
the V between each two.

It was like a horror film, without the
screaming.

His thighs were a warm line along the backs
of her own, calves and feet pressed on the inside of her calves and
ankles, holding them apart, holding her open. Not that she was
fighting him, not really.

Then the perverse insistence of his cock,
there, and she shuddered beneath him, holding her breath against
the first stab of his cock at her anus, clenching in a ridiculously
futile attempt to keep him out.

His next sound was a laugh, she thought, or
half of one, and his cock stabbed against her with more insistence.
The ring of muscle that was keeping him out succumbed to the steady
pressure of him, and he was sliding into her, impossibly hot, like
fire, and she felt her teeth show from the grimace, and when she
hissed in a breath, the air was startlingly cold, but so thick with
the smell of his blood that she could taste it. She cried out when
his hips snapped against her, then bucked back as hard as he was
thrusting forward, and she was suddenly being stretched open with
great seriousness and little care. Speared with blood and flesh and
that searing sense of being ripped apart that she experienced every
time she accepted sodomy.

It was exquisite.

She grunted. Hated the stretch, this
helpless impalement, yet welcomed her own helplessness.

She felt pulled apart, as if pieces of her
might go flying off by themselves, and she had no way of knowing if
they would return, or perhaps return to her… different.

As she would be different.

Both his arms were around her now, holding
her tight against him, the fingers of one hand spread against the
ridges of her ribs, the fingers of the other between her legs,
parting the lips there, working, squirming.

This position –

She could almost feel him in her throat,
lips burning for a taste of cool water.

She stared at his forearm, muscles standing
out, well-formed against the bone, skin so glowing white in places
not blood-covered that she could see the blue veins running
beneath. The original stab wound was clotted, barely seeping now,
and he moved, as if he saw her looking, and pressed it against her
lips. No further command was necessary.

She let her tongue trace the wound, tasting
him, and her stomach rolled because something snapped then, some
internal shift screamed at her that this was not horrible, that it
might be depraved and twisted and sick, but she liked it and would
like more of it, and she almost laughed out loud.

"Oh, Sunshine." It was a low growl into her
ear, so close his voice was like a secret. "You like being
dirty."

Shiver of pleasure all through her,
radiating like the effects of nitrous, from ear to throat to
belly.

He was fucking her asshole with blood for
lube and her whole body was happy about it.

She was addicted to him.

He did something to her brain chemistry that
made her feel bigger, smarter – invincible, and less sympathetic
for even her own plight.

Again she realized she wouldn't choose to be
anywhere else.

So. She really was dirty.

When one wound clotted and stopped bleeding,
he cut another one.

She reveled in his depravity, rolled in it
like the dog does when something smells wonderfully awful and it
wants to keep the scent as near as possible.

Pretty felt like that, breathing him in,
licking the blood from his skin, all vampiric and naughty.
Cannibalistic, even.

"I killed Corrie, you know," he hissed as his hips
rocked.

Pretty's next cry had nothing to do with
pain, and everything to do with his words, protesting that
information. She wanted him to say it wasn't true, to take those
words back.

He didn't take them back. He gave her more.

Chapter 29

S
he.

She's crying now, and it has nothing to do
with the fact that I'm fucking her up the ass.

She likes that part. She likes playing
helpless. I've figured this out.

No, she's worried I'll tell her that I hated
Corrie, that I damaged Corrie, that I never loved her. But that's
not even close to the truth.

I loved Corrie, and that's why.

Her badass caught up with her, and when I
found her, she was a skeleton in a bed, machines pumping sedatives
into her veins, oxygen running to help her breathe. Home care
nurses, strangers, spreading her legs, cleaning her, diapering,
manipulating her limbs and form, hospital gowns and all their
immodesty.

She would have hated it, all of it. This
wasn't Corrie. This was a body that used to be Corrie.

Her partner was despondent at her bedside,
paralyzed with indecision. Not even
allowed
to
make
a decision. Nothing good was happening. The bad had
already come to pass, and the worst was here.

I tapped the side of Corrie's face, said her
name, and her eyes opened, irises indistinct, pupils drug-fogged,
then widening and flaring with fear, horror… hope. I kissed her
cheek, tipped an imaginary hat, and said,
Jeremiah Quick, at
your service.
And then I bowed low.

She almost managed to smile, but the attempt
was chased off by a look that was dripping-pure-
PLEASE
– and
I stared at her, wondering if it was my fanciful imagination, or if
I truly understood what she was asking.

"Really?"
I whispered, as gently as I
could.

"Please. If you love me at all."
It
was all she managed to say, but it was enough.

"She can't go on like this," I said to the
despondent partner, who shrugged and said, "It's not like cancer
gives us a choice."

She was weak. I could see that, and while
she may have loved Corrie well for many years, that love had become
a trap.

"She saved my life," I said to this lump of
depression. "Long ago. All that I am, I owe it to her. She doesn't
deserve this."

"Who does?" the partner said. "We just get
by, day to day."

I hated her.

I hated Them.

I hated a system of care that let a human
being languish in their own waste and called it 'end of life care'.
Called it
dying with dignity
.

There was no dignity here. It was cruelty,
pure and simple, and I felt the rage pulse behind my eyes.

I pulled a folding chair close to the bed,
picked up Corrie's hand, and let the rage build. If I did nothing
to diffuse it, the rage would grow until it was big enough.

This, I wanted.

This, I needed.

I stayed at Corrie's side all afternoon. All
evening. Most of the night.

The partner had fallen asleep in a chair,
slumped over with her forehead resting on the edge of Corrie's bed.
Her other hand curled and tangled with Corrie's.

This, now, looked like love. A form of love
that I could accept. Soft light spilled from the bathroom. Sometime
after midnight she came awake with a start, checked to make sure
I'd sit with Corrie the rest of the night, and went to her own
bed.

Three-thirty in the morning, the time when
even those trying to stay up all night start fading, and Corrie
made a noise.

I stood up and pressed my left palm against
her cheek and pulled at the disease with all my might. Her eyes
popped open and she looked at me, but this time not with horror,
not with fear.

Her whole body seemed to sigh as she sank
into the mattress, a sigh of exhaustion, mouth forming words that
could only be translated into
thank you
, and I nodded once
and did what I needed to do.

She welcomed me, welcomed the towel I held
in my hands, and when she gripped my wrist with bony fingers, she
wasn't fighting so much as holding on, with trust and the hope that
what comes next will be better than what came before.

She stared right into me as I folded the
towel over her throat, an effort that felt so odd, this… attempt…
to
not
leave marks, bruises, or broken tissue.

She clung to me.

I gave her freedom and let her go.

It didn't take very long, and she
went with grace and with relief.

Sunshine makes some noise beneath
me, maybe because, yeah, talking about letting Corrie go makes my
cock harder. It's... well, I'm proud of helping her, of not
allowing someone I love to suffer for one more minute. Being able
to fix that was the most 'me' I've ever been.

Maybe her little cry isn't about
that at all, because...

She
.

She soaks me up like a sponge, no
resistance, no argument.

She is quiet, now.

Not judging.

Not irritating.

It is amazing that she never gets on my
nerves.

Most people do, and it's quick and it's
permanent.

Not her.

She feels like me somehow, except the
opposite of me.

Perhaps she is.

Chapter
30

H
e woke Pretty
sometime later with soft petting and serious eyes. She wanted a
shower more than anything in all the world. His blood was crusted
to her skin, matted in her hair, and clotted and gritty between her
ass cheeks. The metallic scent of it was in her nostrils, and she
knew that soon enough she would start to smell like a putrid,
rotting thing. Jeremiah was dressed and smelled crisp and clean.
He'd apparently showered before waking her up, the bastard.

He walked her to the bathroom, no'd her
request to shower with a solemn wry look that said
you know
better, come on
, but all he said was, "Soon enough, my girl,
soon enough."

Then it was outside where autumn was fading
and the air carried a hint of winter's return. The dead season. The
sad demise of everything good, the time to prepare for hibernation.
If she guessed, she'd say she'd been with Jeremiah for at least a
couple of weeks.

She followed him across the yard and into
the dungeon.

Jeremiah put Pretty on her stomach on the
restraint bed, arms and legs stretched to their limits, so taut,
tight, that she found herself straining against them even when she
wasn't trying.

She rested her cheek against the mattress,
contemplating the immediate ache in her shoulders, the tingle
already starting in her hands.

She blinked as he came into her field of
vision, carrying a large green bucket. A sharp, citrus smell made
her eyes water. He set it down on the floor at the foot of the
bed.

There were a number of straps now that
hadn't been on the bed before, and he used them to tie her down at
her calves, thighs, hips, chest.

Then he rolled a drawered tool box and a
wheeled stool to the end of the bed by her feet. There as a
squeak-creak when he sat down.

She was seized with a terrified knowing,
even before she heard him slide open a single drawer. She shook her
head from side to side, and felt the cry bubbling in her
throat.

He held her left foot firmly. She wanted to
believe he was only going to fix her lines, but something in her
recognized the additional restraints meant something much bigger
than that.

The first cut, around her ankle, was slow
and sharp and ongoing.

For an instant she thought it was the
fine-line pen, but then there was… wet, and too much pain, and she
flexed her foot, trying to escape it.

A hard slap to her inner thigh, and his
admonishment, "Stop it. Be still."

"It hurts," she said, hearing herself sound
wounded, betrayed.

"Yes," he agreed. "But the beginning of the
end has to start somewhere."

She couldn't have been more horrified if he
was eating her inch by inch.

He had one hand clenched around her ankle.
"Think of it like a tattoo."

The pain crawled around up her calf. The
spot behind her knee that developed an impossible itch sometimes
when she was driving. It was momentarily too sensitive, ticklish,
nerves of skin flinching away. Then the wet drag, the split she
swore she could feel, and a horrid sick sense of nausea. She
pictured her skin, dark with ink. She had a lot of lines. Surely he
wouldn't… couldn't…

"You're cutting my lines," she said, her
voice pitched high and tight in a way she couldn't seem to control.
He couldn't. He couldn't do
this
to
all
the lines.
Could he? Without bleeding her to death?

"Re-drawing with a different medium," he
said, and his voice was dead calm. "A more permanent one. So they
last a long time."

"Why?"

"Because I don't want you to ever forget
again. I want you to live with your eyes and your mind and your
senses open. All the way open."

She had no answer for that. It was never
merely that she had forgotten, it was that life happened.

Whatever instrument he was using hurt more
as time went on. As the blade dulled, as her skin oozed blood. He
cut above and below the ankle restraint, removed it and held her
foot in a hard grip, cut some more, replaced the restraint.
Struggling against the restraint made her gasp. Holding still with
her face pressed to the mattress made her howl.