House of Skin (33 page)

Eddy smiled. “Why don’t you drop the facade? Isn’t it all getting a little tiresome? Pretending all this professional, moral interest in me when the real reason is lust?”

“Bastard.”

“Have I touched a nerve, Doc? Have I peeled away your defenses so easily?” He looked pleased. She was squirming and it gave him no end of joy. “All this time, you’ve been thinking about me, haven’t you? And you probably told yourself it was out of scientific curiosity and nothing more. You probably saw the whole episode, the whole situation of hunting me down, as meat for some book or paper you wanted to write. Am I correct?

But that’s a lie. You’re subconscious knows the truth and I can see right into it. I know what you’re about.”

Her hands were trembling, her reserve falling free like ice from a roof. “And what’s that?” she asked with some effort.

Eddy laughed. “You know that as well as I do. You wanted me to rape you that night at Coalinga. You were aggravated that I didn’t. You still are.”

“You’re crazy.” She couldn’t even look at him now, not even for a moment. She could feel his dark eyes staring at her from behind the mirrored lenses. They were so intense, so hungry, it made her skin crawl. She felt violated.

He stood up, stroking his crotch, his erection straining against the material of his jeans. “So are you.” He captured and held her eyes with his own lecherous gaze. “Don’t pretend to be offended. I know you too well.”

“You need help, Eddy.”

“Your kind of help?”

“Fuck you.”

“Exactly what I had in mind.”

He went to the door and returned with a large white package he’d left outside, pulled a knife out of his coat and slit it open. There were a dozen red roses inside. He said: “You like flowers, don’t you? No, don’t answer. I know you do.”

He began dropping them to the floor. He took the last few and brought them to her, pressing them into her face, forcing her to drink in their sweet odor. The petals fell like rain down her face and into her robe. Eddy grasped the belt and threw it open. He wasn’t surprised that she was naked beneath it.

“Don’t,” she said weakly as he took a handful of petals and rubbed them violently between her breasts.

The sweet, almost sickly smell of roses filled her nose, overloading her senses with a pungent intoxication. Her head felt giddy, her heart hammered. Hot blood rushed through her limbs.

He grasped her hair in one fist and jerked her head forward. She gasped, but did not fight. Not even when he dragged a rose stem across her throat and drew blood. She was trembling and her heart felt like it would pound right out of her chest.

Fight this
…
fight it
…
don’t let him dominate you, don’t let him give you what you want
…
don’t weaken
…
don’t
…
don’t
…

But she was beyond self-control. She wanted him like she’d never wanted anything before in her life. He pressed a finger into her mouth and she took it, tasting the salty flesh, biting it, licking it. He put petals in her mouth and she chewed and swallowed them. And then his lips came in for a kiss. But it was no mere kiss, not the sort of tender, intimate brush of the lips or tongue that she’d shared with Fenn. He took her head in his strong hands and pulled her up roughly, covering her lips with his own, his tongue pushing into her, dancing a primal rhythm in her mouth that she joined in on. She was not merely being kissed, but devoured. His lips were smashed into her own, his tongue and hers wildly loving each other as he grasped her chin with one hand and a handful of her hair with the other. Then he pulled his tongue out and bit down on her lower lip. She gasped, but did not fight him off.

No, she couldn’t fight her heart’s desire, the twisted machinations of her libido. The exchange between them had all the subtlety of rape and she wanted it even as part of her brain screamed for it to stop.

Eddy threw her to the floor and chewed her ear, whispering crude obscenities into her ear that made her blood boil. He went after her breasts with the same almost vengeful ferocity, licking and eating the uplifted cones with a hot-blooded animal need that was frightening. As he worked her from head to toe, she said things she wouldn’t remember later, begged and pleaded with him never to stop. Or never to begin.

She never forgot he had the knife, but in her racing, reeling mind it was only another symbol of his appetite. He brought it into view and ran the blade between her breasts, tracing a line of blood to her crotch. She thought for one dizzying, delightful moment that he was going to kill her, take her life with the blade and all she was concerned with was that he enter her first. He took up her robe and shredded it with his blade as her body rocked beneath him, anxious for any and all indignities he would press upon it.

He tied her wrists tightly with strips of the robe, nearly cutting off her circulation. He fastened the strips to the legs of a chair and then gagged her with the belt.

“Can’t have you screaming on me, my darling. Not yet.”

He shed his pants and pushed himself into her with a violence that urged a cry from her throat. Words crossed through her mind, things like
desire
and
lust
and
lovemaking.
If the former was adequately descriptive, the latter certainly was not. This was animal fucking, completely devoid of love or tenderness or sensitivity. Eddy fucked her with a vengeance, trying to kill her with each thrust, to burst her from the bonds of reason and it was all she could do not to explode free of her confining skin with each shuddering orgasm that rocketed through her body. He unlocked something in her, a starving beast kept behind lock and key for far too long. Her teeth tore at the gag, biting and shredding it until her gums ached and her lips bled. Her hands were forced into contorted fists by his incessant pounding, the knuckles strained white, nails digging into her palms. She knew sex as her ancestors had, not as an overly-festive and civilized affair, but as something approaching hatred. She was being raped and liked the feeling of being used, abused, and degraded. She hated Eddy and if her hands and teeth had been free, she would’ve slashed him to ribbons. An atavistic mania was erupting in her cells as her body arched and slammed into the carpet, as muscles tensed and released. Uncounted millenia of breeding and evolution and civilized behavior were washing away in a thundering tide of bestial hunger. Her brain and body were out of contact with present reality, instinct was surging up and releasing suppressed urges forgotten since the time man violated the mate of his choice in a damp and dark cave. Her head was raging with race memory, her nose drowning in odors of an ancient time: pungent smoke, raw meat, hot musk, sweaty muscle … as orgasm after orgasm ripped through her like tumultuous waves crashing on a foreign, primal beach.

She lost track of what happened then. Half-memories struck her later and vanished as quickly as they’d come: the lunatic, chemical frenzy that muddled and mastered her thoughts; the raw and real eruptions of racial memory that reduced her to an animal in heat and let her glimpse a moment buried in time; the wrists and bloodied fingers pulling free of their bonds and scratching and clawing at her lover; the evil, triumphant grin on Eddy’s features as he fucked her and she drew blood; the sharp explosion of pain as he sodomized her and struck her again and again; her own thundering need; the sight of his huge member spitting seed over her bruised breasts as he straddled her and tried to choke the life from her, finally forcing his cock into her mouth where she greedily sucked it. The memories came and went.

In the end, only one fact remained: Eddy had taken her farther than any man had before. Fenn and the others had merely incited a violent appetite in her; William Zero had taken her to the edge of the carnal abyss and dangled her above its hot mouth, but it was Eddy who threw her in, kicking and screaming.

* * *

When she woke later, she was alone.

She couldn’t remember Eddy leaving, but he must have. The suite was empty and she knew this from the breathing silence that pervaded the rooms. She was lying naked on the floor, her lips tender and caked with dried blood. Her insides hurt from the punishment he’d inflicted. Her throat felt swollen and raw from his mock strangulation. He’d had his fun, leaving his whore senseless on the floor.

The memories struck her one after the other and dissipated just as quickly. She knew vaguely what had happened. They’d gone beyond the reasonable limits of sensuality, broke the bonds so to speak, and had journeyed physically and mentally back to a time when humans mated only once or twice a year like the beasts of the forest they were. She’d experienced animal heat.

Eddy had shown her things she’d never dreamed of.

And did she love him for this?

No, she hated him and was disgusted by herself as she supposed her female ancestors were when the time of ritual mating had come to an end.

She pulled herself off the floor and her entire body ached. Walking was a chore and it took some time to reach the bathroom. She was shocked by her appearance in the full length mirror. She was bruised and battered from throat to crotch. There were red, hurting finger indentations in her ass, and her throat was discolored from being throttled. There were cuts and teeth marks on her breasts. Her nails were nearly all broken off, her palms ragged and bleeding. Dried blood was smeared over her face like warpaint and her teeth were stained pink. She looked, if nothing else, like the end result of a very abusive rape.

And she supposed there was a glaring truth to that.

She wondered if his father was watching her now from beyond the mirror’s glass.

She showered slowly, cleansing herself of both Eddy and the act. Afterwards, her head reeling with anger and self-disgust, she went to bed and slept.

* * *

She opened her eyes some time later, feeling sore and raw, but not too bad despite the punishment she’d endured. It was after six and she realized she’d been sleeping for some ten hours. She wondered why Fenn hadn’t called and could only hope he was beginning to see her for what she was. She checked her cell. Nothing.

Eddy had raped her, but he could have done worse.

Rape?

You wanted it.

No.

You asked for it and now you got it. Did it feel good? Did it feel good enough to throw away your dignity, your professionalism, and your ethics?

She shook her head to clear these thoughts. There was no time for self-recriminations. No time at all.

Then the phone rang and she wondered if it was Fenn and if she’d have the strength to lie to him. She couldn’t tell him about this, not yet—

She answered it and it wasn’t Fenn at all.

“Sleep well, dove?” Eddy asked, sarcasm tainting his words.

She bit her lip and started to tremble. “Better than in ages.”

He was silent for a moment, perhaps expecting a string of expletives to be shouted in his ear, cries of hatred, accusations of assault. He got none and was at a loss for words. “Really?”

“Why shouldn’t I have?” It was painful to be so kind and unaffected towards him. She despised him beyond words, almost as much as herself. But there were ideas in her head now, dark and plotting. She held the upper hand now and they both knew it. In the back of her mind, a web was being spun and she was drawing him into it.

“You’re not angry?”

Lisa grimaced. “Angry? Why would I be angry?”

“You liked it?”

“You know I did. My feelings go way beyond like.”

One word was all he could afford. “Really?”

She laughed. “Why are you so surprised? You said you knew me.”

“I don’t know,” he told her. “I don’t understand you.”

“No,” she said. “I don’t suppose you do.” And he didn’t, she knew, no more than he understood himself or what was happening here. “Are you going hunting tonight?”

“Hunting?”

“Don’t be an idiot, Eddy. You know what I mean.”

She could almost feel him pale over the phone. “Yeah, I’m going. Just a few more and it’s done with. Then me and Spider are lighting out of this place.”

Spider was dead. What did he mean by that? Was he going to drag a corpse along with him? There was no time to ask such things. “Maybe I’ll come along for the ride,” she told him.

“You’d like that?”

“Why not? You think you’re the only one bored of the limitations of this place?”

“I never suspected.” She could hear him breathing on the line as if the prospect excited him. “Maybe it could be arranged. Maybe.”

“Think about it.”

“I will. Yes, I will.”

“Keep in touch,” she said and hung up. She raced into the bathroom and vomited in the toilet. But even as she did, her mind still plotted. As disgusted as she was by him and herself and the secret they shared now, it all might just prove to be a means to an end. If she was exceptionally lucky, she might just get rid of Eddy, his father, and the book in one fell swoop.

And maybe yourself in the bargain.

So be it.

It was a risk worth taking.

Stadtler was awake for some time before he realized that he indeed was. Sleep. Awake. Dream. Reality. They were all the same, weren’t they? All segments of common cloth? Cloth? For a moment he couldn’t remember what cloth was.

It’s something you wear, silly boy.

He laughed under his breath. No, no, no, that’s clothes … not cloth. Cloth is something you make clothes of. You can make many things out of cloth. Yes, yes, that was right. Ha, ha, Zero, he thought, you can’t drive me mad. See, I remember everything. I remember that mama makes things out of cloth and she uses her sewing machine. I’m perfectly fine.

Don’t you dare go outside in your new clothes.

No, Mama, I won’t. I promise.

He felt his body and started to giggle. Why, he was naked! He didn’t have any clothes on! What was she thinking of? Poor Mama.

I’m not wearing any clothes!

He moved and his ankle throbbed with pain. Ouch. Oh God, oh Jeezus, that hurt. Mama, please take this chain off me, it hurts so. A terrible, terrible hurt. Please take it off.