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“Is it?” He kissed my back then my nape, and drifted his fingertips from my shoulders and down my arms, making the fine hairs rise in goose bumps. “The law revolves around proof. Let’s say I’m a cop, or someone asking you about what happened here. Can you tell them anything?”

When I breathed, his hands on my arms rose and fell, trapping me gently.

How could I do that? I knew from the past that I couldn’t.

“Red, can anyone prove anything?”

“You said...you have a girl trapped here, in your lower levels.”

“She’s here voluntarily and that’s what she will tell anyone who might ask her. There’s no crime if they want it. Bing. Fail. On the other hand...”

Oh the way his tongue wrapped his threats in that Swedish accent. I knew why the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo movie did so well, because everyone wanted to fuck the Man with the Sexy Accent.

“You tried to shoot me with a rifle. Your prints are on that weapon. You bought it illegally. We can prove you meant me harm. You’d even admit your intent to murder me. What do you think a judge would do to you?”

Bad things.

“I hate you,” I whispered. If I said that three times and clicked my heels, what would happen? I stared downward. Bare feet today, coated in

sand.

“I know. And that gives me a thrill that goes straight to my balls.” He drew my wrists behind me and made me wrap my fingers about the head of his cock, squeezed his hands over mine until I felt the pulse of his dick. “You lost, Red. What should I do to you? Shall I fuck you and let someone else into your cute little dirty orifices? The longer I stave him off, the darker and meaner my monster gets.”

I ducked my head. My shivers peaked in my nipples. “Stop him then. Your monster. It’s just you.”

“Sometimes I can’t. If I try to hold back the tide, I drown, you drown, everybody drowns.”

Then he raised my wrists higher at my back until I squeaked at the pain in my shoulders and had to bend at the waist. I felt his teeth sink into my left palm and bite. Harder, harder, until my little keening scream became a babble.

“Pretty pain,” he murmured, from around his mouthful of me.

“Stop, stop, stop, please.” A quick breath then... “Please.”

He stopped biting and instead rose above, pulling me backward then rolling me onto my stomach with his foot. My face was in sand until I turned my head sideways. “I’ll stop when I want to, won’t I?”

There was a stone-hard precision to his words when he got nasty like this. Maybe this was when his monster came to the top.

“Yes.” There was sand on my lips and tongue. I grimaced and spat. The spit only made more sand stick to me. Stay calm. If I panicked this would get worse.

“Can’t breathe? That’s how my monster makes me feel if I stop him. I’m going to let him out, a little, tonight. Just be glad he’s on a leash.”

We returned to his room and he prayed at his altar to the past. As if he sought penance for sins. Maybe he was doing it in advance. I didn’t believe he was sorry or repentant, no matter how he rocked on his knees or muttered over his relics.

One of those sacred relics was a picture of me, freshly marked with cum. I watched him from my position curled up on the bed, collared and leashed, though he’d not attached me to anything, yet. I wished he would do something more painful to himself – like whipping his back while he sat on a horse-sized, spiked butt plug...or blowing his brains out with a 45.

The latter, yeah. Definitely the latter.

Chapter 7

I’d imagined some dark and gloomy basement where men did despicable things to women. I should’ve known there’d be a gloss to this. Isak did things with flair, as if to thumb his nose at hiding his perversity.

The room was on the ground floor. Beyond the expanse of a thick glass wall, the surface of the sea seemed ready to swallow the house. Waves curled toward the house.

“The glass is made to withstand hurricanes. The foundations are solid and down to rock. Even if smashed, the house would stand.” Isak’s hand at my waist was more terrible than any force of nature. He turned me, his eyes softer than I’d seen on the beach. “Swallow your wine.”

I swallowed, gulping down two inches of the yellow liquid with the bubbles. Tasteless, though it soon made my head spin. The room wobbled as he guided me toward the square of sofas. Bollinger was on the label on the bottles. 1974. Worth a stack of money.

I tried not to look at the four other women, distorted parts of the room’s scenery that they were. While I stubbornly viewed the ocean, the men had redecorated.