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When we were alone, he angled my chair out from the table, roughly moving away plates en masse. A goblet topp

led and shattered into pieces that slid and glistened on the table cloth before me. Calmly, he sat on the edge.

“You tried to dose me with the poison Wolfe gave me.” His teeth showed fleetingly. A façade of a smile.

I let my lip curl. Mocking him was rarely possible but disappointment overcame prudence.

“Your sacred drug, yes.” If I didn’t get this out now, I never would. I hurried on. “You should use it. Can’t you see I was right? You’re a terrible man as you are now. There is a better way. There is.”

“Stand.” He beckoned and I stood, his girl on strings, his terrified girl on strings. “Lie on the table.” He pushed up the table cloth so the glass fragments were gathered in the cloth above the bared table.

I lay with my face turned toward where he sat – the skin of my face and arms stuck to the timber.

So quiet. I waited for the storm, the lightning strike. When he leaned over me, I felt him draw my dress up. When I was exposed to above my bottom, he paused.

“Lovely ass.”

He wouldn’t.

My toes dug into my high heels. “You said you wouldn’t –”

“Fuck your cunt? And here you’ve threatened me, tried to poison me. I’d be justified in fucking you with a whole set of steak knives and forks, let alone my cock. Did I tell you to drug me? No, I didn’t.” He tugged on a strand of my hair, pulled it across my face, let it fall away. “Red hair. I named you well. Remember your old name?”

“My what?”

My old name? He named me? The tunnel collapsed in on me, the one above that led back to my real world. Red wasn’t real? Who was I? Fuck, fuck, fuck.

And I whispered, “What’d you do to me?”

Evil reigned in this house.

Flicker, flicker. There. His face. I’d spotted something. A switch of expression.

But who was I?

“What’s my real name?” I blinked away tears. “Please tell me. Please!”

“Shhh.” He patted my ass. “You don’t need it anymore.” Then he stood and went behind me, I heard him unzip. “Just once. Hmmm?”

His cock pushed at me and I was wet, already, for him, oozing around his intruding member like a well that’d sprung a leak. How dare my body do that? How fucking dare it.

I even wriggled, begging.

“Just once...you slutty temptress.” He halted though, and a moment later stepped away.

Something hard, slender, and cold pressed into me, slid inside.

“One knife,” he murmured. Another length slipped up there. “Don’t move. Two. Only handles but imagine how fun it would be if it were the other end. Three. Feeling stuffed?”

The heavy weight of the cold metal and his quiet threats had me shaking.

“Stop. Please.” I’d forgotten my name and now this.

“Really?” He churned them in me as if stirring a recipe, then the knives slid out and clattered to the floor between my feet. One landed against my ankle before it slipped down to clunk onto the others. “Damn.”

I ventured a quiet, “Thank you.” My relief – that this was his limit for the occasion – burgeoned.

“Thank you, Miss Cuntworthy? What I see back here inspires me, makes me think I can go beyond what I thought was possible.” He lay on the table beside me, making dishes clatter, and pulled his splayed fingers down my face. “Look at those tears. I was worried I’d never let you go if I took your cunt, because I’d want to keep you and then my monster would find your secret.” He kissed my cheek, my mouth. “But you tried to poison me and I’m getting compensation. Keep your hands at your sides.”