Pure
Fiel a Verdad
- Joined
- Dec 20, 2001
- Posts
- 15,135
This is a story chapter, by Varian.
Because of the length, readers should not feel *obliged* to read it through to the end.
ADDED NOTE: I have marked the text at around 5900 words, for those with limited time. It's a convenient pause in the action, at about 60% of the text.
pure
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Varian says,
Hi everyone. I'd love any feedback, but I do have a few specific concerns and questions:
1. On characterization: is Devan too wimpy? Is Vaughn too schizophrenic? Are they sympathetic and interesting?
2. As they come together, does their attraction seem believable?
3. Pacing: in chapter 4 (the next chapter) we learn Vaughn's dirty secret, followed by Devan's, and also starting with chapter 4, the rest of the novel is essentially a non-stop erotic cabaret. But have I dragged you too far too slowly?
4. Is the first sex scene too minutely detailed?
I have to apologize—the first few paragraphs are rather rough—and there are a few other rough patches near the mid-point, as I just got through an extensive and somewhat hurried revision.
Thanks in advance for all your comments and suggestions!
-Varian
Varian's summary of chs 1-2
Summaries of chapters 1 and 2:
Ch. 01
Devan is lost in the woods, running from a wicked fellow named Conrad who's done something sexual to her (not a violent rape). Two dream sequences reveal that Devan is both terrified of and drawn to Conrad, and she's guilty about her conflicting feelings.
Devan finds an unoccupied cabin, takes up residence, and a couple days later the owner of the cabin, Vaughn, turns up, seeing her as an intruder.
Ch. 02
Vaughn is so suspicious he's borderline brutal with her. It's revealed that he's a celebrity and fears she's some kind of stalker. Because of the remoteness of the cabin, though, she can't leave, and they make a tenuous truce. Throughout the chapter each is fearful of the other, but both are having dark sexual fantasies involving the other, as well. Vaughn's are particularly violent.
THE FANTASTIC ADVENTURES OF CHANGED GIRL
chapter 3: Cabin Fever
As he cleaned up he fell into his usual post-orgasmic dolor. Fuck. These twisted fantasies had to stop. It horrified him to think that this was the kind of person he seemed to have become–a man whose dick got hard thinking of scaring and hurting someone that way.
He shuddered. It terrified him to know that there in his remote cabin the only thing protecting Devan from him was his own sense of shame, and his will. He no longer trusted himself.
Outside his fantasies, in their real interactions, he was as careful and as gentle as he had always been, all his life, with everyone. Perhaps more so, because of the guilt. Vaughn kept carefully to himself, telling himself he wanted to put Devan at ease, denying that he was as uncomfortable in her presence as she was in his.
X-X-X-X
On the third day, after lunch, Vaughn set off for a walk in the woods. Anything to get him out of the cabin and away from her. As he left he passed her, sitting on the back porch, nose buried among the yellowing pages of Dostoyevsky's Siberia.
In spite of his care in all of his dealings with her, he was still plagued by dark, shameful fantasies. But there had been a shift. As he watched her, reading, sitting quietly lost in thought, seemingly deep in thought even when she did little tasks around the house, he had begun to feel an affectionate curiosity. Less and less did his darker fantasies force him into the seclusion of his bedroom. But more and more he found himself thinking of her. Not as object. Not as scapegoat. Her, Devan, this person he was trapped with. Wondering who she was, wondering what she was thinking when she smiled as her eyes moved over a passage in the book in her hands. His fantasies which had at first been fueled by thoughts of cruelty and coercion dissolved into hazy images of twining fingers, warm embraces, tender kisses. With this change a new anxiety plagued Vaughn. As his terror at his own dark imagination waned, his fear that he was succumbing to some duplicitous plan of hers grew.
X-X-X-X
Devan closed the book and sealed Raskilnikov's fate. She wandered back inside and stared for a few minutes at the rows of spines on the bookshelf, then settled on Camus. The dark cabin depressed her and she went back outside to enjoy the crisp air and bright sun.
The strain of the tension between them was a burden on Devan, and she was miserable with the thought that he believed she had come with the intention of spying on him, or worse. She understood the pain of that kind of violation and to be the cause of it was unendurable. And, as the first day passed, then the second, she found this aloof, quiet, brooding man more and more intriguing. Perhaps it was because, after all she had been through, she longed so desperately for a friend. She wanted to talk. She could not believe that she found herself wanting to talk to him, this cold, suspicious recluse, when she knew that if she had gone home, among her few friends, she would have been silent. But, inexplicably, she wanted to tell him. Him specifically. And under that soft yearning for comfort and understanding was another perplexing urge—a roiling, rising need for him that she felt in the quiver at the center of her belly and in the aching heat of her body.
But he was wary and distant and they rarely spoke except when they were brought together by his stiffly polite hospitality. He prepared every meal for two and always checked with her to be sure he was making something she would want to eat. She tried to do her part by washing up after and helping out with small chores when he would let her. But on the afternoon, as he returned from a walk in the woods he came and sat down by her on the porch. The Stranger lay open on her thigh where she had set it aside and fallen into contemplation, gazing across the clearing at the bordering trees.
"I'm beginning to see a pattern in your choice of reading material," Vaughn said as he glanced from the book to her eyes, noting her far-away look. She turned away from the wall of trees before her and met his gaze.
"It is hard to get one's fill of sociopathic murderers."
She caught herself throwing an accidental glance toward the woods. With his eyes still on her she felt caught out, and tried to cover her embarrassment with chatter, her words flowing from the stream of thoughts Vaughn had interrupted when he'd joined her.
"It’s so rare for me to be in a place like this, really in nature." She paused, and then, a few moments later, picked up again with an absent-minded air. "I forget sometimes how artificial my daily environment is. Everything paved. Everything clean. Water, food, everything always there when I need it. So easy. But it’s kind of like being an animal in the zoo. Walking around on concrete, sleeping in a little shelter, being fed my three meals every day, but so separated from the real world, the natural environment. Totally cut off from a life of instinct and physicality and survival. Just performing my little human tricks every day, keeping the trainers happy and the visitors amused. It all seems so trivial at times."
She was thinking out loud. Trying, as always, to put Vaughn a little at ease, to comfort herself, now and then, with the sound of voices in the long, silent voids of their confinement together. Vaughn was quiet beside her.
He wanted to talk with her. He so rarely sat down with someone and simply talked. Exchanging thoughts. It was always band business. Or schmoozing. Those dreaded superficial interactions that were all small talk and fake smiles. He wanted to say, yes, he had thought those same thoughts, that he too sometimes felt that he was a creature bred in captivity and forced to live in conditions utterly inimical to his nature. But the lies and the omissions were an impenetrable force field between them. He wanted it gone.
X-X-X-X
After dinner that night Devan watched as Vaughn poured himself a drink, and asked if she might have one, too.
"Sure."
Without giving it much thought he poured a measure into a second glass for her. She rose and started toward the kitchen.
"Sit down," he said in his usual manner, his voice large and soft and low all at once. "I’ll bring it to you."
She sat back down where she had been, on the floor before fire, and leaned back against the front of the couch, and a moment later he was standing over her, handing her a glass.
"What is it?"
"Whiskey on the rocks."
She tried it tentatively and winced.
"Not much of a drinker, are you?"
"No, not really."
He smiled his wan smile, then went to the kitchen and returned with a can of cola.
"Maybe like this," he said, pouring until the fizz almost overflowed the rim.
She tasted and smiled approvingly.
They sat quietly by the fire, sipping their drinks for a while. When Vaughn’s glass was empty he waited until her glass was empty too, then he took it from her and went to the kitchen to make them both fresh drinks.
"Here you are, my dear." His words were sunnier than his tone. He was half-heartedly playing at being gallant, unconsciously trying to make up for how cold he had been to her, to paint over days of dark thoughts with a fresh coat of kindness.
He handed her the whiskey and cola. She took it, and rested it, untouched, on her thigh. She felt flushed and sleepy from the first one. He took a drink, and stood for a while, looking into the fire. When he sat down on the floor again, he sat a little nearer to her than he had been before, with his body turned toward her, his elbow resting between them on the seat of the sofa. He was so close. A twinge of fear fluttered in her chest, and an aching arousal followed the pulsing throbs radiating from her chest, out to her limbs. She glanced at his arm, surprised, as always, at its size, at how muscular it seemed. The smooth milky whiteness of the delicate skin of his inner arm. When she glanced at his face he was looking at her and she felt embarrassed, as if he had read her thoughts. He smiled a small smile.
"I’ve never shared this cabin with anyone. I’ve always come here on my own, to be alone. But it’s nice having you here." He was weary of his own mistrust, of fighting his inclination to like this strange girl.
"I’m glad."
There was a long silence, then Vaughn spoke again.
"I suppose I’ve been lonely. I’ve put a lot of work into making myself lonely, isolating myself."
She looked at him silently, then took a drink. Suddenly it seemed like the sleepiness from the first one had dissolved.
"I sometimes feel lonely, too, in my regular life back in Seattle." She sounded wistful. Distant.
"No friends?"
"I have friends," she said.
Not many. Not real, close friends, she thought.
"No boyfriend?"
She blushed at this question that always felt it had to be leading somewhere, even when she consciously knew that it was not. She hoped that her blush was invisible by the firelight.
"No, not really."
The implication that she was lonely because she had no boyfriend felt pathetic, and after a pause she added,
"But that’s not why I feel lonely."
"Then why?"
"Well, even when you’re around people all the time, you can feel apart. I guess that’s how I feel most of the time."
"How so?"
She'd really put herself on the spot with her passing sympathetic comment. He was looking at her with patient interest, though. Could it be they were about to have an actual conversation?
"I don't know…I’m there in the room with people, but I’m still alone. Even when I talk to people, most of the time it’s as though I’m on autopilot, just saying what I’m supposed to say, and they’re doing the same, and there’s nothing real to the interaction at all."
"Sure," he said, with a soft voice and a soft smile. "I know what you mean." He was intimately, painfully familiar with the feeling she was describing.
A tiny aperture seemed to be opening in the wall between them, and Devan was nearly giddy with relief as the burden of her isolation lightened.
"Sometimes," she went on, suddenly animated, "I feel as though I connect more deeply with the characters in novels than with people I meet in real life—maybe because in novels you get to read their thoughts. In life, you never know what people are thinking."
"You mean you don’t know what I’m thinking right now?"
He arched one eyebrow, doing his best Lothario.
She flushed absolutely crimson and gave a queer little giggle. He laughed, not unkindly, amused at her reaction. He had meant to make a joke, but her odd giggle and the two drinks had warmed him. Once again he was finding himself stirred in her presence. She had an innocent quality that was both alluring and perplexing. It had been a long time since he had been with a woman, but it had been much, much longer since he had been with a woman who had not aggressively worked to seduce him. This retiring girl who blushed so easily, who seemed to like being near him but never made a suggestive gesture or remark was, for him, a novelty. He had not wanted anyone in such a long time. But yes. He would finally admit it to himself. He wanted her. He kept at bay the creeping realization that he was feeling more than the torturous lust that had been building since he'd found her there two nights ago. After months of celibacy, it was high time he got laid, he told himself. He was almost past caring that he might be giving her just what she'd come for.
He was leaning in toward her, and she had the feeling he was going to kiss her. She felt a little stab of excitement—half fear, have arousal. She could not understand it, but she wanted his kiss.. She was surprised to feel that creeping warmth of desire spreading through her, stirred by her simple proximity to this man, by the mere thought that he might touch her, that his lips might brush against hers. She had never experienced arousal this way before. Her desire for this man she feared, who she did not even know, made no sense to her. But then nothing had made sense since the day Conrad had taken her from her apartment. This strange moment—the unfamiliar buzzing warmth of the alcohol, the arousing nearness of Vaughn, her increasing willingness to give in to whatever strange impulse was drawing her to him, seemed to fit with her strange time out of time there in that forest.
They went on talking, very softly. Moment by moment he seemed somehow nearer and nearer. He smiled a little, now and then, as they talked, and that smile, which she had seen so rarely, made her feel soft and almost giddy. Now his eyes, dark but flashing like polished metal, seemed suddenly full of life and warmth and seemed to be seeking something in her.
He was being kind. Funny. Seductive, even if he didn't intend to be. And his attentions had her warm and soft. And maybe the drinks made it feel like it made sense. But she was still afraid. And her fear stoked her soft warmth to yearning heat. He could do anything to her; the thought drove a hot ache to her groin. Conrad had been right about her—the fleeting thought stung her before she drove it away.
A silence fell between them, and after a moment she watched as he unbent that marble arm, as his hand came slowly toward her. Then she felt him gently caressing her cheek, and this small gesture, this innocent touch did her heart sudden, delicious violence. She felt her blood swell in her veins, pounding her pulse points with staccato bursts. Suddenly it was hard for her to breathe evenly and she struggled not to let him hear her racing breath as he stroked her hair, then drew his hand down her neck, across her collarbone, and down her arm. A dull ache began to throb at the center of her.
His hand lingered on hers, toying teasingly her delicate fingers. He wasn't sure if he was caving in to her, or attempting the seduction of an innocent woman he'd practically assaulted two days earlier. If she wanted him, he thought, she would touch him back.
She, spinning in a turbulent confluence of arousal and fear, unsure of what to do, rested her hand on his thigh, just by his knee.
Encouraged by her small gesture he took her drink from her and set their glasses on the hearth. Leaning in very close to her, he ran his palms up her neck until his fingers were submerged in her hair. He gave her one small kiss on her cheek, pulled back a little and looked at her. She was looking at him intently. She did not pull back. He kissed her other cheek. He kissed the corners of her mouth. She stayed still, eyes on him, her head cradled in his large hands.
It wasn't what he'd expected. He felt very warm and soft, and looking at her face that was like some kind of invitation, so open, so beckoning, he smiled a very warm soft smile. He drew one hand back from her face and ran his fingers over the scratchy stubble along his jaw, remembering that he had not shaved since arriving at the cabin.
"Is my beard too rough?"
It was an intimate whisper. For the first time they looked at each other with tender affection, mirroring each other’s gentle smiles.
"No."
Then he kissed her fully, very softly, long and deep. She was surprised by the power of that kiss. And she was surprised to find her whole body reacting to his touch and his mouth when, just days before she had imagined she would never again want a man touching her. But now her stomach was fluttering, her knees and crotch tingling. She let out a tiny moan that surprised her and inspired him. He was being so careful, every nerve attuned to her reaction, anxious that he had misread her signals, that he was taking advantage of her being stranded there with him. But he felt her chest swelling and dipping with excited breath, felt her trembling in his hands, and that little moan sent electricity shooting from his gut into every extremity.
As he went on kissing her, his fingers sunk deep in the warmth of her tangling hair, her body, her sex began to feel strangely like it had those few times she had been touched, though he was not touching her that way. She neither understood nor questioned the aching yearning she was feeling—a physical need to be close to him, to feel the warmth and flesh of him. Her heart’s vital beats echoed between her legs, and she imagined he could feel it, too, like the reverberations from a bass drum.
Still they were kissing as his hands slid from her hair, her scalp tingling with the memory of his fingers that were now lightly trailing over new terrain, stirring nerves along neck and shoulders, over back, bottom, thigh, the skin coming joyously awake everywhere his hand passed. Somewhere under all the pleasure and longing she wondered that she felt no longer felt any fear and thought fleetingly that he seemed to be taking nothing but only giving and understood that this was why.
She did not know what to do with her hands but they seemed to float away from her will, drifting to his dark hair, finding it wonderfully soft, floating down to his face, holding his jaw, unshaven and rough, winding around his neck, down onto those broad shoulders, harder than she knew flesh could be, muscles offering gentle curves to mold her palms against. She was drawing him to her, or drawing herself to him, that wonderful ache guiding her to seek him as she felt his hand curve around her thigh, just above the knee, and gently draw her leg across him, his other arm encircling her back, pulling her against him. Still locked in their melting kiss she found herself straddling him, their mouths, their chests, their bellies pressed together, his hips pressed between her thighs. The intimacy of their embrace startled her, warmed her, made that tender ache throb with new urgency.
He felt her, warm and trembling against him—this same girl who had trembled beneath him when he'd pinned her in the mud, the same girl he'd been tormenting in his endless fantasies ever since. Somehow all his dark desire was mingling with tender arousal as he held her now.
Emerging momentarily from their kiss he held her a little from him. Her black hair was framed by a delicate halo of firelight, her face almost hidden from him. But he heard her little panting breaths, felt her body against his and under his hands, quivering provocatively with what he felt sure was arousal and desire for more. Drawing her more firmly to him with an arm about her waist he teased her tresses again as he kissed in fleeting tiny touches over her forehead, eyes, cheeks and chin before letting her hear his hot, eager breath in her ear. He nuzzled her neck, sinking his nose into the fragrant warm depths of her hair, then re-emerged, licking, mouthing and gently biting her earlobe, eliciting another maddening little moan from her and causing her to tremble delightfully in his arms. He went to work on her neck.
Under his mouth, wrapped in his embrace, pressed to his body she felt bewildered and needful and strangely elated, warm and small and seeking. And now, she not only felt his hands caressing her hair and tickling teasingly over her back and sliding warmly over her thigh and ass; she not only felt the tickle of his beard against her neck and jaw as he kissed and licked her throat in a way that made that ache between her legs swell and sharpen; now she felt him there, between her parted thighs. His hardness bulging against his jeans and pressing against her sex, barely hidden from the sensation by the soft, yielding fabric of the sweat pants she was wearing.
The sensation of her sex pressed to his was wondrous. But the thought of it, of his hard prick seeking her through their clothes, made her tummy flutter with a fresh surge of excitement and suddenly she felt she had crested that hill and now she was hurtling inevitably down toward that delicious obliterating crash.
She was suddenly frightened to feel so much with him this way when he was only kissing her and she tried to pull a little away, not from his arms but just to put a safe little millimeter of space between her aching sex and his hardness. But his legs were bent, his knees high, the steep incline of his thighs making it difficult to raise herself and as she eased back he drew his arms closer around her, pulling her firmly to him once more and her aching, seeking cunt pressed against that wonderful, dangerous bulge once more and she whimpered softly before she could silence herself.
He, feeling her excitement, hearing her sweet little whimper, sank excitedly into the other side of her neck, tonguing and licking and sucking and sighing softly in answer to her sighs and when he felt her push herself away a bit he sensed that she was resisting her own pleasure the way people do when it is too wonderful to bear and he pulled her hard to him once more, bringing her neck to his lips with one hand and with the other caressing the lovely roundness of her ass, clutching her desperately to him, longing to hear another of her little moans, her shy whimpers.
She felt she could not escape and really she did not want to and as his arms drew her against him and as he drove chills through her whole body with his mouth on her throat and behind her ear she let that hard bulge at his groin press into her between her parted thighs. Even as he kissed and caressed her she felt herself flush with embarrassment, but then his hands were both on her ass, caressing and drawing her against him and she went with his movement, the tiniest bit closer, the tiniest drift away, just a little up, a tiny hint down, and her whole belly felt full and heavy with promised pleasure and she was panting in panicked ecstasy as the ache built and swelled and rose up in her and made her whole body still and stiff in anticipation and then that heavy aching promise burst and pleasure flooded up her body and down her limbs like a torrent of warm rushing water and she froze, her nerves listening to this amazing song as the refrain echoed all through her and she let out a whimper, different from the others, kind of lilting and sobbing but still so soft and then she went limp in his arms and he drew her gently against him and he was very still as he held her.
He knew. He knew what had happened to her. She was sure. He had stopped everything at the very moment when his caresses would have become a distraction from pleasure rather than an instrument of it. She was mortified. He had not even touched her…there. What must he think of her, rubbing against him until she came when all they had done was kissed? A flush of unendurable shame burned her cheeks.
"You’re wonderful," he sighed out in a moment of warm, uncensored sincerity, surprising himself, utterly caught up in the sweet excitement of her shyness.
The gentle, open tenor of his voice half effaced her worry. He slowly let her out of his cocooning embrace and gazed down at her and he looked so sweetly happy she almost felt as though she had done nothing wrong. She was trembling with her ebbing tide of ecstasy and waning anxiety that she had done something vulgar and ridiculous. He smiled softly and with that tender look melted the last of her reservation.
He did not pull her to him again but leaned a little forward to seek a small kiss. With her lax body she felt his slightly tremulous strain and desire swelled in her once more. She answered his questioning kiss with an ardent one full of desire and promise. He rose above their kiss for a moment to caress her with another tender smile and to pull a cushion down from the sofa. Setting it on the floor beside them he leaned her back, laying her softly down, wrapping an arm around her waist, holding her tight against him.
"Comfortable?" he asked.
She smiled and nodded her reply.
When he kissed her again, it was a different kiss. He was making love to her with his mouth. He was fucking her with his tongue. He was very experienced, very good at this. He knew exactly what he was doing. This kiss had made many women desperate to get him inside them, and, with a few, once inside it had made it impossible for them not to cum.
He heard her breathing change, felt her hot body quivering beneath his.
She felt this kiss, this fucking kiss. She felt his powerful thigh pressed between her legs, felt him on top of her, his body pressed lightly to hers. She felt his desire and it aroused her already sated body to new yearning. But something darker was taking shape there under her pleasure and her desire for more. That fucking kiss of his felt so penetrating, like he had taken possession of her and she felt irrefutably that she was losing herself as he was taking her over. Then there was a shift and instead of one powerful thigh between her legs there were two, slowly, irresistibly pushing her thighs open and then his hips were between her legs again, his hardness pressed to her once more.
Vaughn, stinging everywhere with lashing desire, felt her excitement but nothing else. Though he had sensed her cum, though his body was clamoring for release, what he wanted most in this moment was to feel her trembling on the brink of climax once more, hear her tiny moan again, hold her as she quivered in ecstasy.
Still kissing her deep and urgent his left hand sought her right, found it, folded it in its warmth, brought it to the floor by the cushion cradling her head. Though the lengths of their bodies twined and pressed together, though their mouths were eagerly seeking and caressing, he wanted this other closeness, her hand in his, their palms pressed tight, fingers learning one another as they folded and unfolded.
His right hand caressed this strange, wonderful girl who, at this moment, was somehow making his organs—the soft places in his chest and belly—ache as sweetly as his body ached. His fingers dove and swam in the warm currents of her hair, trembled down her smooth hot cheek, his thumb traced the soft curves of her jaw, his palm slid gently over throat, neck, and shoulders.
He felt the soft slope of her breast. God, her breasts, he had been noticing them, curving delicious and swaying tempting beneath his t-shirt, imagining seeing them bare, imagining them smooth and soft and warm under his hands, imagining teasing her nipples stiff. Normally, now, he would have caressed her breasts. With any other woman. But she had been so shy, so afraid of baring that part of her body, that without really thinking about it he instinctively avoided touching her there now. Instead he slipped his hand light and warm down her side, feeling tiny undulations of ribs and gaps, incurve of waist, outcurve of hip. His fingers slid under her thigh, caressing, massaging, drawing it up, pressing it to his hip as his fingers glided down, behind, stroking her thigh, down toward the floor, toward her center, that part of her that had thrilled against him moments ago.
He lifted himself a little, hovering over her, touching down at toes, knees and elbow, holding tight her small hand. His other hand came between them. He had made her cum, but he had not touched her yet. He ached to touch her. So, so lightly he let his four fingertips touch down between her thighs, drift back, over the hot humid fabric over her hidden hollow, and with sweetest softness his hand cupped her sex.
She was softly whimpering, almost sobbing with needful desire when his hand touched down on her. It moved so lightly, so gently, stirring nerves still dazzling from her earlier climax, that her hips ached to rise up against his hand, seeking deeper contact. But now, with her thighs pressed open, with her hand held sweetly but firmly to the floor, his hand on her sex, that darker shape in her mind cast a longer shadow over her pleasure. Sweet surrender dissolved in vulnerability, excitement began to smother under sudden fear.
His hand drifted away from her sex, up, and sought the hot bare flesh at her waist. So smooth and soft he thought of warm butter and wondered would his hand sink into her, but it just glided over the taut quivering smoothness, finding navel, gentle slopes at hip bones and ribs and ribs and hip bones. And the teasing, welcoming little gap inviting his hand under the tiny canopy formed by fabric stretching between hip bones and opening where belly did not rise to close the entrance. His hand slipped under the waistband of her sweats, over his boxers, between her thighs, finding the fabric over her sex warm and damp, finding the contours of her body more readable than they had been through the sweats—the firm swelling of her mound, the smaller, softer curves lower down, the enticing valley and hills of her bottom. He did not linger. He crossed the terrain just twice—down and back again, slipping out past the waist band and gently in again, this time beneath the shorts, seeking hot bare flesh.
Her hand, her free hand flashed down and clasped his wrist. His hand remained, soft and warm, pressed to her belly, low and warm and bordering the terrain he sought. She felt his wrist, thick and strong in the weak circle of her fingers. She felt her other hand, clasped tight in his, pressed to the floor. His hips holding her thighs open. His hand on her bare belly. A thousand images that were not images but only hints of memories bombarded her brain, cooling every hot place, darkening every place of light.
She panicked.
Vaughn was no longer there for her. She just felt that there was a man on her, a powerful body overwhelming hers, that there was a man in her mouth, a threatening hardness pressing against her.
He felt her freeze beneath him, he felt her go cold, rigid. He stopped his kiss, lifting himself up to look down on her. Her face was like a statue, white and stony, and her eyes were dark and panicked, and looked insane with the firelight flickering on them.
"Stop," she whispered. "Please stop."
"I have, I’ve stopped."
He sat up and pulled her up into a sitting position.
"I’ve stopped," he repeated. "I didn’t mean to scare you. I wasn’t going to hurt you," he whispered, feeling at once guilty and exasperated. He wanted to embrace her, but was afraid to.
"I know…"
She looked at him, ready to flee in embarrassment. But he was looking at her so kindly, his face so open. She wanted to explain.
"…I’m sorry," she whispered.
"Don’t apologize." His spare words were gentle.
"I’m…not very experienced."
"Okay."
He waited, knowing she had more to tell him.
"I feel silly telling you this."
"Why?"
"It seems childish. But I want to explain why…I don’t know why I got so frightened."
She did know. Why had she said she did not?
"I’ve never really been with a man before."
He was stunned. He tried to strip the surprise from his voice.
"You’re a virgin?"
A pause.
"Yes."
Her voice cracked. She was afraid she was going to cry.
"I’m sorry I came on so strong. If I’d known, I would have been different with you."
A thought occurred to him suddenly, pricking him with panic.
"Devan, how old are you?"
"Nineteen."
So young. It had not occurred to him that she could be so young. So, so much younger than he. Maybe he would have guessed, by her face, by her body, except for her eyes. And the fog of melancholy that always lingered over her which he associated with later years.
He saw that she was upset, maybe even about to cry. He could not have guessed why, though, and thought it was only something between them—hell, what did they know about each other? Nothing. Maybe she was saving herself for marriage. Maybe she had wanted it, then changed her mind. Maybe she had been afraid he would not stop. He smiled a soft sweet smile and tentatively stretched a hand toward her and, when she did not startle or pull back, gently caressed her cheek.
"Devan, it’s alright. I don’t want to do anything you don’t want to do. We can just sit here by the fire and talk."
His gentle smile, his soft words were so sweet she felt a new, different ache somewhere above that other, yearning ache. The hand caressing her cheek slipped lightly to the back of her neck and, rather gingerly, it seemed to her, he pulled her to him in a cautious embrace. Why was this happening? She wanted him. She wanted to feel that delicious surrender again. She wanted to make him feel it. She wanted his hands to erase the ugly memory of other hands, she wanted to see his face, hear his voice, smell his body as she gave herself up to pleasure.
But that cold dead panic was still with her. She could not be touched. She was fighting to hold back her tears, but she felt them welling up perilously high, and when she could not refrain any longer from blinking they slipped down her cheek. She let him hold her for a little while, stopping her tears by force of will and trying to furtively dry them against his shirt as he held her, then broke the circle of his arms, hastily said goodnight, and went to bed, never letting him see her tears.
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A CONVENIENT STOPPING POINT, FOR READERS WITH LIMITED TIME
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He felt unbearably sad to see her slip down the hall and into the little bedroom. It had been so long since he had felt more than base physical desire for a woman, since he had yearned just to hold someone, to be in their presence. She had wanted him, he had felt it, but he had scared her. That had never happened to him before. He had been a very cautious and infrequent lover as an adolescent, and after becoming famous, a "rock star," women did not fight him off. Quite the opposite.
He was so hard he ached, and he thought of going into his room to jerk off. He decided against. He wanted to keep this physical need to go with his emotional need. It was a bittersweet way of keeping her with him. He sat down in front of the fire, thinking about this strange girl who had appeared so mysteriously, about their impossibly bizarre initial encounter, and how it had warped their relations. Wishing they could have met in the city, under normal circumstances, he realized that such a thing was impossible. He never met people under normal circumstances. He never let people near him.
Feeling nostalgia come over him in a wave, he began thinking of his ex-wife. They had met under normal circumstances. He had not held a gun on her. He had not tackled her in a field. Normal. They had met at a party, at the home of a mutual friend. A few drinks, some laughter. Phone numbers exchanged. A few dates, then to bed. Then they were a couple. Then they married. Then they divorced.
Restless, he rose and wandered over to the little desk by the front door, where he kept his remembrances. He opened the wide, shallow center drawer and stood there, looking down at the envelopes scattered over the bottom. They had been banded together, he was sure, in packets. Before, during, after. Her letters to him. Before their marriage. During their marriage. After their divorce. Had she gone through his things? Had she read his letters?
He felt like he was going insane. They were past this. He had finally let his guard down. She had made him trust her. Like her. Care for her. Want her.
But she had. She had gone through his letters. She knew. She knew what had happened to him. He had never told anyone. No one but his wife. And now she knew. This strange woman. Who would be going back to Seattle. She could tell people. The press. Maybe she had even taken a letter for evidence.
He snatched up all the letters, every last envelope in the drawer. Then he stomped into the kitchen, grabbed the whiskey bottle and a glass, and took everything with him into his room. Drinking glass after glass of warm booze he put the letters into chronological order. Then he skimmed them, trying by memory to be sure they were all there. They seemed to be, but he might be mistaken. At least they were her letters, not his. His were the dangerous ones. He could never tell her, face-to-face, what had happened, so he’d written her. Now he regretted it. Never put anything in writing, he thought. Never. Like that old axiom, never say anything that you wouldn’t want to be quoted on in print. Then, with a sinking feeling, he remembered. His journal. The most damning evidence of all. Everything recounted in disgusting detail. Where had he left it?
Stumbling with fury and booze he began searching—his nightstand drawers, the dresser, the closet. Back out into the living room. Back to the desk. Nothing. The storage closet? No. Not the bookshelf either. Not in the kitchen drawers, but that was a ridiculous place to look anyway. He turned, looking down the length of the cabin, at the closed door of the little bedroom.
X-X-X-X
The next morning he awoke feeling positively evil. The whiskey had ravaged his head, and she had violated his sanctuary. The cabin, his one little spot of peace on this shitty earth. His letters. His journal. He got four aspirin from the bathroom, then gulped them down with a full glass of water in the kitchen. When she got up she opened the door to the little bedroom, flashed across the hall and into the bathroom for a couple of minutes, then emerged, walking over to him where he stood leaning against the counter, arms crossed over his chest.
She looked up at him, smiling sheepishly, and said "Morning."
"Good morning," he pronounced dryly.
"You look a bit rough," she said tenderly. She reached up and lightly touched his cheek. He did not move. He looked grave.
She had hoped that he would receive her a little more warmly this morning, though she had feared that he would be angry about the night before. He could not possibly know what she had been through, what she was going through. So her behavior was strange. She knew it. She decided to give him his space.
"I think I’ll go for a walk. I’ll see you a little later." She tried to sound cheery, but heard how forced her tone was.
He said nothing as she opened the front door, walked through it, and closed it behind her. After a few minutes he turned to look out the window, and saw her slipping into the shadows of the trees. He was shaking. Seeing her standing there before him, this girl he had somehow come to adore over the course of a few days, who had been in his arms the night before, filling him with the most desperate longing he could remember ever having felt, he half wanted to embrace her. And yet, she had convinced him to forgive this ridiculous story of being lost in the woods, she had played the victim, tricking him into pitying her, trusting her. And she had read his letters. The night before was probably, he reasoned, another ploy to keep him trusting her, to make him trust her more, let his guard down. He had to find the journal.
He turned from the window and looked toward the open door of the little bedroom. With a determined step he walked the length of the cabin and entered her room. The nightstand drawers were all empty. The dresser had nothing in it but a few articles of clothing. The closet. The pack was there, still loaded up with food, ready for her to take flight. Dragging it out he ripped it open and dumped its contents on the floor. Cans went rolling, the silverware clattered onto the ground. The same two novels thumped onto the wooden floorboards. No journal. Haphazardly he jammed everything back into the pack and stuffed it back in the closet. Exasperated, he went to the bed. Leaning over, he snatched up the two pillows. A gun. Under the pillow like in a tragic news story. He picked it up and examined it. He recognized it. His gun. He placed the pillows back, then stomped back to his room, the barrel of the gun clutched in his clenched fist.
He was convinced she had it. That she had read it. That she knew those things about him. Yet she seemed so different from those others, those predators. Pacing in his room, he went over in his mind every moment he had spent with the strange girl.
His thought of their kiss the night before aroused him again. He could not believe, in his angry state, the power of the longing he was feeling for her. He wanted to purge himself of her, get her out of his system. Bitterly, suddenly he yanked his belt open, unzipped his fly and took out his cock. Seething with rage and unfulfilled desire he sat on the edge of his bed and furiously began jerking off. He was picturing her, her mouth, her full breasts that were never in a bra. He thought of how she had tasted the night before when he had been on top of her, hard and pressed up against her, and how he had thought then that they were about to fuck. He imagined pulling her sweats down, over her hip bones, exposing the smooth flesh of her thighs, then off completely. He imagined what her pussy might look like, how she would smell and taste, and how it would feel to push himself inside her, to hear that tiny moan again.
Something broke his reverie. He looked up, his attention drawn instinctively to the door that he had slammed shut, but which must have drifted open, as it sometimes did when the latch failed to catch. She was standing there. Looking at him. She had been watching him. He stood, rage pounding through every vein and capillary. She made a little noise, a gasp, turned, and ran. He felt suddenly cold, self-possessed. He put himself away, zipped up his fly, buckled his belt.
Then he charged after her. She had left the front door open. He ran outside and scanned the clearing. She was just about a third of the way across, running for the woods. He took off after her. He knew he could catch her. He just ran as hard as he could, knowing he was faster, knowing he would have her in just a few moments. When she reached the edge of the woods and charged into the shadows, he did not lose faith.
When he reached the place where she had entered the woods he stopped. Over the sound of his own hard breathing he could hear the leaves bursting apart under her feet, the twigs snapping in her path. He turned to track her, running full speed, slaloming between the trees. He was gaining. He could see her. Within seconds he had her. He caught her by the arm, spun her around, pressed her up against a tree. Silently he stared at her, roiling with hatred.
"I didn’t mean to…" she gasped.
They were both panting.
"Shut up."
"Vaughn, listen. I’m sorry, it was an accident, I was just passing by, going to my room, and—"
"Shut up!" he shouted. Then more quietly, in a voice straining to be restrained, "I’m tired of your lies. I don’t want to hear you anymore. Come on."
He jerked her by the arm, pulling her from the tree, dragging her stumblingly along behind him.
"Vaughn…"
He said nothing, but quickened his pace, tightened his grip.
"Vaughn!" she cried, increasingly terrified.
He dragged her back to the cabin, up the steps to the front door, down the hall and into her room. He threw her down on her bed. She sat up. Standing in front of her, he unbuckled his belt and unzipped his pants. Mounting the bed he straddled her hips. Sobbing, she tried to hit him in the face, in the stomach. He grabbed her wrists and pushed her arms up over her head.
"Grab the bars on the headboard."
She did nothing.
"Grab them, and hold on to them, or I’ll fucking tie you up."
Terrified at the idea of being tied up, convinced she could not fight him, she gripped the cold iron bars.
"If you fucking let go of those bars for one fucking second, I’ll tie you up, and I may never untie you. You hear me?"
He leaned over, putting his lips against her ear.
"You come here. You break into my house. You read my letters—"
"No—Vaughn—"
"Shut up! If you say one more word, I’m going to stuff a sock in that mouth and tape it shut! You read my letters. You steal my diary. You seduce me."
He laughed a tight, bitter laugh.
"You actually made me pity you. Then you spy on me—you spy on me while I’m fucking jacking off."
Then, calculating his words to frighten,
"Know what I was thinking about while I was jerking off? Hmmm? I was thinking about fucking you."
His voice was a growl. Not human. He felt ready to kill. Ready to cry. In his seething fury he was almost capable of raping her. But her pale tear-streaked face, all the moments she had seemed to fear him, stopped him, in spite of his doubts that it had all been an act.
But he would punish her.
Wanting to terrify her, knowing what would go through her mind, he stripped off his heavy flannel shirt. Then the white t-shirt he had on underneath. His largeness, vague under the thick clothes he always wore, was revealed as hard, defined muscle. He spread open the fly of his jeans, revealing the thick bulge that strained the white ribbed fabric of his underwear. He massaged himself, pushing his hand down into his jeans and bringing it back to cuff the uppermost part of his erection. Her eyes closed, her fists went white around the bars of the bedstead.
"You wanted to see this. Open your eyes and watch."
She opened her eyes. She watched as he pulled his jeans and underwear down, taking hold of the waist band, uncovering his erection. Frightened, embarrassed, she instinctively closed her eyes again.
"If you don’t watch this, I’ll find another way to get off. Open your fucking eyes."
When she obeyed him, looked at him, he began stroking himself. With the force of a tornado rage, anguish and excitement swirled inside of him. After his unsatisfied longing from the night before and his interrupted masturbation session a short time earlier, frustrated lust had built up to the bursting point. Violently he beat off. The sight of her watching him tweaked his arousal to a higher pitch. As his excitement rose his hatred ebbed. He forgot, almost, that he was forcing her to watch.
She, terrified at first that he was about to rape her, then mortified to be seen looking at his nakedness, watching him touch himself, had almost forgotten her alarm. It was strange. As she realized that he was not going to rape her, that he was masturbating in front of her, the darkest, sharpest part of her fear went gray and smooth. Then the sight of him before her, on top of her, his cock in his hand, his firm belly and broad chest, shoulder muscles flexing, his face reflecting his excitement, his eyes locked on hers, roused her. Her breathing quickened, not with anxiety but with anticipation, awaiting his moment of release.
He clutched the hem of her t-shirt in his fist. She almost let go of the bars, desperate not to let him bare her breasts. He pushed her shirt up, baring her belly, her ribs, just up to the first hint of the soft swellings. She watched his frenzied stroking, then he stopped. Then he drew his hand slowly up the length of his hardness, groaned, and released his milky warm orgasm in surprising spurts onto her stomach.
Inexperienced as she was, she knew perfectly well how these things worked. How men came. Yet she was somehow astonished to now have his cum, this stuff that came from inside of him, warm and wet on her skin. Still holding the headboard she lifted her head to look at the pattern of splatter on her belly.
"Don’t move," he said, getting off of her, off the bed, disappearing into the bathroom.
He came back, tucked away and zipped up, his belt open and hanging at his hips, carrying a wet towel. Bowed, contrite, he sat on the side of the bed. She still held the iron bars. He had not meant for her to stay like that, when he had told her not to move—he had only worried about the mess. Already succumbing to agonies of remorse he took hold of one wrist, guiding her arm down to her side, then the other. He washed her stomach clean with the towel he had wet with warm water, then pulled the hem of her shirt down, covering her up. He could not look at her. He started to stand. She grabbed his wrist.
"Vaughn."
Her voice was soft and sad.
"Don’t."
His voice was tight. He was on the verge of crying. He yanked his wrist from her grasp, stood, collected the shirts he had thrown to the floor, and left, closing her door as he went.
She heard his steps in the hall, then his door being closed. The sympathy she had somehow felt as she saw his shamed posture, his hurt eyes, heard the misery in his voice evaporated once he was out of her sight and she was left in silence. He’s fucking nuts, she thought. So am I. Otherwise I’d have run by now.
He, fearing that his irrational cruelty would drive her from the safety of the cabin to the perils of the woods, was listening carefully for sounds of escape, and would not have let her go.
Tired of her tedious, banal despondency, she decided to do the one thing that somehow always seemed to make her feel better, whenever she was overwhelmed by any emotion—she decided to write. In the past, since adolescence, writing had been a release for the unbearable pressure of sexual need she had felt mounting within her, but which she knew could receive no outlet except on the page. And when she had arrived here, tormented by her memories of captivity and her conflicted feelings about all that had been done to her, and all the things he had made her feel, only by writing her story had she reclaimed some peace of mind.
She pulled her diary from its hiding place between the mattress and box spring. Taking the pen from the nightstand, she curled up in the chair by the window. She thought for a long time, sorting through the schizophrenic sentiments that seemed endemic to her now. The fear, the hate, the feeling of betrayal instilled in her by his violence that day, tempered, slightly, by the tender feelings for him she had felt budding within her over the last few days, and her sense that he was living with demons of his own.
She recalled with a fresh pang of fear the accusations he had leveled at her. The letters. The journal. The spying. She understood how it had appeared to him, looking up to see her peering through the narrow opening of the door, when from her perspective, walking past to enter her own room, her gaze had simply been drawn, unconsciously, to the movement she had perceived in her peripheral vision. She had not even registered what she had seen until he stopped, and she read the look on his face. In had been a fateful accident. She turned her thoughts to the letters he had mentioned. She remembered, after a few moments, the letters she had seen in the little desk. She had flipped through them, looking for an address, hoping for a clue to her whereabouts. If he had noticed they had been disturbed, this could account for his belief that she had read them.
Then, thinking about his journal, the journal he believed she had stolen, she looked down at the diary in her hands. She thought of it as hers, intimately hers, made so by the fact that she had recorded within it her most painful, shameful secrets, and that by taking them from her it had saved her. But she had come here with nothing. Like the clothes she was wearing, and the chair she was sitting on, and like the pens she had used to write, the little notebook, the paper and the cardboard and the wire spiral that bound them were his. She had thought of it as a material item, like the can opener and the backpack. But she realized that this book in her hands might be the thing he had most feared having taken.
She opened the notebook, as she always had, starting from the front cover. The cover with the word "journal" embossed upon it. Turning the pages she looked at her own writing, the story of her abduction. Her reflections as she had struggled to make sense of what she had been through. Her entries after Vaughn had arrived. Then she closed the book, turned it over, and opened it from the other cover. And there, on the first page, was writing that was not hers. His writing. Opening the book from the middle and fanning the pages through her fingers, back to his first entry, she saw that almost half the pages were covered in his writing. How could she have been writing in there all those days, never noticing the writing at the other end of the notebook?
She felt nauseous, knowing that she could never explain to Vaughn what had happened in a way that would make him believe her. The thing he feared so much was true. She had his journal. He would never believe she had not read it. And then, looking down at the angry scrawl he had scratched onto the pages in black ink, she considered reading it. It was a violation. It was one of the things she hated Conrad for. It was one of the things, already believing her to have done it, for which Vaughn hated her. But it would tell her, she hoped, whether Vaughn was simply an imbalanced case with a rock star complex and a tendency toward violence, or if some truly frightening experience made him return, again and again, to his belief that she had come there to do him harm. Then she thought of what he had done to her that afternoon. On the bed. That thought wiped all sense of obligation from her mind. She began to read
Because of the length, readers should not feel *obliged* to read it through to the end.
ADDED NOTE: I have marked the text at around 5900 words, for those with limited time. It's a convenient pause in the action, at about 60% of the text.
pure
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Varian says,
Hi everyone. I'd love any feedback, but I do have a few specific concerns and questions:
1. On characterization: is Devan too wimpy? Is Vaughn too schizophrenic? Are they sympathetic and interesting?
2. As they come together, does their attraction seem believable?
3. Pacing: in chapter 4 (the next chapter) we learn Vaughn's dirty secret, followed by Devan's, and also starting with chapter 4, the rest of the novel is essentially a non-stop erotic cabaret. But have I dragged you too far too slowly?
4. Is the first sex scene too minutely detailed?
I have to apologize—the first few paragraphs are rather rough—and there are a few other rough patches near the mid-point, as I just got through an extensive and somewhat hurried revision.
Thanks in advance for all your comments and suggestions!
-Varian
Varian's summary of chs 1-2
Summaries of chapters 1 and 2:
Ch. 01
Devan is lost in the woods, running from a wicked fellow named Conrad who's done something sexual to her (not a violent rape). Two dream sequences reveal that Devan is both terrified of and drawn to Conrad, and she's guilty about her conflicting feelings.
Devan finds an unoccupied cabin, takes up residence, and a couple days later the owner of the cabin, Vaughn, turns up, seeing her as an intruder.
Ch. 02
Vaughn is so suspicious he's borderline brutal with her. It's revealed that he's a celebrity and fears she's some kind of stalker. Because of the remoteness of the cabin, though, she can't leave, and they make a tenuous truce. Throughout the chapter each is fearful of the other, but both are having dark sexual fantasies involving the other, as well. Vaughn's are particularly violent.
THE FANTASTIC ADVENTURES OF CHANGED GIRL
chapter 3: Cabin Fever
As he cleaned up he fell into his usual post-orgasmic dolor. Fuck. These twisted fantasies had to stop. It horrified him to think that this was the kind of person he seemed to have become–a man whose dick got hard thinking of scaring and hurting someone that way.
He shuddered. It terrified him to know that there in his remote cabin the only thing protecting Devan from him was his own sense of shame, and his will. He no longer trusted himself.
Outside his fantasies, in their real interactions, he was as careful and as gentle as he had always been, all his life, with everyone. Perhaps more so, because of the guilt. Vaughn kept carefully to himself, telling himself he wanted to put Devan at ease, denying that he was as uncomfortable in her presence as she was in his.
X-X-X-X
On the third day, after lunch, Vaughn set off for a walk in the woods. Anything to get him out of the cabin and away from her. As he left he passed her, sitting on the back porch, nose buried among the yellowing pages of Dostoyevsky's Siberia.
In spite of his care in all of his dealings with her, he was still plagued by dark, shameful fantasies. But there had been a shift. As he watched her, reading, sitting quietly lost in thought, seemingly deep in thought even when she did little tasks around the house, he had begun to feel an affectionate curiosity. Less and less did his darker fantasies force him into the seclusion of his bedroom. But more and more he found himself thinking of her. Not as object. Not as scapegoat. Her, Devan, this person he was trapped with. Wondering who she was, wondering what she was thinking when she smiled as her eyes moved over a passage in the book in her hands. His fantasies which had at first been fueled by thoughts of cruelty and coercion dissolved into hazy images of twining fingers, warm embraces, tender kisses. With this change a new anxiety plagued Vaughn. As his terror at his own dark imagination waned, his fear that he was succumbing to some duplicitous plan of hers grew.
X-X-X-X
Devan closed the book and sealed Raskilnikov's fate. She wandered back inside and stared for a few minutes at the rows of spines on the bookshelf, then settled on Camus. The dark cabin depressed her and she went back outside to enjoy the crisp air and bright sun.
The strain of the tension between them was a burden on Devan, and she was miserable with the thought that he believed she had come with the intention of spying on him, or worse. She understood the pain of that kind of violation and to be the cause of it was unendurable. And, as the first day passed, then the second, she found this aloof, quiet, brooding man more and more intriguing. Perhaps it was because, after all she had been through, she longed so desperately for a friend. She wanted to talk. She could not believe that she found herself wanting to talk to him, this cold, suspicious recluse, when she knew that if she had gone home, among her few friends, she would have been silent. But, inexplicably, she wanted to tell him. Him specifically. And under that soft yearning for comfort and understanding was another perplexing urge—a roiling, rising need for him that she felt in the quiver at the center of her belly and in the aching heat of her body.
But he was wary and distant and they rarely spoke except when they were brought together by his stiffly polite hospitality. He prepared every meal for two and always checked with her to be sure he was making something she would want to eat. She tried to do her part by washing up after and helping out with small chores when he would let her. But on the afternoon, as he returned from a walk in the woods he came and sat down by her on the porch. The Stranger lay open on her thigh where she had set it aside and fallen into contemplation, gazing across the clearing at the bordering trees.
"I'm beginning to see a pattern in your choice of reading material," Vaughn said as he glanced from the book to her eyes, noting her far-away look. She turned away from the wall of trees before her and met his gaze.
"It is hard to get one's fill of sociopathic murderers."
She caught herself throwing an accidental glance toward the woods. With his eyes still on her she felt caught out, and tried to cover her embarrassment with chatter, her words flowing from the stream of thoughts Vaughn had interrupted when he'd joined her.
"It’s so rare for me to be in a place like this, really in nature." She paused, and then, a few moments later, picked up again with an absent-minded air. "I forget sometimes how artificial my daily environment is. Everything paved. Everything clean. Water, food, everything always there when I need it. So easy. But it’s kind of like being an animal in the zoo. Walking around on concrete, sleeping in a little shelter, being fed my three meals every day, but so separated from the real world, the natural environment. Totally cut off from a life of instinct and physicality and survival. Just performing my little human tricks every day, keeping the trainers happy and the visitors amused. It all seems so trivial at times."
She was thinking out loud. Trying, as always, to put Vaughn a little at ease, to comfort herself, now and then, with the sound of voices in the long, silent voids of their confinement together. Vaughn was quiet beside her.
He wanted to talk with her. He so rarely sat down with someone and simply talked. Exchanging thoughts. It was always band business. Or schmoozing. Those dreaded superficial interactions that were all small talk and fake smiles. He wanted to say, yes, he had thought those same thoughts, that he too sometimes felt that he was a creature bred in captivity and forced to live in conditions utterly inimical to his nature. But the lies and the omissions were an impenetrable force field between them. He wanted it gone.
X-X-X-X
After dinner that night Devan watched as Vaughn poured himself a drink, and asked if she might have one, too.
"Sure."
Without giving it much thought he poured a measure into a second glass for her. She rose and started toward the kitchen.
"Sit down," he said in his usual manner, his voice large and soft and low all at once. "I’ll bring it to you."
She sat back down where she had been, on the floor before fire, and leaned back against the front of the couch, and a moment later he was standing over her, handing her a glass.
"What is it?"
"Whiskey on the rocks."
She tried it tentatively and winced.
"Not much of a drinker, are you?"
"No, not really."
He smiled his wan smile, then went to the kitchen and returned with a can of cola.
"Maybe like this," he said, pouring until the fizz almost overflowed the rim.
She tasted and smiled approvingly.
They sat quietly by the fire, sipping their drinks for a while. When Vaughn’s glass was empty he waited until her glass was empty too, then he took it from her and went to the kitchen to make them both fresh drinks.
"Here you are, my dear." His words were sunnier than his tone. He was half-heartedly playing at being gallant, unconsciously trying to make up for how cold he had been to her, to paint over days of dark thoughts with a fresh coat of kindness.
He handed her the whiskey and cola. She took it, and rested it, untouched, on her thigh. She felt flushed and sleepy from the first one. He took a drink, and stood for a while, looking into the fire. When he sat down on the floor again, he sat a little nearer to her than he had been before, with his body turned toward her, his elbow resting between them on the seat of the sofa. He was so close. A twinge of fear fluttered in her chest, and an aching arousal followed the pulsing throbs radiating from her chest, out to her limbs. She glanced at his arm, surprised, as always, at its size, at how muscular it seemed. The smooth milky whiteness of the delicate skin of his inner arm. When she glanced at his face he was looking at her and she felt embarrassed, as if he had read her thoughts. He smiled a small smile.
"I’ve never shared this cabin with anyone. I’ve always come here on my own, to be alone. But it’s nice having you here." He was weary of his own mistrust, of fighting his inclination to like this strange girl.
"I’m glad."
There was a long silence, then Vaughn spoke again.
"I suppose I’ve been lonely. I’ve put a lot of work into making myself lonely, isolating myself."
She looked at him silently, then took a drink. Suddenly it seemed like the sleepiness from the first one had dissolved.
"I sometimes feel lonely, too, in my regular life back in Seattle." She sounded wistful. Distant.
"No friends?"
"I have friends," she said.
Not many. Not real, close friends, she thought.
"No boyfriend?"
She blushed at this question that always felt it had to be leading somewhere, even when she consciously knew that it was not. She hoped that her blush was invisible by the firelight.
"No, not really."
The implication that she was lonely because she had no boyfriend felt pathetic, and after a pause she added,
"But that’s not why I feel lonely."
"Then why?"
"Well, even when you’re around people all the time, you can feel apart. I guess that’s how I feel most of the time."
"How so?"
She'd really put herself on the spot with her passing sympathetic comment. He was looking at her with patient interest, though. Could it be they were about to have an actual conversation?
"I don't know…I’m there in the room with people, but I’m still alone. Even when I talk to people, most of the time it’s as though I’m on autopilot, just saying what I’m supposed to say, and they’re doing the same, and there’s nothing real to the interaction at all."
"Sure," he said, with a soft voice and a soft smile. "I know what you mean." He was intimately, painfully familiar with the feeling she was describing.
A tiny aperture seemed to be opening in the wall between them, and Devan was nearly giddy with relief as the burden of her isolation lightened.
"Sometimes," she went on, suddenly animated, "I feel as though I connect more deeply with the characters in novels than with people I meet in real life—maybe because in novels you get to read their thoughts. In life, you never know what people are thinking."
"You mean you don’t know what I’m thinking right now?"
He arched one eyebrow, doing his best Lothario.
She flushed absolutely crimson and gave a queer little giggle. He laughed, not unkindly, amused at her reaction. He had meant to make a joke, but her odd giggle and the two drinks had warmed him. Once again he was finding himself stirred in her presence. She had an innocent quality that was both alluring and perplexing. It had been a long time since he had been with a woman, but it had been much, much longer since he had been with a woman who had not aggressively worked to seduce him. This retiring girl who blushed so easily, who seemed to like being near him but never made a suggestive gesture or remark was, for him, a novelty. He had not wanted anyone in such a long time. But yes. He would finally admit it to himself. He wanted her. He kept at bay the creeping realization that he was feeling more than the torturous lust that had been building since he'd found her there two nights ago. After months of celibacy, it was high time he got laid, he told himself. He was almost past caring that he might be giving her just what she'd come for.
He was leaning in toward her, and she had the feeling he was going to kiss her. She felt a little stab of excitement—half fear, have arousal. She could not understand it, but she wanted his kiss.. She was surprised to feel that creeping warmth of desire spreading through her, stirred by her simple proximity to this man, by the mere thought that he might touch her, that his lips might brush against hers. She had never experienced arousal this way before. Her desire for this man she feared, who she did not even know, made no sense to her. But then nothing had made sense since the day Conrad had taken her from her apartment. This strange moment—the unfamiliar buzzing warmth of the alcohol, the arousing nearness of Vaughn, her increasing willingness to give in to whatever strange impulse was drawing her to him, seemed to fit with her strange time out of time there in that forest.
They went on talking, very softly. Moment by moment he seemed somehow nearer and nearer. He smiled a little, now and then, as they talked, and that smile, which she had seen so rarely, made her feel soft and almost giddy. Now his eyes, dark but flashing like polished metal, seemed suddenly full of life and warmth and seemed to be seeking something in her.
He was being kind. Funny. Seductive, even if he didn't intend to be. And his attentions had her warm and soft. And maybe the drinks made it feel like it made sense. But she was still afraid. And her fear stoked her soft warmth to yearning heat. He could do anything to her; the thought drove a hot ache to her groin. Conrad had been right about her—the fleeting thought stung her before she drove it away.
A silence fell between them, and after a moment she watched as he unbent that marble arm, as his hand came slowly toward her. Then she felt him gently caressing her cheek, and this small gesture, this innocent touch did her heart sudden, delicious violence. She felt her blood swell in her veins, pounding her pulse points with staccato bursts. Suddenly it was hard for her to breathe evenly and she struggled not to let him hear her racing breath as he stroked her hair, then drew his hand down her neck, across her collarbone, and down her arm. A dull ache began to throb at the center of her.
His hand lingered on hers, toying teasingly her delicate fingers. He wasn't sure if he was caving in to her, or attempting the seduction of an innocent woman he'd practically assaulted two days earlier. If she wanted him, he thought, she would touch him back.
She, spinning in a turbulent confluence of arousal and fear, unsure of what to do, rested her hand on his thigh, just by his knee.
Encouraged by her small gesture he took her drink from her and set their glasses on the hearth. Leaning in very close to her, he ran his palms up her neck until his fingers were submerged in her hair. He gave her one small kiss on her cheek, pulled back a little and looked at her. She was looking at him intently. She did not pull back. He kissed her other cheek. He kissed the corners of her mouth. She stayed still, eyes on him, her head cradled in his large hands.
It wasn't what he'd expected. He felt very warm and soft, and looking at her face that was like some kind of invitation, so open, so beckoning, he smiled a very warm soft smile. He drew one hand back from her face and ran his fingers over the scratchy stubble along his jaw, remembering that he had not shaved since arriving at the cabin.
"Is my beard too rough?"
It was an intimate whisper. For the first time they looked at each other with tender affection, mirroring each other’s gentle smiles.
"No."
Then he kissed her fully, very softly, long and deep. She was surprised by the power of that kiss. And she was surprised to find her whole body reacting to his touch and his mouth when, just days before she had imagined she would never again want a man touching her. But now her stomach was fluttering, her knees and crotch tingling. She let out a tiny moan that surprised her and inspired him. He was being so careful, every nerve attuned to her reaction, anxious that he had misread her signals, that he was taking advantage of her being stranded there with him. But he felt her chest swelling and dipping with excited breath, felt her trembling in his hands, and that little moan sent electricity shooting from his gut into every extremity.
As he went on kissing her, his fingers sunk deep in the warmth of her tangling hair, her body, her sex began to feel strangely like it had those few times she had been touched, though he was not touching her that way. She neither understood nor questioned the aching yearning she was feeling—a physical need to be close to him, to feel the warmth and flesh of him. Her heart’s vital beats echoed between her legs, and she imagined he could feel it, too, like the reverberations from a bass drum.
Still they were kissing as his hands slid from her hair, her scalp tingling with the memory of his fingers that were now lightly trailing over new terrain, stirring nerves along neck and shoulders, over back, bottom, thigh, the skin coming joyously awake everywhere his hand passed. Somewhere under all the pleasure and longing she wondered that she felt no longer felt any fear and thought fleetingly that he seemed to be taking nothing but only giving and understood that this was why.
She did not know what to do with her hands but they seemed to float away from her will, drifting to his dark hair, finding it wonderfully soft, floating down to his face, holding his jaw, unshaven and rough, winding around his neck, down onto those broad shoulders, harder than she knew flesh could be, muscles offering gentle curves to mold her palms against. She was drawing him to her, or drawing herself to him, that wonderful ache guiding her to seek him as she felt his hand curve around her thigh, just above the knee, and gently draw her leg across him, his other arm encircling her back, pulling her against him. Still locked in their melting kiss she found herself straddling him, their mouths, their chests, their bellies pressed together, his hips pressed between her thighs. The intimacy of their embrace startled her, warmed her, made that tender ache throb with new urgency.
He felt her, warm and trembling against him—this same girl who had trembled beneath him when he'd pinned her in the mud, the same girl he'd been tormenting in his endless fantasies ever since. Somehow all his dark desire was mingling with tender arousal as he held her now.
Emerging momentarily from their kiss he held her a little from him. Her black hair was framed by a delicate halo of firelight, her face almost hidden from him. But he heard her little panting breaths, felt her body against his and under his hands, quivering provocatively with what he felt sure was arousal and desire for more. Drawing her more firmly to him with an arm about her waist he teased her tresses again as he kissed in fleeting tiny touches over her forehead, eyes, cheeks and chin before letting her hear his hot, eager breath in her ear. He nuzzled her neck, sinking his nose into the fragrant warm depths of her hair, then re-emerged, licking, mouthing and gently biting her earlobe, eliciting another maddening little moan from her and causing her to tremble delightfully in his arms. He went to work on her neck.
Under his mouth, wrapped in his embrace, pressed to his body she felt bewildered and needful and strangely elated, warm and small and seeking. And now, she not only felt his hands caressing her hair and tickling teasingly over her back and sliding warmly over her thigh and ass; she not only felt the tickle of his beard against her neck and jaw as he kissed and licked her throat in a way that made that ache between her legs swell and sharpen; now she felt him there, between her parted thighs. His hardness bulging against his jeans and pressing against her sex, barely hidden from the sensation by the soft, yielding fabric of the sweat pants she was wearing.
The sensation of her sex pressed to his was wondrous. But the thought of it, of his hard prick seeking her through their clothes, made her tummy flutter with a fresh surge of excitement and suddenly she felt she had crested that hill and now she was hurtling inevitably down toward that delicious obliterating crash.
She was suddenly frightened to feel so much with him this way when he was only kissing her and she tried to pull a little away, not from his arms but just to put a safe little millimeter of space between her aching sex and his hardness. But his legs were bent, his knees high, the steep incline of his thighs making it difficult to raise herself and as she eased back he drew his arms closer around her, pulling her firmly to him once more and her aching, seeking cunt pressed against that wonderful, dangerous bulge once more and she whimpered softly before she could silence herself.
He, feeling her excitement, hearing her sweet little whimper, sank excitedly into the other side of her neck, tonguing and licking and sucking and sighing softly in answer to her sighs and when he felt her push herself away a bit he sensed that she was resisting her own pleasure the way people do when it is too wonderful to bear and he pulled her hard to him once more, bringing her neck to his lips with one hand and with the other caressing the lovely roundness of her ass, clutching her desperately to him, longing to hear another of her little moans, her shy whimpers.
She felt she could not escape and really she did not want to and as his arms drew her against him and as he drove chills through her whole body with his mouth on her throat and behind her ear she let that hard bulge at his groin press into her between her parted thighs. Even as he kissed and caressed her she felt herself flush with embarrassment, but then his hands were both on her ass, caressing and drawing her against him and she went with his movement, the tiniest bit closer, the tiniest drift away, just a little up, a tiny hint down, and her whole belly felt full and heavy with promised pleasure and she was panting in panicked ecstasy as the ache built and swelled and rose up in her and made her whole body still and stiff in anticipation and then that heavy aching promise burst and pleasure flooded up her body and down her limbs like a torrent of warm rushing water and she froze, her nerves listening to this amazing song as the refrain echoed all through her and she let out a whimper, different from the others, kind of lilting and sobbing but still so soft and then she went limp in his arms and he drew her gently against him and he was very still as he held her.
He knew. He knew what had happened to her. She was sure. He had stopped everything at the very moment when his caresses would have become a distraction from pleasure rather than an instrument of it. She was mortified. He had not even touched her…there. What must he think of her, rubbing against him until she came when all they had done was kissed? A flush of unendurable shame burned her cheeks.
"You’re wonderful," he sighed out in a moment of warm, uncensored sincerity, surprising himself, utterly caught up in the sweet excitement of her shyness.
The gentle, open tenor of his voice half effaced her worry. He slowly let her out of his cocooning embrace and gazed down at her and he looked so sweetly happy she almost felt as though she had done nothing wrong. She was trembling with her ebbing tide of ecstasy and waning anxiety that she had done something vulgar and ridiculous. He smiled softly and with that tender look melted the last of her reservation.
He did not pull her to him again but leaned a little forward to seek a small kiss. With her lax body she felt his slightly tremulous strain and desire swelled in her once more. She answered his questioning kiss with an ardent one full of desire and promise. He rose above their kiss for a moment to caress her with another tender smile and to pull a cushion down from the sofa. Setting it on the floor beside them he leaned her back, laying her softly down, wrapping an arm around her waist, holding her tight against him.
"Comfortable?" he asked.
She smiled and nodded her reply.
When he kissed her again, it was a different kiss. He was making love to her with his mouth. He was fucking her with his tongue. He was very experienced, very good at this. He knew exactly what he was doing. This kiss had made many women desperate to get him inside them, and, with a few, once inside it had made it impossible for them not to cum.
He heard her breathing change, felt her hot body quivering beneath his.
She felt this kiss, this fucking kiss. She felt his powerful thigh pressed between her legs, felt him on top of her, his body pressed lightly to hers. She felt his desire and it aroused her already sated body to new yearning. But something darker was taking shape there under her pleasure and her desire for more. That fucking kiss of his felt so penetrating, like he had taken possession of her and she felt irrefutably that she was losing herself as he was taking her over. Then there was a shift and instead of one powerful thigh between her legs there were two, slowly, irresistibly pushing her thighs open and then his hips were between her legs again, his hardness pressed to her once more.
Vaughn, stinging everywhere with lashing desire, felt her excitement but nothing else. Though he had sensed her cum, though his body was clamoring for release, what he wanted most in this moment was to feel her trembling on the brink of climax once more, hear her tiny moan again, hold her as she quivered in ecstasy.
Still kissing her deep and urgent his left hand sought her right, found it, folded it in its warmth, brought it to the floor by the cushion cradling her head. Though the lengths of their bodies twined and pressed together, though their mouths were eagerly seeking and caressing, he wanted this other closeness, her hand in his, their palms pressed tight, fingers learning one another as they folded and unfolded.
His right hand caressed this strange, wonderful girl who, at this moment, was somehow making his organs—the soft places in his chest and belly—ache as sweetly as his body ached. His fingers dove and swam in the warm currents of her hair, trembled down her smooth hot cheek, his thumb traced the soft curves of her jaw, his palm slid gently over throat, neck, and shoulders.
He felt the soft slope of her breast. God, her breasts, he had been noticing them, curving delicious and swaying tempting beneath his t-shirt, imagining seeing them bare, imagining them smooth and soft and warm under his hands, imagining teasing her nipples stiff. Normally, now, he would have caressed her breasts. With any other woman. But she had been so shy, so afraid of baring that part of her body, that without really thinking about it he instinctively avoided touching her there now. Instead he slipped his hand light and warm down her side, feeling tiny undulations of ribs and gaps, incurve of waist, outcurve of hip. His fingers slid under her thigh, caressing, massaging, drawing it up, pressing it to his hip as his fingers glided down, behind, stroking her thigh, down toward the floor, toward her center, that part of her that had thrilled against him moments ago.
He lifted himself a little, hovering over her, touching down at toes, knees and elbow, holding tight her small hand. His other hand came between them. He had made her cum, but he had not touched her yet. He ached to touch her. So, so lightly he let his four fingertips touch down between her thighs, drift back, over the hot humid fabric over her hidden hollow, and with sweetest softness his hand cupped her sex.
She was softly whimpering, almost sobbing with needful desire when his hand touched down on her. It moved so lightly, so gently, stirring nerves still dazzling from her earlier climax, that her hips ached to rise up against his hand, seeking deeper contact. But now, with her thighs pressed open, with her hand held sweetly but firmly to the floor, his hand on her sex, that darker shape in her mind cast a longer shadow over her pleasure. Sweet surrender dissolved in vulnerability, excitement began to smother under sudden fear.
His hand drifted away from her sex, up, and sought the hot bare flesh at her waist. So smooth and soft he thought of warm butter and wondered would his hand sink into her, but it just glided over the taut quivering smoothness, finding navel, gentle slopes at hip bones and ribs and ribs and hip bones. And the teasing, welcoming little gap inviting his hand under the tiny canopy formed by fabric stretching between hip bones and opening where belly did not rise to close the entrance. His hand slipped under the waistband of her sweats, over his boxers, between her thighs, finding the fabric over her sex warm and damp, finding the contours of her body more readable than they had been through the sweats—the firm swelling of her mound, the smaller, softer curves lower down, the enticing valley and hills of her bottom. He did not linger. He crossed the terrain just twice—down and back again, slipping out past the waist band and gently in again, this time beneath the shorts, seeking hot bare flesh.
Her hand, her free hand flashed down and clasped his wrist. His hand remained, soft and warm, pressed to her belly, low and warm and bordering the terrain he sought. She felt his wrist, thick and strong in the weak circle of her fingers. She felt her other hand, clasped tight in his, pressed to the floor. His hips holding her thighs open. His hand on her bare belly. A thousand images that were not images but only hints of memories bombarded her brain, cooling every hot place, darkening every place of light.
She panicked.
Vaughn was no longer there for her. She just felt that there was a man on her, a powerful body overwhelming hers, that there was a man in her mouth, a threatening hardness pressing against her.
He felt her freeze beneath him, he felt her go cold, rigid. He stopped his kiss, lifting himself up to look down on her. Her face was like a statue, white and stony, and her eyes were dark and panicked, and looked insane with the firelight flickering on them.
"Stop," she whispered. "Please stop."
"I have, I’ve stopped."
He sat up and pulled her up into a sitting position.
"I’ve stopped," he repeated. "I didn’t mean to scare you. I wasn’t going to hurt you," he whispered, feeling at once guilty and exasperated. He wanted to embrace her, but was afraid to.
"I know…"
She looked at him, ready to flee in embarrassment. But he was looking at her so kindly, his face so open. She wanted to explain.
"…I’m sorry," she whispered.
"Don’t apologize." His spare words were gentle.
"I’m…not very experienced."
"Okay."
He waited, knowing she had more to tell him.
"I feel silly telling you this."
"Why?"
"It seems childish. But I want to explain why…I don’t know why I got so frightened."
She did know. Why had she said she did not?
"I’ve never really been with a man before."
He was stunned. He tried to strip the surprise from his voice.
"You’re a virgin?"
A pause.
"Yes."
Her voice cracked. She was afraid she was going to cry.
"I’m sorry I came on so strong. If I’d known, I would have been different with you."
A thought occurred to him suddenly, pricking him with panic.
"Devan, how old are you?"
"Nineteen."
So young. It had not occurred to him that she could be so young. So, so much younger than he. Maybe he would have guessed, by her face, by her body, except for her eyes. And the fog of melancholy that always lingered over her which he associated with later years.
He saw that she was upset, maybe even about to cry. He could not have guessed why, though, and thought it was only something between them—hell, what did they know about each other? Nothing. Maybe she was saving herself for marriage. Maybe she had wanted it, then changed her mind. Maybe she had been afraid he would not stop. He smiled a soft sweet smile and tentatively stretched a hand toward her and, when she did not startle or pull back, gently caressed her cheek.
"Devan, it’s alright. I don’t want to do anything you don’t want to do. We can just sit here by the fire and talk."
His gentle smile, his soft words were so sweet she felt a new, different ache somewhere above that other, yearning ache. The hand caressing her cheek slipped lightly to the back of her neck and, rather gingerly, it seemed to her, he pulled her to him in a cautious embrace. Why was this happening? She wanted him. She wanted to feel that delicious surrender again. She wanted to make him feel it. She wanted his hands to erase the ugly memory of other hands, she wanted to see his face, hear his voice, smell his body as she gave herself up to pleasure.
But that cold dead panic was still with her. She could not be touched. She was fighting to hold back her tears, but she felt them welling up perilously high, and when she could not refrain any longer from blinking they slipped down her cheek. She let him hold her for a little while, stopping her tears by force of will and trying to furtively dry them against his shirt as he held her, then broke the circle of his arms, hastily said goodnight, and went to bed, never letting him see her tears.
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A CONVENIENT STOPPING POINT, FOR READERS WITH LIMITED TIME
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He felt unbearably sad to see her slip down the hall and into the little bedroom. It had been so long since he had felt more than base physical desire for a woman, since he had yearned just to hold someone, to be in their presence. She had wanted him, he had felt it, but he had scared her. That had never happened to him before. He had been a very cautious and infrequent lover as an adolescent, and after becoming famous, a "rock star," women did not fight him off. Quite the opposite.
He was so hard he ached, and he thought of going into his room to jerk off. He decided against. He wanted to keep this physical need to go with his emotional need. It was a bittersweet way of keeping her with him. He sat down in front of the fire, thinking about this strange girl who had appeared so mysteriously, about their impossibly bizarre initial encounter, and how it had warped their relations. Wishing they could have met in the city, under normal circumstances, he realized that such a thing was impossible. He never met people under normal circumstances. He never let people near him.
Feeling nostalgia come over him in a wave, he began thinking of his ex-wife. They had met under normal circumstances. He had not held a gun on her. He had not tackled her in a field. Normal. They had met at a party, at the home of a mutual friend. A few drinks, some laughter. Phone numbers exchanged. A few dates, then to bed. Then they were a couple. Then they married. Then they divorced.
Restless, he rose and wandered over to the little desk by the front door, where he kept his remembrances. He opened the wide, shallow center drawer and stood there, looking down at the envelopes scattered over the bottom. They had been banded together, he was sure, in packets. Before, during, after. Her letters to him. Before their marriage. During their marriage. After their divorce. Had she gone through his things? Had she read his letters?
He felt like he was going insane. They were past this. He had finally let his guard down. She had made him trust her. Like her. Care for her. Want her.
But she had. She had gone through his letters. She knew. She knew what had happened to him. He had never told anyone. No one but his wife. And now she knew. This strange woman. Who would be going back to Seattle. She could tell people. The press. Maybe she had even taken a letter for evidence.
He snatched up all the letters, every last envelope in the drawer. Then he stomped into the kitchen, grabbed the whiskey bottle and a glass, and took everything with him into his room. Drinking glass after glass of warm booze he put the letters into chronological order. Then he skimmed them, trying by memory to be sure they were all there. They seemed to be, but he might be mistaken. At least they were her letters, not his. His were the dangerous ones. He could never tell her, face-to-face, what had happened, so he’d written her. Now he regretted it. Never put anything in writing, he thought. Never. Like that old axiom, never say anything that you wouldn’t want to be quoted on in print. Then, with a sinking feeling, he remembered. His journal. The most damning evidence of all. Everything recounted in disgusting detail. Where had he left it?
Stumbling with fury and booze he began searching—his nightstand drawers, the dresser, the closet. Back out into the living room. Back to the desk. Nothing. The storage closet? No. Not the bookshelf either. Not in the kitchen drawers, but that was a ridiculous place to look anyway. He turned, looking down the length of the cabin, at the closed door of the little bedroom.
X-X-X-X
The next morning he awoke feeling positively evil. The whiskey had ravaged his head, and she had violated his sanctuary. The cabin, his one little spot of peace on this shitty earth. His letters. His journal. He got four aspirin from the bathroom, then gulped them down with a full glass of water in the kitchen. When she got up she opened the door to the little bedroom, flashed across the hall and into the bathroom for a couple of minutes, then emerged, walking over to him where he stood leaning against the counter, arms crossed over his chest.
She looked up at him, smiling sheepishly, and said "Morning."
"Good morning," he pronounced dryly.
"You look a bit rough," she said tenderly. She reached up and lightly touched his cheek. He did not move. He looked grave.
She had hoped that he would receive her a little more warmly this morning, though she had feared that he would be angry about the night before. He could not possibly know what she had been through, what she was going through. So her behavior was strange. She knew it. She decided to give him his space.
"I think I’ll go for a walk. I’ll see you a little later." She tried to sound cheery, but heard how forced her tone was.
He said nothing as she opened the front door, walked through it, and closed it behind her. After a few minutes he turned to look out the window, and saw her slipping into the shadows of the trees. He was shaking. Seeing her standing there before him, this girl he had somehow come to adore over the course of a few days, who had been in his arms the night before, filling him with the most desperate longing he could remember ever having felt, he half wanted to embrace her. And yet, she had convinced him to forgive this ridiculous story of being lost in the woods, she had played the victim, tricking him into pitying her, trusting her. And she had read his letters. The night before was probably, he reasoned, another ploy to keep him trusting her, to make him trust her more, let his guard down. He had to find the journal.
He turned from the window and looked toward the open door of the little bedroom. With a determined step he walked the length of the cabin and entered her room. The nightstand drawers were all empty. The dresser had nothing in it but a few articles of clothing. The closet. The pack was there, still loaded up with food, ready for her to take flight. Dragging it out he ripped it open and dumped its contents on the floor. Cans went rolling, the silverware clattered onto the ground. The same two novels thumped onto the wooden floorboards. No journal. Haphazardly he jammed everything back into the pack and stuffed it back in the closet. Exasperated, he went to the bed. Leaning over, he snatched up the two pillows. A gun. Under the pillow like in a tragic news story. He picked it up and examined it. He recognized it. His gun. He placed the pillows back, then stomped back to his room, the barrel of the gun clutched in his clenched fist.
He was convinced she had it. That she had read it. That she knew those things about him. Yet she seemed so different from those others, those predators. Pacing in his room, he went over in his mind every moment he had spent with the strange girl.
His thought of their kiss the night before aroused him again. He could not believe, in his angry state, the power of the longing he was feeling for her. He wanted to purge himself of her, get her out of his system. Bitterly, suddenly he yanked his belt open, unzipped his fly and took out his cock. Seething with rage and unfulfilled desire he sat on the edge of his bed and furiously began jerking off. He was picturing her, her mouth, her full breasts that were never in a bra. He thought of how she had tasted the night before when he had been on top of her, hard and pressed up against her, and how he had thought then that they were about to fuck. He imagined pulling her sweats down, over her hip bones, exposing the smooth flesh of her thighs, then off completely. He imagined what her pussy might look like, how she would smell and taste, and how it would feel to push himself inside her, to hear that tiny moan again.
Something broke his reverie. He looked up, his attention drawn instinctively to the door that he had slammed shut, but which must have drifted open, as it sometimes did when the latch failed to catch. She was standing there. Looking at him. She had been watching him. He stood, rage pounding through every vein and capillary. She made a little noise, a gasp, turned, and ran. He felt suddenly cold, self-possessed. He put himself away, zipped up his fly, buckled his belt.
Then he charged after her. She had left the front door open. He ran outside and scanned the clearing. She was just about a third of the way across, running for the woods. He took off after her. He knew he could catch her. He just ran as hard as he could, knowing he was faster, knowing he would have her in just a few moments. When she reached the edge of the woods and charged into the shadows, he did not lose faith.
When he reached the place where she had entered the woods he stopped. Over the sound of his own hard breathing he could hear the leaves bursting apart under her feet, the twigs snapping in her path. He turned to track her, running full speed, slaloming between the trees. He was gaining. He could see her. Within seconds he had her. He caught her by the arm, spun her around, pressed her up against a tree. Silently he stared at her, roiling with hatred.
"I didn’t mean to…" she gasped.
They were both panting.
"Shut up."
"Vaughn, listen. I’m sorry, it was an accident, I was just passing by, going to my room, and—"
"Shut up!" he shouted. Then more quietly, in a voice straining to be restrained, "I’m tired of your lies. I don’t want to hear you anymore. Come on."
He jerked her by the arm, pulling her from the tree, dragging her stumblingly along behind him.
"Vaughn…"
He said nothing, but quickened his pace, tightened his grip.
"Vaughn!" she cried, increasingly terrified.
He dragged her back to the cabin, up the steps to the front door, down the hall and into her room. He threw her down on her bed. She sat up. Standing in front of her, he unbuckled his belt and unzipped his pants. Mounting the bed he straddled her hips. Sobbing, she tried to hit him in the face, in the stomach. He grabbed her wrists and pushed her arms up over her head.
"Grab the bars on the headboard."
She did nothing.
"Grab them, and hold on to them, or I’ll fucking tie you up."
Terrified at the idea of being tied up, convinced she could not fight him, she gripped the cold iron bars.
"If you fucking let go of those bars for one fucking second, I’ll tie you up, and I may never untie you. You hear me?"
He leaned over, putting his lips against her ear.
"You come here. You break into my house. You read my letters—"
"No—Vaughn—"
"Shut up! If you say one more word, I’m going to stuff a sock in that mouth and tape it shut! You read my letters. You steal my diary. You seduce me."
He laughed a tight, bitter laugh.
"You actually made me pity you. Then you spy on me—you spy on me while I’m fucking jacking off."
Then, calculating his words to frighten,
"Know what I was thinking about while I was jerking off? Hmmm? I was thinking about fucking you."
His voice was a growl. Not human. He felt ready to kill. Ready to cry. In his seething fury he was almost capable of raping her. But her pale tear-streaked face, all the moments she had seemed to fear him, stopped him, in spite of his doubts that it had all been an act.
But he would punish her.
Wanting to terrify her, knowing what would go through her mind, he stripped off his heavy flannel shirt. Then the white t-shirt he had on underneath. His largeness, vague under the thick clothes he always wore, was revealed as hard, defined muscle. He spread open the fly of his jeans, revealing the thick bulge that strained the white ribbed fabric of his underwear. He massaged himself, pushing his hand down into his jeans and bringing it back to cuff the uppermost part of his erection. Her eyes closed, her fists went white around the bars of the bedstead.
"You wanted to see this. Open your eyes and watch."
She opened her eyes. She watched as he pulled his jeans and underwear down, taking hold of the waist band, uncovering his erection. Frightened, embarrassed, she instinctively closed her eyes again.
"If you don’t watch this, I’ll find another way to get off. Open your fucking eyes."
When she obeyed him, looked at him, he began stroking himself. With the force of a tornado rage, anguish and excitement swirled inside of him. After his unsatisfied longing from the night before and his interrupted masturbation session a short time earlier, frustrated lust had built up to the bursting point. Violently he beat off. The sight of her watching him tweaked his arousal to a higher pitch. As his excitement rose his hatred ebbed. He forgot, almost, that he was forcing her to watch.
She, terrified at first that he was about to rape her, then mortified to be seen looking at his nakedness, watching him touch himself, had almost forgotten her alarm. It was strange. As she realized that he was not going to rape her, that he was masturbating in front of her, the darkest, sharpest part of her fear went gray and smooth. Then the sight of him before her, on top of her, his cock in his hand, his firm belly and broad chest, shoulder muscles flexing, his face reflecting his excitement, his eyes locked on hers, roused her. Her breathing quickened, not with anxiety but with anticipation, awaiting his moment of release.
He clutched the hem of her t-shirt in his fist. She almost let go of the bars, desperate not to let him bare her breasts. He pushed her shirt up, baring her belly, her ribs, just up to the first hint of the soft swellings. She watched his frenzied stroking, then he stopped. Then he drew his hand slowly up the length of his hardness, groaned, and released his milky warm orgasm in surprising spurts onto her stomach.
Inexperienced as she was, she knew perfectly well how these things worked. How men came. Yet she was somehow astonished to now have his cum, this stuff that came from inside of him, warm and wet on her skin. Still holding the headboard she lifted her head to look at the pattern of splatter on her belly.
"Don’t move," he said, getting off of her, off the bed, disappearing into the bathroom.
He came back, tucked away and zipped up, his belt open and hanging at his hips, carrying a wet towel. Bowed, contrite, he sat on the side of the bed. She still held the iron bars. He had not meant for her to stay like that, when he had told her not to move—he had only worried about the mess. Already succumbing to agonies of remorse he took hold of one wrist, guiding her arm down to her side, then the other. He washed her stomach clean with the towel he had wet with warm water, then pulled the hem of her shirt down, covering her up. He could not look at her. He started to stand. She grabbed his wrist.
"Vaughn."
Her voice was soft and sad.
"Don’t."
His voice was tight. He was on the verge of crying. He yanked his wrist from her grasp, stood, collected the shirts he had thrown to the floor, and left, closing her door as he went.
She heard his steps in the hall, then his door being closed. The sympathy she had somehow felt as she saw his shamed posture, his hurt eyes, heard the misery in his voice evaporated once he was out of her sight and she was left in silence. He’s fucking nuts, she thought. So am I. Otherwise I’d have run by now.
He, fearing that his irrational cruelty would drive her from the safety of the cabin to the perils of the woods, was listening carefully for sounds of escape, and would not have let her go.
Tired of her tedious, banal despondency, she decided to do the one thing that somehow always seemed to make her feel better, whenever she was overwhelmed by any emotion—she decided to write. In the past, since adolescence, writing had been a release for the unbearable pressure of sexual need she had felt mounting within her, but which she knew could receive no outlet except on the page. And when she had arrived here, tormented by her memories of captivity and her conflicted feelings about all that had been done to her, and all the things he had made her feel, only by writing her story had she reclaimed some peace of mind.
She pulled her diary from its hiding place between the mattress and box spring. Taking the pen from the nightstand, she curled up in the chair by the window. She thought for a long time, sorting through the schizophrenic sentiments that seemed endemic to her now. The fear, the hate, the feeling of betrayal instilled in her by his violence that day, tempered, slightly, by the tender feelings for him she had felt budding within her over the last few days, and her sense that he was living with demons of his own.
She recalled with a fresh pang of fear the accusations he had leveled at her. The letters. The journal. The spying. She understood how it had appeared to him, looking up to see her peering through the narrow opening of the door, when from her perspective, walking past to enter her own room, her gaze had simply been drawn, unconsciously, to the movement she had perceived in her peripheral vision. She had not even registered what she had seen until he stopped, and she read the look on his face. In had been a fateful accident. She turned her thoughts to the letters he had mentioned. She remembered, after a few moments, the letters she had seen in the little desk. She had flipped through them, looking for an address, hoping for a clue to her whereabouts. If he had noticed they had been disturbed, this could account for his belief that she had read them.
Then, thinking about his journal, the journal he believed she had stolen, she looked down at the diary in her hands. She thought of it as hers, intimately hers, made so by the fact that she had recorded within it her most painful, shameful secrets, and that by taking them from her it had saved her. But she had come here with nothing. Like the clothes she was wearing, and the chair she was sitting on, and like the pens she had used to write, the little notebook, the paper and the cardboard and the wire spiral that bound them were his. She had thought of it as a material item, like the can opener and the backpack. But she realized that this book in her hands might be the thing he had most feared having taken.
She opened the notebook, as she always had, starting from the front cover. The cover with the word "journal" embossed upon it. Turning the pages she looked at her own writing, the story of her abduction. Her reflections as she had struggled to make sense of what she had been through. Her entries after Vaughn had arrived. Then she closed the book, turned it over, and opened it from the other cover. And there, on the first page, was writing that was not hers. His writing. Opening the book from the middle and fanning the pages through her fingers, back to his first entry, she saw that almost half the pages were covered in his writing. How could she have been writing in there all those days, never noticing the writing at the other end of the notebook?
She felt nauseous, knowing that she could never explain to Vaughn what had happened in a way that would make him believe her. The thing he feared so much was true. She had his journal. He would never believe she had not read it. And then, looking down at the angry scrawl he had scratched onto the pages in black ink, she considered reading it. It was a violation. It was one of the things she hated Conrad for. It was one of the things, already believing her to have done it, for which Vaughn hated her. But it would tell her, she hoped, whether Vaughn was simply an imbalanced case with a rock star complex and a tendency toward violence, or if some truly frightening experience made him return, again and again, to his belief that she had come there to do him harm. Then she thought of what he had done to her that afternoon. On the bed. That thought wiped all sense of obligation from her mind. She began to read
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