Chapter 2: The second fantasy: Hunted
The ice bath was a shock. A raw, physical scream trapped in her lungs.
She knelt in the steel tub, shivering so hard her teeth chattered like loose stones. The chains were off. Her skin was pale, wrinkled, alien. The bathroom attached to Rhys’s office was all white tile and chrome. It smelled of antiseptic and the sour, mineral tang of her own exhaustion. Forty-eight hours in the wet room had left a haze in her mind.A film. Sounds were muted.Light hurt.
Rhys stood by the sink, drying his hands on a black towel. He watched her in the mirror.
“Out,” he said.
She tried to stand.Her legs buckled. She fell against the cold steel rim, her knees striking the hard tile floor. A sharp pain shot up her thighs.
“Pathetic,” he muttered. He tossed the towel onto the counter. “Crawl.”
She did. On hands and raw knees, she followed him out of the bathroom, across the polished concrete floor of the office, to the chair before his desk. Water dripped from her hair, leaving dark spots on the pale grey concrete. He sat behind the slab of black marble. She settled on the hard wood of the chair, naked, still dripping. The air in the office was cool, sterile. It hummed from hidden vents.
He didn’t speak.He opened a drawer. He lifted out the ledger. It was thicker now. Her stomach dropped.
He placed it on the marble. He didn’t open it immediately. He just looked at her. His gaze was a physical weight, a probe poking at the soft, new thing she had become.
“You survived,” he said finally. It wasn’t a compliment. It was a data point.
She nodded, her head bowed. “Yes, Master.”
“You wrote this next one after the first.” Another statement. “While the taste was still in your mouth.”
“Yes, Master.”
He opened the ledger. He found the page. His finger trailed down the lines.“Subject Seven. Proposal for the Hunt.” He looked up. “You want to be scared.”
She swallowed. Her throat was still sore. “Yes, Master.”
A faint, almost invisible smile touched his lips. It was gone in an instant. He began to read. His voice was clear. It cut through the hum of the room.
“I want to be prey.”
A chill that had nothing to do with the ice bath went through her.
“Take me to the woods. The ones north of the estate.The old pines. It should be night. A moonless night. Give me a ten-minute head start. Let me hear you loading the rifle behind me. A real one. I need to know the bullets are real.”
Rhys paused, glancing up. His eyes were dark pools. She held her breath.He continued. “I will run. I will be naked. The cold will be a knife. The branches will be claws. I will fall. I will scramble. I will hear nothing but my own heart and the wind and the distant crunch of your boots. I will not know where you are. I will not know if you are close. I will hide in the hollow of a rotten log. I will press myself into the mud and the leaves. I will pray to gods I don’t believe in.”
She could smell it. The damp earth.The pine sap. The blind, animal terror.
“You will find me. Not because I am clumsy. But because you are a hunter. You will drag me out by my ankle. I will scream. The sound will be swallowed by the trees. You will backhand me.For running. For hiding. For making you work for it.”
Rhys turned the page. The paper whispered.
“Then you will fuck me.There. In the dirt. With the pine needles sticking to my back. It will not be for pleasure. It will be a punishment fuck.Angry. Merciless. You will call me a stupid bitch. A worthless piece of meat. You will tell me I failed. I failed the hunt. I failed to get away.”
Her hands clenched on her thighs. Her nails bit into her skin.
“After,” Rhys read, his voice dropping to a low, intimate monotone that was worse than a shout, “you will take me to a clearing. You will have a kit there. A fire.Ropes. Needles.Surgical steel. You will tie me to a tree. You will make me watch you sterilize the needles in the flame.”
A whimper escaped her. She couldn't stop it.
“You will pierce my clit first. A slow, thick needle. To mark my failure to please. Then my nipples. One after the other. The pain will be white. It will be pure. It will be the only thing in the world. You will not plug the piercings. You will let them bleed. You will let them weep. You will leave the needles in. For the walk back. A reminder with every step.”
Rhys closed the ledger. The sound was a gunshot in the quiet room.
He leaned back.He studied her. Her whole body was trembling. Not from cold. From the vision his words had painted. It was vivid.It was horrifying. It was everything she had asked for.
“You’re shaking,” he observed.
She couldn’t speak.She nodded again.
“Good,” he said. He stood up. He walked around the desk. He stopped in front of her. He put a hand under her chin, lifting her face. “Fear is the point, isn’t it?Real fear. Not play. You want to truly believe I might hurt you. That I might break you out there.”
“Yes, Master.”
“The needles.You understand? You will be marked. Permanently.Small scars. But scars nonetheless.”
“I understand.”
He let go of her chin. He walked to a cabinet on the wall, opened it, and took out a small, polished wooden case. He brought it back to the desk, set it down, and clicked the latches open. Inside, on a bed of black felt, lay three long, sharp needles. Next to them, a small alcohol burner, a spool of thin suture thread, and a pair of locking forceps.
“These are the needles,” he said simply. “This is the kit.”
She stared at them. They glinted under the office lights. They were no fantasy. They were real, cold steel.
“We go in three days,” he said. “The weather will be cold.Rain is forecast. It will be perfect.” He closed the case. The click was final. “You will not sleep between now and then. You will think of the woods. You will think of the dark. You will think of these.”
He placed the case on the edge of the desk, in her line of sight.
“Now,” he said, his tone shifting to something brisk, almost clinical. “You need to eat. You need to regain your strength. A weak animal is no fun to hunt. It gives up too easily.”
He pointed to the door. “Go to the kitchen. Elena has a broth for you. Drink it. Then return to your room. Look out the window at the woods. Imagine it.”
She slid off the chair.Her legs held. Just.
As she reached the door, his voice stopped her.
“And pet?”
She turned.
He was holding one of the needles, rolling it between his fingers. It caught the light.
“Run fast.”