Page 57 of Corrupted Guilt

And how did it happen so quickly? Like turning off the light.

Her light.

And now I need to take some of her freedom, her autonomy away. “You’ll need to stay here, close to home here for a while,” I tell her. “Only leave for emergencies, groceries, things like that, okay?”

“She nods, still worrying at her hair, she was expecting this it seems.

“I’ll take you to see Dmitry once things settle down again, okay?”

“How long will that be?”

“We’ll see,” I tell her. “Why haven’t you tried to escape? You had a hundred chances. At the cemetery, during the last few days … but nothing. While I’m weak as a kitten. No less. You could smother me with a pillow and be free from me, all of this.”

She’s quiet, then becomes aware of her hands and she stops them fidgeting. Stretches them out on her knees.

I wait, the silence growing louder until she can’t stand it.

“I don’t know,” she says softly.

“Sure, you do. What was it? What stopped you every time?”

“I don’t know. I should have, I guess. You sure wouldn’t have missed me.”

“What does that mean? Passive aggressive shit. Say what you mean, aggressive aggressive or at least active aggressive. Not that passive bullshit,” I say, as nicely as I can. “Please,” I add, not meaning it.

She closes her eyes tightly, determined not to cry, “I went back to find you, to thank you, to tell you what a weight lifted talking to Dmitry, to his headstone anyways, and… I heard you. I don’t know who you were talking to, but I heard, I heard—”

“‘Cheese for the mousetrap’ or something?”

“It was thewayyou said it that hurt even more than the words themselves, a coldness, that I never was anything to you, that ….” Her voice is steady, far-off like she found detachment, but her face gives her away, trembling, twisting, ready to fall apart if she opens her eyes.

“I told you many times, from day one that if you wanted love from me, from this that you were looking in the wrong place. We’re all out. You won’t find any here with me.”

“How could you?” she asks, not meaning to say these words at all, her voice losing the detachment it found, matching her face now.

Uncontrolled sadness.

Bereft.

Her face is an open book to me now.

I can read her mourning.

Her brief glimpse of a different life—a wilder, more urgent passion with me, this intense man she had found—was over.

And all the little dreams she had been building over the last few days, a future—ourfuture— was gone.

“You could have left,” I tell her again. “You could have smothered me with a pillow, you could have dragged a knife across my throat, or, even easier, left me to die at the cemetery. Again and again, you chose not to. You chose to stay with yourcaptor, in your bondage like a good little slave, didn’t you? Why Katya?”

I know the answer.

She closes her eyes, “I… I couldn’t…” she breathes.

I smile cruelly, pulling her closer to me, “I know.”

Tears are escaping her closed eyes, rolling silently down her face.

My cock still aches for her, but I tuck it aside as I pull her close, I don’t want either of us distracted by sex right now.

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