Page 38 of Mine

“You were unconscious,” he whispered. His breath skimmed the nape of my neck.

“Yes.”

“It’s like death, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know,” I said. The image of the scalpel flashed again in my mind and I blinked it away. “I’ve never died.”

“Descartes said it:I think, therefore I am.When you’re not thinking, then, what are you? Isn’t unconsciousness the same as death?”

“You’re the anesthesiologist. You tell me. Or at least, that’s what you pretended to be.” He might’ve been lying to me about that, too.

“I am an anesthesiologist.”

He was telling the truth. What was it about his voice that made me know he was telling me the truth? His thumb rubbed the side of my arm and I shivered.

“You’re a murderer,” I whispered.

“What’s the difference? I put people under. Sometimes they come out of it. Sometimes not.”

“You torture them.”

“I tortured you.” He hugged his arms around me a bit more tightly.

“Is that supposed to be comforting?”

“I don’t deal in comfort. I deal in pain and pleasure. Specifically, other people’s pain. My pleasure.”

“But not for me.”

“No,” he said. There was something strange in his voice when he said it, a kind of unease that I hadn’t sensed in him before. Rien, who’d been utterly confident from the beginning, sounded unsure for the first time. It drew me even closer to him.

“What do you think?” he asked. The confidence in his voice came back as he changed the subject. “Do you lose your identity when you sleep?”

I leaned against him so that my head rested against his collarbone. His body was relaxed. I breathed in deeply.

“I’m not sure I’m awake now,” I said. I let myself drift off, my heartbeat slowing. “This doesn’t seem real. I might be dreaming. I might not exist right now at all.”

“Are you a different person now than you were this morning, Sara?”

I opened my eyes. It was dark; nothing had changed. But I felt his muscles tense against my back.

“I’m nothing right now,” I said. “I don’t have an identity. I’m just a prisoner.”A survivor.

His arms moved across my chest, pulling me against him. I gasped when he lay down onto the couch underneath me, pulling me back with him. His legs slid under mine, my feet grazing his ankles.

He was under me completely. I lay on top of him, my back against his chest. The back of my head rested on his shoulder.

His hands began to unbutton my shirt. One button at a time. I lay there, frozen, unable or unwilling to move. I’d just decided to pretend, hadn’t I? But this didn’t seem like pretending. His hands hypnotized me, caressed me. I breathed in deeply, feeling the pressure of my lungs as they swelled against his chest. Then his breath came back, resounding.

His cock was hard already. I could feel his erection pressing against the back of my thighs as I lay on top of him. Then he unbuttoned the top button of my shirt. His hands drew the fabric apart. The chill of the library air made my nipples hard. He cupped one breast with his hand, his thumb smoothing circles around the hard button.

Was this how it felt, when my mother slept with her clients? A sick dread twisted in my mind. He was a killer. He had me hostage. But at the same time, there was an unwilling pleasure that came from my body’s reflexes. It mixed with the dread and fought it, and I didn’t know what I wanted him to do. The hard length of his cock pulsed just under my thighs, and I felt myself clench involuntarily with desire.

How much of it did my mother hate? All of it?

I suppose she must have hated it. She was a stronger woman than I was.

Rien rolled my nipple idly with his thumb. The other hand moved down, his fingertips dragging across my skin. In the total darkness, my lips parted. I breathed in. The pads of his fingers were smooth. Long fingers. A surgeon’s hands. I winced, thinking about his hand holding a scalpel, slicing open skin. He paused for a moment, and I let my breath out.

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