Chapter 7
T HE LOFT
What the…
Oh gosh.
He ducked when we got to the top. He took a step in, and dropped me onto something soft. A bed. Most of the small and low-ceilinged loft was just bed. A plush feather bed.
I sat up. He hauled my bag off me and tossed it to the side.
“Please, let me go. I don’t know what you want with me, but if you could let me go, I’ll…”
He leaned over, the action making me halt, mid-sentence. His ungloved hand gave me a shove. It wasn’t a hard shove, but it made me fall onto my back. He backed away and down the ladder.
I blinked a few times in the nearly pitch-dark space. Seconds later, he was back with a lantern in his hand. It illuminated the emptiness of his hood as well as the space, which was sparse and rough looking, having just the bed with light bedding amid the darkened unfinished slanted log ceiling. I gulped down fear, paralyzing fear looking into the emptiness of the hood, catching sight of skin below where the neck would be. I couldn’t tear my eyes away, but before I could see much, he set the lantern at the edge of the loft, and then pulled across folding wooden gates that were on either side of the upright ladder. He pulled them across and fastened some sort of metal latch to hold them closed and then lifted the lantern and used it to illuminate his finger, pointing at the gate. He wagged his finger. He was telling me not to go to the other side of the gate.
But… he’s on this side of the gate with me. Why?
Why? I did not even wanna think about what this could mean.
“…hunting for the one true love a fortune teller had told him he’d find.”
God, no.
He leaned over and pushed the hem up on my dress to examine my leg, placing his hand on my knee. I lost my cloth. I’d had it in my hand when I’d gone outdoors, and I guess it fell somewhere outside when he’d hauled me back inside.
My leg was still coated with the paste he made, glistening in the dim lamplight. I looked back up at the dark hood.
He moved toward me, making my heart hammer against my chest wall, until he came to sit on the edge of the bed.
Oh God. What the fuck?
“Wake up, wake up, wake up.” I chanted to myself.
“Fuck, Isabella. Wake up, damn it!”
He sat, listening to me, I guess. No ears, but obviously hearing me.
I slapped my own face. “Wake up!”
He grabbed my wrist and pointed with the other hand, reprimanding me. For what? Hitting myself? For trying to wake up from this nightmare?
There was loaded silence. He let go of my wrist.
I thrust my hands into my hair. What the heck would come next?
He leaned over and twisted the metal on the side of the lantern, plunging us into darkness. Not exactly pitch-black, what with the fire downstairs in the small space, but pretty darn close.
I heard the distinct noise of boots being kicked off. And then the sounds of undressing.
I closed my eyes and tears squeezed out of them, forcing them to trail down my cheeks. My front teeth were rooted in the tip of my tongue and I was shaking so hard.
My eyes were shut tight, listening to the rustling of clothing. I couldn’t see what he was doing but there was no denying that I knew what this meant, what he intended to do.
I opened my eyes to nothing. Less than nothing, because the little bit of filtering light from below was now gone. There was not a sliver of light anywhere to be seen. I lifted my hands up tentatively in front of my face, I couldn’t even see my own hands in front of my face.
Maybe I should be glad I can’t see, because how absolutely horrifying would it be to see him, headless, without the cloak hiding the horror of it?
What do I do? Try to fight off a headless ghost or other conjuring up in a loft without any weapons with a useless ankle and a bleeding leg?
I’m a 25-year-old virgin who is… what… about to be raped by a headless ghost?
I whimpered.
“Please, let me go. Please. I’ll just go. I’m sorry that I ran. I’m sorry I even came here tonight. My car broke down and I got lost. I was just trying to find a signal for my phone, so I could call roadside assistance. Please. Let me leave.”
He was still.
“I won’t tell anyone. You don’t have to worry. I’ll leave, and it’ll be like I was never here, and you can go back to… whatever you normally do.”
He slammed his fist into something. The wall? I jolted, thinking Oh shit. I’ve made him angry!
I scrambled backwards, having no real place to go.
He grabbed my non-sore ankle and tugged, making me slide down until I was flat on my back.
I felt the tension leave his body. It went from palpable to gone.
Just like that.
He leaned over and pulled a blanket across me. No, not just me. Over top of us. Us.
My heart was racing, my crying audible, loud even.
“No. Please just---” His fingertips touched my lips.
I gulped.
They moved to my cheeks, my wet cheeks, and caressed. And then they were in my hair, softly, gently.
I could smell the fire, the wood in the cabin. My antiseptic soaked skin. I could hear the crackling, faint as the fire down there burnt on, yet strangely wasn’t giving off any light. I could feel his hand move to my shoulder and then it caress softly, momentarily disarming me. Something shifted in his slow and almost reverent movements and then there was urgency as he started to pull at the fabric of my jacket, yanking it down. And then he was trying to haul my dress up, over my head.
“No, don’t.” I was tangled up in the sleeves of my coat, which hung around my lower back. I struggled out of it.
He squeezed my shoulder gently, almost reassuringly.
Nothing about this would reassure me. No . I had to make this stop.
The dress was being pulled up. I heard the fabric protest at his yanking. I grunted in protest and then I begin to kick and fight back against it happening, but it happened anyway, my strength no match for his. In a matter of mere moments, I found myself in the bodysuit and what was left of the ripped striped tights.
My boots were pulled off and the tights quickly yanked. I heard them tear again as he tried pulling the remnants of them down my legs.
I flailed and punched erratically, hitting his chest, I think.
Pain shot through my ankle at my actions, but I ignored it.
He slapped my good leg, making me jolt in shock at the sting and the implication that I’d better cooperate otherwise be hurt. And then he grabbed for the tights again.
I moved to fight, punching and connecting with some part of him that I could swear was a jaw. Wrong. It had to be.
He slapped my leg again, harder, just below my butt, warning me. I froze.
He slowly shimmied the tights the rest of the way off, minding the place on my outer thigh where my leg had the gash, the place covered in the salve.
His hand traveled up the length of my other leg and then paused at my hip, finding the bodysuit. Both his hands began roving over my torso, either seeking entrance or simply enjoying touching me. Maybe both. They got to my breasts and I gasped and slapped at them. He grabbed both hands and pinned them above my head, hovering over my body, knees on either side of my hips.
“Oh God, oh please, don’t. Don’t.” I pleaded. “Please don’t…”
He released my hands and began to run his own hands over my torso again. This time, both landed on my breasts at the same time and then he was pulling and yanking at the skin-tight bodysuit, trying to get it off me as if it was a mission.
I needed out of this loft. How could I do that in the pitch dark? Get the gates open, find the ladder, climb down backwards, all while avoiding him. The only way to do that would be to kill him. How could I kill him unarmed up here? How could I kill a man who had already been decapitated?
I sobbed.
He reached under me, along my back, likely looking for laces or some way of opening my bodysuit. The fabric simply stretched with his tugging and yanking and obviously he knew nothing about the snaps between my legs. Between my legs. I closed them tight.
This can’t be happening to me. This hideous thing, me in a bed with a headless monster pawing at me, trying to strip me naked.
I got a surge of strength, a surge of “Oh fuck, no…” and I started to fight harder, fight like my life depended on it.
My chastity depended on it. My life may very well also.
After he has his way, will he decapitate me? Will he murder me?
I thrashed.
I tried my hardest to fight, but he was so much stronger. Of course. He’s not even a person. What is he? And his hands seemed like they were everywhere, moving on my body, stopping me from getting away, pinning me. My palm hit something that felt distinctly like a cheek. I froze.
A face? No. I had to be wrong. A shoulder maybe. First, I felt like I’d punched a jaw, now like I slapped a face?
At my going stock still, he began to explore me with his palms again. His hands moved over my breasts. I smacked at his hand. He grabbed my chin in his grasp and held it. It felt like a stern warning.
He squeezed slightly, not enough to hurt, but I was guessing he was losing patience with me.
Should I just lie here and get it over with?
It was no use pleading with him. He can’t speak to me.
Was that a face I slapped? It must have been his shoulder.
He flipped me, fast, onto my belly and I shrieked. His hands moved over my back, tugging at the fabric of the spandex suit, trying to find a way to get it off.
His hands moved down my body to my hips and then one of his hands rounded my hip and slid between my legs.
I gasped and squeezed my legs tighter, fighting against the intrusion.
He slid between my parted legs behind me, parting them further with his knee. His legs felt bare, slightly furry, felt human. And I knew my earlier fears were valid, because yes… he was naked.
“Please! What are you gonna do to me?” I shakily asked.
He flipped me again to my back and continued pulling at my bodysuit.
“What?” I demanded, “What do you want?” I slapped blindly at him in the dark.
He grabbed my right hand and brought it forward, wrapping it around his cock. His large, erect cock.
Oh shit . What did I go and ask that for? Evidently, he understood me. The tip of his hood downstairs. This answer to my question.
He used my hand, his over mine, to move my hand up and down over his…cock.
God. Mortification wouldn’t remotely describe what I was feeling.
He worked my hand up and down, not letting me pull away from his hot, hard length.
His other hand moved between my legs again, trying to get the elastic aside, to get his fingers inside the fabric of the crotch. A snap let go, making an audible click. He stopped. He let go of my hand and I winced. Oh, damn.
He reached down with both hands, fingers pushing at the fabric as I writhed and kicked. He found the other snaps, yanked, and they all released.
The skin-tight bodysuit was immediately pulled over my head. He was triumphant in his movements, I could feel the excitement in the way he did it. He figured out the puzzle of my clothes and got me to just my bra and underpants.
“S-stop this. Please…”
His hands moved over my simple jersey panties, across my hips, underneath my backside, then his hands moved up my body to my lace bra, as he examined the fabric with fingertips.
His hand dipped into the cup of my bra and he strummed my nipple. It peaked. He did it again.
His other hand moved into my panties. I squeaked in protest, but his fingers glided over me and my body responded with goosebumps. And wetness.
I can’t believe there’s wetness. I can’t believe my belly is dipping.
“Please don’t do this. I’ve never been with anyone. I don’t want this to be… it’s been… saved… for when I get married.”
It sounded so silly now. Me, holding onto that V-card. I came close to giving it up. Twice, actually, but then I found out that the first guy had faked the engagement just to get into my pants, figuring once we were engaged, I’d give it up.
I found out the truth and broke it off. His car got hit by a train at a crossing three days after I ended the engagement. It was tragic. I was devastated. Even if he was lying to me, I felt terrible about the tragic accident.
The second time, a year after my former fiancé’s funeral, I was dating again, and it was our fifth date. We were in the heat of the moment; he was handsome, and charismatic, also experienced and successfully seducing me. I was ready to give it up, really ready, when the smoke detector went off.
His apartment was on fire! There was an electrical fire and we barely made it out of there.
Two days later, his company transferred him out of the country for a year. We didn’t bother trying to do the long-distance thing.
It felt like I was destined to simply wait. Wait for my wedding night. And I hadn’t dated anyone in a year.
But this?
I wondered if something would save my virginity now, like it did the last two times. Would I wake up and find out this was just a dream? If it wasn’t a dream, would someone swoop in and save me?
As this thought flitted through my mind, his finger started to breach me. He got it inside me. He did not give one single fuck that I was a virgin.
No one had been inside me that way. No one. My last boyfriend had touched me there, but barely and hadn’t gotten inside when the smoke detector went off.
This monster actually got inside me.
I reached up and grabbed for his arms out of some strange reflex, I guess. I grabbed his arms and held on to large and strong biceps as his finger moved in and out of me.
“No,” I said and tried to sit up, shoving him. He wasn’t moving. “Please…”
He pushed me back down.
“No!” I grabbed his wrist and pulled at it, I kneed him in the stomach and it gained me a tiny little bit of space, enough that I got both of my legs up and used my feet against his abs to try to push him back. He grabbed my knees and parted my legs instead.
“Shit. Fuck. Stop!”
Now I was in a worse position, spread out before him. He pulled my panties at the hips, closed my knees briefly to slide them off, and immediately spread them wide again.
This hideous thing was happening. I felt something against me. No, not his…
He was lined up. He was lined up to fuck, to fuck me .
“Pl-” He slammed inside me before I got out the rest of my “please”. I screeched and as I screamed at the pain, I felt something moist on my mouth.
What? Lips?
I shoved. I clawed, but my hands got pinned and a mouth was on mine.
A mouth!
And I heard a male grunt as he slammed inside again, his weight holding me down, his cock inside me, hurting me… ripping me in half.
How was he suddenly making sounds? How did he now have a whole body? I was so shocked, so absolutely baffled, that I just blinked as his mouth devoured mine.
He moaned. Fingers were in my hair, lips were on my throat, a tongue traced my collar bone, and then he moved out of me and slid down my body to nibble on my nipples, to glide his lips down my stomach, to the place his dick had just been, and he tasted me. He tasted me between my thighs with a big sucking motion.
I choked on tears and sobs, and I thrashed, but it was no use.
I was pinned underneath a monster, an inhumanly strong monster, and he was taking exactly what he wanted from me.
He was relentlessly licking, sucking, biting, and touching me. His mouth moved hungrily over my clitoris and my back bowed in primal reaction.
“Mm,” came from him. His hands glided back up my body as he moved back up and put his lips to mine, using his tongue to part my lips. He sucked on my tongue. He drove his cock back into me. It was frenzied. It was hungry. It was out of my control. It was so rough and desperate, it was out of his control…
It hurt.
It hurt so much.
But there were also other sensations underneath the pain between my legs. He was working my erogenous zones with skills. Skills I hadn’t encountered in my limited times fooling around with the few guys I’d let get past first base (but never past second). And it had never felt like this. Because it wasn’t just insistent, it was entitled. It was as if my body was an instrument and he was the skilled musician who owned it, who knew how to extract music from it.
Evidently it took more than a mere mortal to give me an orgasm. Because that was what I had. Suddenly. Hugely. Catastrophically. My very first (not alone, that was, and it was markedly more intense than anything I’d been able to do myself). Underneath a monster.
I had a sheet-clawing, screaming, toe-curling orgasm that left my ears ringing, my legs shaking, and my brain absolutely reeling.
And I’d had it underneath a monster.
I was crying. Crying and quaking and shaking my head in stupefied astonishment.
He wasn’t stopping. He kept at me. He got my bra off, over my head instead of by unclasping it. And I feebly tried to prevent it, but it was very feeble. My eyes should’ve adjusted. I should’ve been able to see his face. I couldn’t. Blackness. Just blackness and the scent of wood, smoke, and something new. Something…
It was sex. It was the smell of sex. Sweat. Fear. And the salve he’d put on my sprained ankle, the leafy paste he’d smeared on my leg. It was also a smell of earth, likely from all the dirt I’d rolled in. A bit of dust, too. And a lot of despair, if that had a smell.
I whimpered as my heart raced to keep up with the zinging nerve endings in my traitorous body as he touched me everywhere while he kept driving into me over and over and over. Hip bones slamming together. Lips smashing together. His tongue twisted up with mine as I cried into his mouth, afraid I was about to come undone again, this soon.
I panted and groaned at the same time as I fought. I dug nails into him, I shoved him, but it was useless. He would not be stopped.
He let out a long, slow breath as he slowed his drilling into me. His fingertips played along my lower lip, then gently brushed my hair away from my face.
I don’t know what made me do it, maybe as a reaction to his gentle gesture right then, but I lifted my left hand with the intent to search for a face. I found it. I gasped as my fingertips touched his lips, his nose. Soft hair fell across his forehead. He blinked, tickling my fingers with eyelashes. My fingertips moved to an ear, then to a strong neck. I felt something raised. Something thick and ropy along his neck. I followed it with my fingertips in the dark. The circumference… around his throat. This was a scar. My fingers were pulled away as I absorbed what that was, as if he had a neck wound that had healed, leaving a thick scar. My fingers were sucked, one after another, after the other as he held my hand captive.
“What happened to you? What are you?” I whispered.
“Mm.” He moved his mouth to my throat again and began to pick up pace, continuing the relentless ramming inside of me over and over, letting out a little grunt each time. My arms just flopped over my head on the pillows. I blinked a couple times and then had no choice but to whimper in time with the slaps of his pelvis against mine.
He began to go faster, harder, more frenzied, chasing a release?
I was flipped to my stomach again and he swiftly grabbed my butt cheeks and parted them as he entered me from behind, making me cry out at the depth of the intrusion.
He slammed in, squeezing the globes of my rear end, then sliding fingers to my hips, using them to keep me in place. He did it over and over as I clawed the bedding, teeth clamped on a dusty and stale-smelling feather pillow.
His mouth moved to the back of my neck and his sounds of effort, heaving breaths, groans and grunts felt like they entered my body. His mouth was on my ear, his right fingers tight on my hip, his left fingers in my hair, and then he thrust hard, stayed seated, and groaned into my ear with a whispered,
“Isabella…”
And the sound hurt. It sounded like a prayer, from a lover, from a love. But, this wasn’t that. This was a monster in the dark, who’d terrorized me, stolen me, violated me, taken something that wasn’t his to take. He stole my virginity from my future husband. He was a thief who took that away from me, the gift I could have given the man I’d spend the rest of my life with.
I felt his fingers touch the gash on my thigh, and it felt sizzling hot, as if being burnt. I gasped. He let go, leaned over and put his lips to it, startling me. He then twisted and moved to the side a little, turning my body so that I was draped on him.
Fingers from one hand were in my hair at the back of my head, the other arm was wrapped around my waist. My head was on his chest. A heart beat against my ear.
It made no fucking sense.
I shivered and shook and just lay there, trembling. Feeling the burn. Feeling an ache all over.
He adjusted the blankets to cover us better.
I felt lips touch the top of my head. I shuddered out a big broken breath. He sighed and squeezed me tighter.
I tried to pull away, wanted desperately to curl into a ball and hide. He didn’t release me. He wouldn’t let go. I finally went limp.
Cuddled. By the monster who took my virginity.