Chapter 17
Imprisoned control
ANMARA
Marshall… seemed like a normal human being.
He always brought me an elegant souvenir, or flowers, and chocolate after he came home from his business trips. A little cliché, but it appeared totally normal at that moment.
However, if I process it a little better, it wasn’t.
Every time I tried to read something in his gaze, a feeling, thought, or secret, I couldn’t. Even though all his facial expressions gave the impression of loving me, of telling the truth, his eyes looked as if they were lost in a completely different universe.
When he was tired, they seemed empty, lifeless, and emotionless.
I asked him about this matter. He smiled and told me it was not true, that I was imagining it. That I shouldn’t think for even a second that he didn’t love me.
Before, I didn’t analyse all his facial expressions because I was too blinded by the love I felt for him. But now, processing every moment together I could remember, something was always suspicious.
That’s amazing. You needed to find out that the one you were supposed to marry is a psychopath who killed girls and loved to keep souvenirs from them to fucking open your mind about him.
I told you from the beginning that something was not right! I TOLD YOU!
How could I have been so fucking blind? God…
There is no God helping you now, Anmara. You’re on your own.
All this time, there was a criminal in front of me, and all I could see was a man who loved me and wanted to try weird sexual fantasies that seemed innocent, but now felt completely different, stupid, and dangerous.
I mean, yes, I also had a lot of odd thoughts on this matter, but they wouldn’t compare to what Marshall had inside his mind. It felt a bit like Dorian Grey, but at a completely different level.
Besides, he was always so secretive regarding his home office. Every time I tried to bring light to one of his secrets, I couldn’t.
For example, I once caught him with a stack of documents on his desk, along with some papers that seemed to contain photographs.
I didn’t notice what they were about, but I saw some dark human shapes.
When he saw me, he gathered all of them and put them in a drawer, then closed the door right in my face.
Of course, I questioned him that night. He said it was a secret that I didn’t need to know.
That I would ruin it if I knew. Before begging him to tell me what it was about, he started kissing me and threw me on the bed, saying that I was a bad girl who needed to be punished because I stuck my nose where it didn’t belong.
And of course, this meant a lot of sex in the only way he could do it: aggressive and obsessive, until he drained his strength and ejaculated inside of me. Only if I think about it…
With his hand clenched around my neck, he scratched my boobs with his nails, making me moan without realising. It was a pleasure combined with a soft pain, which was a disastrous combination.
He let go of me, only to come back with a collar that I let him put on my neck. He was kissing all around the surface of the neck, like he was prepping the zone for the object that was about to stay there until he released himself of the liquid that wanted to come out of that monster.
He loved to take control of his sexual fantasies, but at the same time, he loved to offer it as long as I was doing it to my body, and I also offered him a huge visual pleasure.
He placed the collar on my neck and then quickly tightened it. It was not as tight as not to let me breathe, but enough to keep me close to the headboard I was attached to.
My hands didn’t escape his special treatment either. He took them and introduced my fingers, one by one, into a can of blood-red paint.
“Spread it on your body, baby,” said Marshall in a throaty voice, making me moan softly.
I traced my fingers along the skin that I could touch, while he stayed over me, keeping my legs prisoners.
I started from my shoulders, slowly going down my breasts, getting a strong moan from him when I squeezed and filled them with the red paint.
I got down to my belly with weaker traces, then saw Marshall put just one finger in the paint and continued my job, starting from where I stopped.
He continued painting me until my private part, which was already wet from the horniness that our dirty games caused.
He circled my clit for a bit, then pushed his finger directly into me, getting his name on my lips in a soft scream.
He removed his finger, taking it to his mouth and sucking it. The remaining paint, combined with what he got out of me, was slowly dripping on the corner of his mouth, making him look like a very sexy vampire. I moaned just because of the image in front of me.
He got off me, stuck his cock in the paint, and suddenly entered me. My eyes went wide, and I strongly moaned his name while he was taking it out slowly and then writing with it my name’s initials with the red paint and my essence on my belly.
“Always mine. Nobody will ever take you from me,” he growled and continued the activity inside me, quickly taking me to one of the best orgasms I had with him, with one of my fingers helping my clit in our game of arousal.
I shake my head and swear under my breath when I notice I am turned on only by thinking about how good he made me feel.
I’m already wet because of a man I loved too much and extremely frustrated because I’m still thinking of him in the same way.
I should really consider Lucas’s advice and start getting away from him for the sake of my mental health.
I realise I would give in if I felt his lips over mine or his hands on my breasts, squeezing them aggressively and sensually. I take the pillow next to me and throw it to the other side of the room, but not before I scream in it all of my sorrows.
I am still waiting for Lucas to handle Blake. Whatever that meant. I am just staying and thinking about sexy memories instead of realising how blind I was in all the years I lived beside the fucking chemist.
The day after that scene, I woke up to reality and snuck into his office to search for those documents that were so important to be hidden from me.
Of course, I didn’t find anything unusual to make me think of him as an insane person.
He hid them too well after he let me fall asleep with those five perfect orgasms from that night.
But, as I think of it, they were only perfect with my additional help.
The orgasms wouldn’t have existed if it were just his cock in my vagina.
Anyway, all I could find on his desk were some documents about a company he had to promote and an invoice for an engagement ring. I remember all too well that I melted, and I just waited for him to pop the question, without giving any insight into what I knew.
The proposal happened one month after that, here in Tamwine, to be exact.
Right after he found me next to the waterfall.
Right after he took me to my apartment and fucked me good.
At dinner that night, I found the ring hidden in a cupcake from the sweets he ordered.
I said yes without thinking about his secretive attitude.
I was too in love with Marshall to assume he could lie to me this much.
I’m trying to erase from my memory all the good moments alongside him, but it’s so hard that it makes me want to scream louder and punch all the walls in the room.
I get off the bed and take out the miracle box. If not even a thorough analysis of the shitty things from the inside won’t only make me feel hate for that man, I don’t know what will. Maybe if I would see with my own eyes how the criminal acted.
I shiver when thinking about a girl tied up in a chair, full of the blood that probably came from her, with lifeless eyes, and Marshall with a syringe in his hand, with a satisfied smile and his dick outside.
Now’s better. These kinds of images make my mind subdue from love.
I open the chest and take out the box with the empty syringes, which look exactly like the one Lucas showed me.
I’m trying not to touch them at all. I don’t wanna find out on my own what effect that drug would have, even if they look as clear as a whistle.
I’m not assuming any risk regarding Marshall.
I take the photos from inside and study the girls’ faces one by one, even though the fact that they are dead is making me feel sick.
They were so young and innocent, and they seemed to have only just turned 18.
They looked so pure, not touched by anyone else before, but killed by him in one of the most important moments of their lives.
God…
The revelation that I am nothing like them makes me think this might be the reason I didn’t end up like them. I wasn’t a virgin when I met him, and from the way I was flirting with him, I think he quickly realised that.
And now I am part of a horrible operation with Marshall as their leader.
Disgusting.
The hatred and anxiety for this man starts to get deeper as I am studying all the faces in the photos.
I close my eyes and put the pictures face down on the floor when I had gone through them all. I’m trying to calm down. God, how much I want to get into a gym to get rid of all of this agitation and accumulated tension.
I strongly inhale and end up giving a jerky exhale, already feeling my cheeks filling up with tears and my breath picking up the pace, ending up sobbing my eyes out.
I put my face in my hands, trying to stop the crying, but I don’t succeed. It became too strong for me to do that.
I'm feeling like I’m starting to succumb and tremble uncontrollably.
I hug my knees and get into my safe position, which was there for me in my worst moments.
I’m also talking about the loss of my grandparents when my heart got broken into a million pieces, and I now feel like it’s completely crumbling.
With this thought in my mind, I can’t stop crying, and I am feeling like the cascade in my eyes is only getting bigger.
I scream when I feel a hand touching my shoulder and get up fast, hitting the person next to me. Through the tears in my eyes, I manage to see that it is Lucas. I throw myself into his arms, and he immediately hugs me to his warm and calm chest.
“Everything will be fine, Anmara,” Lucas says with his face buried in my hair. “I promise that nobody will ever hurt you. Nobody will get past me.”
“D-do not make promises you can’t keep,” I say through my sobs, strangling his waist with my arms. “Please, just stay with me this time,” I beg him like a child who was abandoned by her parents in the middle of the storm.
That’s exactly how I’m feeling. Like the orphan I am. I have nobody, besides him. I can’t trust anybody, but Lucas’s presence gives me the comfort I haven’t felt in a very long time. It is like a silent oasis, but my troubled mind doesn’t want to let my body calm down.
“I’m sorry to announce to you that this time you’re tied to me, whatever Cathal will make me do and wherever he’ll send me,” he tightens his hold around me, being careful not to suffocate me in his grip at the same time.
I slowly distance myself from him to look into his eyes.
I can read the emotion in them, a fact that I overlooked at Marshall.
He was playing me really well, so he didn't have to hide his gaze, especially through sweet kisses and romantic gestures that were melting my heart. In Lucas’s emeralds, I can see a mixture of honesty, sadness, and…
love. His feelings are so well exposed, and only through his eyes.
What I am seeing is more profound than if I were to read from…
A journal.
Actually, I think the situation has just gotten worse.
“What happened?” Lucas feels my disturbance, but I get away from him and go back to the magical box, which I know is hiding even more than I can imagine.
“I remember all too well that every time he came home from a meeting while we were here, I caught him writing in a journal.” I start by saying, while I get the bloody lingerie out of the way, throwing it next to the photos.
“He said he was working on a book and never let me read it because I could inspire myself from it, especially when I seriously got myself into writing.”
I see a black material beneath all that lingerie, which I remove, revealing exactly what I was looking for.
A simple journal with the cover made from a delicate black leather.
It looks so innocent in its way, but so erotic and disgusting considering where it was hidden.
I study it for a couple of seconds, running my fingers over the cold leather.
I untie the string that was surrounding it and open it to its front page, where I find his elegant writing.
I relax, happy that I found what I needed, until I read the notes from that page.
The journal’s title is a simple enumeration of three words that makes my skin crawl.
ROMANCE ME IN - activating the emotions of a soulless man
I turn the page, and I start sweating while reading, with Lucas next to me. We are together studying Marshall’s words from ten years ago.
24th of April 2015
Phase I
The first experiment was a total failure.
The combination was lethal. I need to adjust the level of Cadmium and Sulphate, and try other wine combinations.
The solution is here. I can feel it. The only thing I can feel.
Tamwine is the solution to all of my problems.
Other places don’t have what Tamwine does. I tried for four years to find a place where I could come across the right substances, and I know for sure this place is the one. My intuition never felt so hung up on my empty being.
Satisfaction is the only emotion I am conscious of, which is so big when the subjects are not compatible with the injected substances.
My senses are sharper, and an emotion rises from the pool of darkness.
I will continue with these experiments. I will find the right combination for me, too. I want to succeed in feeling love as much as I want to watch how the breath of my pure subjects is the one I hear last.
The experiment will be a success. I can feel it in this bloody air.
I will write all my failures and successes to find the right combination.
I want to be normal.
I need to be normal.
“Chaotic, but it makes sense,” I say while I stare at the journal in my hands.
I feel Lucas watching me, but I can’t move for the moment. I am too caught up in my own thoughts.
I like to keep you still, what can I say? It’s too thrilling.
“I met his parents, and they always looked at me with adoration, but also with a pity that I wasn’t aware of at the moment,” I say, feeling like I am slowly losing my voice. “At least, now I know why.”