Wendee stood looking in the mirror, at the ghastly shroud that covered her body. This was the secret of the locked cupboard. The garment with a specific purpose.
Had it been black, she would have felt more comfortable, but it wasn't black. The layers of tulle that had transformed her into a gothic nightmare were bridal white. A clean, virginal white that she knew instinctively had no place in what was to come.
"Are you ready," Pietre asked from behind her, out of range of the mirror.
"Yes, I am," she replied.
The eyes that stared back at her from the mirror blinked slowly, their thick mascara'd lashes brushing the opaque veil. She thought she could discern an expression in them. Her body was calm and accepting, yet her eyes appeared vaguely incredulous, as though still unable to believe she was going to do this thing.
Much more than merely another role-play, this was to be the performance of her life. For her life.
"You know what to do?" he asked, as though she needed the reminder.
"I watched the tapes. I know," she said, concealing the fact that Pietre and Belle's tapes hadn't been all she'd seen. Somehow she'd found her way into another set of files. Skye's files.
Their time together at the Lagoon had brought a wistful smile to Dee's lips, but that smile had faded as the tape went on to chronicle her torture in the hands of the Lost Boys.
Mack, or even Tony she could believe, but playful Nick? Josh? Using Skye's body so callously? If she hadn't seen the evidence of it with her own eyes, she would never have believed it.
Then, a brutal blow. The scene had shifted to the tepee where Dee had lain with Long Shadow and listened to his lying words of love. Her mind had baulked at the image of Skye fellating her Indian lover, but as the scene had repeated itself again and again she'd been forced to accept its veracity.
Her conclusion had been equally inescapable. She'd never been special or unique to Long Shadow. Her relationship with him had been no different to her relationship with any of the others. Except in the matter of honesty.
They hadn't pretended to love her.
And neither had Pietre. He'd never spoken of love, only destiny. He'd shared the secrets of his past with her — ugly secrets, sure in the knowledge that she would accept them — that she would accept him. And she did.
His final secret had been the key to the locked wardrobe where her trousseau had been waiting — the tactile link between herself and his past.
"I'm ready for you," Pietre said, and she forced her mind back to the present. Adjusted the mirror and turned to him.
"You look ethereal," he said. "Pale and — "
"Dead. I look like a dead bride. Am I your bride, Pietre?" she asked, using his real name for the first time. Then she thought better of the question. "Don't answer that," she commanded, slipping easily into the shoes Belle would no longer fill.
At her sharp tone, Pietre drew in a deep breath and Dee watched his ribs expand — watched how the hollow below them sucked in slightly. His pale penis lay flaccid between his legs, curiously benign in its vibrantly dark nest of hairs.
"Are you comfortable?" she asked, stepping around him, inspecting the ropes that kept him spread-eagled in the middle of the room.
"No," he replied, his breath stilling as her hands came around his throat from behind. She forced herself to squeeze, ever so slightly. The tulle of her dress brushed against his buttocks and she saw them quiver. "I don't want to be comfortable," he croaked. "You know that."
"I know." Her hands slid over his shoulders and down, fingers probing his exposed armpits before her blood-red nails bit into the tender flesh there. "But I also know," she went on, "that there's a world of difference between discomfort and pain. And again, between pain and agony." She relaxed one hand and began to tease the soft hairs of his armpit, while the nails of her other hand drew blood. "So I ask you, Pietre… how far should I go?"
"As far as you want," he panted, whether in ecstasy or pain, Dee wasn't sure. "Belle had limits. I give you none."
"Very wise," she said, stepping back a pace to appraise his back view. Wide shoulders tapered down to slim hips and long legs. His buttocks were surprisingly pert.
The effect would have been attractive, even sexually arousing but for the crisscross of scars that patterned it. Even the buttocks…
She stepped close again and cupped them with both hands, her fingernails digging in hard, as hard as she was physically capable of.
There was a sound, like a hiss of breath escaping. His whole body tensed. Then she released him and he slumped, his shoulders sagging.
Dee glanced over one of those shoulder at the mirror they faced. His penis was beginning to firm.
"I see that they scarred your skin," she said, insinuating a finger between his cheeks to prod at his anus. "I wonder… Did they damage you internally as well?"
"No," he gasped as she pushed against it dry. "But I forbid you nothing, Wendee. You must ready me. I cannot…"
"Yes." She knew. He'd been trained to respond to pain. It was all he recognised now. She understood, in theory.
But assuming she got him erect and could manoeuvre him to climax within her — if they managed it several times and she didn't conceive. What then?
Was the child merely a whim on his part or did he truly believe it was the destiny they shared? More importantly, would he reject her when he realised there could be no child?
"Wendee?"
"Hmmm?" She unglazed her eyes, remembered where she was, and stabbed her finger at the puckered opening.
"What are you going to do to me?" he asked in a voice she hadn't heard from him before. A voice that filled her with power.
She looked at him in the mirror, at the wavering erection, then at her own reflection — at the tulle that pressed against him and overflowed on either side, the opaque veil that flattened her hair and made her eyes seem enormous, the blood-red lips.
She lowered her mouth, and, parting those lips to expose teeth, bit his shoulder, at the same time forcing her finger cruelly inside him.
His body tensed but he remained still. She heard him panting, making little breath noises like the ones she'd heard women make in the labour wards.
Raising her head, she looked at herself again, at the red smeared across the front of her veil. Was it lipstick or blood? She could taste blood.
Her lip curled into a sneer. "You're not going to fuck me," she said, relishing the obscenity, pushing home the point with a shove of her finger. "I'm going to fuck you," and she roughly withdrew the finger and stepped to the side, watching his face in the mirror as she lifted the front of her bridal shroud, bunching it in her hands until first her calves, then her knees, her thighs, and finally her hips were revealed.
Pietre's eyes widened, his lips falling apart.
"See how inventive I can be," she said, and holding the voluminous skirts with one hand, she fondled the huge dildo strapped over her pubis, stroking it as she imagined a man would stroke his penis to make it fully engorged, her hand cupping the large head, rolling it in her palm. "I thought I'd start with this. Then maybe if you're a good boy I might beat you. Would you like that?" she asked, and stopped stroking long enough to reach for his penis and dig her fingernails into it.
"Yes, yes," he cried, his body tense again, his breath coming in short gasps. "I'm not afraid. I'm not afraid."
Dee bit her nails in harder, and still facing the mirror, looked directly into his eyes. "You will be."