NICOLE
The words hung in the air, so absurd and so utterly unexpected that for a second, I just stared at him. "I just did that, Plaything." A joke. He'd made a joke. After everything that had just happened—the pain, the blood, the violation, the shocking, unwanted pleasure—he had the capacity to make a joke.
My mind, which had been a swirling vortex of terror and self-loathing, stuttered to a halt. I watched him walk towards his closet, his posture relaxed, as if he hadn't just dismantled my entire world. I had never seen this side of him.
Was it a side that existed at all, or was it a fleeting moment, a crack in the ice, reserved only for these twisted, private moments after he'd taken what he wanted?
The confusion was almost worse than the fear. It was easier to hate a monster than to be disarmed by a glimpse of something that almost resembled… humanity.
