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It's not love, whatever these stolen moments are. At first she simply visits to mock his captivity, he knows this. She can come and go, but he must stay in the hothouse with his roses.
Then one day she brings a knife and hands it to him as he licks a spot of blood off his lower lip. He says, "What do you expect me to do with this? Slit my own throat?"
Whatever he was expecting--it was not for her to take off her shirt. He takes in her perfection, not a mark, not a freckle and he feels something he hasn't felt this age. Desire. How very unexpected. He made her this way. He owns this body. It's nothing more, he tells himself.
"I had my appendix taken out when I was eight. The scar was here. Put it back," she says.
His hand doesn't tremble and he draws a sharp line parallel to her supple hip that fills in red almost immediately. He has to will himself not to lap at her blood like some sort of animal. He knows, and no one better, that he is a monster. He prides himself on that.
She puts her shirt back on, takes the knife, and leaves. He lets his hands tremble. His whole body strains against the unfamiliar pull of lust. He refuses to give into an animal need.
She returns three days later with an awl. He is hard before she even slips the weapon into his dry hands.
"I fell while climbing a tree and pierced my thigh on a branch." She strips off her pants and he almost drools and it is that moment when his brain finally catches up. She knows what she's doing to him, to his corrupt old body and she glories in her power over his pathetic flesh. Well, let her. She deserves it.
He drives the awl just south of her finger and she sighs, almost whimpers and then yanks the awl out of her leg. She bandages the wound before putting her pants back on.
"Let me see the cut on your abdomen," he says.
She pulls up her shirt and let's him peer at it.
"It's too clean a cut to scar." He holds out his hand. She slips the awl into it and holds up her shirt with both hands. He eases apart the lips of the wound, slowly and carefully--not making the wound deeper, just wider. He chances to look up in her eyes, which are dark and unreadable. But her nipples are hard and poke through the soft fabric of her shirt. He longs to roll one against his tongue, to taste her, to make her moan. Extraordinary. He hasn't wanted a woman in this way in so long, but he's not surprised his body remembers how. Not with such damaged temptation before him.
She doesn't come back for days and he finds he is impatient to see her, but he pretends to be indifferent when she finally shows up again. She hands him a surgical scalpel.
"I had a very small scar on my cheek, from when I was first learning to shoot."
She points to the spot and he cradles her face in his hand and makes the smallest of cuts on the apple of her cheek. He drops the scalpel and brushes his lips across hers. She stands up; he knows he is lost. And he knows that she knows it. The triumph in her eyes is enough to crush him, bring him down, and ruin him forever. Death can't come soon enough.