Disclaimer: I do not own any rights to C. M. Priest's Boneshaker or any characters and all that. Also, if you don't like scenes of graphic non-consensual sexual relations, please don't read.

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She was too tired to object when he came to sit on the edge of the bed. He looked exactly how she last remembered him, and he was smiling, as if everything was all right and nothing had ever been wrong. She told him, "Really. I'm going to tell him, no matter what it costs me. I'm tired of keeping all these secrets. I can't keep them all anymore. And I won't."

"You won't?" He reached for her hand, but she didn't let him take it.

She rolled over onto her side, facing away from him and clutching at her stomach. "What do you want?" she asked him. "What are you even doing here?"

He said, "Dreaming, I think. Same as you. Look, my love. We meet here – if nowhere else."

"Then this is a dream," she said, and a sick feeling spread through her stomach like acid. "For a minute I thought it wasn't."

"It might be the only thing you ever did right," he said, moving neither toward nor away from her. His weight on the edge of the bed bowed the mattress and made her feel as if she were rolling or falling into his space.

"What? Not telling him?"

"If you had, you might've lost him before now."

"I haven't lost him," she said. "I just can't find him."

Levi shook his head. She could feel the motion of it, though she couldn't see him. "He's found what he wanted, and you'll never get him home again. He wanted facts. He wanted a father."

"You're dead," she told him, as if he did not know.

"You won't convince him of it."

She crushed her eyes closed and buried her head into the pillow, which almost wanted to smother her with its musty, warm odor. "I won't have to convince him, if I show him."

"You're a fool. The same fool you always were."

She opened her mouth to protest but stopped when his hand pressed against her face, cold and corpse-like. She rolled over to face him, but his face was distorted now – blurred and glinting in the lamplight. "Levi?" she murmured, the horrible sensation of falling building in her stomach. His hand was too cold, too real against her cheek and his face came into focus a devil's mask reflecting the fires of hell. Her injured head throbbed and swam.

"Who?" she began, but the gravity of the waking world crashed around her and she knew. Minnericht. "What are you doing in my bed?" She tried to use her sternest no-bullshit voice, but the dregs of sleep pulled heavy at her every movement. She shimmied the blankets back up to her chin and tried to scoot away, but his hand was like an anchor, pinning her down.

"Why, Mrs. Blue, don't you recognize your own husband?" He was leaning over her now, the blue fires flickered and simmered where his eyes should be.

"Leviticus is dead. If you were really him, you'd know that." She repeated what she'd told him before, in his office. He removed his hand from her face, where she was growing aware of a sticky wetness, and it was coated in her congealing blood. He planted it by her head.

"Come now, Mrs. Blue. We can start a new life together. Let us celebrate our impending nuptials." His metallic voice was low, dangerous, and it sent a thrill of terror through her.

"I'm not staying here and neither is Zeke. You are not Leviticus Blue, and even if you were you could not convince us to stay." She sat up and pulled the blankets around her. Fully clothed or not, a bed was still an intimate place for a lady to be trespassed upon. He was not deterred.

"You don't have a choice. And if you won't submit willingly, I'll have to force you." Briar had no time to react as his closed fist swung around and hit her already bruised temple. She saw stars, and was paralyzed by pain. By the time she was coherent enough to move her limbs and swear at the top of her lungs, he'd already clamped some sort of double cuff restraint around her wrists. Her hands were stuck, palm to palm, as though she were praying. She swung them blindly at him, clipping his shoulder and earning her a hard smack across the mouth. The blood pooled in her lip and he pulled her hands behind her, clipping them to the headboard.

Her restraints rattled against the wood above her but didn't give. She felt around with her fingertips, but could only deduce that they were made of some kind of metal with bolts and hinges jutting out. Restrained as she was, Minnericht got off the bed and started tugging at the buckles that held his ornate mask in place. After much fiddling, and with some difficulty, the mask came off with a sucking sound. The face underneath was scarred, gruesome, and definitely not Leviticus. She turned her head in disgust.

Briar tired not to notice when his magnificent burgundy coat fell to the floor. She tried not to catch the motion of him shrugging off his suspenders out of the periphery of her vision. And she desperately wished the methodical unbuttoning of a shirt was a more unfamiliar gesture. When he was done, the bed dipped at her feet under his weight.

"Look at me." His words seemed to take a little effort, and the strain added to the seriousness of his tone. She refused to comply, and his hand grabbed her throat, forcing her face to his. A bubbling scar stretched over the right side of his face. Without his shirt, Briar saw that it trailed down his arm and shoulder, the puckered pink skin stretching down his side as well. He was repulsive to look at, and she glared daggers into his one good eye. Slowly he reached down and tugged on the buckles of her waist cincher, peeling it off her and throwing it to a distant corner.

"Now that wasn't so bad, was it?" He started for the top button of her shirt, but she spit right in his good eye. He roared, bringing his closed fist across her mouth. The taste of blood exploded in her mouth with a crack. She barely felt her shirt fall open and the buttons on her trousers being picked apart. He was straddling her now, and she instinctively threw her leg up with all her force, making contact right between his legs. He howled in pain and rolled off her, stunned for the moment. Briar rattled her restraints and writhed against them, desperately trying to loosen the shackles. They were too tight to even budge. Minnericht came back with a vengeance.

"You stupid bitch!" His hand came down on her throat and clamped down. Immediately she couldn't breathe. She kicked and flailed against him, sputtering blood from her wounded mouth. He brought his closed fist against her eye, blinding her with pain, and she stopped kicking long enough for him to get both their trousers off. His hand returned to her neck and he leaned his weight there while his other hand groped her chest roughly. She could breathe, but barely, and the blood throbbed hard against her face, pounding against her head, eye, and lip.

"I don't usually like women that dress like men, but you've got quite a bit of fight in you." He chuckled darkly, pushing her legs apart and settling there. Briar closed her eyes and thought of Zeke. If she got out of this alive, she would take Zeke and move as far east as they could manage and start a new life there. She was pulled out of her happy place by something pushing against her womanhood. "What's wrong, Widow Blue?" He taunted. "Aren't you excited to be with a man after all these years?" He chuckled again, spitting in his hand and running it over his length. His obscenity mortified her, and hot angry tears spilled out, blurring out the vision of her now-swelling eye.

He pressed into her then – hard. And it hurt; it felt like her insides were being ripped open. His hands were at her throat, but he was only holding her down. When she kicked her legs to get away from him, he thrust harder into her and she cried out. He leaned his head down to her ear and whispered venomous obscenities into her ear. Repulsed, she turned her head away and he ravaged her neck, evoking cries of disgust.

"You are mine. I control you." She wished to struggle, to prove him wrong, but she was weak and he had her pinned beneath his thrusting weight, gaining force as though he fed on her submission. They were both smeared with her blood, and shimmery with sweat from their struggle. He looked like a demon in the orange glow, blood painted across his face where he had pressed against her. His forceful strokes tore against her most sensitive place, and every thrust seemed to force him deeper and deeper. He grabbed her face and turned it to him.

"Look at me." He could feel his climax coming, and he wanted to watch the horror on Briar Blue's face as her shame was completed. She closed her eyes petulantly and he shook her face. "Open your eyes and look at me." He was growling now, dangerous. Her lids fluttered open, fresh tears glazing her lashes and her eyes rolled back to look up, around, anywhere but at him. "Godamnit I said LOOK AT ME." The terror in her eyes as she looked at him then was perfect. Her fear was absolutely arousing. He touched her face, her lips; she was aged and bruised and covered in blood and terror – the perfect picture of his conquest. She dared not break his gaze, but winced on every thrust, which he liked.

He stroked in earnest now, and the horrified realization dawning on her face was priceless. She closed her eyes, sobbing now, and he shook her hard by the throat. Reluctantly she cracked her eyes open, and Minnericht crooned poisonous nothings into her lips. With one final, mighty thrust and a grunt, he spilled his seed into her belly, riding out his release with short, bursting strokes that were like knives into Briar's womb. He watched, satisfied, as fresh tears spilled down her cheeks in pink rivers against the drying blood.

"Sh, now. That wasn't so bad, was it?" He kissed her, mockingly, but she had no more struggle left for him. He rolled off of her, and after a moment of redressing, he cast her a condescending glance so similar to her Levi she thought he was a ghost before slipping his mask back on and left her room. A bolt slid shut, clicking against the door, and Briar cried.