She fell quickly asleep that night after he´d taken her, exhausted. The imprisonment and the use of her abilities took their toll. Victor didn't, though he was tired. He wondered if the little moth had ever realized that she virtually leaked of her own emotions. It was how he had originally realized that she didn´t fear him so much – or at least not in the first place.
He moved slowly to find a more comfortable position. Things would have been much easier if he would have simply thrown her out of the bed. For some reason, he didn´t.
For some reason, he hadn´t done it back at that first night, either.
Usually, he hadn't to, as the ladies chose to get away from him as far as possible anyway. There would have been no way to get at least a wink of sleep otherwise. But most of them had also at least tried to fight him. She hadn´t. So, for some weird reason, they had shared the much too small bed back then for the rest of the night. Somehow, that hadn´t changed afterwards.
The whole thing was more than weird for him. He had never been the kind of guy to choose the same girl night after night, like Dukes. It had happened - but rarely. Still, he had gotten used to this one. To the low agreeable voice, the careful way she tried to avoid displeasing him without pretending. Though he would never admit it.
Besides, whatever exactly she had done to him – it had worked. He had been able to face Stryker with a stoic silence and serenity during the last few weeks he had only rarely managed to show over the last few years. The look of surprise in Stryker´s face at that first evening – and a few other pleasant occasions since then - had been prizeless. It made him feel not only good, but superior. The old human scumbag didn´t seem to realize that this change was somehow connected with the girl. Actually, Stryker didn´t care much about these things at all, as long as he let the more important girl´s in one piece. Besides, he had covered things with a nice little bloodbath recently – obviously a quite convincing performance.
Creed knew that the moth felt drained and scared. Struggled heavily to keep down the panic. Stryker´s people hadn´t done any harm to her during their examinations. So hadn´t he, well, generally speaking. But she still was a prisoner, for reasons she wasn´t told, captured by people she didn´t know. She had been here for months now. There were no answers to the question what would happen to her – or if she would ever be released again. And as she not even knew where she was or if this kind of paramilitary looking facility was maybe even sponsored by the government – probably nobody would ever be able to find her, even if somebody tried.
She surely fearedhim every minute they spent together. But she surely feared more to lose control. Her nerves. Give up hope. And the possible consequences of that. The uncertainty of her situation would possibly drive her crazy and she didn´t know for how much longer she would be able to avoid that.
He hadn´t realized it directly, or, to be more precise, he hadn´t known how to interpret things. But after she had done whatever she was able to do to him to calm him down, several times by now, he had come to the conclusion that he was right.
They had something in common.
She struggled hard to hide her emotions when she was awake – though even then in vain. It wasn´t hard to figure out that she didn´t like him, most probably hated him. But she had obviously realized that going with him was the only chance to leave her cell except for the meals or examinations. The only chance to escape the other badly depressive and traumatized women. The only chance to tire out her fear by tiring out her body.
Most probably, she also knew that he looked through her.
Right now, the despair and strain and tiredness virtually dispersed from her, wrapping him in. He thought for a moment about taking her back to her cell or order her to get over to the second, now empty bed, but he didn't. The fact that he was unable to avoid perceiving her feelings at all bothered him more than her feelings themselves. Besides the fear of being raped or beaten or killed, the girl was mostly afraid of going mad.
Like a wild animal locked up in a cage for too long.
A feeling he knew all too well. A feeling he was used to.