"So which is it, Madeleine?" his fingers tap her ankle bone, "Did it hurt, or are you a liar?"
Blood warms her cheeks as the silence builds between them, thickening and expectant. Either reply she could give will make her look worse than a fool, so she evades them. "You know the answer to that."
"Of course. Lies come to you so naturally."
She blinks, lifting her chin. The idea of herself as deceptive by nature is not one she is willing to validate. "I was the child of a killer. I needed them."
"And the lover of a killer, remember," she flinches and he shrugs, "I do not judge you for that. But where you lied to them both, you know there is no need for that between us, don't you?"
He releases her ankle, allowing Madeleine to gather her knees to her chest, shielding herself from his gaze. It doesn't help.
"Will you hand me my shirt? Please."
He rises from the bed, and she watches as he rearranges the pile of her clothing with a thoughtful foot. "No."
Her words wobble. "Why not?"
"It pleases me to look at you."
She shivers, and says, voice tremulous and small, "I'm cold."
Perhaps it is a reward for her telling the truth, or perhaps she was wrong about him and there is a little human mercy that flows alongside the poison in his veins. Perhaps he merely wants to feel himself a benevolent god, now, in this moment. Whatever the motivation, he bends and retrieves her camisole, coming around the side of the bed to hand it to her.
Then he stands, watching, as she takes it. And stands, waiting, for her to put it on.
No. She was wrong. This is no act of mercy. He only wants to see what she must of necessity reveal again as she slides it over her head. She does so as quickly as possible, hands and fingers clumsy in their haste, and her flush has spread down her neck by the time she's finished.
"Better?"
"Yes," she answers, tucking up her knees again, "Thank you."
He huffs a soft laugh, sitting on the edge of the bed, regarding her from one half-lidded eye. "I see breaking you of this habit will be a work of some time."
Anger floods her, heedless and reckless as a tidal wave, and so great is the emotion that it washes a torrent out of her.
"Why don't you want me to lie to you?" she snaps. "This is all a lie. If I had the chance, I would kill you and everyone on this ship to return to my daughter. Nothing you do to me will change that. Even your poisons, all they would do is keep me quiet about it. You could keep me drugged till the day I die, and even then I would remember Mathilde. That is my truth. Now tell me you don't prefer my lies."
He turns to her, eyes fixed and bright. "Your fury is a passion, Madeleine. I welcome it. I welcome it, so long as you remember that you will never have that chance," his tone deepens, but she cannot tell if it is with fury or excitement, "If you act against me and fail—if even one of my men survives—Bond dies first. Then Mathilde. Then you. Do we understand one another?"
She wants to shriek until her throat bleeds. She wants to throw herself into the ocean and let the icy water finish what he started. She wants to pin him down, crack open his ribs, and eat his heart.
Biting her inner cheek is the closest she can come to what she really wants, and the sharp sting helps her focus. One day she'll get her teeth in his neck, even if they die tearing out each other's throats. She nods. "Yes."
"Good."
His hand fastens around her ankle and drags her leg down. Fingers wander, tracing the long muscles of her calf, the soft skin of her thigh. Madeleine braces for the inevitable, crossing her arms over her stomach and digging in with her nails, but the inevitable doesn't arrive.
He stands, gesturing. "In the middle of the bed. Lie down." At her stony-faced hesitation, he cocks his head. "We have an understanding, do we not?"
She wants to say something, something biting and witty, something James would toss out in the face of danger. If she could, perhaps she could wrest back some kind of control, make her feel that all this is a game, a joke. Nothing she need take seriously. Nothing that can hurt her. But she is not James. Her control is hanging by a thread, and if it snaps now, she is finished.
Slowly, avoiding his eyes, she moves to obey, keeping her arms crossed as though they are any defense against him, as though her puppeteer cannot move them wherever he wishes and she will let him, must let him, helpless as a toy, a doll. When he looms over her, settling between her spread legs, she turns her head and closes her eyes.
In darkness, she can hear her heart thudding unevenly, strong beats magnified by her bones. The pulse of it is not as frantic as she thought it would be, but with each second that passes, it accelerates, faster and faster until it is thunder in her ears. Separation between her mind and body is no longer possible; the fear of what will happen to the one once the other leaves it is too much to bear. She breathes, straining to make each one even and uniform, and her heartbeat slows. This is her control. This is all she has. This time it is vital she stay present, mindful. She will not allow her thoughts of James to betray her now, to him.
She opens her eyes. He is waiting for her, unmoving.
"There they are," he says, leaning closer. "Those beautiful eyes. So desperate. I thought I must have forgotten the exact expression, but here it is again. Just the same."
"Because my life is in your hands again," her chin jerks, but this time she does not look away. "Does that also please you?"
"Very much," he whispers, and then he is kissing her.
Neither of them close their eyes, and he is not deluded enough to think she will open to him. He withdraws after a moment and her lips thin, curling in disgust. He only smiles, that same, faint quirk of his mouth. She wonders if it is a defense mechanism, to treat her rejections as merely amusing. But perhaps they are just amusing to him. He will have what he wants regardless of how she feels, after all.
As they stare at each other, his hands are not idle. They slide down her arms, run up her ribs. They pause when a huff she can't conceal betrays a ticklish spot on her stomach. But there is no laughter when they cant her hips upward and into him. Madeleine doesn't move, doesn't fight, but there is a lump in her throat she cannot swallow. With each passing moment, the lump grows, and breathing around it becomes difficult, fraught. It feels like choking.
It feels like drowning.
He is still fully dressed. There is still time to prepare. Inhale, exhale. It is only a moment in time. She will step aside, let it pass, and then it will be over.
Madeleine tries to relax, knowing it will hurt more if she doesn't, but it's impossible. She winces on a sharp hiss when his finger breaches her, and the lump in her throat dissolves at last into tears; she gulps them down, hungry for air. Despite wanting to wriggle away, like a worm instinctively wriggles on a hook, she forces herself to be still. Yes, it stings, that dry drag of skin on skin, but pain is only pain. It will pass.
He stops. Withdraws.
"This time, you will not tell me it hurts? Now, when it would be true?"
"If I did," she grits out, "would you care?"
He sits upright, staring down at her, that placid, implacable smile at last shocked from his face. "I told you I would not hurt you," he blinks, "You may be a liar, Madeleine, but I am not."
This is not a discussion to have when she is half-naked and dangerously near sobbing. "Everything you do hurts me," she says. "Everything."
"Some pain is inevitable," he nods, "When you surrendered your daughter, that was a pain you chose. This is not."
He stands, leaving Madeleine to scramble together and curl herself around her hurt. She feels like an hourglass, some vital essence hollowing out from where he touched her. What will happen when her sands run out?
He watches her drag herself together, while he stands there, barely a hair out of place. The only sign of agitation she can decipher is the way the fingers of one hand curl into the palm of the other. Self-soothing, perhaps? A relic of childhood, an old injury impossible to forget? Madeleine focuses on their movements, using this outward point to distract herself from her inward turmoil.
"You think me a monster, I know," he says. "It is true. I am. But I am not an animal."
"What is the difference?" she asks, weary, tired of his rationale even before he gives it.
Yet she is surprised when he smiles again, and says, "A monster knows precisely what harm he intends to cause."