CHAPTER 16
Tess

Tess Harding knew that David Perkins was a dangerous man. She knew that the man thrived on fear and helplessness. She had on more than one occasion played the part of his 'victim' in his fantasy sex games. But she had never seen him in the state he was in when he had knocked in her door in the middle of the night, the night of his office party.

"David?" Her voice held surprise as she came upon the man on the other side of her door. His black tie was hanging loosely around his neck, the black jacket was hanging loosely from his hand, but there wasn't nothing loose about his expression.

Tess swallowed and a small voice belonging to some kind of survival instinct deep inside of her ordered her to Close the door!

But she didn't. "David, what's wrong?"

He had been leaning against the wall, shadows from the dark hallway becoming a part of his chiseled face. "Hello, Ms. Harding."

"I didn't know you were coming over," Tess said. Her survival instinct had crawled back into its hole. Tess wouldn't let him know that he was scaring her.

"Oh, was I supposed to make an appointment?" he asked, voice deep and threatening.

Tess swallowed. "I guess not. It's just… you're disturbing a lady's beauty sleep here."

"Does it look like I care?"

Her hand tightened around the door knob, giving the survival instinct a chance to peek out and quickly shout Close it! Close it now! before it hid anew.

"Are you drunk?"

He came at her then. Too quickly for her to react. Lunging his body at hers, her back slamming into the picture frames jutting out of the wall as his hands closed around her throat. The hall mirror trembled on its nails next to her, shuddered and fell to the floor. Millions of pieces of glass exploded across the floor.

Seven years of bad luck.

"You belong to me," he sneered, his face so close to hers that she could barely breathe. His hands closing around her throat challenged her possibility of breathing further.

"Yes," she whispered, her vocal cords protesting.

His left hand let go of her throat while his right hand was large enough to spread across the front of her throat, holding her up so that she was balancing on the tip of her toes, confining pressure underneath her chin. His left hand began to fumble with the zipper of his pants, his breathing erratic and hot against her face.

"You are not to look at any other man," he said, emphasizing his words by slamming her twice against the walls. She flinched as the wooden frames of her the generic photos that came with the picture frames cut into her back through her thin nightgown.

"No," she croaked.

I should kill him, she thought hazily. There were black spots dancing in front of her eyes. I have to kill him.

Just then his hand left her throat and she could breathe, but he had only done so to be able to free his penis. She heard the familiar rip of her lacy panties (Damn, the expensive ones) and then he pushed inside her. Hard. She gasped, unprepared for the pain. He pushed her up against the wall with the heavy, now sweaty, body of his own as he thrust into her again and again, his pace fervent.

She closed her eyes and rode out the storm, trying not to focus on the pain in her back.

"You are mine," David pushed out between clenched teeth before hitting her with a closed fist across her cheekbone. The pain exploded across her face, making her lose her breath.

Ms. Survival Instinct was back from her hiding and this time Tess was all ears.

Within a second after David had crossed the line, he was slammed into the opposite wall, the impact creating a indention of his body in the yellow plaster. David collapsed on the floor, pants around his ankles, hair standing in all directions as if he was a madman, the black shirt hiding his manhood.

Tess stood panting, blood trickling down the inside of her thigh (he had been too forceful), a subtle thrumming ache in her back and a excruciating throb in her left cheek. Her expensive lacy night gown was torn in several places and her blonde curls were not so perfect anymore. Her right hand, hanging loosely against her side, still flickered with the tapering powers that had been used.

Her eyes were dark and sharp as she looked at the man that was gingerly trying to get to his feet. She could kill him. Easily. But God, all the paperwork. Having to get rid of his body. Sure, if he had been a one-night stand. But people knew she and him had a thing going. People would question her if he would turn up missing. Fuck. She couldn't kill him.

"How the hell…" David whispered. "What the hell…How did you..?"

Tess smiled faintly. "You're not the only one that's strong, honey."

His eyes caught sight of the visible ebbing electricity coursing through her fingers and his eyes widened. For the first time, David Perkins looked scared. "What the fuck…?"

"I would love to play around some more, David," Tess said with a sweet voice. "But you see. It's the middle of the night; you just broke my wall, my mirror and my favorite night gown. I'm bleeding all over the place and I will have to use a ridiculous amount of expensive make-up to cover up the shit you just pulled. So I hope you understand that I'm not in the mood anymore."

David got to his feet, whispering, "What kind of freak are you?"

Tess snorted in disbelief. "Don't talk to me about freaks, you sick son-of-a-bitch. Believe me, I would love for you to remember all of this, so that you'd spend the rest of your pathetic life looking over your shoulder…" Tess started a slow walk towards David and enjoyed it when he pressed up against the wall, "…but due to your sadistic fuck-up, I'll have to do some damage control. I will not let you forget what you did to me. But you will not remember what happened to you."

He looked like he was about to pee his pants. Serves him right, Tess thought and closed her eyes.

She could hear his frantic and fearful breathing slow down to something of a normal breathing pattern as she entered his brain and did some tweaking. Instead of blasting him half-way through the wall, David would remember Tess fighting him back with her hands and with a very accurate knee to his groin. He would remember her threatening him with a knife, forcing him to actually leave the apartment and leave her alone. He would remember the feeling of fear (which he would have difficulty rationalizing later considering that he had never been afraid of a woman in his whole life) that would stop him from taking his revenge on Tess and prevent him from 'teaching her a lesson'.

David Perkins would never mess with Tess Harding again.

She traced the metallic sans-serif numbers nailed to the wooden door with a well-manicured index finger.

Twenty-three.

This was, supposedly, his apartment. It was in the middle of the day and Tess was aware that anyone could walk down that hallway and see a small blonde woman in designer clothes breaking into an apartment that wasn't hers. But compared to ordinary burglars, Tess had a trick or two up her sleeve. Because a passerby would not see a small blonde woman in designer clothes breaking into an apartment, they would see an empty corridor. That was one of Tess' magic tricks. The genetic variation that enabled her to do so meant that she could take her time breaking into the apartment. Not that she really needed any time anyway.

With a smug smile on her red-painted lips and a wave of her hand over the lock, she had committed breaking and entering without breaking a nail.

She closed the door behind her and dropped the mind-warp she had camouflaged her actions with. Here, in Maxwell Evans' hallway, no one could see her anyway. She locked the door behind her and took a deep breath.

"Nice place you've got here, Mr. Evans." She looked at a picture frame positioned on the small chest in the hallway, scrunched her nose in displeasure at seeing Michael Guerin's annoying face in the photo, next to the owner whose apartment she was trespassing. "Not bad at all."

Calmly placing her pink Valentino bag on the floor, Tess retrieved a pair of latex gloves from the smaller inside compartment.

"Who says bags can't be both beautiful and useful?"

She snapped the latex gloves on and proceeded to take out rather advanced surveillance equipment from the larger compartment of her very useful bag. Her mind tricks sure came in handy, both in acquiring designer bags and in acquiring high tech bugs.

"Let's see," Tess mumbled, looking around the neat apartment. "Where would you spend most of your time, Mr. Evans?"

Of course, balancing on a plastic chair to get a 10 by 10 mm gadget hidden in the upper corner of a painting could not be avoided by using her mind powers. It was true hard manual work that was put into bugging Mr. Evans' phone and placing another camera above the resident's bed. Placing the plastic chair in the exact position she had found it, Tess wiped down (which entailed a simple wave of her hand) the lock she had turned upon entering the apartment, unlocked that same lock, removed the gloves, opened the door with the gloves still in her hand - a barrier between her fingerprints and the door handle - and entered the hallway (mind-warp of empty hallway now fully back in function).

Tess closed the door, magically locked it, let the gloves drop into her bag and smiled.

Mission accomplished.