A clean break?
Break cleanly from him?
Could it be that simple?
"You think this will stop me?" Ethan sneered contemptuously at the wary Lily seated on the bed's edge. He approached and struck out with a backhanded blow towards her arm.
Lily cried out as searing pain shot through her limb, the anti-wolf device clattering uselessly to the floor. With lightning reflexes, Ethan kicked it out of her reach.
The stark reality of the vast physical disparity between men and women struck her. Desperately scrambling back on the downy mattress, arms shakily propping herself up, Lily fixed him with a look of abject terror, "You're insane! Stay back!"
"This is my home," he stated with calm menace, his eyes glittering with the faintest unhinged quality that made her instinctively recoil. Just who did this foolish girl think she was addressing with such impudent demands on his territory? Clearly she didn't yet grasp the extent of her precarious situation.
Lily shrank back even further, her chest constricting with each panicked inhalation as if the very air were thinning around her. That repellent veneer of arrogant pride had vanished from her features, leaving them terribly, mercifully...vulnerable.
So many times, women unwittingly stoked the primal fires of male lust through their very helplessness – the piteous, doe-eyed desperation when struggling in vain like a trembling lamb realizing its utter powerlessness against the wolf's jaws.
And something about Lily's plight struck an even darker, more visceral chord within him.
He drank in the sight of her soft, defenseless terror with sadistic relish. Loosening his tie with one hand, Ethan braced a knee on the mattress edge and leaned across to seize her by the arm, ignoring her frantic thrashing as he deftly bound her wrists to the carved oak bedposts using the shimmering silk necktie.
Despite her best efforts, she may as well have been a rag doll in his grip – his sinewy muscles easily overwhelmed her feeble resistance, rendering her struggles pathetically futile. To be bound in such a demeaning, compromised position...
"You sick, twisted bastard! Let me go!" she spat, furiously kicking her legs out in his direction from her seated, splayed position on the bed.
Ethan shifted closer, pinning her flailing limbs with the solid weight of his knee as a feral glint entered his eye, "Insult me again, Lily, and I'll rape you right here without a second thought."
His tone was a guttural growl of quiet menace, yet backed by an unmistakable sense of dominating force.
She had no doubts he would make good on that depraved promise. This was no idle threat from an ordinary man – he was a driven animal, devoid of conscience or mercy.
Lily immediately froze, lips clamped in a bloodless line, realizing there was no further provocation she could safely risk against this soulless beast. For once her arrogant defiance fled, banished by the cold light of self-preservation. She could ill afford to enrage him further, not when recovering that hateful video remained her only priority.
After tense deliberation, Lily fixed him with an imploring, doleful look, her tone becoming placating, almost pleading, "Please, just let me go. I only want that video back, that's all I came for."
How swiftly that impertinent expression could shift when the circumstances demanded...now the predator had thoroughly cowed his prey.
"Beg me?" Ethan leaned in until their faces were but inches apart, his fingers idly working the buttons of her blouse as he purred with sordid promise, "Why don't I teach you the right way for a woman to beg a man?"