The ride back was quiet, tense and numbing.

For a moment - just one - Netta almost asked herself aloud if she was still in the real world. Perhaps this was the true real world and she had been tossed into it, cold, and left to swim ashore on her own.

She swore that somewhere on the horizon of her consciousness, she could hear a familiar voice as it laughed, senselessly, wildly.

Her nostrils felt as though they were coated in the stench of burning flesh.

She wanted to weep, but couldn't. She felt incapable of doing anything, as though she was trapped inside of her own body, the outside world a living nightmare that she could only stare at.

She could swear that Ash had been speaking to her. She would have sworn that she heard him telling her about a beautiful place in the glade of a wood where small animals, gentle and intelligent in their own way, once dreamt, safe, in his embrace. They lived beneath a great tree that he called his mother.

She must have fallen asleep, because when she came to, she was being carried out of the car. Her cheek was still cold from where it had laid against the rattling wall of glass in the door.

She groaned, but remained still in the arms that carried her. All the while, her mind was filled with memories of her murdered adopted sister.

Ximenia laughed at her, tearing Netta's hair out with clawed hands.

She heard, then felt him opening a door. She felt the change in temperature as she was brought into a house.

She was carried with abnormal speed up some stairs, and was brought into a room moments before she was placed on a bed.

Opening her eyes, Netta recognized the interior of her childhood bedroom. She gasped.

The surprise of her surroundings, for a moment, pulled her out of her daze.

Glancing up, she caught him a moment before he was completely undressed.

Netta gasped and shrank back on the bed, scooting backwards with her feet on the dusty bedspread.

Her voice was a cry. "Oh - oh goddess, Ash -"

Ash said nothing at first as he stood at the foot of the bed. All of the front of him was easily accessible to her gaze, no matter how she tried to make her daze decent and remain at his hauntingly still, handsome face.

She found that her mind was rapidly assembling a collage of sorts of him, the complete makings of a map of his body in front of her.

Although there were long, leanly muscled thighs that were met at his angular hips to consider, the journey of her gaze begun at the center of his chest. It was an almost hairless, long expanse of wilderness that ended in a flat stomach that had the makings of hard, contoured muscle.

At the jutting bones of his hips, Netta knew laid uncharted territory. Still, she tried to stop herself from imprinting the image of on her mind.

Try as she might, however, it was impossible to not be left with the afterimage of him.

Even at gentled rest beneath a thin patch of golden, curled hair when she let her gaze bob down there once, it was a shocking sight to behold.

He was truly a Pandora's box for the eyes, leaving chaos to run amok.

But in her mind was a creeping shadow. It was one that it was becoming increasingly hard to see through, struggling to free herself from.

Ash spoke then, a hand resting on the bed in front of him.

"Please forgive me for this later, and forgive me, now, for insisting that this is necessary for your life. Even as you know so little about me." He sighed deeply, and Netta forced herself to stare into those deep, dark purple eyes as he continued to speak.

"There is no going back for me, I need you to understand, and you need me as much as I need you. I just - I wish it wasn't like this. I wish that we had some other time, a softer place, for us to be together. I admire you for your bravery, your stubbornness. And I must admit, now, that if you had accepted my offering before now, I would have pressed the advantage. Would have eaten you whole."

Netta opened her mouth. Even though the pounding of what sounded like drums in her head, she could not stop the urge to ask seemingly a million questions.

Still, when finally she spoke, she was dismayed when all that could come out was a simpering rattle.

She closed her eyes, hoping that when she opened them that all would be back to normal.

When she re-opened her eyes, however, she realized that Ash had come so close to her.

He was crouching on the bed, fully naked. And then he was crouched on top of her.

In an instant, he leaned closer still. He pressed his forehead to hers, then pressed soft, full lips to her cheek, and began to kiss.

It felt electric, and just like when she had dealt with her Sister, Netta found herself immobilized.

Intermixed with her surprise, her horror, was a feeling that she was unable to stop whatever happened to her. It was a sense of eventuality that was horrible, in light of what had happened with Ximenia, only seeming like a heartbeat back.

Her blood pounded a ritualistic beat in her ears.

She could hear - somewhere in the room? In her mind? - the sound of her Sister, cursing her. She whispered the very thoughts that threatened to make Netta succumb to despair.

And then she heard a voice that sounded so clear that it could have been in the room with them.

Ximenia spoke.

"Do you think he can save you from me? Even if you consent to being his bitch, letting him mount you, I'll always be there, on the horizon, waiting to rise - to burn you."

Her words were emphasized as, unwanted, Netta's mind was filled with the sight of Ximenia screaming in agony as she died anew.

Ash kissed down her cheek to her chin, breaking Netta's concentration on the sound of the unwanted intruder.

And, almost like an after thought, Ash rose up a measure to begin to cascade her lips with kisses. He did not kiss her in an insistant and penetrative manner as he had before. Rather, he kissed in a way that left and continuously removed the imprint of his lips.

Her lips quivered to kiss him back, but she held herself back, her mind in chaos.

For a moment, she morbidly clung to the image that bloomed in her mind like wood rose. It was of her Sister, laying bleeding to death, her arm extended as though she meant to take hold of her beloved.

She felt her grip on the image of her Sister's still face, the eyes open in shock beginning to rise, to overpower every other thought.

He intruded, lips descending on her own bottom lip to grasp, pull in a tender, almost playful manner.

She closed her eyes, fixed in bad memory on the ceiling above. Netta shuddered, felt as gooseskin bloomed and spread through her whole body.

Her mind was drifting for a moment on the sensation of his tender pull, which he held gently in his teeth like a feral animal.

He let go, beginning his kissing where he had left off, traveling down to her neck.

He felt warm. So warm, in fact, that it was as though he was burning her flesh where he touched. When he removed his touch, he left her cold, needing.

Her bottom lip felt bruised in the middle, swollen and tenderized when he let go.

Netta's eyes fell open. She felt a quiver that was like the pulse of a drug mainlining through her veins, altering the chemistry in her mind.

Her nipples hardened underneath the layers of winter clothing. In the thick padding of her boots, her toes curled.

She could sense his pheromones, clearly, beneath the scent of deep woods, of trails that lead into darkness, complete and hushed.

It had to be his pheromones that held her so easily under his control.

She was so focused on the sensation of his lips that she did not feel him taking off her coat until it had fallen off of her body. It was as though he had made an incision and had cut with a quick and elegant slash, leaving her with only her clothing to protect her.

With a swipe of one of his lean arms, her coat flew off of her body and he seemed to somehow meld her body's temperature into his own, as though she were a piece of raw metal submerged into a furnace.

For a moment, she thought that this all felt familiar, as though they had done this many times before. The man was a far cry, however, from the youthful, perfect-looking Monster pressed to her.

She felt a clawing, rending fear. She knew that there was no way that she could overpower this Monster.

She knew with absolute certainty that he was no creature whose main focus was seduction.

No; he exuded his own power, it burned off of his skin so hot that it felt like being pressed to burning metal, even through the layers of her clothes.

A breath left her, a loud exhalation that he was aware of as well. She knew it, for he rose his head up - his beautiful face with that dimpled chin and those stormy dark, purple eyes.

He softly asked her, "Have you ever felt glory so close at hand?"

She felt herself ask him, "Aren't you cold, embracing me with all of this snow and... and you're naked?"

Netta wondered how she would ever survive what was sure to come next. She knew that without his aid, she would be doubly certain to never survive to see the next day.

But, if she died without his help - the Devil's own help - she would have her own soul. She would still be her own person.

He paused, then smiled an almost sad smile that was nevertheless tinged with something like deeply penetrative, corrupting lust.

"Lovely, I'm always naked. Every moment that you look at me I am an illusion when I look as I do to everyone."

The thought of his words rendered her, for a moment, unable to think coherently.

She was taken out of her sudden sense of wonder when she felt his hands roaming over her shirt's front. They slidalong the front of the cloth in such a way that she felt that she might as well as not been wearing anything.

Her heart pounded, the sound filling her ears again, noisy as it intermingled with the sound of her hectic breathing.

How could she be breathing, even alive, as she was touched by him like this?

And then, as though she was hit with some celestial influence, she felt the sudden turn of lust in her mind transform.

It came, even she beheld the sight of her Sister burning.

The very man that had killed her Sister's beloved arched over her.

When she closed her eyes, she could see him.

Ash stood over the burning corpse of a Monster, standing dispassionately over it. He looked different, taller, gaunter, sharp as though there were blades protruding from the top of his head. And then he turned to gaze at her, his eyes brighter, more manic than the fire that burned, ate at the creature at his feet -

The second his hand slid underneath the bottom edge of her shirt, the sensation of skin, so very real, she felt herself lurch into his touch. It was as though they were magnetized, there was nothing that she could do to stop it..

His touch burned, scorched.

She jumped. Her pain receptors reacted as though the curving hand that cupped her bra-covered breast was branding her with a terrible heat.

"Ah - no!" She cried out, throwing her head back.

Ash lifted his hand and the moment he did, the pain in her breast disappeared.

It left an aching, strange feeling in its wake that felt like another kind of pain.

Her body lurched up, of its own volition, feeling his hand become once more pressed to her breast.

Touch me, Netta thought, desperate.

In her current state, everything in her wanted to view the man positioned over her as a beacon. Even the strange, fleeting scorching that he left in her flesh before removing his touch became lighter, more loving.

The pain he brought was the only thing that pulled her out of despair. Still she cried out as she felt the burning heat of his hand again, jerking backwards, away.

"No, no, Ash, no -"

I didn't want it to be like this with him.

She groaned, her head thrashing back and forth.

Her back, sunk as far and away from that torturing, rapturous hand, ached to rise again.

It wasn't just that, either. A humming seemed to fill her, infectious, calling out steadily, beyond the beating, agonizing waves of madness that came closer and closer to drowning her in its high tide.

I'll never be able to have a seal branded into me - my mind will be too open... He can posess me if I ever make love with him again...

Still another voice, a more velvet, deeper voice rose from the sea of Netta's mind.

All the more reason why this should be worthy of almost a century of repressed need and desire. It shouldn't feel like this. It should be beautiful.

Ash seemed to oblige her body's silent call, even with her pause. A hand slipped along the expanse of her stomach, up and up, until his touch fell just beneath the wire of her bra.

He stopped and looked at her, his head hovering over hers, his tall body a canopy over her still, so much shorter, shivering body. He reached down with one hand and, meeting her gaze, he took ahold of her right hand in his. Lifting it up, he put it on the nape of his neck, just beneath the soft mass of his golden hair.

He said nothing, just stared at her.

Slowly, she began to move her hand, as though it possessed a mind of its own.

She had never felt the back of his neck, Netta realized.

It was an odd thing to think about, given the intimacy of the situation, as well as the chilling, killing madness that sprawled itself in her mind like the neverending expanse of the night's sky.

His hand softly rubbed the wire that held her breasts up beneath the black material of her bra. His fingers ran along the wire like it was a roadway.

Her other hand rose up to meet her left hand, caressing the back of his neck.

Netta was hardly aware of the room she was in. It was her childhood room, in a house that contained, for her, more misery than it ever did hope. Any hope she had ever gotten here, after all, came from the creature arched atop her.

Ash stopped suddenly.

When Netta gazed up at him, she found his eyes shutting and a steep intake of air being sucked through his nostrils.

He arched his back, simultaneously pulling a half a foot away from her upper body and pressing in a way that seemed incidental, the lower part of his body against her. Along the length of his body, Netta felt his weight, pressed in a way that was almost aggressive, against her.

Against her closed knees, she felt the solid, heavy mass of his penis, springing against her clothed legs.

She gasped and he looked down at her, his eyes living flames.

He bent down and his lips grazed her right ear and he breathed out the words, "Is there any chance you feel this way that I do?"

Not waiting for an answer, he reached down and took her bra off.

Netta recognized the act as abnormal as it was, as his hand closed only over the front of her bra and it came off.

The hooks in the back falling, open, for him.

The urge, natural, to reach down and cover her breasts, was stopped only because her hands could not bear to stop touching the nape of his neck. That forbidden skin. One hand's fingers were busy in the small, delicate hair that made up the back of his hair line.

She winced as she could feel his gaze on her. For a moment, she tried to grasp onto some shred of sense as if she meant to pull herself out of his embrace, as though it were the reaching tendrils of an abyss that had grasped ahold of the lower half of her body.

She tried to remember reasons, fears that had once won over any desire she had for this man.

Somewhere, lost in the waves of madness that enclosed her, something happened. For the first time in Netta's life, pure hunger - need - won over the fear.

And the Monster leaned over her was transformed into a man, a beautiful, dangerous man.

Her hands reached away from his neck and grasped his face in her palms until he looked up at her.

She had meant to try to gain some control over the situation. She had always thought that Ash was many things, and not all of them good. Or decent, even. In him she had always felt that he was open to reasoning.

She trembled, fearing this, somehow, more than the encroaching madness.

When she cradled his finely boned cheek in her hand, however, instead she found herself momentarily lost. She saw how his eyes seemed to have taken on the kinetic energy of a fire as it unfurled in waves.

Lost for a moment in them, Netta realized how his face felt in her hands. She was brought back to the incongruous memory of when she had first touched his face.

She had not thought of that day in a long time - and why would she? They had certainly "gone farther" than that, physically, after that.

But, it was hard to say that there was ever a moment where she instigated touching him. Why, after she had well and grown up, she never did reach out for his hand with her own.

She felt the words ache to be said aloud, and as she was pinned beneath the burning weight of his eyes and the maelstrom of her own memories, she felt them spill out from her.

"Do you remember the first time that I -"

Ash breathed heavy and arched his back forward so that his chest was bent forward enough to cling softly to her breasts.

"Yes. I remember everything. Everything with you."

Netta broke her eye contact with him.

She clung to something that she remembered from that day - an artifact of her humiliation that would only reveal itself more to her as time passed.

"Ash - don't you want to wait so that we can be bound first?" She felt the words breathe softly out of her, and felt, in what was left of her sanity, a thrilling sense of need.

She wanted him to deny her the very thing she was asking him to consider. She wanted him, as she had in the airplane. She wanted him to complete the sorrowful emptiness inside of her.