Skull and Dagger

“Let me go!” Annabelle screamed, struggling to free her hands from where Quinn pinned them down to the bed.

He gave her a nasty sneer. “Playing hard to get, huh? Honestly, bitch, who do you think you’re fooling?”

She screeched in anger at this and lashed out with her booted foot, kicking him squarely in the shin.

His eyes widened in pain, and he struck her hard across the jaw in response.

Annabelle felt blackness trying to overcome her and just barely managed to bite it back. Even so, it felt like her head was spinning drunkenly, and she didn’t have the conscious thought to struggle as Quinn tied her hands roughly to the headboard.

By the time she regained herself, he was tying her last ankle, leaving her spread-eagled on the bed. Annabelle couldn’t help it then; she let out a little sob.

Quinn glared down at her in response before his gaze turned cold. “It’s about time someone put you in your place,” he sneered.

“Why?” Annabelle didn’t want her voice to sound so desperate, pleading, but the emotions escaped, nonetheless.

“I saw you first,” Quinn said simply. “That makes you mine.”

“You led a mutiny just over me?” Annabelle couldn’t help but mutter the implied “idiot” at the end of that statement.

Quinn let out a cold, heartless laugh. “Stupid little girl,” he shook his head. “You honestly think you mean anything to me? That you’re worth this? Well, allow me to enlighten you then.” His hard eyes bored into hers. “You’re nothing, you whore!”

“Then, why?” she was hopelessly confused now.

“Frank[i/]!” Quinn practically spat the word out. “I saw you first, yet he still took you from me! Just like he takes everything else...” He leaned over her, and she hated herself for flinching. “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that you whored yourself off to him,” he began casually, almost conversationally. “After all, that’s what they all do. Like he’s something special, something better[i/]...” His voice turned icy once more. “Tell me, harlot, just what is it all you women see in him, anyway?”

“H-He loves me.” Annabelle’s voice was shaky with fear, but she said this statement with complete assuredness.

Quinn laughed. “I hate to break it to you, but there’s no such thing as love.”

His fingers trailed down the side of her face, and she turned her head away from him. She received a harsh slap in response and reluctantly didn’t move as he traced her cheek once more, fighting back her tears. This was such a horrible mockery of the way Frank had touched her. His gentleness, tenderness, the love in every gesture, the way he made her burn for more...

“There’s only power,” Quinn continued in an almost-whisper, “possession, control... And now it’s mine.” His hand drifted down to the front of the shirt of Frank’s that she was still wearing.

The thought of being separated from the last reminder she had of him was too unbearable to contemplate, and she grasped for anything to distract her attacker. “You’re wrong!” she hissed vehemently. “He loves me! It’s real! Just because you can’t love-”

“What did you say?” His eyes flashed dangerously as his hand gripped her throat roughly.

She didn’t care then, though. Death was preferable to being violated by this criminal while her true love was hanged. “You’re so green with envy it’s pathetic,” she practically spat at him. “You just can’t stand that he’s a better man than you in every way.”

She did pass out briefly from the force of his blow then. It was only for a moment, however, before she woke to the sound of him ranting like a madman.
“-and chose Way, of all people, as his first-mate! Way! Like he’s any better than me? That boy?! The only reason he did it was because he knew I was too strong, too powerful to control-”

“Or because you’re a crazed drunk,” Annabelle muttered under her breath, but Quinn was too caught up in his own speech to hear her.

“But now, finally, I’ve won, taken everything from him...” His hand traced over the curve of her thigh, displayed so revealingly through the pants she wore.

“Touch me and you’ll never have me!” she snapped, somewhat illogically.

However, to Quinn’s mind, it made perfect sense. “Yeah,” he agreed thoughtfully, “I’ll make you mind completely, just like he did.” He chuckled slightly to himself as he pulled away. “Keep you tied up in here, completely under my control...watch you fall in love with me the same way you fell for him. And then, when you beg for me like you did for him, I’ll show you who the real better man is...”

Annabelle gulped and remained silent. She’d pretty much resigned herself to being violated by him, and now that she seemed to have a viable way of averting this, she wasn’t going to rock the boat...metaphorically speaking, of course.

“I’ll make you love me the same way he did,” Quinn announced in sudden triumph. “Then, everything of his will really be mine...” He was so delighted by this prospect that he didn’t bother to spare her another word before he left the room, slamming the door shut behind him.

And it was only then, still bound to the bed that she and Frank had embraced upon only too recently, that Annabelle finally allowed herself to break down.

She cried for the man who until so recently had been constantly at her side. She cried for his fate as well as for her own. She cried for her lost love, and the love that was never fully consummated. And, beyond all else, she cried for the fate that would undoubtedly befall her the instant Quinn learned that he could take her, whereas she had never allowed Frank to...