White Rabbit

When Brooke Avery became lawyer to one of the most notorious criminals in the city, she knew how dangerous he was. She knew all about his charm, his brutality, his infamous reputation with women. What she didn't know is how much her obsession would end up costing her, or how their strange, violent relationship would ignite the entire city… "You are very beautiful, Brooke," he said, his voice low, and Brooke felt herself blushing beneath the weight of his stare. She pulled her skirt down and then unfolded her legs completely while he watched her with a bemused expression on his face. "Tell me, does your firm often send you out to the wolves like this? All alone?" "Sometimes. Usually on the initial interview." Ronan tilted his head and looked at her, the shadows from the overhead lights making his eyes seem enormous and frightening. "It seems strange, for a woman. Almost masochistic. Do you like dangerous men? Do you like them looking at you, at your body? Wondering what they might do, what they might be capable of, if you turned your back on them for just. One. Instant?" Welcome to Wonderland...

When they finally escaped the city together, Brooke and Ronan were already being reported dead, written off as two more casualties in the all-out drug war they'd helped to ignite. While Connor used the news to strengthen his own position in the city, Brooke secretly hoped that they could just disappear. That she and Ronan could carve out some sort of a life together, and find solace in one of the only places in the world she had ever felt safe. Ronan, of course, had plans of his own… Brooke ran her tongue over her bottom lip as Ronan knelt between her legs and leaned over her on the bed, tying her wrists to the headboard above her until her arms bowed backward. He stared at her greedily for a moment, the sight of her bound and helpless driving his excitement in a thousand ugly ways, and then dragged his hands down her breasts slowly, watching her back arch towards him with naked enjoyment. Brooke exhaled as Ronan reached into his pocket and pulled out his cell phone, tapping at the screen lightly before running the camera up the length of her body. He spread her knees apart with one hand as he angled the camera between her open thighs and then shoved her tank top up over her breasts, his dark eyes hard and playful. "Now," he said, tilting the camera lens down at her face. "Tell me again what you won't. Ever. Do." •••Explores themes of dark sexuality, violence, incest and rape•••

Ronan looked back towards the end of the medical center as he saw the doctor give him a tight, disapproving grimace and then closed her office door on him like a high school principal who'd grown weary of his antics. He brushed his fingers over his lips, still enjoying the quick violent daydream of dragging her across the tile floor enough to replay it and then felt his mood darken as a sudden vivid image of Brooke opening her eyes burned through his mind like a nuclear blast, the quick, unexpected agony of it enough to make him wince. He looked back towards the metal cage as he saw Lance disappear into a storage closet and patted his shirt pocket quickly, pulling out the lone pin-up card lying against his chest as he smoothed it out gravelly. It was a rare Joker pin-up girl, the kind of lush color image that would've once looked right at home on the side of a B-17 Bomber, lost to a world before photographed pornography had cornered the entire market of male hearts and minds. In it a girl in a long red robe sat at an old-fashioned dressing table and examined her face in the mirror, the angle of her body exposing her breasts almost completely. Ronan ran his finger over the girl's lips, her long, glossy black hair falling across one wide green eye and then closed his eyes as he allowed himself to get close to it for a moment, watching the drawn image of Brooke come to life while he felt the pain of her absence hollow him from the inside out. Soon, he thought, rolling his shoulders as he began to feel the white-hot flood of rage rush to fill the emptiness inside him like a sonic boom.