Prompt: Jekyll - Claire/Hyde - BDSM - Only Claire Jackman can tame the savage beast that is Billy Hyde. And I'm sure he'd enjoy it. Bring on the whips and chains! Word count: 1622
The cuffs snapped shut on his wrist. "I'm so glad you could take the kids," Claire said, talking breathlessly into the phone as she worked on the shackles. "It takes such a load off of my mind."
"Well, at least you remembered they still exist," her friend said dryly.
Her smile felt a little too tight and dry with the memory. I turn his eyes black. Hyde, even then? Hyde, behind Tom's eyes?
She wanted too--to kick him, to beat him, to shake answers out of him, this feral thing living in her husband's skin and not Tom at all. But this would have to do. He was too dangerous to treat any other way.
Claire stood, and she took a step back, and she said, "thanks again. I'll call you when I can."
And then she waited for the monster to wake up.
He actually chose the moment after she'd gone downstairs for tea. She heard the crash all the way down the stairs, and almost bolted for the doorway before she stopped, gasped in air, and forced herself to pour calmly, take her cup, and move up the stairs.
He cursed her when he saw her in the doorway, a low gutteral sound, eyes glittering. The words he used weren't kind; her fingers curled tightly. "This tea is hot, you know," she said. "Watch your mouth--husband."
"I'm not your husband," he hissed.
"No," she agreed, an unexpected spasm of rage going through her, "you're just a psycho playing masquerade with my husband's skin. But for now? You're all I've got. So learn to deal! I want answers."
His black eyes went over her like a physical touch, lips curled back off of his teeth. She'd dressed for his weaknesses; a sheer black silk bathrobe, underwear that was nothing short of lingerie. It was still so strange, to see her husband looking at her with an expression alien to his face.
Not Tom, she reminded herself, which made her acknowledge that it was another man entirely looking at her nearly-naked, which was entirely discomfiting on a whole other level.
His body--but not him. She tore her mind away. "Where is my husband?"
Billy Hyde grinned at her, a feral and animalistic baring of teeth. "Right inside, sweetheart, and not coming out to play anytime soon."
"You're keeping him in." She wasn't surprised, exactly. "You're--you can do that?"
His voice dropped to a croon, made obscene just by the look in his eyes, the hunger, sexual and violence commingled or maybe the same, in him. "Let me loose, darlin', and I'll show you just what I can do."
"No," she said, icy and exquisitely controlled. "I don't think so. I'm not interested in what you can do."
"Oh, yes you are," he leaned back, someone suddenly relaxed, boneless as a cat against the wall inside his chains. "Poor little mummy, all deprived. Maybe all you need is a good hard fucking, Mrs. Jackson, to teach you--"
She moved forward quicker than she'd anticipated, pure instinct and rage, and when he exploded to his feet she hit him before he could grab her. Not a slap this time, but a close-fisted blow, and danced backward, dark silk rippling out around her--risky, damnit, he could have grabbed it--as he hissed in shock.
"I can leave you here," she said, as controlled as she could manage with adrenaline still shuddering through her veins. "Watch your mouth."
He raised his head to look at her, and his eyes were burning. Nothing human in that look, nothing sane as we recognize it, nothing tame. "Watch it?" He said softly. "Sweetheart, you've earned yourself--"
She threw the tea at his feet. The mug shattered and he leapt to his feet like a startled cat, baring his teeth at her.
"Don't you speak to me in endearments," she hissed through her teeth; keeping it from a scream with an effort, keeping herself from tears by sheer willpower. "You'll get nothing from me until you give me back my husband!"
And suddenly he was slumped against the wall, studiously casual, watching her with eyes hooded like a panther's. "So what do I get if I do?" He drawled, and she took a step back, startled and reeling, and just stared blindly at him.
Then she was scrambling to recover. "I'm supposed to believe you?"
Suddenly he was at the end of his chain, straining, plaster sifting from the walls at the explosion of movement. "Let's stick to the truth between you and me, Mrs. Jackson, admittedly I prefer and I won't abide by lies in this room, do you hear me?" A pause, smiling at her in a rictus grin of teeth. "Let's stick to the bare essentials."
"Let's," she agreed tightly, and glanced at the tea at his feet--and the shattered mug--with some strange strain of ruefulness.
He paused, then stepped back, smiling casually, and leaned his shoulder against the wall. "I'll ask again, Mrs. Jackson: what do I get if I do?"
"Then allow me," she answered, frigidly precise, "to rephrase my statement: why should I believe you're willing to?"
"Well, Mrs. Jackson, I'm sure you have a great deal to...trade." His eyes trailed down her body.
She recoiled. "What--"
"After all--as you were so vehemently insisting until such a short time ago, I am your husband." He leaned back, tilting his hips out, smile slow and self-satisfied. "Or at least, sharing his dick."
She itched to slap him, but she knew she wouldn't get away with it twice. "Maybe I'll just wait."
He swung upright suddenly, smile brilliant and manic. "Maybe I'll swallow him whole. He'll never come out. Good as a divorce! Good as being widowed."
Ad suddenly she moved forward--it was unbearably stupid, but the spurt of terror dragged her forward, she wasn't even thinking. "You will not--"
And he caught her.
Flash of sharp, animal teeth and Claire threw up an arm, her forearm smacking into his throat as his hands bit cruelly into her hip and wrist, hauling her against him even with his grip restricted by the cuffs. This is my death, she thought dazedly, and then more surely, this is my husband, and then she kissed that sharp, sharp mouth.
She didn't know he changed; she just knew that the next moment she could kiss him harder without slicing her mouth open. And this was dizzyingly confusing, because she knew this body, she knew it with a ferocious intensity, because it was her husband and he'd been inside of her countless time.
Hyde kissed differently than Tom. Oh, so differently. He was harder, harsher, greedier, nearly drawing blood even after the feral sharp snarl had faded and she knew that if he was free, he was the kind of man that would put a hand in her hair, or pin her wrists. He might eat her whole.
The thought held a dizzy madness; she gasped in a breath, shuddering, struggling for air, and twisted her wrists to cup him.
Hips and height and weight and face aside, this was familiar; she closed her eyes, lost herself in the thought of Tom.
Then he shook her like a rag doll, harsh enough to snap her head back and forth, and rasped, "this is me, Mrs. Jackson, best not to forget that."
She bared her teeth in return, fear and anger and goading, and dug her heels in enough to shove against him, knocking him backwards. And then she got her feet behind his legs and twisted the handcuff chain between her fingers. My win. She rose above him, black against smooth skin, pushing her hips against him, and said in a not-quite-steady voice, "you'll give me back my husband?"
He gave her a slow grin. "Oh, certainly."
Black lace was easily pushed aside. His eyes widened with interest, like he hadn't really expected her to, but his head tipped back when she sank over him, black eyes gleaming between heavy slits of eyelid.
She hadn't expected him to feel--hadn't expected him to feel, so different and yet so the same, and still good. Hadn't expected it to feel good, honestly, hadn't expected her body to have been reacting like this so readily. He rocked up against her and she twisted the handcuff chain in her grip, holding him still, and rose up, swaying over him, feeling the silken brush of slick flesh against her. He snarled, and she dropped down--leaned forward so that her hair brushed his chest--and began moving, setting a hard slow pace, watching as he moved restless and urgent and without leverage.
She rode him until his body tightened and then leaned forward and hissed, "give me my husband."
For a second, stunning her with his acquiescence, Tom was looking out at her, dazed and dilated with pleasure, his face softening, and then she closed her eyes and was kissing him with all the love she had in her, pouring her emotions between them, and then he was answering her, her lover and partner and--
And Hyde's mouth sharped on hers, teeth sinking into her lower lip, as his hips slammed up and they both came. She sagged over his chest, fingers going numb, shuddering and blind. "What--"
"Oh, I gave him to you," he purred breezily. "Did you enjoy him? Gave him food for thought, I'd wager."
She rolled off him before she was even thinking of moving, backing away. Sharp pain on her feet made her flinch but not look down until she was safely away.
Cup shards, imbeddded in her feet. Still reeling, she had the presence of mind to remove them, and when she looked up Hyde was staring at the blood on her skin.
"Best take care of that, Mrs. Jackson," he said expressionlessly, and then he was looking at her, half curled in his corner, eyes no less intent or frightening for their almost sleepy expression.
"I'm none of your business," she told him, and left down the hall, leaving a bloody trail of footprints down the hall, practically an invitation.