Lying with Little White Teeth

Give yourself to me / you hold the key

She wonders, briefly, what melted glass would look like in that fire. She imagines it, her hand gripping the brilliant crystal, wrapping around the base and hurling it with ungraceful clarity toward the flames that would lick up and consume it with brevity. There's a moment where she can actually see it, where the heat is so close to her body that she starts to think she has done it.

But there's another reason for the warmth and Chloe opens her eyes to un-focus the imagery. Her legs are propped languidly on the couch across from her where Lex sits, his hand hovering delicately just over the exposed flesh of her ankle. She catches his eye and he remains perfectly balanced under her stare and he doesn't remove his hand. There's no abashment there that would accompany someone like Clark who would shy away from being caught reveling in his adolescent fantasies. There's no awkward phase where he tries to explain his actions in mumbled half phrasing, misconstrued apologies and jerking fingers doing their best to avoid touching her.

Lex is no awkward farm boy and Chloe stumbles on whether that should frighten her or not. His unabashed attention to her skin shifts something inside her like kindling sparking in a fire and she feels the caress of breathe against her skin and she tenses. "You still haven't told me what you want." She says and she's grateful when her voice is strong and doesn't betray the rapid warmth fluttering in her stomach.

He looks at her and the crystal on the table reflects against his skin with such perfect delicacy that Chloe shivers. His hand comes down against her leg as his eyes stay on hers and he says with such perfect casualty, "We have a lot in common." His hand moves around her ankle like a caress but skilled enough to seem like an examination. Upward, slowly, his fingers dancing across the skin of her calf and up, smooth, toward her knee and his fingers feel like silk where they land but she can feel the roughness in his touch beneath it. Like she's a possession, like she's ivory keys under his fingers and he plays Mozart up her thigh with quick desperate strokes.

She knows she's drunk, understood it even before he started touching her. But the alcohol in her isn't the reason she's not pulling away and the smooth taste of amber in the back of her throat can't explain away the heat at the base of her spine and the pain near her heart.

"At the risk of sounding like I'm ripping off the graduate, are you trying to seduce me?" Chloe asks.

Lex smiles and it's extraordinary because she can actually feel the chills go bump up her neck when he looks at her. The smile doesn't reach his eyes and she thinks he must have that down to an art form by now. That cold expression that never leaves, even when the masks on his face change—now caring, now frustrated, now curious, now angry. They're all masks and they do an excellent job of concealing human emotion but nothing, not even the most skilled of them can erase that look in his eye.

She's seen it once before and it was in the eyes of his father when she tried to blackmail him. And it was the most frightening thing she had ever seen.

His hand comes to a stop at her knee and he squeezes when she opens her mouth to speak again so she stops, bites her lip and looks him dead in the eye.

"Yes." He answers. Smooth like cream.

"It won't work," she parrots and she can hear the near hysterical edge to her voice and it makes her sick. Somewhere this stopped being a game, somewhere this stopped being about lust and somewhere she began to understand what real fear felt like.

"Ah," he says. "I didn't think it would. What a shame." He looks her in the eye, smiles. "That would have been much easier."

Chloe opens her mouth when she feels his fingers begin to pinch the flesh at her thigh and she jerks back, says "Lex, stop it," when his nails pierce the skin at her knee.

There's a moments hesitation before she pulls her legs back and her feet hit the floor ungracefully and she stumbles, unbalanced on legs on fire and heavy pointed heels. She feels like she's been drugged when the world tilts and her eyes must be a devastating pale green as she watches him suspiciously, unsure. His motives have always been unclear to her, to anyone, because he's a Luthor and because he's a billionaire and he's staring at her with those eyes that reflect the crystal and she pivots, stumbles, and collapses on the floor near the fire.

He doesn't rush to her rescue and he's not at her side in seconds because he's not playing the hero anymore and she knows better to understand when that mask is the first to slip. Part of her is appreciative that he's not pretending with her anymore and part of her is blindingly frightened by the knowledge. She gasps and pulls at the carpet while her legs are immobile under her heavy form and she's trying to drag herself toward the door with her bare hands and sheer willpower.

"My, are you alright Chloe?" His voice echoes strangely in her ears and her legs tremble when she hears him stand and she's pulling now with the edges of her blunt fingernails and she barely feels it when one snaps at the base. There's blood on the floor and his foot comes down hard against her ankle and he pushes her down until she's clawing, clawing but no longer moving.

She screams and the sound of it rips out of her brutally and she's gasping and repeating, "What did you do to me? What did you do to me, Lex?" And she can't stop screaming and she won't stop asking what he's done and she wants to escape, she wants to black out, she wants it to end because she's terrified and it feels like glass melting up her spine.

He says, "I drugged you." And there's a lilt in his voice that belongs in casual conversation but is out of place here as he bends down and rips the strap of her dress when he grabs for her neck. Her face is pushed against the floor and there's blood on her eye lashes when he lifts her by her neck and all she can do is grasp at the buttons on his shirt as she's dragged across the marble floor. The hem of her white dress tears and the blood is running down her face now as it mixes with the tears and sweat and everything is clinging to her. Everything except Lex, who tosses her inelegantly onto the couch before kneeling on the floor and forcing her head back with the palm of his hand pushing at the hollow of her throat.

"We have a lot in common, you and me." His lips are close to her ear and she's close to hysterics as her body convulses against the intrusion of his hand on her neck, his hand at her hip. He's spreading her legs and pushing himself between them and the fabric of his black pants presses roughly into the soft flesh of her thighs. "We're both ruled by the sins of my father and the sins of our own selfish desires. You see," Both hands are at her hips now and the fabric at her waist is twisting around her body like a sheet and her legs spasm violently against the drug invading her system.

"Your desire has always been for the truth. Noble, I'm sure, but never adequate enough for you. You've always craved some higher purpose, some deeper meaning behind everything that happens to you—everything that you're denied."

She's saying please, please, and he's hushing her sobs with teeth against her throat and his tongue on her lips. "I've always desired power, something you're well aware of. I want everything denied me, Chloe, just like you. I want the truth that was hidden from me and I want to rip apart the lies that were left in its place and you, you," he's whispering against her skin now in languages she doesn't understand and the heat at her hips moves to her thighs and the fire in her spine explodes in the back of her eyes and she shuts them when he clamps a hand over her mouth to silence her screams.

"You know the truth Chloe. You are the truth. And I want it; and I'm going to tear you apart to find it."

She's screaming silently about God and survival and he just smiles, grins and there's death in his eyes where recognition should be. He watches her lips rasp out incoherent words and he taps a finger against them and pushes past and up against her teeth and through her panic she tastes salt and her own blood on the tips of his fingers.

"You know everything, everything I deserve to know because he confided in you," he's absolutely resolutely calm even though she can see the hatred in his eyes and how deep it runs back, back and through to the core of him. "He told you everything once and you kept his secret all these years. Why did he tell you Chloe? Why not Lana, or Lois? What is so extraordinary about you?"

She blacks out for a moment and he slaps her face to bring her back. She's gasping, confused and her mouth is too dry for speech and she starts to choke on stale air. She feels like she's dying and she looks into his eyes for recognition but all she gets is a lack of understanding, of a slight tinge of insanity and in the corners—nothing. There is nothing.

"He did love you, if only for a little while. I thought I loved you once, thought one day that I was so in love with you that it would break me in half." He's silent for a minute and Chloe stutters because of the terror in her veins and the realization that she's going to die, here, with Lex Luthor's hands on her neck.

"I loved the idea of you, Chloe. I loved the idea that you were Clark's, you were Lana's, you were everything I couldn't touch and I wanted to desperately—I wanted to touch you. Because I want everything I can't have."

Her teeth are chattering in her mouth and somehow, somehow she finds herself long enough to say, "You can't kill me," just barely a whisper with his hands at her throat. "You can't kill me, you'll never know, you'll never know."

And he's laughing and his teeth are so white, the room is so white and her eyes, her pale green eyes are streaming with tears and she's thinking about her life and the things she gave up for the truth.

He's going to break her and she won't say it intentionally but not everything is about will and triumphing over good and evil. She feels regret, instantly and it burns her palms and her body goes slack and he lets go of her just as her head slips back and she's gone, unconscious, and silent.

He leaves her on the couch, steps around the broken glass and removes her shoes. He lays her bare feet against the couch and touches them, reflects on her skin and just how far he'll go for the truth. He always loved that most about her.

Lex pours himself another glass of scotch but doesn't drink it. He drapes it around her body like fine silk, adorns her in it like a queen with her bare feet and pale, pale skin and pale, pale green eyes.

He throws the glass into the fire and watches it leap forward. He leaves the room when the fire gets too hot.