She's not trying to stab him in the head, she's trying to stab him in the hands, as she's not going to kill a high level spellcaster and interfering with their ability to cast spells is the best she can hope for. She does, in fact, relax somewhat when he heals himself, and then she turns around and tries to run.

Graced, Strengthened, and now with nonzero training in non-purely-defensive martial arts, Keltham will catch her and trip her and knock her down.

And then give her a chance to get up.  "Fight me at your hardest, Carissa.  Show us both the actual truth about whether I can outfight you when you're not holding back.  There's nothing you can do to me, or I to you, that Jacint can't undo."

- oh. All right then. 

In that case she will try to stab him in the head. Though while possibly having somewhat mixed feelings about whether she wants to succeed at this.

That's a move which Keltham will deflect as smoothly as a low-level monk.  'Not being stabbed in the head by an aggressor with a kitchen knife' is an almost-purely-defensive capability that Civilization is happy to train into anyone very thoroughly, using computer-assisted reflex formation and guidance.

His return fist-strike may also possibly lack some sincerity behind it, but he's trying to overcome that.

Carissa is a wizard, and not even a combat-tracked one; it was obviously not the best use of her by the time she was fourteen. Having a knife is a pretty substantial advantage in a fistfight, but it's approximately her only one, and also she's totally internally flinching every time she attempts to use it.

She can however withstand quite a lot of very powerful punches without in any sense indicating she'd rather surrender than take another one.

"You're not fighting for real, and that's disappointing me given the amount of effort I put into making sure I'd win against that."

"Fight me like we're at the Worldwound and I'm a demon wearing this face."

Right except that doesn't cause a worldwide catastrophe if she kills him and Osirion raises him - no, this was planned, there'll be a plan for that, there'll be someone nearby with Breath of Life - 

- she starts trying, between attempted stabs, to work their way down the hallway. She'll recover faster than Keltham from falling out a third-story window.

When Keltham estimates he's burned halfway through his Cat's Grace and Bull's Strength, he'll start sincerely trying to do enough damage to Carissa that afterwards he can haul her off to the cuddleroom without her being able to effectively resist.  Breaking bones aren't out of the question; he's rehearsed damage on that level with Meritxell, and inflicted more pain than that on Carissa before.

He'll try to grab her back from the window, if she gets there and he realizes that's what she's doing in time; failing that he'll follow her out after only a slight hesitation, if that becomes necessary.  The average dath ilani male teenager does not like losing.

So all you have to do is make it losing, not to be Evil -

- she'll have to think that through later because it's actually very hard to think in the middle of a fight. 

He can stop her before she can jump; he's a lot faster and a lot stronger, right now. 

Yeah, he doesn't really see what she was trying there, she doesn't have Infernal Healing any more, and he can heal himself... maybe she just thought he'd hesitate too long to follow her out.  If so, he can prove to her that she was wrong about that some other time.

Now, before his spells run out, he needs to do enough real damage to Carissa that she can no longer resist him, if he picks her up and carries her off.  Break both of her upper arms, for a start.  He did rehearse that with Meritxell and she was fine afterwards, though she did yell in pain at the time, and Carissa is stronger than Meritxell.  He can heal any broken bones once Carissa is properly in chains.  He'd want somebody to do that for him, if he had Carissa's pain tolerance and he couldn't manage to have an orgasm in company otherwise.

ABROGAIL what did you TELL THIS BOY

To win!  At least, that's what Keltham heard Abrogail saying!  It's not a message dath ilani are totally unsympathetic to, although back in Civilization they might've had qualms about this particular battle being one that should be fought in the first place.

Okay, that looks pretty helpless there, if not exactly 'subdued' per se because Carissa Sevar.  Now to sling his possession over his shoulder and carry her off to the cuddleroom while he's still got the Bull's Strength; that's supposed to be romantic.

It is. She will sort of affectionately nuzzle him about it.

Awwww.  That definitely makes him feel better about all this -

- is he supposed to be thinking like that?  Actually, probably yes!  He doesn't just feel like he's transgressed less against Lawful Good, he feels like - like everything is right with their relationship after all, that he did the thing Carissa's owner is supposed to do, and his possession reacted to that like his possession should.

Cuddleroom, chains, and she can have a healing once she's in them.  He'll be hurting her in other ways, of course, once she's helpless; but having her limbs broken makes his possession less pretty.  Keltham will say so in words before he heals her.

Now he's out of affectionate nuzzling range and she should probably come up with words to say in response but that seems - faintly ridiculous, somehow, as if words like magic are a thing employed by a different Carissa Sevar and not by Keltham's possession -

- this seems like a fine state of affairs except for how it was totally unexpected and Keltham probably hasn't been told it's a fine state of affairs - maybe Security could tell him? 

It hasn't actually occurred to Keltham to worry about his possession not speaking!  It feels fine to him too!  If he wants her to exhibit any behavior he'll force it out of her!

He'll click the tickling collar around Carissa too (it's not her first time with it), and see about wringing some reactions out of her, screams and flinches, hysterical laughter, and this time also pleasure.

The only thing he'll say to her is that she's just there to be a thing that has real feelings.  Not to try to force anything, as he's taught her before on other occasions; he'll hurt her severely any time he sees her getting tangled up in her thoughts again.  Just be in the chains, have no goals, and feel.  Anything resembling strategy is his own concern as her master.  If they don't get a 100% total success on this occasion, Keltham will celebrate the progress they've made on their relationship and then write Abrogail for more advice.

So, no need to worry!

Carissa feels - well, Carissa's feelings are kind of a mess, maybe that's why she hasn't been doing too much feeling them lately. But she feels terrified, of Keltham and everything Keltham represents, of how high the stakes are in her life at all times, and she feels impressed and proud, because Keltham wanted to become more Evil for her and he's learning and he's really good at it, honestly he's doing better on learning to enjoy cruelty than Carissa herself is no that's not a useful line of thought to go down right now, and she feels - the desire for it to be real, the desire for this to be all there is, the desire for Keltham to know everything and break her bones about it and then say, to Cheliax, that if actually he's not spending any social capital with them to demand people enslaved he'll have Carissa forever please -

- and she feels confused, so profoundly confused, about what Evil is and what love is and what cruelty is and about what Asmodeus wants and why this is part of it and that, too, is definitely getting too caught up in her head -

- and if she doesn't have time or space to think about any of that, then she's just here, scared, with her fate in Keltham's hands, and yet so much safer than she ever was anywhere else, because he won't let her be destroyed. Outside of complicated hypotheticals about Zon-Kuthon nope that too is getting too caught up in her head -

Carissa Sevar needs to figure out all that stuff, at some point, so that this whole complex juggling act doesn't come crashing down on her head and destroy everything she loves. Keltham's possession does not need to figure out all that stuff. She just needs to stop thinking and let things happen to her until Keltham gets what he wants, or gets bored.

A lot of things hurt a lot less, if you stop thinking about them. It might not be very dath ilani, but it's true.

Love is a lot nicer when you stop thinking about it. That, she suspects, is a perfectly Asmodean stance to have on it. 

Keltham's possession can relax around him, because it wouldn't matter if she tried to be on her guard or not. Keltham's possession cannot protect herself and cannot advance her goals and cannot talk but can, through small happy sounds, convey that that's quite all right, really, and that she does not want it to end.

He doesn't want it to end either.  Keltham can see it, or thinks he can, that Carissa is just existing now, with some of the noise in her head quieted, and he wants to protect her from all her thoughts, and extend the protective time she has where she doesn't need to think them.  It feels right, what they're doing now, the way he's possessing her and the way she's being possessed.

Keltham has a Lesser Restoration or two queued if at any point he starts to feel fatigued, or she does (as shown by her reactions starting to diminish).  He decided before this started that he'd play with Carissa however he felt like it, until he stopped feeling like it.  He's unlikely to stop feeling it, so long as Carissa looks - safe, and protected, and happy, like this.  That's the way a possession of Keltham's should look.

Do they have this in Hell?

Seems like a good question not to ask yourself, really. 

...okay but did he succeed in forcing pleasure out of her?  However much Keltham is successfully having other and more important metrics of relationship success, he is a male dath ilani.  He is physically incapable of not evaluating every single thing that could conceivably look like a relationship figure of merit, of which that is still one.

Yes. It's not that hard, really, once you've gotten a girl to stop thinking about how she's lying to you about everything as part of an elaborate high-stakes conspiracy which will probably end either in Cheliax conquering the planet or in her and everyone who trusted her being executed.

Mm, that's some mild progress.

How about the thing he does to Yaisa, can he also manage to do that to Carissa?

It's somewhat different because she doesn't seem to mind, at all, or to really be forming expectations about what he'll be doing, so she seems to hardly notice she's being teased. 

Well, he's definitely going to try it for at least five minutes to see if she notices that.  'Try for five minutes* before giving up' is a dath ilani proverb after all.

(*)  Technically 4 minutes and 7.4 rounds, in Golarion time units.

Pattern recognition presently offline. You see if it were online then she'd have to think about - kind of a lot of things that are better not to think about.