[ Truyện Tiếng Anh] Mercy

Mercy
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“You wouldn’t just go along with it to please me?”

I frowned. “No, I’m not her.”

His face got hard then, angry. I would never have talked to him that way if I wasn’t so tired.

“Matthew,” I said, stroking his cheek. “Don’t be angry with me. I’m telling you the truth. I love the things you do to me.”

“Why? Why do you love them? Tell me why. Explain to me.” I don’t know was on the tip of my tongue, but he was already wrought up enough. Instead I said, “Right now?” to buy myself some time.

“Yes, right now,” he insisted. Okay, no time.

I looked into his intense blue eyes. “It’s hard to explain, but it makes me feel safe.” He looked at me like I had completely lost my mind. “Safe in what way?”

“Safe in a way that I’m completely under your power, but I trust you not to hurt me. Really hurt me.”

He looked at me a long time. I was so very tired by now.

“Matthew, may I please fall asleep again?”

“Okay,” he grumbled. “But no more screaming.”

“I’ll try.” I wanted to ask him to hold me until I fell asleep but I wasn’t brave enough, and soon he let me go and turned from me. I looked at his back and wondered what he’d do if I scooted over and pressed against him, but I just didn’t dare. I imagined myself snuggling against him, my arm coming over his waist to rest around his perfect flat belly, my fingertips tracing up and down his trail. Matthew, I wished I could say to him, I love you so much. But I didn’t dare. I didn’t dare do anything like that. It would have been the end of us. So I just lay there and thought about it, and wished that he would fall in love with me too.

I can’t really say why I loved him, and why I loved the things he did to me, why they made me feel protected and safe. I think some things you’d just rather not think about too deeply, and for me, that was one of those things.

* * *

I got pretty good at hiding my feelings from him, but it was never easy because he read me like a book. I tried to guard the things I said to him, and I never, ever looked him in the eyes, at least not for very long. Sometimes he insisted that I look at him, that I look him right in the eyes, and I hated those times because it was hard to keep my feelings to myself. Surely he realized I hid from him, but for both our sakes, I suppose, he didn’t press.

But while sometimes my feelings were allowed to be my own, one thing that was never my own was my body. I learned to be always, always available to him, and there was a kind of security in that arrangement. In fact, the most miserable times between us were when I struggled against him. I rarely did this, and when I did, I hated myself. Only now and again did I resist him, and those moments always made both of us hold our breath.

There were those moments when he asked me to do something especially coarse or intimate, something beyond what my mind was comfortable with. He searched for those moments, pushed me towards them, because I think he most loved to watch me struggle with myself. Struggle to persist, to overcome my fears and inhibitions, for no other reason than to please him and his lusts. Just as I lived to make him happy, he lived to watch me fight with myself to do as he asked. He lived to watch me try to make him happy, and to touch and own me, and feel me against his skin.

Therefore, nothing made him more furious than me withholding my body from him. Not my actual body, because he took what he wanted whenever he pleased, but my body’s reactions, which he felt he owned too. If I tried to own them, tried to control my own sensation and pleasure, a punishment was given, and I was quickly trained from such folly. If I tried to touch myself, to arch my body the way I wanted, I was slapped or pinched and told to behave. I was expected to do only what he wanted, and I was supposed to find pleasure in that, and not seek my own pleasure or let my mind wander from him. It was actually a lot easier than it sounds because he knew precisely what would make me thrill and burn even better than I knew myself.

I think in a strange way that was my only power in our relationship, that power to be aroused, to go wild from his hands and his and his mouth. It was a power I had that both threatened and excited him. I was expected to always very clearly express my pleasure, as well as my nervousness or pain.

Only once did I try to resist reacting to him, resist feeling the pleasure and pain he visited on me. He was already in fine form that night. He had stood me against the wall and wielded his belt until I screamed, then pushed me to my hands and knees and ed me hard from behind. I thought he was so wild that night that even if I shut myself off, he was unlikely to notice. Wrong.

He knew the very second I left our dance, and he became enraged. I whimpered, stifled stubborn fear, and twisted away from him as he tightened his hands on my shoulders. He’d pressed against me, pressed my , pinched it hard.

“Come, damn you. You come.” But I couldn’t. Somehow, I had completely turned off. He pulled my hair hard. “Don’t. You don’t do this. I told you to come.”

“I can’t!” He was really hurting me. He let go of my hair with a frustrated exhalation and pulled out of me. He turned me over, spread my legs wide and pulled me under him again. He drove back into me, lifting me from the floor with the force of his thrusts.

“You’ll do as I say,” he said, and his voice both scared and aroused me. He ed me hard, like the sheer force of it could snap me back to him, back under his power. “I can you like this for two hours, Lucy. You ing come, or else.” And he knew how to make me come. He did exactly what he had to do. The exact pressure, the quick tug on my s, the press of his . He knew, he knew. I did finally come for him, even distraught as I was. I realized then for the first time this bizarre dynamic between us. If I didn’t enjoy what he did, he was lost.

The realization of that fact terrified me. The fact that I could hurt him, that I had a way to cause him distress. After I came, he fell away from me, and he gave me a look that threatened annihilation.

“Go to bed,” he growled, and in tears of misery and shame, I ran from the room. I was still sniffling and sobbing when he came up nearly an hour later. “Just go to sleep,” he’d sighed, and that had made me cry harder still, because his disappointment and true displeasure was the most painful punishment he ever doled out.

The next morning he had been cold to me still, and distant. I was afraid he was thinking of the words he needed to end us. Instead he asked, “Will I see you on Thursday?”

“Yes, sir,” I replied, and what my voice said was, I’m so sorry, I’ll never do that again.

And on Thursday, I climbed out of his car with my bag in my hands, nervous and breathless as always. He met me at the door, pulled me close and rubbed his cheek against mine and said,

“I’m glad you came. You ready?”

* * *

That Matthew cared deeply for me was never in question, even when his lovemaking pushed my limits. Even when his eyes seemed to both caress and revile me, I knew he cared. Some nights he flat out worked me over. Those nights were always a jarring shock. Almost always, those nights were followed by something akin to coddling, subtle rewards for being brave and steadfast.

Then there was one strange night that confused and unnerved me, a night when I’d taken a hard fall at practice and been laid up in my apartment. I let him know I’d be unable to play, that I couldn’t come over. An hour later, he was knocking on my door.

I’m sure he partly came by to be sure I wasn’t lying, to be sure there wasn’t another man in my life, but I hoped he came to check on me too, to be sure I was all right. And to be honest, I wasn’t all right. I was lonely, and scared like any dancer nursing an injury, no matter how small.

“Matthew!” I was shocked to open the door and find him standing there. He’d never been to my place. It was a mess. I looked like hell in my ratty pajamas, my eyes red and swollen from crying. “I really can’t play.”

“I know.” He breezed into my apartment, a market bag in his hand. “I haven’t come to you.”

He reached into the bag with a flourish, like a magician about to pull a rabbit from a hat.

Instead he pulled out a pint of ice cream. I burst into tears.

“I swear I’ll throw this at your head.” He turned his back on me. “Get into bed.” He rooted through my kitchen drawers until he found a spoon and returned, crawling under the covers beside me. It was just a twin, which made him seem even larger than usual, and he had to scoot close to me to not fall off the edge. He looked out of place in my tiny, messy apartment, and yet, right at home. Thinking about that, how easily he adapted to my squalid little surroundings, made me burst into emotional tears again.

“Enough. Quit your crying. What happened?” I think he thought I was crying about my knee. I explained how I’d fallen, that I wanted to stay off my knee as a precaution. He was highly suspicious even then of my injuries, the pain he suspected I felt.

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“How long will you be off?”

“Just tonight. Long enough for it to rest. To make sure there’s no serious damage.” He looked at me still, hard and essing, and then decided not to speak. Instead, he pressed the freezing pint of ice cream to my , and smiled broadly when I shrieked.

“Are you hungry?”

“Yes,” I said, although I wasn’t. He ended up eating most of the ice cream himself. Ice cream wasn’t something dancers ate before bed, but I took a few small bites to mollify him.

“Look at you. Take a real bite!”

“I am!”

He scooped a huge spoonful from the bottom of the carton. “Open up.” I laughed as he brandished the spoon at me. “Matthew, stop!”

“Open your ing mouth.” He fed me the spoonful, letting me lick it off slowly instead of shoving it all into my mouth the way I think he wanted to. I teased him a little, using my tongue to do things to that ice cream that I usually only did to him. He chuckled. “That’s right, you eat it all, you little .”

“You’re trying to make me fat.”

“Yes, that’s exactly what I’m doing.”

We laughed there together on my small, lumpy bed. I looked over at him, Mr. Matthew Norris sitting in my pitiful apartment, and I thought I would just die. I was so hopelessly in love with him. I looked away, because his blue eyes were bright and burning. Don’t look at me.

You’ll see.

“I wish we were down in my basement,” he said in a voice gruff with lust.

“I do too, Matthew.”

He looked down at my knee. “Can’t I you here?”

I don’t know, I wanted to answer. Can you? How many of your rules would that break? It seemed to me suddenly we were recklessly breaking them all, as he pulled me close to him and held me in his arms. The carton of ice cream was put aside, forgotten.

“Can’t I you here, if I don’t jostle your knee?” His fingertips trailed slowly down my arm. I felt so warm and protected in his embrace. I basked in the smell of his aftershave, the feel of his fingers moving over my skin.

“Mm. I’m sure you could find a way.”

“If I was so very gentle...?” he breathed against my ear.

“Can you be gentle?” I felt his soft laugh against my skin.

“I wonder how a sound spanking would affect your knee. Take your top off. I want *****ck on your .”

I took it off with his help and he fondled me, kissing and licking my s.

“Does that feel good?”

“Yes, sir!”

“Am I hurting your knee?”

“No! No...” No, don’t stop.

He pushed off my pajama bottoms and put his hand on the inside of my thigh, parting my legs, his fingers going right to my , then deeper into my . I was already wet and hot for him.

“Am I hurting your knee?” he whispered again.

I made a helpless noise of denial. His fingers left me, and I watched in fascination as lowered his mouth to my . Oh, my God. I moaned under the manipulations of his talented tongue. He brushed his lips against my with a sensuous skill that had me trembling. I had never enjoyed receiving oral before. When Joe had gone down on me, it felt so submissive on his part that it wasn’t ***y at all. The way Matthew did it, there was no question he was in charge.

He held my thighs hard and had his way with me. Just as I reached the point of , begging for release, he stopped. He only smiled at my frustrated wail, looking down at me with those piercing, intent eyes. When I returned from the brink, he started all over, and did it again. And again.

“Tell me if it hurts...” he whispered. Sadist.

I urged him on with a moan. Finally, when I thought I would die from the hot ache of my unsatisfied passions, he gave me permission to come. He held my and pressed his tongue against me, licking all the way up my slit, before sucking my between his teeth and nipping it. It felt like he was eating me alive. I was the prey, caught and consumed by the predator. I almost screamed with the force of the orgasm that overtook me.

Afterward he licked and caressed my now sensitive until I begged him to stop. When he finished tormenting me, he licked all the way up my belly and s and then licked right up my cheeks to my eyes. He rubbed his rough cheek against me and whispered against my temple.

“Do you have condoms here?”

“Yes.”

“Where?”

“In the bathroom, in the drawer.”

Again, after he’d been to the bathroom drawer, and rolled a condom onto his , and pushed inside me, again he whispered, “Tell me if it hurts.” Tell me if it hurts. It didn’t occur to me later how ironic it was for Matthew to so persistently protect me from hurt. He cradled me, half ing me, half coddling me, hard and soft, until I shuddered under him and came on waves of endless, unfocused pleasure. I was fuzzy and helpless, in deep, deep submission to him. Afterward, I couldn’t look in his eyes. I felt so much love for him, with his ice cream and his tender caring whispering . Instead, I hid my face in his neck, and he let me. He didn’t turn away or push me from him, just held me close and still.

“You know,” I finally said against his skin, trying not to tremble. “You can be really gentle.

I never suspected.”

“Strange, huh?” He took his condom off and tossed it away, then lay back beside me. I looked at him and wondered how he’d come to be the man that he was, wondered that he had this tender, nurturing side he’d never shown me before. I was unbalanced by it, and yet fascinated.

The rules that ordered our world were suddenly undefined there in my bed, and I took advantage, trying to draw him out at the same time I was afraid of what I’d learn.

“Did you used to be gentle, always? Before you got into rough ***?”

“Rough ***? Is that what we have?”

“Isn’t it?”

“Because I restrain you? Because I beat your ?”

“Because you beat my hard and often.”

He laughed. “Well, then, I’ve always liked rough ***. But sometimes I like gentle ***. It’s like...my kink.” I laughed, and he smiled back, and so I kept on.

“When did you first spank a woman?”

“Oh God. Long ago, when I was a teenager.”

“I mean, serious spanking. Scenes like you do with me.”

“Oh. Yeah. I was older. Late twenties probably, before I screwed up the courage to try it. I was probably your age.”

“Did you try it on a vanilla girl? Or you found a submissive?”

“All these questions, Lucy. I hardly remember. I think I started very clumsily with a vanilla girlfriend. I’ve mostly just been with adventurous vanilla women. You’re the first one I’ve ever met who’s really into it like me. And you, you were vanilla before you met me.”

“Yes.”

“A closet submissive.”

“I guess.”

“Fortunate for me. I got to train you up from scratch, just as I like you.”

“You’re not bored of me yet?”

“Not even close. Do I appear bored?” His was already starting to harden again. He stroked it, looking at me. “Do you ever wish I was your vanilla boyfriend?”

“Yes, sometimes.” I wish I could have lied to him, but he would have known and that would have been worse. “But it goes away. I’m not vanilla anymore.”

“So, what am I to you then?” he asked, looking me right in the eyes. I wanted to counter, what am I to you? But even then, it wasn’t something I would dare.

So I just shrugged, defeated. “I’ve given up puzzling out what I am to you. What you are to me.”

“Have you? Quitter.”

He seemed to shake himself back to reality then. He stood up from the bed and told me he had to leave.

* * *

One night soon after that, when it was almost Thanksgiving, he came to pick me up at the stage door himself. I asked where Davis was, and he told he was waiting down in the basement to watch me get my beaten and ed.

And sadly, that made me wet. He was so evil, so perverted. And yes, Davis was there in the basement waiting, and when I stripped for Matthew, Davis watched me too. A few moments later I was sucking Matthew off. I was getting better at it, gagging less. I still gagged though, which was a convenient thing because it gave Matthew an automatic reason to punish me. When Matthew came in my throat, I tasted him and swallowed him, never forgetting for a moment that Davis was there watching this whole scene.

“Over the ottoman,” he said the moment I finished. “I’m so ing tired of you choking on my .”

I went to the ottoman he pointed at. Davis watched all this from his place by the door. He didn’t sit down. He just stood still and watched me. He was only there, of course, to humiliate me with his gaze. And yes, the old me would have been humiliated beyond measure. I would have felt sickened to be debased in front of this man. But by now I was so used to humiliation, had been so trained to enjoy it, that Davis’s presence only worked me up more.

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“Give me your hands.” Matthew buckled them hard, angry because he could tell I was turned on. He knew every subtle signal of my body. Yes, he was pissed that Davis’s presence wasn’t hurting me as he’d hoped, but I was sure he’d find another way to make me cry. He walked to the armoire, got a huge butt plug. “Put your up in the air.” I squeezed my legs together and arched my bottom to him. He lubed up the toy and began to press it into my hole.

“Open,” he said, slapping my cheeks. “Don’t tense up and make me shove it in.” He finally drove the toy home deep inside me, so I was stretched open and totally in thrall to him.

He got the crop next and whipped me hard, to punish me, yes, but for the sheer fun of it, too.

No lectures, no frowning, no deriding my capabilities. He whipped me just to see me jump. Blow after sharp blow fell. I cried eventually, even though it wasn’t a long beating. I almost always cried, even with my tolerance for pain. But as usual, I was so turned on by the end of it that my was dripping with lust.

He sheathed himself, then knelt and thrust into me from behind, coming over my back, his weight pushing me down. His inside me rubbed up and back against the anal plug. I moaned like a slut at how decadent it felt. Within minutes I was trembling, tensing.

“Do you want to come?”

“Yes, Matthew!”

“Beg me.”

“Please, please, let me come, Matthew!”

“Try again. That’s pitiful.”

“Please, please let me come with your inside me, and the toy in my ! Please, Matthew! It feels so good. It makes me feel like a whore—”

“Because you are a whore.” He whacked my with his hand.

“I know, Matthew. I am!” Davis witnessed all of this but I didn’t care.

“You wait until I say, you slutty little tramp.” He ed me hard then, hard and brutal.

“You like it in both holes?” he asked hoarsely.

“Yes, Matthew!”

He undid the cuffs and pulled me to the floor. He took the toy from my and worked his in. I moaned from the rough pain and pleasure.

“Spread your legs wider! Wide apart!”

I complied, and he drove deeper, so deep I thought he might split me in two. The orgasm came over me like wildfire, hot and searing. He held me down as I shook myself free of every last vestige of my pride and identity. I was his toy, pure and simple. He came less than a minute later, jerking against my . It was then I realized I hadn’t asked permission for my orgasm.

“I’m sorry, sir,” I said when I could breathe again. “I’m so sorry I came.” But I wasn’t really sorry, even when he brought out the cane. He handed it to Davis.

“Punish her,” he told him. “Not too hard, though. She’s a hell of a , and you can have what’s left of her when you’re through.”

Ever the obedient lackey, Davis started to cane me. It was the first time Matthew had someone else join us, and while I’d liked having Davis watch, I liked less having him join in. I realized quickly how careful Matthew was, that I’d never appreciated Matthew’s finesse at giving me pain. Davis beat me like a dog. I screamed each time his arm fell, and it only took five excruciating blows for him to draw blood. Matthew stopped him then, taking the cane and handing him a condom.

“We can share her now,” he said. “You can use her **** and I’ll use her mouth. You saw how she likes having all her holes filled.”

I lay still, reeling as they discussed how to take me. I watched from some kind of dissociative state as Davis picked up my legs and thrust deep into my still slippery .

Matthew knelt with one thigh on either side of my head and jammed his deep down my throat. They both ed me, and I lay there like a good girl, like the good girl he’d trained me to be.

And as I lay there still and quiet, I thought, this, this is what he meant about using me. This is what it really feels like to be used.

Chapter Eight: Shame

He pulled me upstairs afterward, showered me off under water that was barely warm. He waited long enough for me to brush my teeth, brush the taste of his cum away, and then he pushed me towards the bed.

He was furious. I didn’t know why. I’d done what he asked, even let Davis me and draw my blood. I didn’t understand the scene that had just happened, and I felt I had no right to make him explain. And honestly, I didn’t want to know why he had wanted it. So I just lay silently beside him, traumatized and numb.

Had he expected me to rebel against him, refuse to let Davis use me? There were so many rules I didn’t know or understand. I thought again of how it had felt, pinned by both men, used as an abject receptacle. Shared. Abused. My mind whispered the word again and again. Abuse. Had he crossed a line? Should I have stopped him? Could I have stopped him? I could have. But what upset me the most was that he’d wanted to share me and treat me so cruelly in the first place.

My mind raced, replaying the scene again and again in my mind, and then a small rebellion, a tiny spark of rebellion began to grow. I could hear him breathing steadily beside me, feel the bed shift under his weight. I thought of the quiet, calm way he’d invited Davis to have me, the cold way he’d knelt over me and shoved his down my throat, and it suddenly seemed to me that this was someone I should hate. I started to tremble from the horrible need to act, and then I did act. I decided to leave.

Well, I decided, but I didn’t just get up and do it, at least not right away. No, I started to inch, millimeter by millimeter, to the edge of the bed. When I was far enough away from him where I thought he wouldn’t grab me, I lay the sheets back carefully and rolled onto my feet. I got probably four feet away from him before he said to me, “No.” He said “no,” but it sounded more like don’t you dare. The ice in his voice was enough to freeze me. He put on his bedside light and sat up, frowning at me, cool determination in his icy blue eyes.

“You come now, Lucy, and you get right back into bed.”

I was shaking so hard I thought my legs would give out, and I suddenly felt very , more than I’d been in my life. I wrapped my arms around my front, tried to cover myself the exact way he’d forbidden me to the very first day, and started to cry.

“Stop it,” he snapped, but I shook my head.

“I can’t,” I bawled. “I can’t.”

He crossed his arms over his chest. He didn’t move or speak, because I think he realized that if he pushed me any more right then, I would have snapped. And strangely enough, through all this, I went nowhere. I just stood still there like a statue in front of him and continued to cry. I didn’t make any more effort to leave, nor did I return to his bed. I just stood. It seemed like I stood there for an hour in time, but it was probably only five minutes, five silent minutes of trembling, passive revolt.

“You’re shivering. Just ing come back to bed.”

“I hate you.” It felt good to say it even if it was a lie.

He looked away from me and bit his lip. Trying to keep his temper? Or had I actually hurt his feelings, my indefatigable tyrant?

“There are a lot worse things I could do to you, Lucy! A lot worse things!”

“Why do you do it at all? Why do you do these things to me? Why did you share me with Davis, humiliate me—”

“Humiliate you? I promise you, I’ve not even begun to humiliate you. I’m ridiculously soft on you—”

“Why? Just tell me why!” I interrupted him. At any other time, he would have beat me silly for that. But now, our rigid rules seemed suspended, put aside for something more important and raw.

“That’s none of your ing business! I don’t have to explain myself to you!”

“It’s because you hate me!” I screamed at him.

“I don’t hate you! That’s ing ridiculous!”

“You hate women!” I insisted, and then he threw off the covers, walked over to me, and grabbed my face.

“Don’t you ever, ever presume to tell me what I hate,” he said through tightly clenched teeth. “Now you listen to me, you stupid little . You can either get back into bed with me and shut your ing mouth, or you can walk out that ing door and go home.” He looked hard into my eyes, squeezing my chin between his fingers. “But you think first. You think really hard, Lucy Merritt. Because I promise you, if you walk now, you’re never coming back.” He let go of my chin, and not gently either. My head snapped back and I bit my lip. He walked back and got into the bed, pulling the sheets down roughly, while I stood, mute and stupid, rubbing my lip.

“Get over here!” he barked. “Do not make me drag you.”

I still just stood there looking at him. What would he do if I came back to the bed? It seemed all of a sudden that I was standing on a precipice, one of those cartoon types, where there was nowhere to go but down. Just one tall rock in the middle of the desert, with only enough room for my two feet to stand. All around, a sheer drop off, like a cliff.

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Well, hook an anvil to me. I was going down.

I walked over to the bed, never taking my eyes off him. As soon as I was under the covers, he grabbed me and pulled me under him. His reared between my thighs.

“Don’t you even move, you stupid little .”

He rolled on a condom and kicked my legs apart with his knee.

“Look at me!” My eyes flew to his, because there was a tone to his voice I’d never heard. He grabbed my hands and pulled them taut over my head, and he just ed me, his face inches from mine. As he ed me, he started to talk to me, low and threatening, in a strange icy cadence to the punishing force of his thrusts.

“Don’t you ever yell at me like that again. Don’t you ever ask me questions. Don’t you ever tell me how I feel about you.” Then his eyes got even harder, narrowed dangerously. “Don’t you ever try to steal away from me in the night, just don’t. You’re mine, Lucy, don’t you realize that?

You’re mine and you always will be.” Then he repeated it to me again and again, in time to his ing, as if he was trying to burn it on my brain. You’re mine, you’re mine, you’re mine, you’re mine, you’re mine. Then he pinched my s hard, so hard that it took my breath away, and he licked at the pulse in my neck and said, “Come for me.” All he ever had to do was say it. Barely a moment later, I came apart in his arms. I felt punished and helpless, the orgasm racking my body even as hot tears wet my cheeks. He clasped me close when he came, while I was still shuddering. I thought I felt him shudder a little too.

When our breathing slowed, he stood and left me. I thought he was going to punish me then, which I fully expected. When he came back to the bed, I braced for clips, restraints, and pain, but he rolled me over and put his hand on my back.

“Lie still.”

He began to rub my bottom, my painful striped cheeks. The small amount of blood that Davis had drawn had long ago scabbed over, but it still smarted, it still ached. Slowly, gently, Matthew applied salve to it, rubbed soothing cool salve all over my . Who knew he even had salve in the house? He’d never so much as offered it to me. I started to cry just because he was being tender. He hated it when I was emotional like that, but he didn’t reprimand me. What he actually said to me was, “I’m sorry.”

He said it so quietly I almost didn’t believe my ears. But then he said it again, louder, “I’m sorry,” and my tears flowed hopelessly then. “Not sorry about Davis,” he qualified. “You agreed to let me use you in that room however I liked. No, I’m sorry because I broke a promise to you, a promise I made to never draw blood.”

“But you didn’t draw it, Matthew.” I was so sick for him, I would excuse him, even now.

“No, I didn’t, and I wouldn’t. But when I handed someone like him a cane, I might as well have.” He put his hand on my back and rubbed me all over, lazy and slow. “Anyway, I’m sorry, Lucy. I hope it doesn’t leave a scar.”

I hadn’t even thought of scars. Was that the point, no scars left behind? No souvenirs to remember him by?

“I’ll have to punish you tomorrow,” he said as he rubbed the knots from my neck. I moaned softly, maybe from fear, maybe from pleasure. Who knows, at that point?

“I’m sorry, Matthew,” I whispered through one last gush of tears, and I meant it. I didn’t say it to try to get out of being punished, because I knew I wouldn’t. “I’m so sorry I said those things to you. I didn’t mean them.”

“I know it, Lucy. I know.” His hands were so strong, so firm and so warm. He massaged and stroked me from my shoulders to my thighs. He didn’t do it to soothe me or stop my tears, I knew. He did it because he liked to feel my curves, liked to hold them under his hands. These shoulders, this waist, the flare of , it’s mine. Even so, I loved every moment of it, and basked in the sensation as long as it went on. I stretched a little the way he liked, flexed my dancer’s muscles beneath his fingertips.

“You know,” he said as I did this, “my rules, my requirements, they aren’t always easy. But they’re important. They’re there for a reason.”

What reason? I wanted to cry out. Why won’t you love me? Why do you hold these rules between us?

But what I said instead was, “I wish I could be more perfect for you.”

“Oh, Lucy,” he said after a moment. “You’re more perfect than anything I have.”

* * *

The next morning he dragged me out of bed before dawn and hauled me down to the basement without a word. He bent me over one of the ottomans and cuffed my hands in perfunctory silence. I put my head down on the cushion, resigned. Yes, I’d behaved terribly and I deserved severe punishment. Davis was there too, looking tired and annoyed. Must suck, to be dragged out of bed only to witness me get my beaten. Well, maybe he’d be invited to me again now that Matthew realized how much I hated it.

Matthew lectured me first about tantrums and rules, then dropped his many spanking implements in front of my face, then gave me a lengthy and businesslike disciplinary beating that came very close to being more than I could take. Ten with the paddle for disrespect, ten with the crop for raising my voice, ten with the strap for covering myself from him and crying like a baby, ten with the cane for just generally being a stupid , as he so colorfully put it. I screamed and I begged and I cried up until the end, but his only response was to kneel down behind me and lube up my . He ed me then, steady and hard, not brutally, but not gently, no. As always during punishments, I was not allowed to come. Then he invited Davis to me in the as well, and he did. Thankfully, he did not again invite him to wield the cane.

When Davis was done ing my then tender , Matthew pulled me up from my knees, shaking and weak. He had me thank him for disciplining me, and thank Davis for ing me.

Then he lightly kissed my wet, tearstained cheeks and sent me upstairs to his bedroom.

I came down afterward for the obligatory uncomfortable breakfast, now cleaned up, dressed, and all made up. Human again, not a toy for beating and ***. My was so painful, sitting down was its own punishment. I fidgeted helplessly even though Matthew snapped at me to stop. Mrs.

Kemp bustled back and forth without so much as a glance. Davis ate with us too, which was excruciatingly weird and awkward. Near the end of breakfast, Matthew told me to tell Davis goodbye, that he would not be back with us again.

* * *

The incident with Davis actually turned out to be a good thing because it opened my eyes, snapped me back to reality. It was Matthew’s way of telling me that what I was doing was not okay, that it was absolutely not okay to fall in love with him. Letting Davis abuse and me was an explicit way to tell me that I needed to ing get my head straight. Of course, I thought, of course Matthew had known exactly how I felt, exactly what false hopes I harbored. What a dork he must have thought me, to believe I loved him, to think he might one day love me back.

To think we might one day marry and have babies, be a happy family during the day, and spend each night behind a locked basement door. By inviting another man into our insular world, he got his point across with clarity and élan. Don’t fall in love with me, Lucy, or I will hurt you. Don’t fall in love with me or I’ll show you that love hurts.

So, yes, as much as the Davis incident hurt me, in the end, it helped me infinitely more. I returned to our next session with a new attitude, new conviction. New promises to myself that I was determined to keep. I would no longer let myself crush on Matthew. I would not harbor silly, girlish fantasies. I would not imagine him confessing his true and undying love for me. I would not picture him pining after me when I was gone.

After that, things got much easier. A new silent and burly driver was hired to shuttle me back and forth but he never joined Matthew and I downstairs. Putting pointless hopes of love and affection from my mind, I focused only on pleasure and pain. I developed into a perfect little *** slave, with my lust-laden mind trained only on pleasing him. Matthew commented on it often, praising me for the progress I made. I even stopped gagging when I sucked him and he had to find other reasons to punish me, which he effortlessly did.

In turn, Matthew began to beat me less cruelly, or maybe I just got more used to the pain.

And he gave me more pleasure, more delicious pleasure than I thought I could bear, and almost always, he let me come.

Eventually, too, the marathon sessions of depravity altered, commuted into something less frenetic and more refined. He always still hurt me, and he always still ed me soundly, but he began to spend a lot of time just looking at me too. Sometimes he’d make me stand there for an hour with my hands at my sides, my legs spread, and a toy burning in my . All the while that I stood there facing him, he’d sit on the couch and stare with an unfathomable look, a look that would make me want to fidget, although I could not.

Sometimes he put clips on my s and on my , and made me lie still in front of him, wet and desperate, but untouched. Other times he would pore over work contracts, take phone calls and send emails while I...

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Over time I came to realize that he wasn’t planning to get rid of me, and in fact, one Sunday, he requested to see me more. I was so happy about it that I almost wept. He added Sunday night and part of Monday, so that the only day off that I had to myself was Monday afternoon and night. That was actually really good for me because when I was alone, without rehearsals or shows or Matthew, I was completely lost. I withdrew from my friends and I soldiered through work. I still loved to dance, and I still did it well, but it was only something I did until I saw him again. Grégoire snapped at me more than once after we danced, to come back from wherever the hell my mind was.

Poor darling Grégoire. Our deep connection suffered, and in turn, our dancing partnership suffered as well. Our ten year friendship began to degrade. He tried to hold onto me, and I to him, but we just grew apart. I couldn’t share with him anything about Matthew because he so thoroughly disapproved, and it made me sad because up to that point, Grégoire had been so much a part of my life.

Whenever he tried to bring his concerns up to me, I gave him stony silence. “He’s taken over you,” he said to me once. “He’s completely taken over your life. What will you do when he drops you, Lucy?”

“I don’t know, G,” I had answered, shutting out his words.

Because that was the truth. I really didn’t know what I’d do.

* * *

I had another relationship that suffered, and that was the relationship between me and Pietro.

He called me to sit for him and I agreed to, and I begged Matthew not to beat me the session before.

“He won’t like the marks.”

“The marks are part of who you are now.”

“I know, but there’s just one more painting. One more of this series. Please, Matthew, please.”

He sighed. “I’ve been waiting all day to mark you. Two days. Since Thursday night.”

“Can’t you just hit me softly?”

What a face he made then. “You tell me.”

In the end, he didn’t beat me at all, but he used me for *** that made my toes curl. Even so, the marks from Thursday were still visible on Monday when I showed up at Pietro’s studio. To me, they looked rather mild, considering the bruises and welts I normally had, but to Pietro, I guess they were something else altogether, and there was a horribly awkward moment as I tried to explain them to him.

“It’s totally consensual, Pietro. It really is.”

“Consensual? You do this consensually with who?”

“You know him,” I said, a little piqued. “You’re the one who gave him my name.” His eyebrows shot up. “Do not say such a thing. I promise you, I give no one your name who treats you this way.”

“The man who bought the first two paintings, Pietro. He told me you gave him my name when he asked.”

He frowned, caught, and his teeth ground together. I felt bad for him, and I quickly spoke again.

“I don’t mind. It’s okay. We’ve been together since October.”

“Since October? He does this to you since October? What of that very nice boy you were to marry? James or John...?”

“Joe. He left me.”

He began to draw me as I was, standing there looking at him with my hands in fists, embarrassed and defensive.

“How do you want me to stand?”

“I want you to stand just as you are.”

He drew for long moments in silence, and his strokes were angry and quick. Then he said,

“You like this, really, Lucy? To be beaten this way?”

“Yes I do.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know why. He makes me feel protected.”

He snorted, an ugly, derisive sound.

“If this makes you feel protected, there is something wrong with your brain.”

“Pietro, it’s really none of your business.”

“If I want to draw your body that you abuse, then it is.”

“Fine. Then don’t pay me. If you’re so unhappy with me, you can draw me for free.” He closed his notebook then with an angry snap.

“Put on your clothes and get out, please. I can’t paint you anymore, not like this.” I stared at him. “Pietro! Why? You can’t even see the marks in this pose!”

“No, I can’t see them, but when I look at you...” His voice trailed off, and his shoulders slumped. “I used to look at you and see amazing beauty. Now I look at you and see only a stupid and beaten girl. Please get out of my studio. Please leave now. Here, take this with you.” He tossed the drawing he’d done to the floor.

He turned his back on me and went to wash the charcoal off his hands, wash them off violently as if he washed his hands of me. My face was hot and I felt numb and cold all over. I put on my clothes quickly, not wanting to be anymore. I glanced down at the drawing, and it was me, cloaked in shame and sadness. I left it lying right where it was and walked, blind with tears, out the door.

In all the time I’d spent with Matthew, he had never, ever come close to making me feel shame like this. Coming from Pietro, it devastated me.

He might as well have settled himself over my shocked face and shoved his right down my throat.

Chapter Nine: Dinner

I walked home from Pietro’s studio bawling my eyes out. Blocks and blocks along city sidewalks, but no one stopped me to ask if I was all right, which was just as well, because I’m not sure how I could have explained to them. When I got home, I crawled into bed.

I pulled myself together for work the next afternoon. I didn’t tell Grégoire what had happened, though he worried about me when he saw my swollen eyes. Maybe he thought I’d finally broken things off with Matthew, which would have been a great relief to him. But no, I pulled myself together to see Matthew too, climbed into the back seat of his car that his new driver, Kevin, held open for me outside the stage door.

If Matthew noticed my red eyes and listless sadness, he made no comment, and if anything, used me harder than he usually did. I needed that pain though, desperately needed it, if only to feel something other than shame. I didn’t tell him either about Pietro, although seeing the paintings up in his room made my eyes blur again with tears.

It was December by then, a couple weeks before Christmas. Like most dance companies, we’d added extra holiday shows and rehearsals, and my body ached from the strain. I would be twenty nine in early January, and I could feel my ability to dance slowly ebbing away. My and knees screamed in protest when I leaped and kicked, and my ankles gave me constant needling pain.

So, during this time just before Christmas, I started to feel like my life was falling apart. My joints ached, my best friend judged me harshly for my choice to keep seeing Matthew, and an artist who once found me beautiful now found me stupid instead.

Only Matthew remained unchanged and consistent in his actions towards me. He treated me with the same affectionate scorn, the same rigid horniness as he always had. I fought as hard as ever against the impulse to love him in this time when I felt so needy and bereft, because if I lost him too, I thought that probably would have finished me off.

In the week leading up to Christmas, though, I was unable to see him. I had extra shows to dance and Matthew had obligations to keep. But on Christmas Eve morning, he called and asked if I could come to dinner with him that night, when the show was over, and I said yes, I could.

He told me to wear a little black dress and no panties, and he promised to meet me at the stage door at 10:45.

After the show that night, while everyone else gave each other warm Christmas wishes, shared plans and made arrangements to meet places, I showered and dressed to meet the tyrannical lover who ruled my world. I dried my wavy hair and drew it up into a loose chignon because I knew he loved to look at the back of my neck. I put on my smooth, pale porcelain-doll makeup, and applied the nutmeg lipstick carefully to my full lips. I put on black thigh high stockings with wide lace tops, and as he required, I wore no panties. I slipped into some patent leather mary jane pumps with high block heels, and I hoped desperately that I wouldn’t humiliate myself.

Dinner with Matthew. We had never actually gone out to dinner together, not once in two and a half months. We ate at his house when we played, formal meals in his dining room and breakfasts in the kitchen. I’m sure he thought, like me, that dinner out would be too risky, would feel too much to the wistful romantic in me like a date. And he was right, I was really afraid that it would feel like a date to me, that I would fantasize, and he’d know it, and that he’d punish me for it. Maybe that was the whole point of this Christmas Eve exercise, to make me act stupid so he could torture and humiliate me. ’Tis the season, I thought wryly. But it was my eternal goal to do what he wanted, so if that’s what he wanted, that’s exactly what I would do.

I walked out the stage door and there he stood in the cold air, in a heavy wool coat that made him look ridiculously handsome. He smiled, hugged and kissed me, and I’m sure to any person passing by we seemed like any other couple, a boyfriend and girlfriend, even a husband and wife, from the tender and familiar way we embraced....

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He smiled at me and licked off his fingers, then slammed the door and got in on the other side. He hummed some familiar Christmas carol to himself under his breath. What was wrong with the both of us, I wondered, that on Christmas Eve we were not with family or friends? No, we were both of us with our perverse, sadomasochistic lover, and neither of us thought that it was strange or sad. I had no family left aside from Grégoire, and he had Georges to sit with in front of a holiday fire. And Matthew, I ume he had no family either, because he never mentioned them, and I never asked.

He drove me to a dark and expensive restaurant, the type of restaurant with no prices on the menu. He ordered wine and food for both of us in French and I resigned quietly that I would eat whatever arrived. Of course, it was delicious, whatever it was. Of course Matthew would know the most wonderful things to eat. We both ate slowly, and for a long time we didn’t talk, which was fine with me.

I didn’t talk because I was afraid of saying something stupid, afraid of sounding too familiar and loving during this meal that felt like a date. He didn’t talk because he was too busy just staring at me, staring at me with eyes that made me burn. I was half afraid he’d turn me over the table right there and me, lift my skirt and thrust inside while the other patrons looked on.

His eyes were so alive with smoldering lust, I had no idea why he hadn’t just taken me straight to his home. It had been nearly a week then since we’d been together, and we both felt that strain.

“I’ve missed you,” he said when the waiter brought dessert. I stirred my coffee, too nervous to reply. I remembered that night long ago at the coffee house, when I’d first drunk coffee with him and he’d told me what he wanted from me.

“I’ve missed you too, Matthew.” It was a safe, inane thing to say. Then he reached over and picked up the rectangular box he’d carried in, and handed it over to me.

It was wrapped in heavy, elegant paper, a stylized holiday print of berries and holly leaves.

There was a bow on top, perfect and crimson.

“I didn’t get you anything, Matthew,” I said, running my fingers over the gorgeous wrappings.

“Good. I didn’t want you to.”

“Whatever you want, I’ll do it for you later. Anything at all.” He rolled his eyes. “Don’t be a dweeb. We both know you’ll do what I want anyway. Just open it up. I wanted to get you a present, and now I ing want you to see what’s inside.” I smiled. He was so ridiculously charming, even when he called me a dweeb and ordered me around. I carefully undid the paper, not wanting to wrinkle it, and honestly, not really wanting the moment to end.

“Rip the ing paper off it, Lucy. Open it up or I’ll break it over your .” I smiled wider and looked up at him from under my lashes. I ripped off the rest of the paper and lifted the lid. I had expected something typically appropriate between us. Some new lingerie, or a paddle or a plug, but there was nothing ***ual or kinky inside that box. There was a beautifully framed piece of parchment covered in spidery calligraphy and decorated at the top with a painting of a Grecian urn.

He’d gifted me with a framed copy of the Keats poem I’d quoted to him, the one about truth and beauty, and it made my breath catch in my throat. Ode on a Grecian Urn, it was called, five stanzas long. I stared down the poem while he sat and watched without a word. The first two lines drew me in with their strange, appropriate sentiment: Thou still unravish’d bride of quietness,

thou foster-child of silence and slow time...

Silence. Slow time. I thought of our hours in the basement when he only sat and stared. He’d found this for me, or perhaps, knowing him, had it crafted by some artist to his exact specifications.

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter...

Thou canst not leave thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare; Bold lover, never, never canst thou kiss.

As I read, it seemed every single line spoke of our strange relationship. Matthew and I were frozen in time just like the pastoral scenes on the urn that Keats described. We were frozen in a scene where we reached for one another, but would never actually touch.

More happy love! more happy, happy love!

For ever warm and still to be enjoy’d,

For ever panting, and for ever young;

All breathing human passion far above...

For us, it would always just be passion. He would love me while I was young and perfect, his unchanging ideal. And then what? Someday, the urn would be broken, would crumble to pieces, capitulate to the ravages of time. The poem was so appropriate to us that I shivered, and for a long time, I couldn’t look up into his eyes.

At the end, the famous and well known words we’d discussed so long ago...

Beauty is truth, truth beauty—that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

The simple words that exemplified Matthew’s view of the world, all Matthew desired.

You’re beautiful to me. There will be only truth between us.

I looked over at Matthew and wondered what it meant. If it was a declaration of some kind, I didn’t understand it. Perhaps it had no significance at all. Maybe it was a mind****, a way to hurt or mock me. Maybe simply a gift to a lover with whom he’d spent so much time.

“Thank you, Matthew,” was all I dared say in the end.

“Do you like it?”

“Yes. I love it. It’s beautiful.”

He stared at me, long and hard, but I gave him nothing, no emotional reaction. I felt suddenly we were both teetering on the edge of a cliff.

“I love everything you give me,” I said as an afterthought, and thankfully, he left it at that.

He took me back to his house afterward, and when I turned towards the basement, he pulled me instead up the stairs. “Not on Christmas Eve. I won’t beat on you tonight.”

“You can if you want.”

“No.”

Up in his room, he took off my dress as I kicked off my shoes. “Go stand against the wall,” he said, stripping out of his clothes. He pushed me over to the broad white wall, the one without the paintings, and I stood there in my black stockings with my hands at my sides. He sat on the bed, looking at me, stroking his which was already huge and hard.

“Play with yourself. Stroke your ty, pinch your .” I did what he asked, trying to look ***y. He didn’t like that at all.

“****ing submissive. Harder. Touch yourself.” He stood up and strode over to me.

I moaned as he pinched my s, then twisted them mercilessly hard. He reached between my legs and found my swollen and pinched that too until I danced under his touch.

“You little cum whore,” he breathed. “Come on. Come for me, let me watch you.” I reached out to him and squeezed his shoulder hard, and he let me, so I kept squeezing, just as he squeezed and worked my sodden . “Come on, you little slut,” he prompted me again, then he pressed himself against me, pressed me to the wall and kissed me hard and violently, with more feeling than he ever had before. He hauled me over to the bed and pushed me onto my hands and knees and drove into me standing up from behind. He came just moments later, driving hard, then collapsed on top of me, his lips against my neck.

Before he even caught his breath, he gasped, “Lie down. Lie down and spread your legs.” I did, the obedient slave, and he fell on me at once. He stroked my thighs, bit the top of my stockings, licked and teased me while I flew on a high of ***ual pleasure and pure infatuation for the man who mastered me.

He devoured me, kissed and sucked my sore , licked my and hole with a fervor that made me wild. He had gone down on me on many occasions, but this time, somehow, it was even more abandoned and wild. The arousal built, throbbed, turned inside out and then exploded.

I came apart, thrashing under his mouth. He held my thighs hard between his hands and began again. I begged for respite, but he allowed none. He made me come again, this time finishing by thrusting his thick fingers in and out of my ****. As I came, he gazed down at me chanting,

“Yes. Yes, beautiful girl.”

He lay beside me then on the bed while I gasped for breath, completely spent, sprawled at his side. He watched me, his head propped on his hand.

“I have an unhealthy addiction to watching you come.”

I looked over at him. “I’ve noticed. I don’t mind.”

He stroked my face a moment, and then leaned over and kissed me like a true lover, and I let myself kiss him back just the same. We kissed like that while time spun away, and then he broke away from me. He suddenly seemed agitated and cross.

“Lucy, can you go home now? I’ll call a cab for you. You can’t stay here tonight. I’ve got things to do in the morning. You understand.”

I nodded. Yes, I did. Of course I did. I took a cab home that he insisted on paying for, and I was really okay with that. I climbed the stairs to my little apartment with my framed Keats poem clutched in my hands.

Who are these coming to the sacrifice?

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To what green altar, O mysterious priest...

Matthew, my handsome and mysterious priest. And I, the urn, frozen in beauty, not permitted to change.

He was the artist, the priest, the shaman, and I was the urn, existing only to receive.

* * *

That lovely Christmas Eve night that Matthew took me to dinner was an anomaly, certainly, perhaps an attempt at holiday cheer. It was nice, but I think it made both of us uneasy. We returned after the bustle of the holidays to our regular schedule and my stringent sessions in his basement continued just as before.

One morning after such a session, I came awake with the most delicious feeling. I was warm and relaxed. The bed was the perfect cozy temperature. Matthew lay beside me, an arm’s length away. He rarely held me in bed even though he insisted almost always that I sleep over. I knew he didn’t want me there for snuggles and cuddles. He wanted me to sleep over in case he felt like ing me in the middle of the night, and he did wake me up to do that fairly often. Those were always nice s, half-conscious and quick.

But that morning, I just felt so happy and cozy. I did a hard stretch beside him. His hands came out for me at once and his sleepy arms wrapped around me. “Do it again,” he whispered.

“Stretch for me.” I stretched again and his hands groped over me. He nuzzled his face into the curve of my neck.

“Lucy...Happy birthday.”

And I swear to God, I had completely forgotten that on this cold, luxuriously comfortable morning I had been born twenty-nine years ago.

He ed me then, twice in a row, once from behind and once clutched close in his arms.

Warm delicious snuggle****ing. I came both times, to his soft encouragement, to his constant demand. Come, Lucy, come.

Down in the kitchen, Mrs. Kemp produced a cake for me, a small cinnamon apple cake with roses in cream cheese frosting. It had a candle on it which Matthew lit with a flourish. I laughed while they sang Happy Birthday to me in surprisingly lovely harmony.

All of this strange softening of Matthew around me, the affectionate kisses, the cuddles, things like the birthday cake, I was so happy he felt all right with doing these things, because it meant I had finally convinced him that my emotions were not a threat. That I no longer harbored unrealistic fantasies, that I wouldn’t flip out and ask him for love. That I wouldn’t expect any commitment. Things got so much easier, so much simpler after that.

After one particularly debauched session, as he kissed me before bed, he asked if I’d like to go out with him again.

“On Saturday, I’ll pick you up at the theater. I’d like to take you to dinner with some friends.”

Some friends. Friends like Davis? “Okay, Matthew.”

“Why ‘ okay’?” he asked, mimicking my ambivalent tone. “What? Why not?”

“Nothing. I said okay. I would like to.” I didn’t know why he was so annoyed. Did he want me to fall over myself with excitement? “Will they know what I am to you?”

“Maybe. Do you care?”

“I guess not.”

“I’ll clear it up right off and introduce you as my *** slave.” I just looked at him, because it was completely possible he wasn’t joking. I guess my uneasiness amused him, because he laughed and pulled me next to him in the bed.

“Listen, don’t think so much. I want you to come out with me. I want to see you smile and laugh and do something besides take me in every hole. You’re my submissive, correct?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then you do as I say. I don’t really understand the attitude.” I murmured apologies, but I felt his mood shift.

“Do you want me to put a ing collar on you, Lucy? Would that make you feel better?

Take you to dinner on a leash? Make you eat it out of a dog bowl at my feet?”

“No, sir.”

“How about a toy in your while we dine? You’d probably like that, actually.”

“Matthew, it’s fine, I’ll go. I just didn’t know if these were friends who...”

“Who what? Who will come back with us to the basement?” He fought with himself for a moment, over whether or not to admit it, and then I knew for certain that they were. Of course, he’d wanted to spring the whole thing on me. Now he would be angry with me that I’d pried it from him in advance.

“So what if they do, Lucy? What are you going to do about it? I know you’re a hot little cum-crazy whore. You come like a ing horny slut every time I fill all your holes. I thought you might enjoy a few extra of my friends.”

“Yes. Yeah. I would love that, Matthew.” I expected to be slapped now, for the way that I said that.

“You know what I’d love?” he said low and dangerously. “A little ing appreciation sometimes.”

I turned to him and pressed my head into his chest, and then sank down until I faced his . I wanted *****ck him more than anything at that moment, just so I wouldn’t have to participate in this conversation any more. He sighed as I put my mouth on him, and he let me suck and caress him at my own pace. For a long time he just let me have him, and while I had him, I thought about what he’d said.

I thought about going out to dinner and coming back to the basement with his friends. God, who cared? As long as it felt good. Just more way to be sure we didn’t fall in love. I was actually really looking forward to it. By the time he came in my throat the idea actually turned me on. I hoped they were as beautiful and handsome as Matthew. I hoped they thought I was beautiful and desirable too.

Chapter Ten: Falling

On Saturday night, Matthew didn’t meet me at the stage door. He actually met me backstage, outside my dressing room door. Of course he had all-access granted whenever he wanted it. The amount of money he donated to the company ured that. He had a garment bag in one hand and a small boutique bag in the other, and a broad smile pasted across his face.

“My little dancer. How was your show tonight?”

“Fine,” I murmured. My ankle hurt.

As soon as Ellie left he came into the dressing room with me. He helped me pull the black dress down over my body and it fit like a glove. He nodded in approval while I marveled at how it made me look. It fit so perfectly and so flatteringly. I had no idea how he managed it. I pictured him standing over me with a measuring tape while I slept, then calling a seamstress with all his notes.

“Yes, I had it made for you,” he said.

“How—”

“I got your measurements from Jo.” The costume mistress.

“I’ve never worn anything so beautiful. I really haven’t.”

“Well, it’s yours now. It looks wonderful on you.”

It wasn’t a slut dress of course, not from Matthew. It fell to just below my knees. It had some beading, very subtle, on the front. It had an almost iridescent sheen to it, and the bodice laced up. It didn’t lace up in some pseudo-corset way, it laced up with silk laces to a tie at the top. It was ***y, elegant, and girlish. I absolutely loved it and it moved like a dream.

But he wasn’t done with me yet. “Hold up the skirt,” he said, kneeling down. He reached for the shop bag he’d set down on the vanity and drew out a garter belt that made my breath catch.

It matched the dress in design and laced up in the front, and was embroidered with delicate beads. He put it on me, and of course, again, it fit perfectly. Then he gathered up the stockings and put them on next. He smoothed them up my leg so that I shivered, and then he attached the garter clasps for me. He licked me softly at the place where my met my thighs and I put my hand back on his head, twined my fingers in his hair. It was partly because I didn’t want him to stop it, and partly because my legs were about to fail. It may sound funny to say this, but it was the first time in the nearly four months I’d known him that I’d touched his hair that way.

He stood up all too soon and said, “We’ll be late.”

As we sat in his car driving to the restaurant, he ordered me to pull my skirt up over my thighs. He made me masturbate myself until I came, and I was thankful that his windows were tinted black. For once, primed as I was by the erotic way he dressed me, it wasn’t that hard to jack off for him. I wasn’t as self-conscious and hesitant as I usually was. I thought too of the way his hair felt under my fingers for that wonderful moment, that very short moment when they twisted in his soft, blond locks.

When we arrived at the restaurant, it was busy and crowded. Lots of rich people standing around looking rich. It was loud, smoky, frenetic, and expensive of course. My eyes darted all around, wondering who his “friends” could be. He had told me nothing further of the people we’d meet, letting me work myself into frenzy of curiosity and nerves. And I was nervous, very nervous to see the people that Matthew had decided to let play with me. Unlike Davis, I umed these players knew what they were doing.

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The maître’d led us to a secluded table, and I was surprised to be greeted by two men and a beautiful woman my age. Well, perhaps she was a bit older, thirty five or so. The men were older than Matthew too, with grey in their hair. They weren’t old men though, not at all. If they were fifty, I would have been surprised. And they turned me on. God, I hate to say it. They were ***y and virile, and potent to the core. They looked at me in the same way Matthew looked at me, as something to appraise. A thing to conquer and own. These men were dominants, and the woman was a submissive, that was patently clear to me even before we spoke.

All of a sudden, I started to panic a little. What were the rules here? How should I act? I hung back and shrunk closer to Matthew, but he put his hand on my back and pushed me forward. They all stood up and greeted each other warmly, including me, so I was not to be ignored, the peon slave. Matthew pulled out my chair and seated me next to the woman. She was a woman that made me feel like a girl, voluptuous and ***y, and quietly self ured. Her body was amazing, large s and , and wide brown eyes framed by jet black, flowing hair. I wanted to cry, imagining my skinny dancer body beside hers, my babyish red curls next to her black, flowing mane.

She smiled at me though, kindly and sweetly. I took my cues from her even though we didn’t talk. We were submissive sisters, that was the feeling I got from her, and I had a strong sense that later we’d be beaten side by side.

Matthew and the other men ordered dinner, and as I expected, Matthew ordered on my behalf. Over the course of time I gathered the men’s names were Byron and Frank. I was shocked, however, to hear them refer to the woman as Slave. That was all they called her the entire time we dined, and I was terrified that Matthew would begin to do the same to me. I realized that I couldn’t bear the loss of my name. But no, he referred to me many times as Lucy over the course of their conversations about me.

And yes, for the most part, that’s what the men did, they discussed the ***ual lives of their slaves. As in, the ***ual life of me and “Slave” who was next to me, while we sat with our heads down and picked at the food on our plates. I didn’t eat much although the food was delicious, but I listened, and wow, the things I learned. I remembered when Matthew had scoffed, “I’m ridiculously soft on you!” and by the end of dinner, I realized he had been, as Byron and Frank discussed their relationship with Slave.

Slave was apparently “full time,” she didn’t work or have her own domicile. She lived with Byron and Frank, who shared her every night. If one was tired or busy, the other one used her alone. They did a lot of the same things Matthew and I did, and then quite a bit more.

Slave wore a thick black padlocked collar, which she was ordered to display to Matthew from beneath the high neckline of her dress. Apparently she was also pierced and branded. I tried to keep the emotion out of my face, the way I felt about their arrangement, about the things she let them do to her. And of course, I wondered what exactly had been Matthew’s point in this little meeting. Maybe these were things he wanted to do to me.

Did he want to take things further between us? Was he unhappy, or bored? Did he want me to be more like Slave? Did he just want one night of watching me worked over by Byron and Frank? Because I knew that was what was in store for me. I could tell by the lingering looks they gave me. I saw in their eyes the promise of pain to come. I was so scared. I wanted to take Matthew’s hand and beg him, please don’t make me. I’m not that good.

But I didn’t do that. I stayed silent, because a part of me was curious too. A part of me was horny and reckless, and wanted to see if I could endure just one night of Slave’s hell. I was pretty sure that Matthew would protect me from anything that broke his promises to me. He wouldn’t let me get scars, or bleed, or get injured. He wouldn’t let any of these men inside me without a sheath. So aside from that, what could I not bear?

I met Matthew’s eyes from time to time, even though Slave kept hers down the entire time.

Yes, I’m allowed to look at my dominant. Aren’t I a mess? I met his eyes mostly to uage my panic, to reassure myself that I was his and not Frank and Byron’s, who seemed to regard their submissive as nothing much more than a dog.

Soon after we met, he had told me emphatically, I’ll never put you in a collar. I’ll never treat you like a dog. I don’t like to have *** with animals. But Slave, apparently, ate off the floor.

Slave was collared around the clock. She was walked sometimes on a leash in the garden in the walled backyard. She pissed and shat out in the yard too, and sometimes, her masters pissed and shat on her. Slave was punished in a dungeon. Slave competed in pony races and exhibitions.

Slave didn’t even have a bedroom. Slave slept on the floor next to one of her masters’ beds.

I can’t say myself what drove Slave to do this, even being submissive as I was. I wondered how long she had lived a life like this, how much longer she would keep at it, and what the adjustment would be like when she re-entered the world. The idea of what she had done completely terrified me…to give up everything, every inkling of dignity and will. My eyes strayed to her again and again. When she met my eyes, hauntingly, there was intelligence and irony there.

I suppose it’s possible that it was all an act, that Byron and Frank bragged about things that weren’t true. Matthew didn’t brag a great amount about me, just spoke of my lithe dancer’s body, of how my muscles strained under his hands. He spoke of the way I lost myself, the way I came continuously and uncontrollably for him like a mindless slut. He spoke of the way I loved to be doubly penetrated, and the way I had never yet used our safe word, even when an outsider had beaten me and drawn blood.

He said that word, outsider, with an air of repugnance. I think he reminded his friends too, in a subtle way, that they were not to draw my blood. He was unapologetic for his “softness” towards me.

“I like to see her dance,” he explained. “I won’t take her away from that.” Byron and Frank nodded, although I knew they scorned his kindness. “Of course,” said Byron, “that’s a choice you’re free to make.”

After dinner, we went to the car. We were going to Frank and Byron’s house, to use the dungeon there. I sat beside Matthew half in shock, and he knew I had to ask the questions in my mind.

“Okay, you have until we get there. Ask your questions, whatever you want.” They poured out in a rush.

“How long have you known them? Have you done this before?”

“I’ve known them for years, Lucy, and I’ve played with them many times. It’s perfectly safe.”

“You’ve slept with her? Slave?” I felt unreasonably jealous.

“I’ve ed her, yes,” he said. “And I will tonight.”

“They’ll have *** with me?”

“Yes. They’ll wear condoms every time.” He looked over at me with a faint frown. “Of course, you trust me to keep you safe.”

“Yes, I do...” I said, and I truly did.

“But you’re scared.”

“Yes.” I looked back at him, troubled. “Do you want me to be like her?”

“No, not really. But I do think you could learn some things from her. She’s been doing this for years.”

“She’s prettier than me,” I said mournfully.

“No, just different. If I thought she was more beautiful than you, she would be mine now, instead of you.”

“What do you want me to learn from this exactly?”

He didn’t answer right away. “I would like you to see how somebody else erts dominance, and how it compares to the way that I dominate you.”

“Why? So you’ll look better? You want me to realize that you’re soft on me? I know that already. We don’t have to go through all this just to show me that.”

“No, it’s not that at all. What I want you to learn is if what I’m doing for you is enough. If it’s all you want.” Oh God, he thinks I’m not happy. He thinks he’s not enough for me. It boggled my brain. “I guess all I want from tonight, Lucy, is to show you that what we have is only part of what’s available to you. I don’t want you to be mad at me later that I never showed you.” I looked out the window crossly. Did he think I was that naive? “I read The Story of O, and Carrie’s Story too.”

“Even so, Lucy Merritt, you’re my submissive. If I want to educate you further, you’re obliged to obey.”

“I know I am, Matthew Norris,” I answered, and that earned me an excruciating pinch on the inside of my leg.

* * *

When we arrived in Byron and Frank’s “dungeon,” I really had to try hard not to laugh. It was such the epitome of an actual *** dungeon, it was really almost too over the top. It made Matthew’s stark, neutral basement room and armoire of toys look like a honeymoon suite. Slave was already and on her knees, with huge weights hanging down from her pierced s and her hands bound to a chain over her head.

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I’ll try to tell you everything that happened in that dungeon, but things moved so fast, it was almost a blur. They moved fast, and yet we were there for nearly three hours. I did lose myself a little bit. More than I’d expected to.

To begin with, Matthew ordered me to strip, and Byron and Frank immediately mocked my worthless body, my skinny legs and non-existent boobs. They tied my arms over my head and took turns beating and marking my while I watched Matthew Slave in the mouth. After that, they asked Matthew if they could both me at once. He agreed that they could, that I would love that, and the truth was that I actually did. They put clips on my s first that hurt like hellfire, then Frank lay down on a bench and pulled me onto his . Byron straddled the bench behind me and thrust into my and they both ed me slowly in a very smooth and practiced way. And yes, it felt great, I got turned on from it, turned on enough to really come hard. Matthew just sat in a chair across the room and watched with an unfathomable look on his face. Byron and Frank said nothing about the fact that I’d come, and then Slave and I were made to kneel and were both beaten at the same time.

As I cowered beside Slave with my arms cuffed behind my back, I thought that the way she took beatings was amazing. She writhed and moaned like she loved every blow. It was like the pain didn’t touch her, or if it did, it was something she craved. While she moaned in my ear, I screamed and begged pitifully. When they were done striping both our bottoms, they made Slave lie down and told me to eat her out. I did, even though I’d never gone down on a woman. I tried some of the things Matthew often did on me. She moaned and twisted under me and seemed to find pleasure, but since she seemed to find pleasure in everything, I couldn’t really tell if it was true. Then she was ordered to go down on me, which she did while Matthew ed her in the , watching my face the whole time. I let myself drift, as Slave’s cunnelingus talents put my own to sorry shame. She had me ing haplessly in minutes, and I stared into Matthew’s eyes as I came. Up to this point, I actually found great pleasure in that dungeon, but then, after that, things took a nasty turn.

Byron commented to Matthew that I was undisciplined, childish, and self-absorbed, that I came too frequently and with too much pleasure of my own. Matthew laughed and said that was true, and Byron asked if he could gag me and punish me as he saw fit. What he actually said was, Can I take her into my hands? I hated that idea, because his hands would not be Matthew’s, but Matthew said that he could if he wanted to, and things got totally crazy after that.

Byron began by gagging me with great pleasure. I had never worn a gag, and I’m sure that turned him on, to be the first one to gag my mouth. The one he produced was invasive. He thrust the wide phallic shape into my mouth and buckled it against my face with the straps, so I was unable to breathe deeply or swallow with any success. Matthew asked to check it, and I thought there was no way he would make me endure it, but he nodded, to my dismay, and said I was okay. Then I was blindfolded and bound to a leather-covered, X-shaped cross, bound at every point, wrists, ankles, neck, and waist. Byron, Frank, and Matthew all ed me in the at that point, and I could tell from the feel of it that Matthew went last. I also didn’t enjoy it at all. I was far too traumatized by the helplessness I felt.

Next, Byron lectured me a long time about how worthless I was, about how much Matthew loved Slave. He said that their slave was lower than **** but that I was even more worthless than she, because at least she was beautiful and womanly while I was unattractive and poorly trained.

I could hear Slave’s moans in the background, that someone was ing her. The idea that it was Matthew brought tears to my eyes. Was this truly what Matthew wanted? The fertile beauty and utter submission of Slave? Instead he had me, coltish and pale, and more likely to cry and scream than moan with pleasure under his blows.

Byron started to beat me painfully then with a cane, and that in itself hurt like hell, but aside from that, he hit my thighs and my back. I screamed behind the gag and writhed in a panic, because those marks would show. Matthew asked sharply for him to restrict his blows to my , and Byron began to argue with him about the place of a slave. Matthew insisted I could not be marked as Byron wanted, and then Byron asked to beat the bottom of my soles instead. I shook my head violently, made a desperate sound of alarm, as much as I could behind the gag in my mouth, but Matthew was already voicing his denial. Lucy is a dancer, he said.

And those four words, I can’t say what they meant to me, while I was gagged and trussed and ed and beaten there on that cross. Yes, my name was still Lucy to him, not slave or whore, and I was a dancer, not just a piece of flesh. But the worst part of it was, what made me start weeping, was the edge of frustration in Matthew’s voice that said he was being embarrassed, that he was being shown up. That Byron and Frank were rubbing it in his face.

Your girl is a piece of ****, was basically what they were saying. I hated that I’d brought that embarrassment to him. For Matthew to be belittled on my behalf was just so horribly unfair, and then for him to still stand up for me so staunchly made me want to sob.

Things turned ugly then. Byron cycled through toy after toy. Beatings and dildos and clamps and beatings and hair pulling and more beating to a constant symphony of verbal abuse.

Matthew and his friends had become locked in some testosterone driven game of slave chicken, and I desperately, desperately wanted to scream mercy. But I wasn’t able to scream anything at all. In fact, I was barely able to keep from choking on my spit behind that godforsaken gag. I thought pretty soon I’d be foaming at the mouth. If this was S M, real S M, I didn’t want it.

I only wanted what Matthew gave me, that edge of pain that was a pleasure to endure. Byron and Frank wanted to break me, smash me to pieces and then brutally smash me some more. I think Byron was trying to see how far Matthew would let him go, to see if he could actually force Matthew to stop him. And he did, when Byron said he wanted to piss in my mouth. I shook my head, frantic and disgusted, as Byron mocked me. “Do you think you have a choice?” But Matthew muttered, “I don’t think so. Bodily fluids. You know. It’s getting late, we should probably go.”

He came over to the cross and stood behind me, stood between me and Byron who had to pee. It felt so protective, his body behind me. I cried desperate tears that I couldn’t reach back for him. Even when I had failed so miserably to live up to this S M dream, even when he was angry and embarrassed, he still came behind me and put his hand on my neck. He touched me as if to say, okay, now it’s over, and I wept in sorrow and shame. He unmasked me, undid my restraints, and then carefully removed the awful gag stuffed down my throat. My lips and chin were covered in drool and I swiped it away as best as I could, feeling ugly and humiliated. I couldn’t have met his eyes then for anything, and fortunately he would not meet my eyes either.

He brought me my dress and threw it at me. “Get ready. We’re leaving.” I quickly obeyed. I knew he was disappointed in everything, me, his friends, the whole sordid scene. He didn’t even ask me to thank Byron and Frank, just said goodbye to them and dragged me out the door. As he pulled me to the car, I was awash in self-loathing, and Matthew was more furious than I’d ever seen him before.

“I’m sorry, Matthew,” I whispered.

“Shut up,” he barked so sharply that I flinched. He opened the door and shoved me in the back seat, then slammed the door and went to the driver’s side. He stood outside a minute, like he was trying to compose himself, then climbed in and peeled away from the house.

“I’m sorry—” I said again.

“Just shut the up, Lucy. I mean it.”

“I tried, I just couldn’t—”

“Just shut up!” he yelled. “I asked you to ing shut up!” So I did. I sat and cried in the backseat as quietly as I could, and when we finally got to his house, let him haul me inside and rip off my dress.

He yelled for Mrs. Kemp as he pushed me to my knees.

“Suck me,” he growled, tearing open his pants, pulling out his and stuffing it into my mouth. While I started sucking him off, Mrs. Kemp scurried in from the kitchen in alarm.

“Take this ing dress and ing burn it,” he said, tossing it at her feet.

“Yes, Mr. Norris,” she replied, not missing a beat. I did not miss a beat either. While she collected the dress from the floor, I sucked away at his , while he pulled my hair so hard that it hurt.

“Just suck it, you bitch. Don’t be lazy.”

I sucked it like I could just suck everything away, and when I finished he looked down at me furiously while I swallowed his cum. He hauled me up and pulled me towards the basement, and I fought him then. I fought him hard, but he carried me kicking and flailing down the stairs and flung me into the room, right onto the floor. For a long time he stood and looked down at me as I sobbed brokenly. His anger, his furious disapproval was something I just couldn’t bear.

“Please, what can I do?”

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“I asked you to shut up. That’s what I want you to do.”

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry!”

“I don’t want another ing word from you.” He crossed to the armoire and got the cane, and stood over me for a minute, and then he said, “Don’t bother to count.” As he started to beat me, I heard him talking low, almost to himself.

“You know why they call it falling, Lucy? Why they call it falling in love? Because it’s completely out of your control. And I hate being out of control.” I was unable to untangle his words right then, exhausted and overwhelmed as I was. He just kept on hitting me with that cane while I writhed and drew my legs up on the floor. I felt it, but I didn’t feel it. It hurt so badly, but at the same time I felt so empty by that point that my entire body was a void. It was almost four in the morning, and I was completely sure that Matthew’s mind had snapped. He beat me until my own mind faltered and grew foggy, and then a word in my mind suddenly became clear.

“Mercy,” I moaned into the carpet.

He hit me again. Fire and pain. Stop him. “What?”

“Mercy!” I screamed at him. “Mercy! Mercy! Stop!”

I heard the cane hit the wall across the room, and I heard the door slam when he stalked out of the room and left me there, and I lay there still and alone until long after dawn.

So in the end it wasn’t Frank or Byron who broke me, it was Matthew himself. He broke me and crushed me and smashed me and left me lying there in jagged pieces on the cold basement floor.

Chapter Eleven: Plans

I’m not sure what time it was when he came back to get me, but I was still lying in exactly the same place. I never wanted to move again, actually, and when he tried to pick me up, I struggled and hit out at him.

“Lucy.” His voice sounded tired. “Don’t fight me.”

He carried me upstairs and put me in the tub. I soaked in there for half an hour while he hovered around, and then he ordered me to wash my hair. When I ignored him, he washed it himself, and when he was done he had to help me out of the tub because my legs and my back were so tired and sore.

He dried me and made me lie down on the bed and again he massaged my bruised and welted with salve. After that he combed my hair out as I lay on my stomach. I never even lifted my head from the pillow. At some point while he did that I fell asleep, because when I woke up again, it was dinnertime on Sunday night. Matthew was there when I opened my eyes.

“Hello,” he said.

I said nothing back to him.

“Lucy,” he said, and then he stopped, and he didn’t say anything for a long time.

Finally, he said very matter-of-factly, “Lucy, I’ve decided to make another promise to you.

I’m never going to share you again. I decided I just don’t like it.”

“Oh, you decided that?” In ordinary circumstances, my tone would have gotten me slapped.

But he only frowned and said, “Yes,” and waited to see what my reply was to that.

My reply was, “I want to go home.”

“You’re not going home.”

“What do you want, Matthew? To beat me some more? To put some huge ing gag in my mouth and make me drool and choke and then piss on me?”

“I had no idea, Lucy—”

“You’re a liar. You promised me truth.”

“Lucy—”

“Why did they call that woman Slave? What’s wrong with them? Why are they so sick?”

“They call her that because she likes it. Because she wants them to.”

“I’ve gone down on a woman exactly once in my life, and I’ll never even know her real name.”

“Her name is Gloria. And believe me, there’s nothing they do to her that she doesn’t completely revel in.”

“Do you like her?”

“I don’t care for her at all, to be perfectly honest with you.”

“But you want me to be like her.”

He snorted as if the idea was ridiculous. “No I don’t! God forbid you would be like her. I can’t stand her. She’s a total fake.”

“What do you mean, fake?”

“You know what I mean.” I thought for a minute and actually, I realized I did know what he meant. “She was better than me at everything, though. At the way she took pain.”

“I love the way you take pain, Lucy. I live for it.”

“Do you think I’m too skinny?”

“I think you’re perfect as you are. I’ve told you that before, many times, so don’t annoy me by fishing for compliments. Jesus, Lucy, they were just trying to with your mind. And were successful at it, I might add.”

I kept asking questions, and he kept letting me, and the longer he let me, the braver I got.

“Why did you let them hurt me so badly? Why did you let them gag me like that? Let them mark my back?”

“I stopped them!”

“A little too late.”

“Do you want to know something, Lucy? You stupid little . Do you even realize why they were so rough with you? Why they turned so completely against me? You’re a hundred times more real and sincere than Gloria. Gloria’s a pain whore. They’re never enough for her.

They can’t keep her happy, they can’t satisfy her. She tops them from below, and honestly, soon, she’s going to leave them. She’s got both their nuts clutched right in her hand. I don’t believe you couldn’t see that.”

I thought back over the evening, and his words made sense to me. It all became crystal clear.

“They were jealous of you.”

“Yes, jealous. Jealous of your honest, open reactions. Jealous of the fear you have, and the trust you place in me. Jealous of the noises you make that are real, not out of some movie.” I digested that for a moment, and suddenly Byron and Frank seemed so sad. No matter the cruelty, the fancy dungeon, the imaginative punishments, they would never be enough for her. It boggled my mind. It all seemed so sad and ugly, and not ***y at all.

“So why? Why did you take me there?”

“They wanted Slave to see you, to see if they could get through to her. They’re trying to save a relationship. But I’m sorry in hindsight that I got you involved. If Byron or Frank try to contact you, you’re not to talk to them. You’ll tell me immediately if they do.” I snorted. “Are you afraid they’ll try to steal your slave?”

“Don’t laugh. They will try. You’re not to go.”

I rolled my eyes. “Oh, God, Matthew.”

“I’m not kidding. Promise me. Swear to me now.”

“I promise.”

“Swear to me!”

“Okay, okay, I swear it.”

He just looked at me, frowning, and he looked really tired. I was afraid that soon he would cut off my questions.

“Last night, when we got home, why did you do that?”

His face was suddenly hard, his expression hooded. “You are my submissive, you remember. You agree to give yourself to me. You always have the safe word, which you did use.”

“You wanted to force me to use it. Why?”

“I don’t have to explain myself to you.”

“I know,” I snapped. “But it would be nice if you did every once in a while.”

“Does it matter?” His whole face changed into a frightening furious mask. “Does it really matter why I did it? Your body is mine to use as I like! I can give you the most severe punishment I can dream up only because I felt like doing it to you. That’s what you signed up for. And you can stop coming anytime, as you know.”

He said that so coolly, my lips started to tremble.

“Do you want me to stop coming?”

He tsked in annoyance. “No, Lucy, I don’t. What other stupid questions would you like to ask?”

“It doesn’t matter. You won’t answer anyway.”

He scowled at me with his arms crossed over his chest. “Do you want to know why? You want to know why, Lucy? Look at me.”

I did, very warily. He looked at me and his eyes narrowed, and his jaw twitched, and I thought for a moment he might hit me. He didn’t hit me, although honestly, I would have preferred that to what he said.

“I need to remind myself that no matter how beautiful and perfect you are, you’re nothing more to me than three holes to and an to beat on when I’m feeling punchy. Truth, Lucy.

You can thank me for it if you want, since I didn’t have to tell you.”

“Thank you, Matthew,” I said through clenched teeth.

“You’re welcome.” He ed his head, and looked down at me. “Do you know how many times I hit you last night, after we got home, how many times I hit you with the cane?” I shook my head.