A house dom in black boots, black T-shirt, and black military-style pants was kneeling on one knee, tracing the edge of a very sharp, very large hunting knife over the man’s skin. He was currently teasing his nipples with the tip of the knife. Fine, red lines crisscrossed the man’s chest, back, and legs. With each new slice, the man convulsed. His erection was fierce.
A house domme, dressed like her male counterpart, was working the other side of the web on the woman, striking her breasts and stomach with a flogger made of thin leather strips. The woman’s skin was bright red and her nipples hard. Tears found their way out from under the leather mask, but she was smiling, laughing after the wince of each new blow. The domme leaned toward her captive. She brutally pinched one of her nipples as they kissed, as if the domme were tasting the scream of pain and pleasure that escaped the restrained woman’s lips as she shuddered in release.
I moved on, heading up a marble staircase to the second floor. A velvet rope blocked the top of the stairs, and a well-dressed Latino clone of Malcolm was the rope’s guardian. He was talking to someone on his cell as he looked me over and obviously didn’t see me as much of a threat by the dismissive look he gave me. He nodded, muttered a good-bye, and ended the call, tucking the phone away in his jacket. He reached for the rope and unhooked it, stepping aside.
“Mistress Anna is in the third room on the left,” he said with a heavy Spanish accent. “She is expecting you, sir.”
I walked down the corridor; this level was all exposed wooden beams among the stonework, giving it the feeling of a great Viking hall. I wondered for a second if Grendel was lurking behind one of the heavy wooden doors, covered in leather, ready to devour me like Hrothgar’s kin. Then I remembered I had already dealt with the scaly bastard and his harpy of a mom in Sweden, sixteen years ago with Boj and Harrel by my side. Still, it did remind me that it took a dragon to bring Beowulf down, and at least one of them was still lurking around here somewhere.
I opened the third door on the left without knocking. The room smelled of Nag Champa incense and a faint musk of sweat. The light was low, coming from a small circular brazier full of hot coals. A good-looking athletic man in his forties was strapped to an X-shaped St. Anthony’s cross. He was nude and panting like an animal, his eyes were rolled up in his head, and his body was covered in a sheen of sweat. Anna was standing before him.
Anna. There are a rare few who move through this shadow box with so much genuine life and love in them, or so much pain and anger, or so much control and care that they echo, that they impress a mark of their passing through this time and place, indelible, on every life they intersect with. Anna was one of them.
She looked as young and beautiful as she had almost thirty years ago. I see the world through many lenses, many windows of perception, but nostalgia isn’t one of them. If she had noticeably aged, I couldn’t tell. Maybe a little thinner, her beautiful features a little more angular. Her hair was still russet silk; it fell below her shoulders when she wore it down, but tonight was business, so it was coiled in a long, tight french twist braid and pulled back severely from her face. Her eyes were sapphire stars, quizzical, intelligent, with equal parts innocence and trespass warring in them. Right now, the trespass had ascendancy as she regarded her charge.
She wore a leather catsuit the color of dried blood and stiletto-heeled boots that ended at her thighs. Her lipstick was the only makeup she wore, and it matched the color of the catsuit. Anna seldom wore makeup; she didn’t need it. The lipstick was a prop for her sub. The suit’s zipper was fastened all the way up. The large metal ring hanging from the zipper rested at her throat and reminded me of days when she wore a collar with two such rings. The only skin exposed was her slender, delicate hands. They were strong hands too, marked with the passage of hard work, a life of struggle. Her whole demeanor spoke of wiry strength. Her build was slight, but she possessed enticing curves and I burned inside remembering the way her body moved. The suit hid ivory skin and a lithe body. I remembered how her skin felt; it was intoxicating. Touching her could get you high. She had been mine once, and I considered myself very fortunate to have had that time. In a lifetime of damnation, pettiness, anger, fear, and a hundred other hollow heartbeats, my time with Anna had felt like a brush with a kind of divinity.
Anna saw me, and her eyes widened a little and became a lighter shade of blue, then she was back in character. She raised a finger with a nail that matched her lipstick and suit in color. She traced it along her sub’s chest, pausing to toy with his nipple. The sub came out of his stupor and was looking at me too. Anna slapped his cheek, hard. The stinging crack of the blow made him jump, and his cheek was red and flushed from the force of it.
“Eyes forward,” Anna said. Her voice was not harsh; it
