“Yes, mistress,” he muttered. Anna cupped his face now, caressing the skin she had just struck.
“I am your focus,” she said, “I am your universe. Do you understand?”
“Yes, mistress,” he said. His voice was getting hoarse, and his erection was brushing Anna’s thigh now. She ran her hand from his cheek down his toned chest to rest for just a moment on his hardness. Her touch was light and fluttering, and he moaned a little, and then her touch was gone. She turned her back on her sub, facing me. I leaned against a wide wooden beam and enjoyed the show.
“Confess to me,” she said. “Tell me what you’ve done since we were last together. Tell me your sins.”
And he did. I stood there and listened to a litany of the things this guy was doing in his life he wasn’t proud of. By my standards, it was pretty benign—cheating on his wife by doing this and other things, petty theft at work, lying, some drug use—but to this guy it was grade-A, straight-to-hell, evil. It made me almost laugh, but a quick glance from Anna told me doing that would get my ass kicked, so I didn’t.
“Is that everything?” Anna asked, keeping her voice even and authoritative. There was no judgment, no approval in her tone. It was masterful, no pun intended.
“Yes, mistress … I think,” he said, eyes locked on her.
“You sound uncertain,” Anna said and stepped over to a table where various tools and implements were laid out in meticulous order. “Let me help you obtain … clarity.” She selected some nipple clamps. She lowered her face to his chest and teased his nipples to hardness with her lips and tongue. He moaned a little but tried to maintain his composure; he hadn’t been given permission to enjoy this. Anna applied the clamps and tightened them to her satisfaction. Her sub paled a little as he struggled in the throes of pain and ecstasy. Next, she applied a Velcro band with a small black plastic box to the base of his hard penis and made sure it was snug against his balls. I spotted two squat metal fangs inside the strap, like the terminal leads on a Taser or stun gun. Once it was fitted to her liking, Anna picked up a small black box and pulled open a telescoping antennae from it. The sub looked apprehensive. Anna stood in front of him again.
“I want you to meditate on your transgressions,” she said. “Make sure every corner of your mind is free of uncertainty and doubt. We will scour your mind until it’s pristine, won’t we?”
“Yes, mistress,” he croaked. His voice was raspy with ache, desire, and fear. Anna pushed a button on the small box in her hand, and there was an electrical snap as a current went through the collar. The sub’s eyes rolled again as they had when I had first entered, and his mouth went slack as current burned through his most sensitive places.
“Good boy,” she said, releasing the button. Her sub slumped, jerking mildly. Anna adjusted the power of the shock by a dial on the box and then switched it on to a lower, continuous charge. The sub grunted and thrashed a little, but he remained quiet, obedient. “Meditate. I’ll come back, and we can discuss what you have found within yourself and what you have cast away.”
Anna walked to another door in the room next to a large black-silvered mirror fitted into the stonework of the wall. She walked through the door, and I followed, closing it behind me. The room we were in was like any small office you’d find behind the scenes at a business. A computer on the desk, stacks of papers, a whiteboard with scribbled notes by employees needing days off or to switch shifts, and a fucking OSHA safety poster. The mirror was two-way, like an interrogation room, so Anna could keep an eye on her charge as he wrestled with his karmic dilemmas as his junk crackled. Anna rested on the edge of the desk and crossed her arms as she looked at me.
“Still the sin-eater, I see,” I said. “It’s good to see you, Anna. You look great.”
“Damn it, Laytham,” she said in a very low voice. Anna’s voice got lower the more serious, the more emotional the subject. It was another beautiful thing about her. “Did you just decide that enough time had passed, that we had worked our way through enough of the pain you left us with, that it was time to come back and inflict some more?” I could tell she wanted to say more, but she didn’t. We locked eyes, and I looked away. “What do you want?”
“I’m on a job,” I began. I saw the shields of understanding crash down behind those beautiful, open eyes. “I need Dragon’s help.”
“Of course,” she said, nodding. Her voice remained calm, even, but I could hear the sharp barbs of pain and anger come into her inflection. “That makes perfect sense to you, doesn’t it? You need, you want, so of course that makes coming here okay, logical even. She’s a resource to you. We both are. Another asset to use and then forget until the next time you need us.”
“Look,” I said, finding a cigarette and slipping it between my lips, “you want me to say I’m sorry, I will, but you and I both know that doesn’t change a goddamned thing. I was spiraling down here, and if I had stayed, I would have dragged you two with me. I didn’t want to go, but I needed to. At least I had a long enough binge
