Page 68 of Spider Demon's Kiss

I replied with the paddle emoji.

‘I will be home at 6:30. You will be prepared and you will do what you’re told.’

My mind swirled with anticipation for what would happen next. I would be home an hour before he would. I had time to prepare. How, though?

Hurrying to the closet in the guest room where I kept my clothes, I fingered through everything until one thing stood out. It was a floor length cloak I had bought when I was feeling particularly dramatic. Designed to encircle the wearer completely, what said obedient submissive better than dressing like a Catholic priest?

Deciding to wear it with nothing underneath and it turned to open in the back, that just left my hair and makeup. Staring in the mirror at what I had to work with, all I could see was the devil. But that was off theme. I needed to look like a Catholic school boy or something close.

With only forty minutes left before the night began, I took a shower and washed my hair. That’s when it hit me. Dante had never seen me with my bush of hair slicked back. With it, I passed as what I was, Japanese. What could be more obedient and submissive than that?

Using my thickest hair gel, I pushed it through my hair until every curl was gone. Next, I applied mascara until my wide eyes slanted and the creases in my eyelids faded. I wasn’t prepared for who I saw in the mirror when I was done.

Kuroi was gone. Sitting before me was the boy my father would have had if not for my mother’s blackness. Would my father have loved this version of me? Would he have given this son to his business partners to use and dispose of?

Iwould never know because this would never be me. But tonight I could pretend. And the boy who stared back in the mirror was ashamed of all of the bad things he’s done.

He wanted to be punished. He desperately needed to cleanse his soul so he could be good again. He wanted so badly to be good.

Whipped out of my thoughts by the elevator door opening, I turned toward the bedroom door feeling my chest clench. It wasn’t me who would go out there to meet Dante. It was Shiro. I knew how Shiro thought and behaved because it was the opposite of how I would.

Leaving the makeup mirror, I adjusted the cloak around me and approached the closed bedroom door.

“Kuroi?” Dante called in a stern voice.

I took a breath and opened the door.

“Kuroi isn’t here. He sent me to take his punishment.”

Dante’s eyes widened seeing me. He looked confused but only for a moment.

“Did you agree to this, because Kuroi has a lot coming to him?” Dante asked tilting up the paddle that he held by his side.

Past the handle, it was a foot long and three inches wide. All of it was covered in leather. Seeing it, my balls tingled. My breath hitched.

“Yes, sir.”

“You will take his punishment for him?”

“I will take everything he has coming,” Shiro said bowing his head.

With my head lowered, I couldn’t see what Dante was doing.

“Did Kuroi tell you to do whatever I said?”

“Yes, sir. I am to do anything you tell me.”

“What is our safe word?”

“Cherries.”

“Stand up,” he ordered.

I did. Meeting his eyes, I found a glimmer in them that I had never seen before. I wasn’t sure what to think. I just knew I wanted more of it.

“Where’s your phone?”

“My phone?” I asked caught off guard.

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