Page 78 of Ashes of Sin and Stardust

He waited for me outside one of the private rooms. “Just watch today, okay little raven?” He reached out and stroked my cheek with his thumb, and then entered the private room, locking it behind him.

I knew that the room next door had a one-way window, so I went into the viewing room and watched. There were a few other people in there, but when they saw the man enter, they left. I watched as he paced and rolled up his sleeves, waiting patiently for his victim to remove her clothes.

And she truly was a victim.

I then watched one of the most horrific, violent scenes I’d ever seen in my life. He bound her with ropes to the ceiling, wrapped her breasts until they were bulging and purple, beat her with a cane until she bled, and then bit her purple pulsing breasts until they bled too. He punched her in the stomach and kicked her in the back. Then he fucked her from behind while he held a knife to her cheek, holding her close and thrusting slowly, like he was making love to her. He was affectionate in his lovemaking, and the monster inside him was satisfied.

He cut her down from the ropes and left her on the ground without giving her aftercare. Another man came in a few minutes later and took the woman, battered and bruised and crying, scooped her up into his arms, and took her to another room to give her whatever care she needed.

I sensed him behind me. He was sitting in one of the viewing chairs, studying me.

“How long has it been,” he asked softly.

“Since what?”

“Since you took flight?”

He was referencing the magic of subspace, where pain and pleasure mixed together and overwhelmed the body, shooting me up into the sky like a kite and letting me float through heavy waters.

“A little over a year,” I whispered.

“I only play with a woman once a month,” he said softly. “You need that long to recover.”

I swallowed.

“I’m not a Dom. I’m a sadist. I do scenes, and that’s it. I don’t want to know your life story and I don’t want you to fall in love with me. I just want to hurt you.”

He was beautiful and terrifying, and watching him work had made me horribly wet. Daddy had never gone that hard on me before. Never. He spanked me until I cried and used a crop or a paddle if I was really naughty, but never did he hurt me like what I’d just seen.

“I’ve never done anything that intense.”

“But you want to try,” he said. “You want to know what that feels like.”

I nodded.

“Little raven doesn’t speak much,” he murmured, brushing a finger over my lip. I wasn’t sure what it was about this man, but I just knew that bratting him would be a bad idea. “You need to know something.”

“What’s that?”

“I don’t care about you. Only your pain. No safeword, no limits. For one hour, you’re mine to do whatever I want. I can give you two promises... You will live... and you will fly.”

Michael Lewis and Iwere monthly play partners for almost a year after that. He was exactly as he promised. He cared nothing about me, only about giving me as much pain as I could handle, and then some. I begged him for mercy more times than I could count, but he never showed it. He had no weakness. There were no magic words or pleas I could give that would lessen my sentence. And yet I came back every month, desperate for more.

Because he was right. He kept his promises. He never killed me, even though there were times I thought he would. And he always made me fly so high I thought I’d never come down.

I knew why he didn’t bother giving aftercare. I was so high on endorphins I couldn’t remember what happened to me near the end of our scenes. I didn’t even remember getting fucked. By that time, I was so empty of all emotion, so blissed out, that all I could feel was pleasure and peace, with no thoughts in my head. He had a horrific way of dragging every one of my fears to light and exploiting them.

He was glorious. And he never even asked my name. I loved him in a different way than I’d ever loved Augustus Quinn. Daddy was my caregiver, but Michael was my addiction. I counted down the days until our sessions, telling myself this time I was going to bail on him, or brat him, or not show up. But every time, I walked into that room, took off my clothes, and placed my hands in the cuffs he left for me, desperate for whatever he had planned for me.

In the interim while I was healing, I often did smaller, less intense sessions with another man who I really liked. He was very much my type; broad and scary, dark and handsome, quiet with a sadistic glint in his eye. His name was Simon Pierce, and he was a tattoo and piercing artist. I was pretty sure his last name wasn’t actually Pierce, but that’s what he called himself, so that’s what I called him.

He saw me one day when I was lounging at the bar during lady’s night. I was drunk and ended up grinding on one of the poles, wearing nothing but a g-string, and he couldn’t take his eyes off me. I danced for him and only him, going up to the edge of the stage, gyrating and showing off. His eyes glowed as he studied me. When the song ended, I jumped down and practically landed in his lap.

We became friends and fuck buddies. There was no better way to explain our relationship. While I recovered from Michael’s abuse, Simon gave me sex, a friend to drink with, and he did my piercings and tattoos. He took pride and joy in decorating my body, suggesting jewelry and art that he thought would look good on me. I enjoyed his attention, his Jacob’s Ladder, and the deep growl that reverberated from his chest when he fucked me from behind. He liked to play with needles too, and sometimes knives, and between my two new playmates, I felt like I could take over the world in the office.

Several years into living in DC, there was a situation involving a Russian runaway wanted by the Mafia, a drug bust that wasn’t supposed to be busted, a body farm, and an island off the coast of Florida with a bunch of trafficked children that the CIA was desperately trying to keep quiet. I met Alex Victor in the midst of all this, and she was assigned by my boss to find and capture a criminal who they believed was a part of the whole scheme. The criminal was a terrorist who called himself “Agent Smith Smith.”

A blurry photo was handed out to the people in the briefing room with a brief explanation that Agent Smith Smith was working with a former serial killer who had escaped from prison many years ago. I didn’t see the photo, and I didn’t think much of it until a few days later I arrived at The Underground for my scene with Michael, and he never showed up.

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