Mercy is for men who fall in love.
I don’t fall.
I collect things, catalogue them.
Possess them completely.
Break them until they’re remade.
And she—Tahlia—is breaking so beautifully now, fracturing in exactly the ways I’ve orchestrated.
It wasn’t the moans that confirmed it. It wasn’t the way she begged with increasing desperation. It was the moment she looked up at me with eyes wide and glassy and wanted me anyway despite everything.
The moment she pressed her thighs together seeking friction because I wouldn’t give her more stimulation. The moment she whispered, please, like the word might save her from what’s coming.
It didn’t save her.
It never will.
I pass the monitor room again, footsteps echoing on marble. I don’t stop to review the footage. I’ve already memorised the angles—her on her knees, her mouth parted in supplication, fingers twitching like they’re still begging to be punished for their transgression. I’ve already carved that moment into my brain with photographic precision.
And yet I still can’t stop seeing it playing on repeat behind my eyes.
I tug at my collar, breath coming faster than it should, because I shouldn’t be this undone by one girl. I’ve owned dozens before her. Trained them. Bent them into silence, obedience, perfection.
She’s different somehow.
She bites back instead of submitting.
She curses me instead of thanking me.
She resists when others would have folded.
And worse—she makes me feel it, makes me vulnerable.
The arousal isn’t clean or simple. It’s not slick and smooth and transactional like it’s supposed to be. It’s filthy. Sick. Obsessive. It scrapes against my ribs like knives dragging and throbs like punishment in my spine.
I want to bite her hard enough to leave permanent marks. Chain her so she can never leave. Mark her until my name is the only sound she knows how to make.
I want to hear her scream for it with genuine need and then beg for more when I’m done.
I stop at my bedroom door, palm pressed flat to the wood, and I know if I open it and go to her now, I’ll lose control completely. I’ll drag her back in here and make her finish what she started—on her back, crying, ruined on my cock with nowhere else to run and no escape possible. I wait, forcing discipline because there’s something worse than immediate punishment.
There’s hope and I want her to hope again—just enough to think she’s survived me, that the worst is over.
Before I take her apart all over again tomorrow.
I don’t sleep.
I don’t fucking blink for hours.
I stand at the foot of my bed and let the hours drag themselves across my skin like razors because I don’t know howto be still anymore, haven’t known in years. Not when she’s still out there in that room. Not when she’s still aching, soaked, denied what she needs. Not when I can still taste her desperation in the back of my throat like a drug I didn’t realise I was becoming addicted to.
I should be done with her by now.
That’s how it always works in the past. Take. Break. Move on to the next.
Tahlia is different from the others in ways I’m still cataloguing. Her defiance doesn’t shrink when she’s punished—it festers, evolves, transforms into something more dangerous.
