Chapter 13
Scarletta
The humiliation begins immediately, flooding through me in waves that make my skin prickle with shame.
Just the fact that I've written this scene—that I've sat in my blanket fort and carefully crafted every degrading detail—is enough to make my mind spiral into another pit of self-loathing.
My fingers had flown across the keyboard as I typed it out, my pulse quickening with each word, my thighs pressing together involuntarily as the scene took shape in my imagination.
What kind of sick fuck sexualizes a gynecological examination? What kind of person takes something clinical and sterile and transforms it into something twisted and arousing?
You, Scarletta. You, that's who. You're the one who thought of this. You're disgusting, you're broken, you're?—
"I'm going to take your blindfold off now."
Of course he is. That's exactly how this scene goes, every single time I've written variations of it. The girl—me, I'm the girl, OK? It's me! Let's stop pretending it's some fictional character—she's always ashamed of what's happening to her body, of her reactions, of the way she's restrained and exposed.
So the Master makes her watch. Forces her to witness her own degradation, to see exactly what he's doing to her, because watching makes it worse. Makes it more real. Makes the humiliation complete.
He's right up next to me now, so close I can feel the heat radiating from his body as he presses his torso against my arm. His fingers slip behind my head with practiced efficiency—and I lift up automatically, tilting my chin to give him better access, to help… to help?What is wrong with me?Why am I cooperating with my own humiliation? Why does some broken part of my brain think I should make this easier for him?
But there's no time to answer that question, no time to psychoanalyze my fucked-up responses, because he pulls the blindfold away and suddenly I'm hit directly in the eyes with a stark, bright examination light.
I blink rapidly, my eyes watering from the sudden assault of brightness after the darkness. Once, twice, three times, trying to adjust to the glare. Then, finally, my vision clears enough to find his face, to look up at the man who's been touching me, who's seen every intimate part of me.
He's wearing a suit—like a tux. But he doesn't have a face. Not one I can see, anyway. Because he's wearing a black ski mask that covers everything except his eyes and mouth.
And that mouth is smiling. A slow, deliberate curve of lips that somehow manages to be both welcoming and predatory at the same time. "Hello."
"Uhh…" The sound escapes before I can stop it, barely even qualifying as a word. Just a pathetic stuttering noise that makes me sound like I've forgotten how human speech works. I stutter. Literally stutter. Over a simple greeting. Over the word 'hello'.
Jesus Christ, what is wrong with me?
"I've got your chart here, Scarletta," he says, and his voice is so perfectly professional, so clinically cool and detached, likewe're actually in a real examination room and he's actually a real doctor about to discuss my actual medical history. Not… whatever the fuck this is. "I've taken a good long look at it. Read through every detail very carefully."
"Oh… uh… yes, Master." The title feels strange on my tongue, formal and subservient and absolutely surreal given the circumstances, given that I still can't see his actual face, given that I'm on my back on a gynecological exam table with my legs spread wide and everything on display.
"What do you think it says?" He asks the question like it's perfectly reasonable, like he's genuinely curious about my opinion, like we're having a normal conversation and not…this.
I want to sigh here. Desperately. Want to let out a long, loud, exasperated breath that conveys exactly how ridiculous this question is.
What do Ithinkit says? I know exactly what it says. Every single word, every fabricated detail, every carefully constructed piece of fictional medical history.
I wrote the fucking chart.
Like, literally sat down at my computer and made a chart from scratch. Photoshopped the whole thing with a template I found online, formatted it to look official and clinical, and filled it in with every minute detail about insert-your-favorite-FMC-here-written-by-ScarletSins-who-is-really-just-Scarletta-Mae-Desmond.
He taps a blue Bic pen on the folder's edge—a slow, deliberate rhythm that makes the cheap plastic click against the manila paper.
Oh, shit.
The Bic pen.
The goddamn Bic pen.
The fuckingBicfuckingpen.
Of all the objects in this room—the leather restraints, the metal stirrups, the clinical instruments arranged with surgical precision on the tray beside me—it's that worthless piece of disposable plastic that makes my breath catch. That makes heat flood my face and chest and lower, spreading through my exposed body like wildfire.
