Chapter 15
Scarletta
There's something fundamentally, irreversibly wrong with me. I don't even try to fight—not a single token protest, not even the pretense of resistance—when he presses his large, strong hands into my hips, fingers digging into the soft flesh there, and lifts me up onto the exam table as though I weigh nothing at all.
The white sanitary paper crinkles loudly under my ass and the backs of my thighs, the sound obscenely innocent in this room designed for depravity, but there's no time to think about that trivial detail, because master is already pushing me backwards with inexorable force, his hand flat against the small of my back, supposedly guiding me down onto the padded leather surface.
It's a stupid gesture that means absolutely nothing, a mockery of tenderness, because he's not being gentle.
He's a monster in a mask.
Then, just when I think I've experienced the depths of degradation, the humiliation starts all over again, fresh and cutting.
He straightens my legs with clinical efficiency, running his palms down the length of them from hip to ankle, then deliberately pries my knees apart, spreading them wide. His movements are unhurried, methodical. He gently cups each heel in turn—such a careful, almost reverent touch that makes this somehow worse—and places them precisely in the waiting stirrups, positioning me exactly as he wants me.
I close my eyes. Tight. Squeezing them shut hard enough that colors burst behind my eyelids.
"Look at me, little slut. Eyes up." His voice cuts through my attempt at mental escape.
I open them, surrendering even this small rebellion. I'm so fucking tired of fighting, exhausted down to my bones. If he wants to spread my pussy open with a speculum and examine me like I'm a specimen, maybe I should just let him and get it over with.
The bitter truth I'm learning is that the more I fight, the more he clearly likes it, the longer this entire ordeal will take.
Compliance might be my only path to mercy.
"You're going to watch in the mirror," he says. It's a command, simple and absolute.
So I do exactly what I'm told. I watch, because I have no choice, as he straps my ankles to the stirrups with practiced efficiency. First one ankle, leather tightening with a soft creak, then the other, the symmetry of my captivity somehow making it worse. Then he moves with predatory grace up towards my head, his fingers circle my wrist—warm, firm, inescapable—bringing my arm clear above my head in a smooth arc, securing my wrist inside a heavy cuff that must be bolted directly to the wall or the table's frame, because it doesn't shift even a fraction when I instinctively test it.
He does the same for the other one, completing my bondage with the same unhurried certainty.
And there it is, reflected back at me in merciless detail.
Me.
Spread eagle. Utterly helpless. Completely exposed.
Every vulnerable inch of me on display.
"What happens next?" Master asks, his voice cutting through the haze of my panic like a blade.
I blink up at him, my brain struggling to process the question. "What?"
"In your story, Scarletta." He shifts his weight, and I feel rather than see him studying me with that unnerving intensity. "Not the one you already wrote. The one you're writing right now. In your head. What happens next?"
My mind stutters, trying to catch up. He wants me to... write a story? A new story? Right now? Something just for him?
Well. This, at least, is something I'm good at. Even strapped down and terrified, my writer's brain can still function. "She?—"
"Scarletta." His correction is sharp, immediate. "'She' is you. Call her by her name."
What a psycho. But I swallow hard and try again. "Scarletta is..." I breathe, my voice shakier than I want it to be. "She's strapped to an exam table and?—"
"Be very careful what you say next." And do I catch the hint of a smirk playing at the edges of that mask? I think I do. The faintest curve of cruel amusement. "Because all stories come true tonight. Everything you say, I'll make happen. So if I were you, Scarletta... I'd dig deep into that filthy, brilliant brain of yours and come up with something you might never have the courage to ask for again."
I scoff. I mean, his self-confidence is almost obscene.
But he's not wrong. He's giving me permission—no, he'sdemandingthat I confess what I want. What I've written a thousand times but never dared to experience. But my mind isscattered, thoughts fragmenting like dropped glass. "I... I can't think straight."
