Turning away, I walk over to the bed and sit down on the edge. Elbows on my knees, face in my hands.
Story Island.
The maze.
Volk.
That was nothing like Christmas morning. It was supposed to be better. Less clinical, more challenging. Climbing rope ladders into trees. Bending over punishment benches sixty feet in the air. A zip-line taxi to the next station.
It was supposed to be fun.
The maze wasn't a punishment, it was her deepest, darkest fantasy come to life. The fantasy that filled her with so much shame, she hid it away. Denying its existence.
We got to know each other better after her safe word in station 2. We came to an understanding.
At least… I thought we did.
I see it from her perspective now. What she must have seen.
Scarletta crouched in the mud, covered in blood that wasn't hers, watching a headless body leak out onto the platform where I was supposed to fuck her. She was screaming her safeword and nobody came. She thought the attendants were part of the scene. She thought I'd scripted her terror.
Then I arrived.
Naked. Erect. Already hard from watching her preparation on the monitors.
She watched me torture a man.
Cut off his fingers. His cock. His balls.
She watched me stroke myself while I did it.
My hand moves to my dick automatically. The memory shouldn't arouse me.
It absolutely does.
Volk's screams.
The way his body convulsed when I severed the femoral.
The hot spray of arterial blood across my chest.
I came on his corpse.
Scarletta saw all of it.
I told myself it was justice. I told myself Volk trafficked five hundred children and deserved worse than I gave him. I told myself she'd understand because I'd already confessed to killing Derek.
But Derek happened off-camera. Derek was a story I told her. A monster I'd already slain before she knew it existed.
Volk was different.
Volk was immediate. Visceral. Real.
I made Scarletta watch me become the thing I actually am.
Not the controlled dominant who edges her, and praises her, and makes her feel safe while she surrenders.
The other thing.
