Club Mephisto (14 page)

When do I become broken?
was
all she could think in answer. She felt broken as he shoved her into the
underbed
cage with her hands still cuffed behind her back and the harness cinched tightly closed. For an hour or more she ached and burned, all the while knowing he was lounging on the bed above her. At some point, when she sobbed aloud, he banged the side of the cage and told her to sleep.

The Sixth Day

She must have slept, although she thought it impossible, because she awakened to the rattle of the bed-cage's bars and Mephisto staring into her eyes.

"Are you better now?" he asked, in a voice neither kind nor accusing.

She nodded, wanting to hide her face in shame, but her hands were still cuffed behind her. He pulled her out. He was already showered, while she felt grungy and exhausted. He removed her harness and took her to the kitchen, forcing her to eat when she resisted. She did begin to feel slightly better by the end of the meal. He cleared his plates himself,
then
left the kitchen, leaving her kneeling and unsupervised. The implied restoration of trust bolstered her a little. He returned with a pair of jeans, a tee shirt and pale green sweater.

"I believe these are your size."

She took the clothes he handed her in surprise.

"Yes, we're going out. It's a really beautiful day and you haven't gotten much exercise this week. Put these on. No
panties,
and no bra. I don't want anything between me and you but these articles of clothing."

She stood and drew on the comfortable garments. They did fit well. The shirt was a little flimsy and snug across her chest, but the sweater was thick and cozy for the chilly early spring weather. Mephisto fingered her collar, removing the o-ring that betrayed the decorative band's true purpose.

"Vanilla enough, I guess," he said with a smile.

His relaxed mood soothed her in turn. In his small black sports car, on the way to wherever he was taking her, he reiterated the importance of his orgasm denial regimen. He also praised her overall performance at the party, if not her breakdown at the end. So she was left feeling, at the very least, forgiven.

One more day.

Master would come for her tomorrow. After that, Mephisto wouldn't control her any more—not her orgasms, her speech, anything. She tried to convince herself she would be relieved to wash her hands of his control, but the truth was, she'd forged a connection to Mephisto. She'd truly come to think of him as her Master, and to admire his charisma and control, if not the trials he put her through.

He drove her to a Seattle city park, and they took a brisk walk around the jogging path with all the other people enjoying the unseasonably beautiful weather. She wondered what they looked like to the vanilla eye.
A handsome man in black, obviously a progressive type with his dreadlocks and piercings.
She, the more conservative-looking girl in the jeans and green sweater, long curly hair occasionally blowing across her face in the breeze.

"You look pretty without makeup," he said. He held her hand briefly,
then
released it. They stopped at a snack bar, and he bought ice cream and popcorn. He shared the swirled cone with her first, and she savored the treat. Ice cream was something her Master allowed her only occasionally, and never this soft, creamy variety she used to enjoy so much as a child. He watched her take each delicate lick, a gleam in his eye. She laughed softly, swiping a drip from her chin.

"Take more, if you like it."

He ended up giving her most of the cone in the end, while he crunched on the popcorn and threw some to the birds swooping up and down. Master hadn't taken her out to a park like this in years. He took her to plays, concerts, and hundred-dollar dinners regularly, but not this. Of course, Master was a busy man, and not very outdoorsy. They lived in a high rise downtown, where sprawling parks like this were hard to come by. It wasn't a big thing to give up. Still, she wished she could save the feeling of the breeze in her hair and the sweet taste of the ice cream melting against her tongue. And the look Mephisto was giving her.

Silence came easily now. There were a lot of things she would have liked to ask him, a lot of things she would have chatted about, but silence seemed more suitable between them somehow. Silence easily turned physical, while words were mental. He pulled her into his lap and thrust salty fingers into her mouth, letting her lick off the grease of the popcorn. She giggled a little, and he stuck his other hand up under her tee shirt, beneath her sweater, pinching and stroking her nipples. They instantly went taut.

He did it for a long while, turning her against him to hide his activity from passersby. Her pussy grew warm and wet pressed against his thigh. She slid a hand around his neck—a forward, unrequested embrace—but he didn't correct her. She rested her face against his cheek, making tiny, faint noises of pleasure. He pinched harder and she made a whisper of a moan.

He squeezed her breast then and kissed her, hard, grasping a handful of her hair in his other hand. She felt
his own
secret groan against her lips. He pulled away and looked around the crowded park in frustration. "My own orgasm denial," he said ruefully. "For once, I feel your pain."

He took her hand and they walked again, past the busiest part of the park to a wooded area. There, behind a curtain of thick brush and bushes, she knelt and served him, taking his cock in her mouth as the birds sang and squirrels chattered in the background. She heard some voices now and again, but they weren't close. Even if they had been close, even if they'd stood and watched her, she wouldn't have stopped. Her mind was fixed on her Master, on her Master's cock and balls, and the soft encouraging noises he made that drove her until he found his satisfaction. He stumbled away from her, zipping up again. He handed her the condom and she buried it a few inches deep under some loose dirt and dry, decayed leaves. She imagined for a moment she was planting Mephisto trees, to grow up strong and tall and dominant like him.

"Silly girl," he said, watching with a bemused look as she carefully covered over the rubber. But as Mephisto pointed out, she'd earned a degree in environmental studies. She knew that condoms could be harmful to wildlife. She probably should have carried it back to a trash can, but she didn't have anything to wrap it in. With all the people in the park, carrying it swinging from her fingertips would have been taking humiliation a bit too far.

Oh, the moral conundrums of a slave.

He took her hand again, leading her out from the trees along a path he seemed to know well. Soon she heard the low rushing of water, and they came out at the bank of a small creek. It was sandy on the bottom, with large rocks jutting up and creating
criss
-crossing eddies and currents in the water. The shore was lined by more low bushes and trees. Molly remembered the names of most of the trees. Her area of specialization had been water and wetlands.

She wondered how he knew that.

She had no doubt he'd brought her here purposely. The speculative way he stood back and observed her told her that. Well, what did he expect her to do? Start taking water samples? Search for evidence of animal activity? Map the varieties of marine life? The creek had a good amount of minnows in it, which told her a lot about the health of the local environment. She hated that she analyzed it as she stood there. She used to
wade
these types of creeks in vinyl thigh boots on misty mornings, in sweaters and jeans just like the ones she had on. She used to measure amoebic activity and chemical levels. Used to.
Used to.

The breeze rustled the trees, a sound that had always seemed to her to convey the power of the earth. The trees were budding, tender new shoots with the advent of spring. She used to know all this, love all this. All this used to rule her world.
Until Master.

When the tears blurring her eyes finally started to roll down her cheeks, Mephisto took her home.

* * * * *

It was only a weak moment, she told herself.
The beautiful day.
The ice cream.
The people in the park, carefree and laughing.
She loved her life with Master, much more than she loved her old work or her old life.
Much
more.
Still, she felt unsettled. Had Mephisto taken her there to hurt her? The silence that seemed to suit them before now seemed sinister. She wanted to ask him to explain his purpose, his motives, but enforced silence was a wall between them.

For his part, he was thoughtful and close-lipped on the ride home and through the afternoon. He kept her busy cleaning the play space and doing other mindless household tasks. When she finished them, he set her up in the kitchen with an ironing board and a pile of clothes. Molly wasn't great at ironing. In fact, she was terrible. She always seemed to create more wrinkles than she smoothed out. Back when she bought her own clothes—back when she wore clothes—she always bought the wrinkle-free kind. At Master's home, Mrs. Jernigan took care of the ironing. More things she'd taken for granted. As much as it had challenged her, she knew this time with Mephisto had been invaluable in opening her eyes.

She did her best with the shirts and pants, wrangling with the collars and plackets. She eyed the starch and decided to take her chances without it. Mephisto was sitting out at his desk-table right next door. Perhaps she ought to just break her speech restriction and tell him she didn't know how to iron. But then she'd see that awful derision.
Pleasure slave.
Not very useful, are you?
But if she ruined his clothes...
Another slave conundrum.

She was still arguing with herself, pulling at the iron cord and trying to flatten down a collar, when she yelped at a searing, burning pain. She'd brushed the inside of her forearm against the iron. It was already going numb and tingling. Some instinctive part of her brain thought of cold water. She flew to the sink, fumbling with the faucet handle and thrusting her arm under the soothing stream.

"What happened?"

Mephisto was beside her, no doubt alerted by her screech of pain. He grabbed her arm, staring down at the skin that was already puckering into blisters. "Fuck!" He put it back under the water. "Fuck!" he shouted again so she flinched. His dark eyes bored into her, frightening her. "Did you do this on purpose?" He shook her arm as he yelled at her. "Did you?"

She made a negative jerk of her head, his question confusing her. Burn
herself
on purpose?

"Talk to me, damn it!"

"You put me on speech restriction," she pointed out, pulling her arm away from his rough grasp.

He gave her a quick, sharp slap across the cheek. She didn't know if he was slapping her for burning herself or slapping her for pulling away from him, but he seemed to get a handle on himself after that. His lips twisted into a frown and he glared at her.

"Forget the speech restriction. How the fuck did this happen?"

"It was an accident. I'm sorry!"

"I promised your Master no permanent damage," he said. "No scars!"

Again she stared in miserable, tongue-tied helplessness. He unplugged the iron with a jerky movement and steered her into the bedroom. He ran her arm under the water some more and then got a towel and dried her burn with a gentleness belied by his anger. It stood out now in red stark relief against the pale skin of her forearm, but it was only a couple inches long. "Jesus Christ," he yelled again as he wrapped the burn in a loose gauze bandage. "He's going to kill me."

"But it was my fault, Master," she said, more out of desperation to soothe him than contradict him. Still, she braced for another slap. It didn't come. He ran his hands through his locks of hair and then pulled her back out to his work table.

"Sit here. Just sit here and don't move."

She heard him on the phone in the bedroom. Talking to her Master? She couldn't make out any of what he said. She ran her fingers over the gauze on her arm. The pain wasn't even that bad anymore. She laid her head on the smooth wood surface of the table and listened to the faint clicking sound of his laptop at the other end. Even after he stopped talking on the phone, he didn't come out of his room for a while. She sat still and silent, feeling like a boat set adrift. Long minutes ticked by.

When he finally returned, he had that familiar but unfathomable expression on his face. She looked up at him and thought
,
he really is so handsome. It's really a sin, how handsome he is.
But he still looked deeply unhappy.