After a week, Angel deemed Pet’s branding was healed enough to be touched. I’d kept my hands off her for the seven days and it had been excruciating. But what I hadn’t expected was to enjoy spending time with her as a companion, as if we were in a real relationship not dominated by my sexual preference.

I held her close and watched movie after movie she picked, cringing hard through most of them and getting swatted by her when she caught me. I fed her ice cream and popcorn and held an ice pack to the inside of her thigh when her brand hurt. For the first time since Pet came into my life, I felt fucking normal, but only until I realized it was all an illusion. Only until she asked the question I’d been dreading to hear.

“Is he coming back?”

My fingers stopped toying with her hair and I wanted to tug on the strands of her lavender mane, but I fucking restrained myself. This was the plan, right? This was what I was working towards, and I couldn’t punish her for the idea I’d planted in her head.

“Yeah,” I told her, my voice strained even though I tried to hide my anguish. “If you want to, he can come back.”

Pet gave me a shy smile and settled into the crook of my arm.

“I just meant, because we didn’t really finish what we started last time…”

Because I was scared I’d fucking kill the guy, I wanted to tell her, but I bit the words back. I gave her a tight-lipped smile instead and promised her I’d get him back there. That was when I got the idea… The perfect idea to get back at my little Pet, even though she wasn’t really doing anything wrong.

I made a quick phone call and returned to my impatient little girl after spending a few minutes in the study.

“He’s busy for a while,” I told her, and she deflated visibly.

“Oh,” she said lamely. “Let’s hope he’ll have time again soon.”

“Let’s hope so,” I growled.

She seemed to sense my bad mood, and her legs parted as she gave me a cheeky little smile. My brand winked from between her legs, right on her left inner thigh. Hidden to everyone but those fucking her, and ensuring that everyone would remember sweet little Pet was mine and mine alone.

“Did you forget about something?” she purred, running her long fingernails along her inner thighs. “I’m all yours now, Master, and I have the mark to prove it.”

I couldn’t help pulling her in my arms and nuzzling her neck, biting into her shoulder to mark her again.

But my head was fucking swimming.

After weeks, almost months, of not digging up any new dirt, I’d finally come a bit closer to finding out what had happened when she was younger. I hadn’t forgotten about the abuse she suffered at the hands of a man she refused to name, and I still had plans to act on it. I’d gotten distracted with all the plans I had for Pet, but I sure as hell hadn’t forgotten. I was going to get that revenge for her, any way I fucking could.

I let her crawl onto my lap. I even let her get my dick hard for her even though I knew I had way too much shit to do to spend time with her like she deserved. I let her work me through my pants until she moaned so sweetly it nearly drove me insane, and then I pushed her off my lap while she protested with soft whimpers and groans.

“I have work to do, little thing,” I told her with a grin. “But I promise I’ll make it up to you tomorrow.”

“Okay,” she said grumpily, settling back in front of the TV with her half-empty bowl of popcorn and a shitty movie. “I’m sleeping next to you tonight, right? You won’t spend all night working again?”

I’d done it the previous three days, just buried myself in fucking research, trying to find more dirt on who I now believed was the man who had abused her. Of course, I couldn’t have told her that, so I fobbed her off with lies of an important deadline coming up at work. And she ate it all up, even though she spent several hours a day sulking because of it.

“I’ll come sleep with you,” I promised her, kissing the top of her pretty purple hair. “But don’t wait up for me, Pet.”

She blew me a kiss as I left, and I spent the next few hours buried in something I really shouldn’t have in my possession.

I’d sent someone to Pet’s parents place when they were out. I made sure they’d never even notice the break-in. There was only one thing I wanted, and it was the old computer in her childhood bedroom.

I’d spent the last few days digging through so many old messages, history and files, I felt myself going insane from the absolute overload of information. It felt like I was getting to know a different girl, definitely not my sweet Pet.

This girl was her complete opposite. She was nasty at times, almost a mean girl. Other times she was painfully insecure, sweet and needy at the same time. And all of those emotions seemed to rely so very heavily on a single person I’d managed to track down through her computer.

She used a messaging program that had since gone out of style, but the records of her conversations were all still there on her computer. I read through all of them – well, I’d tried to. I’d gotten pretty far, but sleep had gotten the better of me, and I still couldn’t let my girl know exactly what I was doing. So I lied smoothly and spent every free moment I had reading that shit.

She was talking to someone who went to the same school as her almost every night. Apparently, they were both part of a forum her high school set up, and Pet – who was quiet on the boards and barely posted – found this guy’s email and started messaging him back and forth without having any idea who he really was.

I found the whole story weird as fuck. She messaged him out of the blue replying to a joke he’d made on the forums, and over the course of weeks and then months, they’d developed a strong friendship with an obvious crush from Pet’s side. She flirted clumsily, and the guy poked fun at her for it. It was obvious her friend was a man from the way he spoke. He sent her pictures, but none of himself, and over time, the secret of who he was seemed to cause a bit of a rift between them.

I knew as much as she did – he was older. I realized he must’ve gone to school a few years before her, not at the same time, sooner than Pet did. But that didn’t make sense with the timeline she’d given me.

She’d said the guy raped her when she was just a kid, so he must’ve been older than her. I couldn’t make sense of things.

At first, I dismissed the messages as unimportant. Until I realized she’d recognized the guy at some point and completely severed any contact with him.

I looked at her emails after that, and found him messaging her there. Over and over again. And that’s when I realized what the bastard had done to her.

Sapphire, I’m sorry. I didn’t want to tell you – I was worried you still remembered. Please talk to me.

SR! I’m so sorry. I’m not like that anymore, I swear. We were kids when it happened. Why are you so hung up about it?

Sapph, you need to talk to me. Don’t be a nasty little bitch about this.

Bitch, you think you can blow me off like that?

The messages got nastier and nastier as time passed and it made me worry. There was a single email to his address from Pet’s, and it was asking him to leave her alone. Of course, he never did, and before she could block him and sever contact, the threats started coming. Nastier and nastier with each message.

Do you think your mother would like knowing what her little girl’s ass felt like? You didn’t even fight it, Sapph…

I’m going to tell everyone how you begged for more while I fucked your asshole.

Never thought about me taking pictures? I could have a dozen or more Sapphire, and you’ll never know… What would everyone think of that?

You were a little whore when I met you. I remember you rubbing your little cunt on your parents’ carpet like a slut. You were only five, Sapphire, how big of a whore are you now?

That’s when I knew. I remembered her telling me about the guy, in tears, so scared she still couldn’t confess what exactly had happened. And I realized this guy had come back to haunt her, even when she was just a teenager. So not just the fucking therapist, this damn prick as well… I was going to kill him when I finally found out who he was.

His email didn’t offer a single clue. The emails kept coming over and over again, to an email address Pet didn’t seem to use anymore. She hadn’t even seen the last few, which he must’ve sent over the last year when she’d all but disappeared.

I saw several unopened ones, and my blood boiled when I read them. The guy had gone from empty threats to real fucking dangerous ones, ones I’d rip his throat out for. He threatened everyone from Pet to her parents and her old friends from school. I wanted to kill him for it.

I spent hours trying to figure out who he was, getting more and more enraged with each minute I spent without the prick’s name, without his still beating heart in my fucking fist. He was insane. Fucking insane, and I was going to punish him for what he’d done to my girl.

And finally, there it was. A simple clue, hidden in plain sight. It had been there the whole time, and I’d missed it.

He’d sent Pet these pictures, these gifs, all from the same website. And I realized it was a sort of blog of really fucking disturbing stills from porn, moving images with no sound which made them even creepier. Finally, I realized he must’ve been the owner of the blog. And once I figured that out, finding the sonofabitch was easy.

I knew I would have to break my promise to Pet; I wouldn’t be sleeping in our bed that night.

I was going to avenge her innocence, and I was going to kill a man for the very first time that night.

* * *

I found her sleeping on the couch, covered up with a blanket. She barely stirred when I picked her up and carried her into our bedroom, bundling her under the blankets. Her hands reached for me before I left, and I wished I could’ve stayed with her. Feel the warmth of her skin against mine, feel her heart beat for me. But she closed her eyes before I could change my mind, and snored peacefully.

I grinned at her sleeping frame, so small in our bed, and I left.

Not before changing and getting ready, though.

I was almost at a point where I didn’t give a shit if I got caught. I wanted the prick dead, and if someone found out I’d done it, I’d go to jail for it, fucking gladly. He’d hurt her too much for one lifetime though, and I wouldn’t let him have that final victory. I had to be careful.

I took a taxi to his neighborhood. It wasn’t far away from where her parents lived. A nice upper middleclass neighborhood a guy like him shouldn’t be living in. I walked the short distance from the store the taxi had dropped me off in front of to his house.

A suburban, nice-sized place in a cul-de-sac. There was only one light on in the house. I rang the front doorbell.

My heart pounded as I waited for someone to answer. I had no idea what to fucking expect. What would Pet’s abuser look like in person? I wanted him to be ugly, mean-looking. It would make it easier to hurt him.

But the man who opened the front door to the picture-perfect family house was far from that.

He was handsome, in a classic way. Chiseled jaw, not unlike mine, and a full head of light hair. He was a few pounds overweight, but it didn’t take away from his looks.

But my punch would.

I slammed my fist into his face before he had a chance to speak, and he howled in pain.

“What the fuck, you jackass?” he screamed, and lunged at me.

I was ready to take him, and we nearly tumbled to the ground when a little voice called out behind him.

“Daddy?”

I looked over his shoulder to see a little boy standing there, holding a toy car.

I wanted to kill him then, really kill him, in the most gruesome way possible. How could this bastard have a child? Had he hurt him as well, or was his taste for little girls only? I wanted him dead. If the kid wasn’t standing on his doorstep I would have finished him. I would wear his blood on my hands with pride.

“You know what that was for,” I snarled at the man. “And you better sleep with one eye fucking open.”

He picked himself up and glared at my back as I stalked down his driveway. He didn’t speak up until I’d reached the street.

“She’s not worth it,” he yelled after me. “That fucking girl isn’t worth jack shit, man.”

I looked over my shoulder at his damn smug face, and I knew I was going to kill him.

And soon.