Years ago, I caught an infection that made me into an apex predator of certain females.

I was a mesmer, a collector – a man with all the right gifts. I could make them do anything.

Within reason? Someone might ask me, if I ever took questions.

No.

Anything.

And yet... Used. That was how I felt when I thought of Red.

She was coming. I would’ve known even without Wolfe’s emailed forewarning. I could feel her, as if the wake of the jet plane she rode in sifted essence of her over me, essence of her femaleness, her sodden cunt, from miles away, high in the atmosphere.

When I spoke a word or whispered my fingertip down the undulations of her spine, how wet she’d become. I remembered this well.

I’d hidden. She’d found me.

A soldering iron applied to the surface of my brain couldn’t burn that day away – the day in Cuba when I met Wolfe and I met Red. Hot, sun-bleached air, and my power sparkling new.

Her real name? I’d forgotten it. Why bother asking, reading her passport, when she’d do anything for me, despite knowing nothing about me?

The first time I detected her, she smelled incandescent... like gold, like power, like money, like every barbaric, sadistic, perverted sexual act one human being could do to another.

I wanted her. Still did.

If I had her, the world would never be the same. She gave my monster permission to do things.

The paradox of a man who loves control being in a perverse situation.

Cuba had been days after my fiancée left me on the eve of our wedding. Arranged for months. The invited had travelled from the UK and Sweden. Chaos spawned from her whim. She loved another. Hilariously devastating.

After the infection, the mesmer revelation, I cared nothing for her or her whim.

I’d thrown her cellphone in the sea.

Now? Red was up there, flying to me, probably to kill me.

I shifted my back on the deck chair and eyed Vitor where he played with one of my girls. She swayed, hands cuffed and caught in ropes attached to the ceiling of the patio. Below, the sea sloshed against the pylons. Beyond was blue water, a far and beautiful curve of sea, lined by beach and the square dots of houses. The mostly naked girl, clad in shreds of lingerie, rocked back and forth, jarred and made to squeak as he screwed himself into her ass. I kept Vitor happy with fucking and a second-hand power over what was mine.

Blood was dribbling down her inner thigh.

Years ago, becoming jaded had seemed ridiculous. I had my town by the sea, I had my collected ones, but the girls grew dull with use and I had my moments of morality.

Red...

Wolfe said he’d broken something in her to give me access to her head. Wolfe could grab almost any girl. To me and to most mesmers, only some females were susceptible. Red was different.

He’d snapped something inside her and it’d stayed snapped. Before releasing her, I tested her. There’d been risks with letting her go but Wolfe could go fuck himself. He wanted me to keep the little CIA agent and make her vanish so she couldn’t chase him. Since I was a novice mesmer, he thought I’d be eager for my first. And I had been. I was also smarter and stronger willed than most men.

My way had worked. Until today. Why else would she chase me except to kill me?

Three years had passed since Wolfe handed me the facts.

“You will be a monster, unless you’re careful.”

I didn’t want to be a monster controlled by an infection.

As a lawyer, logic took precedence. I lived control.

I took steps. Rigorous and repetitive steps.

Red was coming.

She was my talisman, my potential key. I’d pushed her away because I feared the unlocking. In a way that meant I feared the key but I hadn’t deduced that straight away.

Fear was a mind killer. I detested my own fear, even if I loved inducing fear in others.

I was comfortable, here, in my South American town, but I could be doing more. The world tantalized me.

If Red returned, I had that choice again to turn the key or throw it away.

I’d thought back then it would trigger me and make me worse if I kept her, my little redhead.

Keep, kill, maim her beyond the point of wanting her? Talk to her?

One of those needed doing. Red’s plane swept overhead, roaring toward the nearest airport. The contrails from the engines prettied the sky.

I rose from the chair and strolled into my study. All the doors to this upper story were rolled back exposing the rooms to the breeze and the morning sun.

This was my ritual. It kept me in check and sane.

All of these things before me reminded me of that day when I was barely a mesmer and could recall what it was like to care for others, to empathize. Twice daily, I forced myself to remember.

Knife.

The written story.

The unsullied blister pack of capsules. Wolfe had given me that – a drug that could help dull the power and the aggression. I hated drugs. Artificial shit.

The photos of her after I had her, and before.

Who needed luxury settings when you had your first collected girl?

I remembered the alley between tall buildings.

One photo of her freshly brought to heel. Eyes wide, pupils dilated, her back to the grubby brick wall. Tongue in mid-sweep across her red lips. That dark yet sexy pantsuit with the thin red tie. Her neat short hair. I could see the swell of her breasts beneath the cloth, and her hips.

Red hair. Red lips. Red tie.

CIA? I saw only a thing I could have.

Have. Keep. Fuck.

Outside, Vitor made whacking noises as he slammed into the girl. Seagulls screamed. The girl gurgled and gasped incoherently like an animal caught in a delicious trap. My nostrils expanded, smelling the sex. My cock livened, swelled.

The monster pumped with searing rawness in my veins, same as it had then. It desired all of me. Sometimes I could almost see it – sucking on me, flowing like raw and bloody sex in my veins. I wrapped my hand over my forearm and felt the swell of muscle, the bump of my pulse. I was a bigger, bulkier man than I was then – a mesmer side-effect.

The monster could never be allowed full rein. I wanted to remain me.

Hence my ritual.

What if I didn’t need it anymore?

I fingered the second photo of her – kneeling on the pavement, her head angled up, my cum splattered on her face and dribbling from her swollen mouth.

Wolfe: “Take her, put semen in her, touch her, make her orgasm, and you will have her fully.”

I’d done that.

She couldn’t tell tales about us. Couldn’t orgasm by herself.

I’d kept her a few days but I’d not let her or myself come again, just to prove I could be that restrained. Then I let her go with a smile.

I’d leaned on the corner of the hotel and waved. Bye bye.

So smart, I’d thought. Restraint was my answer.

And the ritual.

Carefully, I drew the knife across my arm. The pain yanked the room into startling focus. I bled. Red leaked through the hair, dripped onto the timber of the desk top. I’d heal from this quickly. I picked up the worn pages, the small digest of that day, to relive what it was to be Isak Bain, a man who cared.

The girl outside groaned then screamed in climax, for the third time. I blinked away the monster. Mechanically, I touched the photos, the knife, the capsules, then I mouthed the words. I only read a few of them nowadays, and it was enough.

“It was a bright day in Cuba when I first saw Wolfe and I first saw Red...”

This was my shrine to the day Isak Bain went bad but stayed a little good.

The girl was sobbing and I matched the rhythm of my words to her sounds.

When I finished and stood, she lay curled on the stone. Vitor was taking down the ropes. Her breathing was still rapid, she was mottled and striped with red, but she was fine. I clicked my tongue.

“Vitor, take her downstairs. She’ll get sunburned there.”