What to do with her? The question never ran away. If she stayed I would end up fucking her properly and somehow I knew...felt that would mean something more than what I had so far.

Maim her, kill her, keep her. Letting Vitor ass-fuck her wouldn’t maim her. Amuse me? Yes, to start with. Seeing her get turned on by his dick in her, I’d had the urge to take her myself. A little too possessive an urge for me to feel comfortable about obeying it.

The mesmer infection liked to make me do things to them and I fucking hated lack of control.

Limiting myself worked.

I led her into the bathroom and showered her, detaching the head and playing the water over her, washing off all my cum, shampooing her hair, soaping her everywhere, between her legs, delivering a few pointed spanks if she was slow at positioning herself where I wanted her.

Then I had her stand and toweled her dry.

Different, not different.

Now she lay on her side, on the floor beside the bed, still naked because I liked her that way. Her hair was damp and stuck to her shoulders, her breasts, with droplets of water shining in the strengthening light from the wide doorway.

I could see her watching the seagull that sat on the railing I’d recently tied her to. It could fly away anytime it wanted to. Was she aware enough to be considering that?

Perhaps clothing her was wise. The chain leash attached to her black collar led up to the left post of the bed where I’d attached it to a ring. My little pet for the day...the week...the year.

My monster would like to make this forever.

“On the bed.” I patted the oriental-inspired quilt. Black with gold dragons. Asian text that probably said nothing sensible. Learning Chinese would be a good hobby.

Her partly inked tits teased me as she crawled up there.

I walked to the desk and retrieved my calligraphy pen, walked back to her. Her gaze stayed on me, magnetically attached. The more I fucked her, the deeper we’d go.

Maybe I shouldn’t.

When I sat beside her and pushed her onto her back, she roused.

“You have a monster or you are one?”

“I...have one, in a way. The mesmer infection exaggerates a part of me that most would call bad. It’s not a separate person.”

“Oh.”

I took her breast, pushed it up so I could have access to the underside and began to write.

“Why are you writing? What are you writing?”

“Whatever I feel like. I just like seeing the black ink looping across your skin.” I was writing some of her words, about immorality, but it was so stylized I doubted she could read it upside-down, or even in a mirror. “My hobby.”

“Your hobby is writing on women?”

I paused, pen held above her nipple. “One of many. I’ve found hobbies, learning, helps me focus.”

The movement of her throat said she swallowed, and maybe was nervous. Awakening to reality then.

“I find I want to fuck less. My monster needs less input.”

“What sort of input?”

She wriggled and I trapped her with my hand across her throat, pinning her to the quilt. “What a helpless thing you are. Input? Hmmm. Like torturing the fuck out of little butterflies like you. I have only five women. I’ve managed with that for years. Logically I should not take more.”

She snorted lightly and derision surfaced in her expression. Daring bitch when she was aware.

“Logic. Sure. How about plain old being a nice person?”

“You have no concept of how this infection has overwritten my brain.” My voice turned harder. “Without what I have organized, my routines and rituals, my fucking hobbies, I’d be gone from here. Do you know how much I could do, would do, if I let myself?” I squeezed on her neck, tightened the arc. “No fucking concept.”

I breathed hard for a while, scaling back the anger, before I could make my hand release her.

If I kept her, I’d be forever tempted to break her mind down enough to figure out the mechanism Wolfe had used.

Controlling women was a hobby I’d never get bored with, unlike the calligraphy, the art, the shibari. I’d even enrolled in online psychology.

If I released her, she’d be snapped up by the CIA, interrogated over her reasons for what she’d done, maybe under that espionage act even, if they could make it stick. They’d find out about me in a roundabout way even though she couldn’t tell them directly. Wolfe would make them suspicious. I was linked to him by my past tracks.

I rubbed my chin, twirled the pen with my other hand. “Open your legs.”

If I couldn’t fuck her there, I could still enjoy the view. She opened, slowly at first until I drew a line from her belly downward, across her mound, through that thin wedge line of hair. By the time the pen reached her clit I’d run out of ink but there was a bright red mark showing its track.

If I was the monster, if I truly let it loose, using a knife there would be imperative...eventually.

I shuffled down the bed, lay beside her, propped on my elbow.

I lifted the pen from her skin, pulled apart her labia until I could see the darker pink. Touching her, of course, had her gasping and arching. As a mesmer, it would take a great effort for me not to affect her. I couldn’t be bothered to make that great effort.

Besides, I’d slid the fat end of the pen into her until I’d fucked her about three inches deep. This way had more potential.

“Don’t come,” I murmured. “Not unless I say.” Then I lay down on my elbow and played there. The disappearing act of the pen, the shudders she gave, the spasms of her cunt as she grew more aroused...my cock was unhappy with me for not letting it do what the pen did.

“Maybe I should organize something more, soon, while I think. Can’t let you go. Can’t keep you.”

“More?” Red whimpered and clutched at the quilt, bunching it under her fingers.

“Yes, more.” I stuck a finger in her alongside the pen, then a second finger searched for her asshole. “Maybe here wouldn’t mess with the status quo.” Her eyes had rolled up and her thighs and spine tensed so much that her ass left the quilt. “Want me to keep you, dear girl? I would let you come.”

“Please, yes?”

Her whimpers would make any man cry. My cock was weeping and digging into the bed through my pants.

“Poor girl.” Loved seeing them do this, saying what they shouldn’t. “Can’t keep you. But...”

But I had to do something. She was driving me mad with this need to fuck her.

I shoved the pen and my fingers in further, until the pen vanished completely. I could get it out again though the nib might hurt. Maybe I’d get her to lick it clean.

The monster needed to be paid its due. As a temporary solution, I bit her thigh a few inches from her clit and listened to her scream.

Then we went out onto the deck and had breakfast. I dressed her first, of course, in a blue-and-white, floral, open-front gown with golden bows. It flowed all the way to her feet, concealing little, but enough. I tied her hair to the back of her chair and fed her when she begged. One of the things my other girls were past. They never thought enough, or were frightened enough, to make this sort of thing delicious.

The table was glass and so when I sat opposite her I could see everything.

“Open your legs more.”

Pretty cunt. Pretty wet and very red cunt. Needed to be redder. Which could be arranged.

I sighed and shifted.

“I need your second argument tomorrow.” She nodded. “Remember that.” Another nod.

Depending on how she said it, I would arrange the party.

Gently, I tinged my fork on my glass of apple juice, admiring the sunlight dappling the outer edge of the deck, where it filtered through the glass roof panels. Glass was good. Concealment could entice and seduce but seeing things clearly was often better.

I should start looking into places I could send her. It was too dangerous to keep her, for both me and her.

In the meantime...Vitor could get some of the other girls brought here. I could recall only one still installed in the lower room.

That cunt of Red’s. Her slit beckoned. If I fucked her there, when all was arranged...finalized...it should be okay.

My fingers tightened on the fork, my other fingers pressed into my scalp. Hurting myself was preferable to hurting others. Not that it always worked.

I moved my fingers up the fork and squeezed the pad of my forefinger into the sharp end of the tines until blood leaked around the point.

Red shifted on the chair. I’m sure she didn’t mean to reveal more, to tease me, but I could see my tongue in her, licking out that pussy, crushing her to the floor with my weight, fucking her unconscious. I knew what was good for the world – for me to stay put, revolving in my own mess.

Her slit though, it put things into perspective. Was I really this self-sacrificing?