Icounted the links of chain leading from my collar on my neck to the wall.
At least numbers were honest. They didn’t lie. They didn’t cheat. They didn’t make you kneel in a basement breaking your body until there was nothing but disgust and…need.
One.
Two.
Three.
The metal scraped against the concrete as I shifted my weight. My black metal collar tugged at my throat, my constantreminder that freedom wasn’t a word in my vocabulary. I hadn’t known freedom since I was nine, when Mistress chose me to become her new pet.
I used to think I was special enough to earn her praise. I craved her rewards and feared her punishments. None of the others had lasted as long as I had.
I am number one.
My wrists ached from gripping the sides of the wall where I’d been painting, spreading mud, rust, spit, and my own blood into long streaks. My fingerprints smeared across my bare chest, veins of brown and red coating me in a cool layer of protection.
Fourteen.
Fifteen.
Sixteen.
The wall was messy, and my body was worse. I refused to wear clothes. All the ones provided to me ended up as another tool for creating my art.
This one is beautiful.
Rusted sins.
Crosses were scratched across my skin, through the rusty mixture, and I cut my flesh with my fingernail until I felt the art come alive from my fresh blood.
No.
This is wrong.
It is too cold.
I liked watching my mistakes dry into something that could be reborn. Blood and dirt, layered like scars on the stone around me.
All the marks were paintings. Only I could understand their meaning.
An art only I could love.
Seventeen.
Eighteen.
Footsteps sounded above my head, and I touched my thumb to each finger pad. She was in the drawing room.
Click, click, click.
Every click of my Mistress’s heels made my blood boil and my dick grow painfully hard. I knew the heels she wore now. They were the black ones, with lace running down the sides. She knew they were my favorite. My hands traced the scar of the heel print on my ribs. It was healing, but I could still feel the imperfections beneath the paint. She was coming back for me.
Three days was too long without seeing her face.
I needed the subtle hit of her cinnamon perfume and the salt on her skin. I needed anything she would give me, like I was an addict.
Eight steps.
