Page 209 of Safe Word

She liked chains. She loved to be strapped in and used. It was all for her – a theatre of need and indulgence before I cleansed her.

A cold gust snuck beneath my collar. It was supposed to be warm tonight. But here I was – wearing a coat. The air bit at my cheeks. It might hinder me.

I turned. The soles of my boots ground sand and pebbles into the concrete, the only misplaced sound in a night otherwise brimming with holy anticipation.

My gaze drifted slowly towards the shadowed corner. The machine waited there. The one I’d bought for her. The one she’d already wept against, clenched around in silence – a baptism of sweat and want. It waited again, patient, gleaming.

A muscle jumped in my jaw. Jealousy was filth. Worse when aimed at a silicone thing. But there it was, low in my spine, hot and acid and climbing – devouring me piece by piece. The thought of her arching beneath artificial rhythm, before she’d ever broken under mine… it sickened me.

It… also delighted me.

Perhaps, once she was cleansed – once her mind stopped clawing at the past and started craving only absolution – I should simply keep her. Entirely. Flesh and thought. Her purpose was clear: beauty to enthral, mind to submit, and sense to dissolve. She was meant to be used. To be purified.

To be mine again.

I heard footsteps then.

Heavy. Unmistakably male.

Initially I’d thought it fitting for him to be a part of this, given his inclinations towards abduction and being untraceable, but… his decay had begun to seep into the cracks of my plan. A volatile dog should be put to death, not coaxed. But mercenaries usually cost a lot.

The footsteps stopped short. I didn’t have to turn to know why.

He was staring at my altar.

The crude table was strewn with necessities: weapons laid out in ascending order, glistening restraints arranged like relics, vials of sedatives labelled with my own hand, and a delicate array of implements meant to hurt, heal, and hush. It was all there, waiting for her. Waiting for the angel that kept showing up in my dreams, trying to shame me with her cries and her beauty.

But shame didn’t live in her any more.

Only reverence.

And her name.

He whistled low – mocking and amused. The sound slithered between the bare concrete pillars of the unfinished building. His silhouette leaned into the gloom, head inclined, most of his rugged face swallowed by shadows.

Filthy sinner. But his presence was necessary.

‘You really know how to make a girl feel important,’ he rumbled, boots grinding gravel as he stepped towards the altar. The voice grated like a broken prayer – too loud in a place meant for silence and reverence.

My body snapped taut the moment he neared it. His hand lifted, fingers twitching towards something sacred – something I had cleansed, baptised in holy water, blessed with my own sweat.

‘Don’t.’ The word tore from my throat like a curse.

He froze mid-reach. The shadow turned slowly. Locked eyes with me across the unholy divide, hand still suspended in the charged air like a threat half-born.

‘Who the fuck do you think you’re talking to?’ he hissed.

I angled my head left, my neck cracking in sharp relief – then right. Another pop. Calming, almost ritualistic. The therapist always said to ground myself in physical sensation. I preferred a quiet type of violence. When they were bound – but loud – as I sliced them open.

I counted backwards from ten, the voice in my head belonging to the latest therapist whose tongue still graced a box in my basement.

Nine. Eight. Seven.

By the time I hit six, my eyes found the shadow concealing his face.

‘Everything is in place,’ I told him, voice flat.

The reflector light carved a pale cross down his neck. It didn’t deserve a clean edge. It deserved a blunt one. Something to bruise before it split. I wasn’t one to relish a bloody mess, but I’d make an exception for him.