Page 5 of The Monster I Am

Rhys’s eyes went to the slave’s face as he gasped, and he wanted to trace those plush lips with one of his fingers. It wasn’t time for touching, though; he’d barely gotten started. He noted absently that the slave’s hands had curled into fists, and one of them looked bruised and broken in a few places.

A belting, perhaps? Something had happened to it.

But that wasn’t what he was focused on. No, he had a perfectly unspoiled expanse of flesh to mark up, one cut after another.

The second line was a diagonal in the opposite direction, leaving an unfinished triangle open on the slave’s chest. It was barely even a start, too, only two lines that nonetheless warmed up his canvas so that he could leave other lines across the foundation.

“The painting is known as Composition 8,” he murmured to the slave, who he was sure didn’t care or appreciate the art he was recreating. “For being a series of lines and circles, it’s surprisingly complex. But then, everything starts out as lines and circles, hmm?”

He didn’t expect an answer, so he didn’t wait for one. He began drawing lines with the tip of the blade, crimson lines left in its wake. A few times, they looked as though they might drip, but the blade’s enchantments held, and they stayed where they were: gathered, beaded up, and collected, forever on the brink of trickling down instead of being allowed to do so and mar his art.

True to the claims of his host and the slaver, within only a few cuts the slave’s body was visibly rousing, his cock filling to hardness with no more than the blade’s edge to stimulate him.

The slave was extraordinarily beautiful like this, caught in the throes of pain and pleasure with tears glittering in his eyes, and Rhys wanted to pause to savor the moment. He’d enjoyed the true masochists he’d found over the years, but it had been so long since he’d been able to use his blade on someone who wanted it⁠—

He doesn’t want it, Thorne.

Guilt and disgust welled up within him.

The slave didn’t want this, any of this. His body was reacting, certainly; that was indisputable. But that didn’t mean he wanted it, or enjoyed it, or desired more.

It didn’t matter.

He’d been brought there for the witches to use up and discard, and that was precisely what Rhys would do to him.

It would be a damn shame.

“Will you cry for me?” he murmured. “Let me see your tears. You’re doing so well.”

He hadn’t truly begun criss-crossing lines yet, though, and the circles would take more out of the slave. Time to put that to the test and see just how the human might react to it when the pain began to ramp up.

The slave shook his head, but the gesture was followed by a miserable sound that caught on another sound of pain — and pleasure that he was still trying to hide.

“Ah, none of that,” Rhys chided, and it might’ve been gentle if it hadn’t been punctuated with a deeper cut as he began to form one of the half-circles in the design. “I want it all. Your breaths, your whimpers, your tears, your blood, your screams… I’ll have it all by the end of the night. Denying me will only make it worse. If you give yourself over to it, you might be surprised by how much you enjoy it.”

Rhys was disgusting, and he knew it. He shouldn’t be encouraging the human to try to slide into subspace, to enjoy it despite himself. It would make it easier in the interim, perhaps, but later on? This would damage the young man’s psyche more if he did enjoy it. Hating it was easy to understand; getting off on it was another thing entirely.

But Rhys couldn’t help it.

The next gasp turned into a moan, louder this time, then another cut evoked a cry while tears began to trickle down his cheeks.

The human was doing well. Exceptionally well, really, and there was a part of him that wondered… Could Rhys keep him? Could he take this one home? Save him, only to take him apart again and again and again?

He’d never purchased a slave before; there was too much at stake for him to risk letting anyone see him treat a slave well. But if he had a masochist, whose body yearned for it, whose pleasure could be coaxed from him even as his mind protested…

No. It would be cruel, crueler even than ending the human’s life.

The things he would have to do to maintain his reputation could be catastrophic if he had to prove his loyalty, and he simply could not afford to have his ruse detected. He and the others had worked too hard for too long for a single slave to become a liability.

There would be a day again when things like this didn’t happen with such ease. Not that they wouldn’t continue to happen; they always had, even before the Takeover. But such blatant, flagrant excesses would be halted.

What a pity.

Rhys continued to work the human over, and he murmured, “Deep breath.” Then he was cutting into the slave’s side, etching the design into his flesh.

A hoarse scream burst from the slave’s throat, and his body lurched away from the cut.

Rhys had been expecting it, and really, it was a surprise that it had taken this long for the human to jerk away from one of the cuts. He hummed, approving of the scream — even if he didn’t approve of the way that the cut had gone askew.