FORTY-TWO

Not Whole

Just like the women, the masters, away from the curtain and out of hearing range, are also conversing, while they await the first curtain-drop reveal of the body-part-guessing mini-contest.

“What if I know her tits better by touch?” A master in Tristan’s group whines to a contest attendant.

“This weekend’s body art doesn’t allow the fondling,” the attendant evenly replies. “And neither can recognizing your art be a factor in recognizing your subservient’s breasts. From this distance, and with this lighting, you can’t see it.”

“Stop saying breasts. They’re tits. You sound whipped by all of womanhood, using that word when there’s not even a female around. And, it’s a contest, so you could make an exception about fondling,” the master insists. “And we’d wear blindfolds, so we couldn’t see our wonderful come-art. And . . .  if you’d made this contest the first one of the weekend, then we could’ve just felt our way down the curtain, hands up and out, squeezing. Cupped hands to judge size. Feeling and comparing nipple-erection. Seeing how wide we have to open our mouths to suck on ‘em. Tits in a circle, with the blindfolded master in the middle,” the master longingly adds.

“That contest is time consuming because no master in a circle is methodical,” the attendant replies.

“I know. Reminiscing is so sweet,” the master returns.

When the outer black curtain is about to drop, the masters are informed and therefore turn their attention towards it. Seconds later, in front of every man in the room,  breasts simultaneously appear as if out of thin air, as if floaters without attachment.

Once the delightful, delicious sight of the line-up before them is enjoyed, all masters of course turn from the fare served to them in order to see what other masters were served, what more disembodied breasts they can set eyes on. The men, however, soon return their attention to the line-up where their submissive’s fleshy mounds are displayed, since there is guessing to be done. Competing.

The dramatic, rapid drop of the outer curtain moments ago that started the clock on this first guessing round sent a gust of air towards the women, but only their breasts registered its touch directly. The rest of their body was instead grazed by the remaining upright curtain, as it drifted backwards towards their bodies, due to the airflow created by its partner’s fall. An odd sensation instantly surfaced in the women then, both physically and mentally, with the sudden feel of being exposed in the manner dictated by this competition, with the sudden knowledge of having only that one part of them seen, and with seeing nothing but darkness before them, as the black curtain swayed back right against their eyes. That sensation continues now.

Guessing time.

Tristan is quite objective, as he looks at each pair of beckoning female parts. He writes down a number after just one pass of his eyes, and then continues to look, of course, at his curtain and at others, losing that objectiveness then, freeing his imagination to amuse him. The other masters, for their part, are not so fast.

“Eye of the true artist,” the master beside Tristan comments. “I’m stuck between three,” he adds, the challenge of identifying his play toys for the weekend greater than he believed it would be.

The masters who are with non-refundables are at a disadvantage during this competition, since they have played with those choice female parts for a little over a day only, and have had their own all-important competitive-part seen only briefly by their weekend submissive, either before it penetrated her in one way or another, or upon the drop of their pants before said part was then quickly busy and out of sight within this or that orifice belonging to another woman, or, before said part was discharged during competition. In all instances, said part was then quickly hidden away afterwards, back into its master’s pants, after its blissful satisfaction.

“Just imagine your dick in between them,” Tristan evenly suggests “Or squeezing them. Open up a memory. A context.”

Silence.

“I think I got it. You’re helping your competition now? You?”

“Tits are easy.”

Once the men have recorded their guesses and have passed them on to the attendant at their competing line-up, the inner curtain with the openings specially tailored to allow body parts to be showcased drops, and the women’s breasts once more become a part of a person, of a living being. Many men, however, shrug a shoulder, literally or not, at the return of a face, of eyes, and of a personality joined to the breasts, because they truly do not care. If they possessed a true female being showcased, the men would be somewhat more interested, but instead, most masters immediately miss the wonderful amusement that being surrounded by disembodied breasts offered their fantasizing mind.

Catherine registers that collection of shrugs, whether within or without the men, as she is forced to look out at the masters once her nudity is once more completely exposed to them.  With the curtain on the floor, there’s no more darkness, no more blackness, but is light, in this instance, better? Which nudity was more bearable? To be just that part of oneself for show, or to have all of one uncovered for show? Catherine briefly considers, before pushing the question out of her mind, preferring instead to obsess about being given one of her pills, an obsession that allows her more control of herself.

She looks at her master, into his eyes, and then rests hers on the outside of the inner pocket where she knows her pills to be, on him. She is annoyed when seconds tick by and he does not walk to her to render assistance, when he either does not understand, or when he refuses to render that assistance to her poor mind, the way that she sees it.

Come on! Nothing to see here now: the boobies are like they’ve been all weekend! So give me a pill. I want a pill. Tristan . . .

“A woman can’t say ‘uh, I’m up here’ to a man when she’s the one who creates that cleavage, after all, by choosing how she dresses,” Catherine recalls her writer friend telling her. “Women hide the body parts that they are ashamed of. They don’t put them on featured display. And if a straight woman herself can’t help but to naturally follow the line down to a woman’s cleavage . . . Of course, a man has to be stronger than to give in every time that a woman enters his line of sight with the purpose of trapping and manipulating him that way. Brides with cleavage, that’s what I never get. They already have a man, and all those male relatives assembled there . . .  Men always happily and eagerly run straight for the troublemaking women who will end up making them unfairly hate all women. If a man doesn’t want to be manipulated, then he shouldn’t go for women who have such an easy way to manipulate. If he does, then when she does, he has no right to be angry. He set himself up.” 

How to manipulate you to come to me to give me a pill . . . Cough? Catherine considers, realizing why that particular file opened up just now. But it is not in her to do so such a thing.

She therefore remains immobile, most impatient to be allowed to fall out of the line-up, in order to then hurry to Tristan before the next round begins. She has convinced herself that her sanity depends on getting that pill.

When the desired command finally comes, Catherine immediately hurries towards her master. As she does, the curtains in the ballroom are simultaneously raised once again, and attendants call out numbers in order to quickly reorganize the women into groups in which they share a likeness of genital area. Catherine soon hears her number, but ignores it, as she most determinedly continues to head towards Tristan.

“Mistress Tristan, that’s you,” an attendant close to her reminds her, as she walks by him. “That way,” he then instructs her, pointing a finger towards her new curtain.

Duh. I’m too stupid to know my number . . . And you know my number, really? Right. Of course you do. Despite her deep need for her drug, for escape, she knows that continuing on to Tristan now would displease her master, because she must follow the rules. She therefore takes a deep breath and turns towards her new grouping.

Seconds later, just as she slips behind her new curtain, Catherine hears the host’s voice announce that the men did well, in the breast round, with eight out of ten masters of non-refundables guessing correctly, and not one true submissive’s master unable to recognize his female by that part of her. Tristan’s submissive shakes her head, both at the sound of that voice and of its type of words allowed to own the grand ballroom yet again, as well as at having to endure the next showcasing without having been given one of her pills.

I’m shaking, aren’t I? Am I shaking?

Catherine, you’ve gone longer without a dose before, healer replies.

But not while having to put up with everything that’s been going on all around me this weekend, and with everything that I’ve done this weekend, and not with Tristan just . . .  Okay. I’ll get to him after this round for sure, she recovers some, before reminding herself to breathe when, just like hands were at her breasts manipulating them for the first guessing game, hands are now at her nether region for the second one.

Catherine believed that it would be much easier to be posed for the showing of this body part, but as fingers continue to manipulate her, she resents more and more that it is not. They are fingers with a job, however, and the attendants do not allow themselves cheap feels, cheap glances. They are as professional as they can be, like doctors perhaps, unlike the attendants in the women’s bathroom area.

Well, although there are no cheap glances, in order that every nether region look similar, they must be compared by sight by the attendants to allow for slight adjustments to be made, not that any nether area is completely altered, or masters would otherwise not be able to recognize their submissive through her part. Most, however, are slightly altered, in order to make every collection of showcased parts more alike and add difficulty to the competition.

When an opening of the inner black curtain is finally in place around Catherine’s nether area, she hears a non-refundable compare this manipulation behind the curtain to being examined by a gynecologist. The woman mentions a doctor seeing that lower extremity of a woman’s body while a sheet is spread over her raised knees, stopping her from looking down, and from seeing him, seeing.

“It’s creepier to see him seeing. To look down and see your pussy there and his head there. My doctor puts a sheet across my knees at first, but then he flattens it. So I can see, and he can see my face too, then. It never feels right,” another woman replies to the first.

“You must be a truey,” the non-refundable mocks the true submissive.

“You’re allowed doctors?” Another weekend submissive ridicules in turn. “But Neanderthals didn’t have doctors. Don’t you base the whole of your lifestyle on how they lived?”

“Bet you don’t see a doctor after the playroom, though, do you? Doctors have to report abuse by law, don’t they?” Another continues.

“Pot calling the kettle black,” Catherine counters, under her breath. She is certain that non-refundables visit playrooms. And anything that causes cuts, wounds, and allows blood to come out makes disease spreading and disease catching even easier, she adds to herself, with nothing of her previous thought referring to a different kind of infection being within her returning to her now, not even a corner of that file opening up now.

Once the outer curtain drops and allows the line-up of nether triangles without attachment to stare back at the masters, the men are once more faced with nothing more than objects in a line. Colour of hair, bushy, to not so much hair, to no hair at all, to some on the thighs, to none there, to just a stripe right down the middle, and so on, all versions have their place in this or that grouping, according to such criteria and more.

Why the sudden urge to move my hips? Catherine wonders, the touch of air in movement around the ballroom once again reaching only one part of her body. From what she feels of her own nether area, as framed for her by the feel of that cool air, she imagines what the men must be seeing, with all the curtains around them now framing this newest collection for them. She is certain that  picturing what they see is much different when one is a part of that collection oneself.

When the masters look up and down the line-up before them a few times with purpose, it is after once again enjoying the different collections around them. Many of the men shake their head when it comes to making a guess.            

“As if I spend any time looking at her damn tw*t,” a master in Tristan’s group comments.

“Who the f**k goes down on females? It’s disgusting, and it’s emasculating,” another adds. “And no one will ever convince me otherwise. It’s not a modern-man thing to do. No way.”

“Yeah. Hear that women’s whip trying to make men believe that it is? A real man grabs that whip out of a woman’s hand and then twists her arm hard, for daring to raise it, to crack it.”

“Yeah, she’s all smug up there like a f***in’ queen bee while you’re thinking ‘can this f***in’ taste any worse, and how long before the taste leaves my mouth after I’m done, and what the f**k am I getting out of this?’ It’s a power play, and a power loss for the man.”

“At least dicks are dry. Before they’re not.”

“And she can see what she’s putting in her mouth.”

“Not a damn black hole of . . . With come coming back down, and some brown blood even days after her f***in’ period.”

“And her ass is so close, and I don’t do assholes. Another thing no one will ever convince me to do. I’m not gay. And I’m not female.”

“I heard some men got cancer, in their mouth, their throat, from eating pussy.”

“Happens to women giving blow jobs too. But we can’t let that get out. If women were to stop getting on their knees . . . ”

“Then the men out there would have to find other ways to make them.”

“Shaft punishment, disciplining. It’s really what most women need.”

“Shoving their heads down and holding them at your dick. Either they choke and die, or suck. Because men ain’t living without blow jobs. No way. The best sex there is, all around. But it doesn’t matter to us, how the men of the world mess up: we’re masters, so our females just do as we say.”

While the other nine masters in his group are venting and without a guess, Tristan writes down a number. He then shuts the men out completely and allows himself another flight of fantasy: his eyes become his manhood and, one after the other, they embrace the disembodied and somewhat pushed forward female parts floating before him, out of the display openings in the black curtain. So vivid in his mind is this fabrication that his manhood snakes up towards the top of his pants, praising eyes for their excellent work, and wanting to take over from there. 

“Okay, well, one, I’m sure that most of you who even try it just fumble your way through and are saved only by her faking it,” Tristan snaps at the men seconds later, when one of them is persistent in questioning him about the subject of “going down,” and therefore draws him out of his fantasy, annoying him much. “And two, if you’re any good at it, what you don’t have is patience, so your female has to fake it anyway because she knows that it’ll take her too long to come and that you have no patience to just keep going until she does, even though you demand and expect that she not stop until you come, no matter how long it takes. Too bad about the pain in her hand, in her wrist, in her jaw. Pain from the day before, and from the one before that, continuing carpal pain that last for hours, and then days, and then forever.”

“A master is due whatever sex he wants. Whatever the price.”

“Well, one, I know what I’m doing, and, two, if I decide to take my female down that road, we get to destination, and three . . . ” Tristan stops.

“Okay. Go back to your little fantasy then.”

“Why wouldn’t it be too bad about the pain?” Another master, however, asks Tristan.      

“That kind of lasting pain doesn’t serve a master in any way, because it becomes an issue that has to be dealt with, regularly, and then, because of that pain and of her limitations because of it, her body ends up having power that it shouldn’t have,” Tristan replies. “So, she ends up having power that a submissive shouldn’t have.”

Silence.

“Do women suffer erectile dysfunction of their clit? It sort of erects like a dick, right, so then, it’s a little blood rushing there, and if it stops being able to erect, then they can’t have orgasms anymore?” Another master then brings up, since, in order for him to compete, his eyes are forced to return to a sight before him that keeps the subject matter on his mind.

“Time’s almost up,” a contest attendant warns the men.

“S**t, I don’t know. They all look the same to me.”

If Catherine’s luscious lips weren’t held up or back, somehow, they wouldn’t all look the same, Tristan thinks to himself. Or were they shoved in and held there? How?

Tristan knows that, whatever the method, they were manipulated in order to make them look like the others, which are all more impressive than most, in this grouping, but not as impressive as Catherine’s, when left unfurled. He is certain of it. It has never crossed Tristan’s mind to wonder what most men’s preference is. He knows his own: an extension-like of moist, warm walls, grabbing a better hold of him,  creating a longer hold. He is an impressive male, after all.

“Okay, so we definitely have the nudie magazine bunch, masters,” one of the men in the group announces, expressing at least one vote, then, for Tristan’s preference. “If we got two more, we could put together a calendar.”

“But who looks at that part of a woman and thinks ‘I so want to kiss and lick that?’” A master somewhat counters. “I don’t mean our ten in particular. I mean, at any pussy, in any collection here, or, anywhere.”

“Who looks at your dick and thinks that?” Another master jests.

“Some gay guy,” another replies.

“What?”

“Don’t be so insecure.”

“A female whose hormones are just at the right peak in that damn cycle of hers,” a master replies to the question previously posed.

“It’s called the pill. Avoid most of the mood swings.”

“It’s called a shot, every six months. It can mess up her fertility, but who the f**k cares? It’s the most reliable way. She can’t forget it, and it can’t slip out of place.” 

“But there’s a few days when it’s great, that natural cycle . . .”

“Doesn’t matter. Females just like to please. It makes them feel alive and worthy,” another master reminds them. “How often would they be on their knees, if it didn’t? A woman is like a dog pleasing its master: you see her with her tongue out of her mouth, panting, saying ‘did I do well, master? Did I do well?’ So very much wanting to please, needing to. Just wanting that pat on the head. A female just does different tricks than fetching or rolling on the floor or playing dead. Those magazines for females at checkout counters even tell them that they have to do tricks for their man, to please him, or face losing him: ‘be the best sex he ever had,’ ‘how to make him come the hardest he ever has,’ ‘how to keep him coming back for more,’ and all that. I love those magazines because they’re aimed at females, but they’re all about them having to please men, and never expecting or asking for anything sexual that they want. They tell females that all of their happiness depends on it, and females buy it.”

“But only her master can teach a female exactly how to please him,  because every master is different, and when a submissive has to unlearn, that’s just so much harder than when she just has to learn.”

“If men’s magazines advertised right there, on the cover, articles about having to please our female or else, articles about desperately needing to please her or face losing her, about making ourselves sex-slaves and not getting the sex that we want, we wouldn’t waste a minute of our time reading them.”

“We’d laugh our heads off.”

“Thank God I’m not female.”

“But wouldn’t our magazines be about how to please females in ways that they like to be pleased? Like, ‘how to make her heart swell up and make her cry tears of joy.’ ‘How to talk and talk until your jaw hurts to keep her coming back to you.’ ‘How to love every emotion and discuss everything when she wants to know what you’re thinking.’ ‘How to be interested in everything that she says, so she doesn’t leave you.’ Or, wait for it:  ‘how to be faithful,’” the master adds, mocking every single idea. “They give and we take. End of story. They pick up those magazines in desperation, but we’re never desperate, because there are so many females to every one straight guy in the world. Nature’s good to us. They have to please men because supply and demand makes them have to. But, anyway, masters know how to keep a female emotionally happy and fulfilled.”

“The panel with the completely shaved pubies is the best.”

“So you like little girls,” Tristan evenly replies, judgment included, however.

“No. I just don’t like . . .”

“Time!” A contest attendant calls out to the masters who are busy at the thirty panels currently being viewed.

“Is a little bit of pubes a teen girl, then?” A master asks.

“Teen girls have just as much pubic hair as women do,” another master replies. “Before a woman’s spills over onto her thighs. Does that happen because she can’t shave straight, or because it just happens, or does it just happen and I just imagine that it just happens when a female is older?”

“You’re yapping too much,” Tristan informs the masters around him, nine men whom he would certainly never choose hang out with. His natural authoritative tone, his older look and demeanour than his age, quiet the men.

After the masters record their guesses and pass the papers on to the attendant at their curtain, Tristan turns his attention to the revealing of what is who, and, when the inner black curtain does drop, its absence reveals not only what part belongs to what woman, but also how the women themselves were physically restrained, a necessity due to past contests being ruined by women who did not stand still, who moved their hips, who shimmied or thrust.

The face that Tristan expects to see is indeed connected to the nether area that he recognized as Catherine’s, and he immediately walks towards her.

My pill! She immediately thankfully thinks, when she sees him on his way.

Once before her, however, he raises a finger to hush her when she opens her mouth to speak. He then sends his hands to free her nether lips, curious to see how they were made to be less than they are. 

Can the virus for genital warts be passed from hands to genital area? Men send dirty hands, fingers, to pussies . . . Okay, fine then, do that first. Yes, that’s the way, like that, Tristan. Free me this way, and then free me again, Catherine thinks to herself, waiting to speak, to ask for her drug.

“Did it hurt?” Tristan asks, once she is physically freed, and after once again warning her not to speak.

She shrugs a shoulder. No vocal reply, no “sir,“ and Tristan expects neither.                            

“Feel better?” He adds, as his eyes travel down and back up again. “I can’t be making you self-conscious,” he jests.

She rolls her eyes at those words. Of course not. Not after her nude body has been on display all weekend, and not after two of her body parts were just objectified by being separated from her person completely and featured in the way that they just were. That was self-conscious-creating. Tristan looking at her naked body for the umpteenth time, that is not. Quite. Much.

Tristan’s eyes rest briefly on the faint red marks in her face left there by his hand’s aggression against her. However, since discipline is discipline, the way that he sees it, and since it happens when necessary, he feels no remorse. He wonders instead if the colour will fade before the judging of the come-totems takes place, or if he will have to take that redness into consideration when he designs her face.

“Tristan . . . ”

“That’s your number. Go,” he interrupts.

“Tristan, my pills,” she quickly reminds him, without shame. She has to deal with him, after all, and with all of this, with this world, his world, a master’s world, and what is in it. Reminding herself of all that cancels out feeling shame.

Tristan sends a hand to the pocket where the bottle should be, and Catherine’s face changes immediately when she sees the pocket collapse upon itself: it is empty, and Tristan’s hand therefore returns empty handed.

“I must’ve left them in my work station.”

I will kill you . . . Catherine threatens in her head, as anger offers to take over for the fear that instantly spread over her face when the pocket collapsed. Anger is stronger, of course. A better fighter.

“You didn’t ask, back there.”

“I, uh,” she stops. Explaining to him about body betrayal will not do. Her explanation to herself is that she was so very upset with what happened in his work area, at his fingers’ play, that, instead of thinking about her pill and realizing that not getting her drug was leaving her feeling off as well, she instead believed that every part of her was upset over that occurrence and that occurrence only. His fingers. Her bliss. And nothing else. No thought at all that her mind was upset because it needed help to cope. Pill help. So much to handle. Too much to handle.

Tristan looks into her eyes.

Why did you leave them back there? Did you do it on purpose? Are you thinking that making me come can replace my pills? That that can heal me or whatever? That that attention from you can . . . Are you thinking that you’re so amazing, or that what you do is so amazing that . . . Go away. Before I explode. In front of all the masters. What punishment would that get me? You won’t do that again. I won’t let you. Just because you’re ignoring the great big rock wall that I put all around me doesn’t mean that it’s not there. You won’t break through that one. As soon as I get one of my pills, I’ll be okay. I’ll come out from behind my wall because I’ll be okay. And then, after I sleep, then . . . Back to how everything was. You wanted the masters to help you get my mind, uh, all of me? No way. Not even the voices of all the men here, all together, all weekend, working on me every minute, in every way, all around me in words and in actions, can do that, can get you that. Why did you ever tell me that you wanted my mind? I never would’ve guessed that you did. Why would I? Maybe it would’ve been easier for you to get it, then, with me off guard. Why say such a thing? It’s just another way to terrorize me, isn’t?

Catherine hears her number called and immediately walks away from Tristan, without a word, without a look. Very much abruptly.

“Maybe if she had some kind of lasting pain to trouble her every second of every day . . .” One of the masters comments, as he walks by Tristan in order to join his new grouping.

For the following guessing round, it is the women’s rears that are disembodied, and contest attendant hands have little to do, manipulation-wise, for this set up of parts. The attendants merely use tape to stick the edges of a showcase opening within the inner curtain onto each woman’s upper thighs and lower back, as well as to the sides, in order to insure that body parts remain spotlighted.

“Oh, the master of masters requires concentration during this round,” a peer comments to Tristan, annoying him even though the man only meant to tease.

“What? Your dick doesn’t spend much time there? Are you all lovey-dovey and always in her c**t? Who’s the master then?” Another master adds, doing more than annoying Tristan.

“Rumour is that you like asses a little too much,” Tristan therefore replies to that man, evenly as is his way, and clear on what he is suggesting.

“That’s absurd,” the master replies, his tone instantly different.

“Don’t prod me, unless you’re ready to deal with me,” Tristan just as evenly adds, his eyes not once away from considering the sets of cheeks before him. He writes down a number.

“I really don’t care,” a different master announces, before scribbling the first number that comes to his mind between one and ten. “And I’m not embarrassed to say that I would love to move down that line and poke everything there. No fuss, no muss. No one attached. And if that’s liking asses a little too much . . . ”

Tristan has already imagined himself doing just that, and that is not at all what he meant by this words, of course, which he now learns that at least one master did not understand correctly. The man that his words were meant to attack, however, did understand. That was clear.

Catherine finds herself once more shaking her head, as her behind is now the only part of her body that registers that flowing air from the ventilation system, as it circulates it in the grand room. The only part of her out of the curtain. Mooning the masters.

One of the non-refundables lined-up with her suddenly thinks that very fact quite amusing, and begins to laugh, and laugh some more. And more, and more, louder and louder. When she begins to breathlessly add the word “mooning” to her possessed-like laughter, working hard at forcing the word out so it can be heard, a few of the other non-refundables begin to laugh as well. Contest attendants warn the women to stop, but they do not.

From the other side of the curtain, some feet away, masters hear. Registering the faint movement of certain rears at the curtain suggests to them which body parts may be attached to the noisemakers, and, with the annoying noise ruining the fantasy-moment and overall effect, many masters’ eyes unhappily find attendants’. The latter immediately respond, and so, the sound of paddles hitting flesh soon attracts the attention of masters who are standing before other panels. The laughter quickly turn to sounds of suffered pain, as submissives are struck more than once, need to be, in order to be quieted.

Shortly afterwards, when the bodies attached to the rears are revealed by the inner curtain drop, Tristan does not admit it, but he is relieved that his guess was correct. He then once again walks to Catherine, who observes him looking her up and down once he has reached her.

“Of course not,” he remarks, pleased when he sees that she is paddle-striking-evidence free. No  marks, no redness other than what he left upon her himself, in her face.

“But I could get the giggles,” Catherine declares, once she understands what he was doing, what he was looking for. “I do, sometimes. Just another something that you don’t know about me, uh? And, you think it wasn’t funny, mooning you? All of you? The least self-conscious thing I’ve had to do all weekend.”

“It was funny. But you didn’t lose it.”

“And if I had?”

“Well, first I would’ve been upset if an attendant had struck you.”

“If he had struck my art.”

“He wouldn’t have struck where my art is.”

“My ass has some of your art. Or would I have been struck in the chest?  Right in the chest? Another coughing fit, maybe? Or in the face, where no, uh, deliberate art of yours is?” She adds, referring to those two marks.

“It really was amusing.”

“I didn’t hear the masters break out in laughter.”

“Well, it could be overcome,” Tristan replies, his eyes telling her that something nearer and dearer to the men managed just that feat, before the women laughed. “I knew that you didn’t lose it.”

Catherine turns her face away when his eyes come to rest in hers once more.

I want a pill. How can you have forgotten to give me one, and how can you have left them in your work area? And just what do you think of my having forgotten to ask for one, to want one, to need one? God . . . What you might be thinking . . .  This stupid body . . . See my wall, damn it! And go away now!

Lips are next. They are in their natural position when the masters first see them, with nothing else around them but that black velvet curtain, but are then instructed to part and to push out forward, as if wanting and waiting for a male part to fit in. Or having one slipping in.

“Such a pretty sight,” one of the masters in Tristan’s new competing group longingly remarks. He then grunts as his hips thrust forward once, and his face simultaneously expresses desire and unkindness, or desire and spitefulness, perhaps. There is no woman there, however, to register it, to term it so, and, as far as the masters are concerned, perfectly fine, normal, acceptable behaviour that thrust, that grunt, that face.

Just one pass, and Tristan once more swiftly writes down a number. Without delay at all.

“Just imagine my dick in there, right?” The same master whom Tristan helped earlier on with the breast guessing thinks out loud, as he studies the lips.

The man’s words instantly initiate a quick succession of images in Tristan’s mind, memories of different times, places, and circumstances when Catherine embraced his manhood in that very way. Instances early on during the last year, then later, and then recently. A very nice sensation accompanies the memories. But Tristan soon pushes all those thoughts away.

As his eyes then return to the lip line-up before him, he finds himself feeling pleasure at imagining bringing his own warm, moist, desirous lips to the solitary part of Catherine that is currently not contained behind any wall, to that sole part of her presently through, and free.

So much for those lips to do, and to do with, including kissing them.

None of your walls will be left standing. I will have your mind. To keep you safe.