THIRTY-FOUR

Sir?

I’ve done everything that he's wanted for a year, everything, but that wall, that immovable wall . . . Catherine cannot shake off, as Tristan and she walk to the 1 a.m. mini-contest.

And yet . . .  healer counters.

How are my eyes? My face? Do they project “even?” I  wasn’t “even,” at the wall.  Many of the non-refundables are complaining and wanting to leave, and if even they don’t want to be doing all that this weekend demands, and they’re pros, then I most certainly have the right to  . . .

They have no attachment here, healer redirects her. Tristan’s your anchor, Catherine. And your protection.

He didn’t protect me out there, against the wall. He PUT me there! He’s cold and cruel, and a punishment like that, just for wiping his come off me was . . .

It was a midnight special. He did choose the men thinking of your punishment, but what happened after that would’ve happened anyway. And . . . I think that your master actually knows what he’s doing.

And that right there is proof that a part of me is most definitely insane. So, just shut the  fuck up.

His breath on you, different than other masters’ . . .

Enough. The horrible, horrible wall.

The lesson. Punishment and discipline.

Oh, so, by comparison, I prefer him to the other masters, prefer one rather than nine of them at me, and that means anything?!

She shakes her head as her eyes catch Tristan’s face, in profile. He appears to continue to be in a great mood, whereas Catherine continues to feel rather oddly. Am I losing control?

“How long have we been at this, now? And you’re still stupid about it?!” She hears  a non-refundable insult her master, as Tristan and she reach the last work station of the aisle.

The master has just climaxed, and, if the host were not at this very moment announcing an extra five minutes for masters to create because so many midnight specials ran late, he would have no time to design what he has just gifted, before the next mini-contest.

 “Some of your come’s been bouncing off me since the first time you came on me with that druggie super-power of yours. And gravity hasn’t stop existing just because you’re super-come-man for forty-eight hours,” the non-refundable adds to her older master. “So, your come drips, and some of it bounces off me, if you don’t aim it at the right angle when you spew it out, or if you’re too close to me. And, I’m just a mess! Is your theme the effects of gravity?!”

Catherine raises an eyebrow. Does that non-refundable not fear the consequences of speaking to a master that way, especially here, when he has such control over her due to the remoteness of the location of this weekend event, and due to the support of so many men, no matter what he does to her?

Catherine cannot imagine ever using a condescending voice, let alone that ultra-condescending tone of voice of the woman’s, out loud, in her dealings with Tristan, who, after hearing the words, makes a face, while one of his hands opens and closes a few times in the yap-yap way, thumb towards four fingers united on top.

“When I use shaving cream, I know that it’s going to squirt further if I apply too much pressure. It’ll shoot across the bathroom floor and just drop there, and how can you not know that about your dick?“ The woman continues.

Tristan and Catherine soon do not hear her anymore, as they continue to walk towards the contest area.

“He’s letting it go because he doesn’t care and he knows that no one here cares either, about what a non-refundable thinks or says. If it were me, I’d just keep smacking her. She obviously has none of the qualities of a submissive,” Tristan explains.

“So, prostitutes aren’t submissives by profession.”

“Of course not. They get paid to attach to a man’s dick, to detach when the job’s done, and to just get the fuck out immediately after that. But you, you’re not a zombie like a whore is expected to be, with no feelings, and never coming out of herself at any time, under any circumstance, while her body just does what it‘s paid to do. That’s not a submissive. Moderation is a submissive, and moderation in being is the best thing for any female because no female’s happy being all over the place, due to all those emotions and anxieties that your gender is so prone to.”

So, “even,” Catherine thinks to herself. I can’t argue with that. But I do have a problem with you telling me anything about your childhood, Tristan, and, by doing that, making me forget for a second that you’re cruel and cold, and that you’re my captor, who now calls himself my master by title. And I don’t want it to happen again. Because then you made me stand against that wall, and I felt so sick. And whatever I felt when you came to me last . . . I would very much be all over the place right now, but I have a lot of practice at “even.” And not because you order me to be that way.

When Catherine and Tristan stop walking, he takes one of her hands into one of his and guides it towards his lips. She is taken off guard, and it feels to her like the short travel of that part of her to him happens in slow motion. When he kisses her hand, as he looks into her eyes, the room spins for her, and then she feels nauseous.

You’re playing with my mind, and you’re good at it, she reminds herself, her hand still a prisoner within his gentle, and yet strong one. She wonders if he planned the wall, right down to his slipping in last. She wonders how masters learn to be masters, to punish and discipline. To manipulate. There is perhaps a strategy to it. An art. Tristan the artist. Tristan the rock-star persona, she reminds herself.

Her mouth feels dry, and she therefore sends her tongue up, down, and around within it, to try to rectify the situation. Her lips then turn inwards into her mouth as well, with the same goal, since their inner state does not feel as moist as it should. She can still taste and smell the outcome of her mouthwash offensive on herself, once saliva revives it.

With Tristan’s eyes still within hers, she realizes that her heart is racing.

You can’t have my mind, she tells him, eyes locked into his, and glistening some. You must absolutely not have my mind . . . How would I remain “even” then?

Tristan releases her hand, and Catherine quickly returns it to her side, as she turns her face away. After a moment, her master turns his attention towards the front as well, where the host is speaking with a few attendants.

The mini-contest rules are soon explained, and Catherine is not surprised to learn that yet another ejaculation game will take place, since the drug makes the masters most happily feel that they have a wonderfully improved favourite toy to play with, through their manhood’s acquired stunning super-ability, and they of course want to take full advantage of it while it lasts.

“They all feel supernatural,” a non-refundable comments to another. “Because of their dick. Holy shit.”

Since the non-refundables keep commenting no matter if they are hit for doing so, Catherine has decided that they do not have enough self-control to keep their mouth shut, even under threat. And so, words leave their lips before consideration of the consequences stops them.

The host announces that the mini-competition will turn the canvases’ faces away from the audience, place them close to a wall, and have the men shoot for each submissives’ behind-ring, which will be maintained in plain view by another canvas holding each target’s rear cheeks opened, if necessary.

Photographs of women’s rears come to Catherine’s mind, ones that she stumbled upon when most definitely not looking for such photos. She marvelled then at how mere behinds entice men sexually, and now tells herself that just seeing several posteriors lined up before them in the buff will make men’s spoiled “brat” rouse, stir. And then, for the men to ready themselves to shoot towards those lovely rumps will please and entertain them even more.      

It is not long before the first batch of women is readied for the first shooters. Some women are on their hands and knees, crouching down forward while elevating their rear, with the woman holding their nether cheeks apart by way of one hand on each fleshy mound somewhat placed on top of them. The targets face the wall; the holders of cheeks face in the direction of the shooters. These women’s faces will therefore be something else for the men to hit, if the lower target is missed. Other target-women are standing and leaning forward towards the wall in order to make their rear target prominent, with the women who are holding the curtains back from those submissives’ manholes standing to the side.

The targets are therefore at different heights, and, as a master eyes the fleshy mounds that are all extended out towards him, he must choose three consecutive holes, including that of his submissive, and must hit all three in order to move on to the next round.

The third man in line to participate after a shooter has competed is at liberty to penetrate any woman’s rear that this shooter managed to hit straight on, perfectly centered, in order for that shooter-to-be to kick-start his process to climax, to his competing. The man second in line to the shooter is by that time past this kick-start and should be almost ready to compete, while the master immediately behind the spent shooter steps up immediately to do his thing, with hopefully minimal time wasted in between competitors. The masters, however, are not the male professionals of the sex circus shows, to climax on cue.

Thus,  in this contest, if a shooter hits two targets, then the corresponding man in line can penetrate both submissives attached to those targets. If he hits three, then the man can penetrate the three, thrusting a few times into each woman that he is allowed to penetrate, one directly after the other, and then proceeding to his chosen submissive for her to get him all the way into shooting/competing form. This submissive is not his own, since she must be shot at and is therefore a part of the most appealing range before the master. The targets consequently change with each group of shooters.

With three hundred men in attendance, several men will once again compete simultaneously in the room, and so, at different ranges. The shooter obviously cannot aim towards the area where the man who is allowed to penetrate is doing his thing. He must choose three other consecutive targets.

When the host reminds everyone about the rule governing rear penetration where true submissives are concerned, Catherine sends a hand to her head, and then her fingers through her hair. When they meet up with some of the ejaculate that was spewed up there unintentionally, she quickly removes her hand and nervously looks at Tristan. His eyes, however, do not change.

“What are you, ten years old, all of  you?! Leave your wee-wees alone! I want to leave!” A non-refundable complains. Or, as the masters see it, whines.

“You’re not leaving. So deal with it,” her master replies.

“I don’t want to see you play porn-star-stud anymore! So what if you can come like . . .”

Smack.

“You’re still ugly!” She nevertheless finishes, hand stroking her cheek.

“If you want handsome studs, you have to go gay porn,” another non-refundable judges, further taking aim at the assembled masters. “Because straight porn has mostly ugly guys getting everything that no woman would ever give them if they weren’t being paid to do it, so that all the ugly, pathetic men out there can imagine themselves being those lucky, ugly guys, when women in fact wouldn’t even give them the time of day for free,” she adds. She is not the only one to believe that the masters appropriate power, take it for themselves, without deserving it, and, like several others, has obviously had enough of her weekend master and weekend play, even for pay.

These non-refundables, after all, have been with their “master” for much longer than a usual transaction lasts, and that duration is wearing out their ability to ignore their client’s ugliness, and/or other shortcomings, whether physical or mental. What is being demanded of  them is thus much more than sex with men who spew silly or ugly words that the women usually have to hear and to put up with for only a few minutes before they can move on. They have the patience, then, to tell those men to “fuck off” in their mind only, but the setup at this gathering is different. So many men. So many words. Such repetition. So much sex with the same master, which bothers the women more than sex with different partners during combos does, since that is actually the easy part for them: get used for a combo, and then leave those men behind.

With every passing hour, the absence of their drug of choice affects them more and more, physically, psychologically, and emotionally, Catherine reminds herself, before surprising herself with the wish that Tristan would double her dose. She takes a deep breath, and manages to keep at bay the dizziness that threatens.

In her case, Tristan did not have to substitute her drug of choice since, for one thing, she is a true submissive, and, for another, pills are not an issue. Smoking crack cocaine, or doing lines, or injecting oneself, is. No drug paraphernalia. Only pills from bottles, allowed.

After the host completes detailing the rules, with technicalities about distance and tied-standings included, and then lastly points out a change in a rule from the year before,  Catherine is reminded by his words that some masters are of different minds on some things sexual, aside from outright sexual orientation, and so, the rules of contests are sometimes changed by committee.

“Men all have their own sexual ways, their own sexual peculiarities,” she recalls hearing on the streets, among the streetwalkers there. “But women often forget that men have different sexual tastes, since the whole pack just seems so very much the same: press that button, and male reacts in expected way. Predictable. Just don’t use the word ‘freak’ with men, though. With them, you tell them that everything that they want is perfectly normal, and that you don’t judge them. That all sexuality is perfectly, perfectly normal. Oh, and that you really like everything that they do and want. Just tell them what they want to hear, or don’t tell them what they don’t want to hear, and you get their money.”

“Men feel comfortable with us because they’re the absolute master, with us, and they can order up whatever they want sexually, just like that, at the snap of their fingers -- as long as they have money in their other hand -- and not be judged, not out loud anyway. But of course we do judge them, because we know, and because they judge us,” Catherine recalls another non-refundable adding. “We see right through them. We’re the experts. We pin them down and know exactly who and what they are. All their insecurities and failures that make them come to us. And some men love being seen for what they really are, even if what we see is pathetic.“

“But knowing who and what men really are is the worst thing ever for any woman to know because it makes a woman realize that her heart is not needed, ever,“ another streetwalker had offered. “Selling yourself, it tears your heart out of your chest, and then, you have to try to survive like that, until you die. So you get high. You numb the pain of that gaping wound. But, after a while, the high doesn’t come anymore. The drugs just make you even, and they make your judging of men go away because you’re dealing with your own shit, and then, men really don’t feel judged at all by the pathetic woman who’s at their dick. And ‘sex-trade’ makes it sound so nice and fine, what we do. Just a trade, like any other trade. Yeah right. Because women easily detach themselves from their bodies . . . Uh, no. Not without alcohol or drugs. Something. I’m tired of escorts making it all sound so great. I’m tired of college girls who’d be having sex after clubbing anyway, and with anyone picked up there anyway, when they’re drunk, so, making money’s just a plus for them. But that’s not what we have to put up with, when we have to deal with any and all men who come to us. Strippers know too, about men. After a while, after seeing their eyes, when men aren’t trying to hide anything or be more, be human for show. When they’re just so cold, sitting there, masters with control and power, because the one with the money is always the one with the power, not the one who wants and needs the money. Most women just don’t know what we know. And if it’s all just sex, like men say, then why does it matter so much to them, uh?”

I have no use for my heart either. Is there a gaping wound there? Catherine contemplates.

“It’s all an act, of course, what we do in the club,” a stripper once told her. “We don’t want those men. Most of us think most of them pathetic. And if they knew what we’re thinking when we’re . . .  But they think that the faces that we make are ones of desire, for them, and that’s just messed up, because, most of the time, we’re taunting them in our heads, like ‘not in a million years, old man,‘ or ‘wouldn’t you like to touch, uh, loser? Who’s the weaker sex now?’ That’s what puts amusement and fun on our faces. There’s even a way to play the men in the club, a plan in place that we all know about, to get the most money from them: go to the older and old men first, because they have less money to spend, because they’re on fixed incomes. And then, after you have all their money, leave the old geezers and move on to the younger men, who have more money, or who will spend more money even if they don’t have it, even if their family, their kids, could put it to better use than his using it to get to ogle naked women, big tits, and feeling all powerful and all male and superior to women, sitting there while we have to do what he wants, with no effort at all on his part. Like a master commanding a slave, or using any object. It’s no wonder that most men like dogs: they can order them around. And why are cars and computers and anything that a man uses and controls, female, in men’s mind? Referred to as ‘shes,’ by men?  Because that is how men are: one, everything is in a relationship that starts with their dick, and two, everything that is controlled is female. When we’d like something more from a male, then is when we get depressed, because bodies are a material, and materialism is superficial and empty.”

Catherine’s eyes look around her before she sends both hands to her temples, fingertips aligning there. Her eyes then find the wall. She does not want to stand facing another wall, and fixates upon it until an expensive dress shirt blocks it from her sight. Her eyes then bounce off the material, find the flesh that the shirt does not cover up, linger there, and then rise up to Tristan’s eyes. She shivers at his persisting good mood. Odd mood.

After the two observe several men doing their thing to compete, observe them standing at the shooting line in bliss, before opening their eyes, and, organ in hand, aiming and discharging it, it is soon Catherine’s turn to be one of the several targets for the following ten shooters, which include her master.

Anything so men can feel that they’re spreading themselves around, uh? She tells herself, wanting to think of something else, as she walks towards the wall.

Her body is soon being manipulated by contest attendants into her required position on the range, on hands and knees. Once she is told to hold still, she closes her eyes, very much aware of the naked woman almost above her who will hold her nether cheeks separated when it is time for the men to take turns spewing at her.

Catherine knows what the range looks like, having seen it recreated in exactly the same way through the bodies of different submissives, as every round of shooters stepped up to compete. Now she is a part of it, and she knows that the men are looking at her, in this awkward position of hers, in which nothing else but her behind matters. They are rather close, of course, the men, since it is not like there can be tremendous distance between shooter and targets. Not dealing with real guns, here.

It’s always easier to get over something when it’s over, and when it won’t happen again, she tells herself, closing her eyes.

Referring to what happened by way of the manhoods of the nine masters, or by way of Tristan’s? Healer asks.

Catherine angrily opens her eyes and once more sees the wall before her, which infuriates her. Hit the wall! Do it! Forehead against it, hard! End this! I mean, a target for men’s amusement? Come on, Catherine! You’re better than this! All of this is ridiculous, everything! Is it not better to be dead, than to live life like this? Where is the love? The art of it, of life? The MORE! Hit the wall! Look at how close you are! Look at how close you’ve come to it! Again! You, and all the women! Don’t learn to like it, to live with it! And what will men do, if all of you hit that wall that they’ve shoved you to in their hundred different ways? They’ll have to do something!

Catherine sends a hand to one of her temples once again, since both are throbbing once more. She loses her balance doing so, as her other hand resents being the only one left to support her, up front. A contest attendant moulding the woman next to her into target form is quick to stop her from crumbling to the floor.

“Are you all right?” He asks her.

The question very much surprises Catherine. What does it matter whether or not I’m all right? No one here cares. You all just want to play your little sex games. That’s all that matters to you. You have extras waiting in the wings, because if any woman falls, or fails at pleasing, you most certainly can’t miss out on sex, and there’s always another female body to replace it, so, so what? No big deal to you. We’re nothing more. Am I all right? Really?!

“Master Tristan,” she hears the attendant call out, after looking into her eyes.

Great. Now I’m going to be punished for . . . She stops and commands herself to get a hold of herself. Even.

“What’s wrong?” Tristan immediately asks, once he is by her side and crouching next to her, since she returned herself to her hands and knees, even after the contest attendant gave her permission to stand up. The woman who was almost above her to insure that her target remained visible during competition is now standing to the side, her eyes on the rock star.

We’re not a couple just out here having fun this weekend for me to hear that out of your mouth, this  “what’s wrong?” with . . . well, as if  you care. Your art is safe, so go back to the line.

“You can compete in the next round, if you like,” the contest attendant offers to Tristan, who nods his head.

He then takes one of Catherine’s hands into his, supports her so she does not lose her balance as he straightens her out from her target position, and begins to walk her off the range. She is hesitant, and therefore slow, in following his lead. She is afraid again, after interrupting play like she has, after forcing the reorganization of shooters. How can this not be a bad thing?

“It’s just a headache,” she decides to try, not understanding at all why first the attendant, and then Tristan, made a big deal of her losing her balance. Yes, she could have fallen to the floor, smudging and ruining Tristan’s art, but she did not.

“I think that you’re dehydrated,” her master tells her, as he adjusts their trajectory towards a table of bottled water. Once there, he opens one and hands it to her.

“Water means urine, and urine means that bathroom,” she points out, refusing the water.

“Drink it,” Tristan orders, his eyes and eyebrows expressing the silliness of those words.

“I really don’t want to make you angry, because I don’t want to be punished anymore. But I hate that bathroom.”

“Your eyes are red; you’re pale, even for you, and your cheeks are a bright pink. You have a lot of fixative on your skin, and some of it is being absorbed. You have to drink,” he calmly, gently says.

“What if I just want to die?”

“Why would you want that now?” He shakes his head. “It’s the fixative. Trust me. You don’t want to die right now. Criteria have not been met.”

“What? What if I’ve just had enough of . . . all this?”

“Trust me, Catherine,” he repeats, his eyes into hers, and his lips not using her weekend name.

“Why?” She asks, her eyes glistening. “You’re not nice to me. You hurt me. You don’t care.”

“Of course I care. Drink.”

She is certain that he does not mean the same kind of “care” that she does. He cares that she live, so he can continue to use her. He cares that she live, so she not be disqualified from the competition. He cares that she live, so he does not miss out on weekend activities.

“Trust me,” he repeats.

She looks into his eyes. Tristan-the-rock-star-persona? Is that whom she sees there? Is that whom he is using to get her to drink? To trust?

Her mouth is so very dry that she coughs, because there is just no saliva to swallow, to lubricate her throat. That one cough then encourages another, and another, and, after quite a few in quick succession, Tristan snaps his fingers in the direction of two contest attendants, somewhat agitated as he does.

The men rush towards the couple, whom they had already been observing. One of them is a medical attendant, one of the doctors on hand, who all wear a caduceus on a band of material stretched around one of their upper arms.

Catherine is very much aware of her back’s movements, which are generated by her every painful cough in a series that continues, and that has quite the hold on her. The shifting of her skin brings Tristan’s art to her mind, and its preservation, when she should be thinking of the non-refundable who fell earlier on, who died, within a station close to Tristan’s. Catherine’s master is most certainly thinking of that.

“Catherine, drink,” he orders her once again. “Come on. Your mouth is dry. It’ll stop the coughing.” Maybe.

He extends the water bottle towards her once again, and she reaches out for it with a trembling hand. Her fingers manage to close upon the bottle, but loosely, and Tristan’s own hand must therefore stay behind in order to help hers hold the plastic container as she brings the water to her lips.

Catherine immediately coughs back out the first few sips that she takes, unable to swallow the water, which is therefore spewed uncontrollably at Tristan. He does not take a step back from her, away from her. He does not react at all to mere water.

“Try again,” he tells her instead, when her desperation during the continuing coughing fit tells him that she has given up. Her hand within his has released the bottle.

Catherine looks away and towards her other hand when she feels a finger belonging to it being pricked. She sees that the medical attendant is drawing blood from her, holding her hand very steadily as he does, since she continues to cough more and more violently. Once he has the sample, he slips it into a device, an expensive-looking device, and when it beeps a moment later, the doctor, after deciphering the display, then opens up a case of manufacture-labelled vials.

Catherine’s eyes leave the assortment of drugs, and look back at Tristan. Her decreased oxygen saturation is obvious: no need for a device to be placed on one of her fingers in order to get a precise reading through the fingernail there. Tears stream down her face now, as the ins and out of her chest have become so very painful. Her lack of clothing allows everyone close by to see the sinking in of her ribs, of the skin above them, into her. Everyone can see and hear the difficulty of her drawing any breath at all.

The cameras do not pick up this moment, do not broadcast it all over the room, even though some masters would not doubt very much enjoy watching a woman in such distress.

The medical attendant quickly removes a syringe from its wrapping, and then just as quickly guides it into different vials, even though carefully measuring at every stop. He then turns towards Catherine and his eyes seek a place along her skin that is both without art and an appropriate site for such an injection, from where the drugs will be able to do their thing, once they are allowed within her system. 

“I really don’t care,” Tristan impatiently informs the medical attendant, referring to the attendant’s hesitation due to the art upon Catherine’s skin.

The doctor therefore uses alcohol to swab a small area of Catherine clean of creative material and fixative, and then sends the needle in. Whatever is delivered to her as he presses the plunger creates a burning sensation as it penetrates and becomes a part of her, and the needle itself pinches very much as well. Catherine cannot clench her teeth, since she continues to cough, and the combination of both assaults leaves her feeling like she might lose consciousness, as it is so much to bear. She squeezes the water bottle tightly, and Tristan squeezes that hand within his.

After a  moment, with the needle removed, the burning sensation ended, and the medicine beginning to do its thing, Catherine manages to draw in oxygen, in between coughs that are tempering their previous rushed succession, and thus ending their earlier mad hold upon her.

“It’s not an allergy,” the medical attendant then confirms to Tristan.

If a blood test, or any other test, could predict what woman will or will not be allergic to the fixative, then true submissives would be tested. But not non-refundables, since masters like to gamble, to play the odds. And they love surprises, at events.

“She can continue to compete,” the doctor adds, confident that the concoction of drugs that he has just administered is fixing the problem. Fixing her. “She needs to keep hydrated, however. And if the cough begins again, don’t wait too long to get medical attention,” he adds, since Catherine wears a skin-tone bracelet.

He then enters medical information into her digital file, on a tablet that he has pulled from a pocket. Such files usually contain information about smudged art and other event happenings only, but have, on occasion, included medical, personal information as well. Catherine is not named, in her file. She is registered as Master Tristan’s submissive.

Tristan grabs a water bottle from the table close by, opens it, removes the old one from Catherine’s hand -- a bottle that remains misshapen, and with little water left within it, after its ordeal -- and slips the new one in, between her fingers. They close upon it.

A few seconds go by, however, before Catherine manages to drink, to swallow, since her coughing must subside even more. Her mouth then loses more and more of its dryness as she drinks, and the coughing soon stops completely, thanks to medication and lubrication.

She is looking into her master‘s eyes when she feels fingers at her wrist, before another prick, at a different finger. The doctor did not bother to warn her, to ask, even if she is in control of herself now. A moment later, he is satisfied with what the blood monitor tells him, and he walks away.

Catherine does not know what the man injected her with, nor what was wrong with her, and she does not ask, since Tristan did not ask. She then realizes, however, that his not asking does not mean that he does not know, and perhaps in fact means the opposite: that he did not ask because he does know. He has attended these events before, after all, and masters obviously talk. Share. Learn.

Yes, masters talk, share, learn. They speak to each other about strategies to improve submissives, and about how to get what they want from them. When masters are among masters, with all their maleness free to be out in the open, they speak about how to manipulate women, and how to punish and discipline them best. They speak about what reprimands work, and about how to best apply them. They teach others how to counter, to correct, to discipline, to punish. They share remedies, tried and tested and true, with results that are A to B, in women, I bet. They teach each other to add to their alpha nature. To be masters. To be Dominants. And how will I be punished for what just happened, with so many watching?

She swallows more water.

Gathered alpha males, here, where none of them submits, where none is more important in mating with the females of the pack. Alphas because, when they return to the world, each is then a man to whom other men submit to, each has power there, each controls, and other men bow to them, there, in their own pack, their own circle. But none bows and submits as much to them as their true submissive does. Are there more than one female, for these men, as there are in a pack, for alpha males, in the animal world? Pause.  Tristan’s power over all the men around him, and over the women that cross his path, on tour. That pack. And those women . . . surely intimately, since he captured me? Of course. Yes. Always prostitutes backstage. At the hotel. And then, when he’s been away from the tour altogether . . . Of course. Yes. Even if he’s come to me  two, three, and sometimes even four times a day when not away . . .       

Catherine tells herself that her mind is not quite back online yet, and therefore dismisses such thoughts in order to concentrate on her body: she sends a hand to her chest, positions it immediately beneath her neck, and then allows her fingers to massage the area there, as well as between her breasts, to her diaphragm. Echoes of her coughs physically resonate still, all over her torso.

When she looks up into her master’s eyes once more, they are ready for hers, waiting. “I’m sorry,“ she finds herself telling him. “Sir,” her lips add, in spite of her mind. Since her arrival, she has heard true submissives use the word, and non-refundables reminded and forced over and over again to do so.

“I won’t punish you. Just keep hydrated.”

“Yes, sir,” she replies, that word falling from her lips once more.

Just the weakened state persisting.