When Demons Are Redeemed: The Dominant's Muse

Thirty-Six - Line Crossing

I imagine that this association of powerful, wealthy masters would go all out, covering a theme, and, therefore, include the sort of act that follows. I kept it very simple, however.

THIRTY-SIX 

Line Crossing

At 3 a.m. Sunday morning, Catherine and Tristan stand before the stage in the ballroom and await the beginning of the next circus-themed show.

With her coughing bout and what happened tied to it presently shelved in her mind, Catherine is no longer preoccupied by what happened during the most recent mini-contest, and her drug of choice must therefore now shoulder all of the burden of keeping her mind from obsessing about the wall. She knows very well that she cannot allow that memory to possess her. The first nine men must therefore be forgotten, and Tristan’s approach as the tenth must be as well. His care during her coughing fit, those offered “sirs,” and what she felt when he hit her target during the first round must also be included in her drug’s mission of keep away.

I promise that I’ll deal with all of this next week, when I’m far away from here. And, healer, it’s not a physical vault, for it to have limits, so why protest that it’s full? She argues. Stretch it out and make things easier: let me shove more into it!

That pleading, however, never works.

“Our canvases are beginning to look like the embodiment of the everyday care and nurture and value that you lavish upon, and have within yourselves for your submissive, masters,” the host speaks, before the show begins. “Submissives, it must make you feel thrilled and overjoyed, beholding the representation of that intensity of care, which is now out for everyone to see, on your bodies.”

Catherine is aghast, disgusted, when she unexpectedly registers something within her that agrees with those words, since Tristan’s gentle care, while designing upon her, has left her feeling oddly. Whereas most of the other masters design in a few minutes, and then affix their so-called art to their canvas, Tristan has repeatedly taken much longer to patiently create his vision upon her. She consequently now possesses several memories of this “care,” which presently does make it more demanding for her to not believe and to not trust in it. She perseveres, however. Keeps at it. Committed to not losing her mind in his game.

Absolutely resolved once more, Tristan’s submissive thoughtlessly turns her face towards her master before realizing that she is responding to a sixth sense notifying her that he is looking at her. As she quickly returns her eyes to a forward line, she registers that he remains in a good mood, before miserably recognizing that she is afraid. She regularly deals with fear, but since this kind is particular and stubborn and refuses to be shaken off, she once again finds herself wishing that Tristan would double her dose. Of her drug of choice, that is. Not of him.

But it’s just the art that he cares so much about, that he pays such close attention to. He’s not some kind of caregiver tending to me carefully, seeing to my wellbeing, when he examines me and . . . Am I being brainwashed?! Me?! That chauvinist crap that the masters spew can’t be right! Just sexist mumbo-jumbo they want to stick to us! But . . . so much time and attention spent on my body that isn’t about sex, but that does, however, fall in between so much else that is very much about sex. But my body isn’t me. Attention to it, even if artistic and caring in that way, isn’t directed at me. Nurture . . . Well, it certainly does not come from ingesting what masters so readily offer. But those moments of peace and calmness during which I don’t fear that Tristan will explode as if striking from the calm of the eye of a storm . . . It’s important to him, this art all over my body. It makes me his in a different way, even more than I already am by force.