When Demons Are Redeemed: The Dominant's Muse

Forty-Nine - The Coatroom Jail

FORTY-NINE

The Coatroom Jail

As Catherine nears the doors that lead out of the ballroom and into the lavish hallway that leads to the buffet room, she senses that the attendant posted at the threshold will stop her.  “Do you have permission to go the bathroom while your master sleeps?” He indeed inquires.

“I’m going to fall asleep if I don’t do something, and eating is something to do. And why isn’t there coffee?” She replies, her answer prepared before the question was asked, and her mind, too tired to formulate a response to the actual question posed.

“It’s a stimulant, so it shouldn’t be mixed with the drug that the masters are taking.”

“And we can’t drink it either because they can’t? We’re not taking that drug.”

Silence.

“The stay-up pills are a stimulant as well, of course,” Catherine’s tired mind realizes. “Whatever they are, they’re not working very well on me, by the way.”

“You should remain by your master’s side. It’s safer.”

“The masters are asleep. So, are contest attendants a possible concern, then? A possible threat?”

“You’re quite articulate. I’ve noticed.”

“It comes and goes,” Catherine replies.

“I know who your master is.”

“Just pretend that I wouldn’t shut up,” Catherine suggests, off the top of her weary head.

“And what would happen to you then?” The attendant points out.

Wouldn’t be good. “I have permission to go to the bathroom,” she then states. “Because my master told me not to forget to drink water, while he sleeps, and he’s not a stupid man: he knows that drinking water equals . . . ” She stops, since the attendant’s look changed at her words, as she just admitted that she does not have direct, verbal permission from Tristan.

After a moment, however, the man nevertheless opens and holds the door for Tristan’s female, and she feels very much self-conscious as she steps towards it, since the man’s eyes appreciatively and then hungrily travel up and down the front of her body as she does. Seconds later, she has no doubt that those hungry eyes remain on her back as she walks down the hallway, away from the door. She most certainly does not turn back to check.

Perfectly fine to the masters, that ogling. None is infuriated, or even annoyed,  and yet a female is supposed to be one master’s only. So, masters certainly have a different definition of belonging, Catherine concludes, before images of combo hours return to her and smack her in a “duh” fashion, since sharing and belonging, to most women, indeed do not play well together. Different definition.

Utter absurdity, that we’re made to go through all that we are this weekend, and that the masters dare to say that it’s to make us feel that we belong, or whatever. If I ever wanted to belong to a man, in some way, it wouldn’t be to one who is intimate with so many women and who forces me to be as well, and with others, even if there’s a line. Because it’s not my line. If I wanted to belong to a man, it wouldn’t be to a mere animal. He would have to be so much more. Yes. Like I’ve heard so many times before, that men should be so much more.

When she hears the door close, she knows that the attendant is once again on the other side, within the ballroom, which means that she is free of his eyes.