Molly's Lips: Club Mephisto Retold by Annabel Joseph Page A

you sorry? Do you have regrets? What do you see in your future?
    What do those tears mean?
    She turned to him and her expression said it all.
Just take me home. That’s all I want, to escape this. Please don’t ask me anything.
    So Mephisto took her home.
    *** *** ***
     
    Back at the club, Mephisto watched Molly undress and fold her borrowed clothes into a perfectly aligned stack. He took the bundle and tossed it on the pile with the other things for the laundry service, only so he wouldn’t be tempted to hide them away and fondle them like some sociopathic stalker after she was gone. Meh. He might still do that.
    He reattached the o-ring to her collar and put her to work dusting and straightening up the dungeon. She moved around doing whatever task he set her to in perfect slave mode, as if her short brush with the outside world was some horror that proper service and submission could erase.
    So be it. She was happy. He was glad to know it. She didn’t yearn for all the things she’d lost when she went into slavehood, all the things she’d left behind. She yearned for her Master, Clayton, and if Clayton wasn’t around, then him. So, to keep her happy, he continued to assign her the most menial tasks he could think up, while he worked at his desk and daydreamed about ways he could bring her to orgasm later. Some bondage, a little teasing to make her think she was in for more torture, and then—
    He heard a shriek from the kitchen. He ran in to find her standing at the sink, fumbling with the faucet handle. She’d been ironing clothes for him, but the iron was lying on its side, the clothes knocked over in a jumble. He righted the hot iron and went over to her.
    “What happened?”
    Like some nightmare, some bad dream, she held out her forearm. The underside had an angry red mark down the middle. He grabbed it, staring down at the pristine velvet skin already puckering into blisters. “Fuck!”
    He held it under the water. Clayton would fucking murder him for this. “Fuck!” he shouted again, so loud she flinched. He thought about her tears at the stream, her robotic slaveyness. “Did you do this on purpose?” He clenched her elbow as he yelled at her. “Did you?”
    She shook her head, looking scared.
    “Talk to me, damn it!”
    “You put me on speech restriction!” She pulled her arm away from his rough grasp.
    He gave her a quick, sharp slap across the cheek, for the sass and for the panic that even now had his heart pounding. Self-hurting slaves didn’t fly with him. He’d been there, done that, read the book and written the review. He didn’t fucking do that shit. He took a deep breath and grasped for calm.
    “Forget the speech restriction,” he snapped. “How the fuck did this happen?”
    “It was an accident. I’m sorry!” He gazed into her eyes, searching for answers, and saw no guilt or premeditation, only pained shock. She didn’t do it to herself. It was an accident. His breath came easier, but there was still his broken promise to explain to Clayton.
    “I told your Master no permanent damage,” he said. “No scars!”
    Again she stared in miserable, tongue-tied helplessness. She must think him a maniac.
Breathe. Just breathe. Take care of her.
He unplugged the iron and hurried her back to the bathroom. He ran her arm under cold water a while longer, then dried her burn with the softest towel he could find. It stood out in stark relief against the pale skin of her forearm, half an inch wide, a couple inches long. “Jesus Christ,” he yelled again as he wrapped the burn in a loose gauze bandage. “He’s going to kill me.”
    “But it was my fault, Master,” she said. “I’m not good at ironing. I should have told you.”
    He didn’t want her to blame this on herself. He looked up, on the verge of snapping at her again, and she flinched. Jesus, he had to calm down. He was freaking her out and the pain of the burn had to be excruciating enough. He ran his hands through his hair