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The mesmer infection liked to make me do things to them and I fucking hated lack of control.

Limiting myself worked.

I led her into the bathroom and showered her, detaching the head and playing the water over her, washing off all my cum, shampooing her hair, soaping her everywhere, between her legs, delivering a few pointed spanks if she was slow at positioning herself where I wanted her.

Then I had her stand and toweled her dry.

Different, not different.

Now she lay on her side, on the floor beside the bed, still naked because I liked her that way. Her hair was damp and stuck to her shoulders, her breasts, with droplets of water shining in the strengthening light from the wide doorway.

I could see her watching the seagull that sat on the railing I’d recently tied her to. It could fly away anytime it wanted to. Was she aware enough to be considering that?

Perhaps clothing her was wise. The chain leash attached to her black collar led up to the left post of the bed where I’d attached it to a ring. My little pet for the day...the week...the year.

My monster would like to make this forever.

“On the bed.” I patted the oriental-inspired quilt. Black with gold dragons. Asian text that probably said nothing sensible. Learning Chinese would be a good hobby.

Her partly inked tits teased me as she crawled up there.

I walked to the desk and retrieved my calligraphy pen, walked back to her. Her gaze stayed on me, magnetically attached. The more I fucked her, the deeper we’d go.

Maybe I shouldn’t.

When I sat beside her and pushed her onto her back, she roused.

“You have a monster or you are one?”

“I...have one, in a way. The mesmer infection exaggerates a part of me that most would call bad. It’s not a separate person.”

“Oh.”

I took her breast, pushed it up so I could have access to the underside and began to write.

“Why are you writing? What are you writing?”

“Whatever I feel like. I just like seeing the black ink looping across your skin.” I was writing some of her words, about immorality, but it was so stylized I doubted she could read it upside-down, or even in a mirror. “My hobby.”

“Your hobby is writing on women?”

I paused, pen held above her nipple. “One of many. I’ve found hobbies, learning, helps me focus.”

The movement of her throat said she swallowed, and maybe was nervous. Awakening to reality then.

“I find I want to fuck less. My monster needs less input.”

“What sort of input?”

She wriggled and I trapped her with my hand across her throat, pinning her to the quilt. “What a helpless thing you are. Input? Hmmm. Like torturing the fuck out of little butterflies like you. I have only five women. I’ve managed with that for years. Logically I should not take more.”

She snorted lightly and derision surfaced in her expression. Daring bitch when she was aware.

“Logic. Sure. How about plain old being a nice person?”

“You have no concept of how this infection has overwritten my brain.” My voice turned harder. “Without what I have organized, my routines and rituals, my fucking hobbies, I’d be gone from here. Do you know how much I could do, would do, if I let myself?” I squeezed on her neck, tightened the arc. “No fucking concept.”

I breathed hard for a while, scaling back the anger, before I could make my hand release her.