She let out a long, shuddery sigh. “About my life.”
“Molly!” One of Clayton’s sisters called out to her. “Are you okay? Shall we hold the car?”
Mephisto looked at the woman, then back at Molly. “I’ll drive you back if you like. If you want to stay and talk.”
“Well... Okay.”
“I mean, if you’ve been thinking about your life, this might be a long conversation.”
Molly turned to Clayton’s sister and waved. “I’m going to stay a little while longer.”
The woman looked between him and Molly. Sure, his clothes were spiffy, but he still had dreadlocks and a stud in his nose. He smiled and walked over. “I’m Jay Tennant. An old friend of Clayton’s.”
“Oh?” Her
oh?
was clearly a request for more information.
Mephisto gave a short glance at Molly. “I used to do security for one of Clay’s properties.” The woman wouldn’t understand the real meaning of that, but it was more or less the truth. Security work would also explain his build and appearance. She offered him a lackluster handshake.
“I’m Margaret Kearney. One of Clayton’s sisters.”
“I see the resemblance,” Mephisto said.
Margaret Kearney looked like she had plenty more questions, but she didn’t ask them. Instead she turned to Molly, wearing a tight smile. “Don’t be too long. We’ll be receiving visitors back at the house.”
Molly didn’t answer, only stared down into Clayton’s grave. With one last look at Mephisto, the woman turned and stalked across the grass to a waiting car. Mephisto swallowed down unkind cracks about Mrs. Kearney, in deference to Molly’s pensive mood. “We can stay here as long as you like,” he said. “As long as it takes to say goodbye.”
“To you?” She looked confused.
“No. To Clayton. To your Master.”
“I’ve already said goodbye.” She frowned and gave another little shrug. “He’s not there anyway. I know that. All of this is just for show.”
Mephisto waited. He knew there was more. Molly brushed aside the black tulle shielding her face and held her forehead like she had an ache there.
“Okay, listen,” she said. “I know you and my...Mr. Copeland had an agreement. That, you know, after he died I would go to you.”
Mephisto shook his head. “That wasn’t the agreement. I only promised to look after you. What you do with your life now is up to you, fully and completely.”
“So...that’s what I’ve been thinking about.”
“Good.”
“And I see now what you were trying to show me that week we spent together. That day in the kitchen, that last day when you asked me all those questions. I get it now. I understand how stupid I’ve been, how all of this has been so bad and wrong.”
Mephisto stiffened. Those words were the last words he’d expected to fall from Molly’s lips. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. That day when I asked you those questions, I was only trying to make sure you were happy.”
“Bullshit.” She pursed her lips, her pretty face distorting in anger. “You took me out to that park where I used to work. You fed me ice cream and led me to that creek and you stared at me. I remember. You did everything you could to...to break me down. I see now you were trying to snap me out of it.”
“I wasn’t. You are absolutely, one hundred percent wrong.”
“But I was so blind,” she said over his protestations. “I was so deep under his spell.”
“Molly, you have everything so wrong.”
“Do I?” She turned from him, staring off into the distance, her chin set. “It’s taken a few days, and a few tears, but my brain finally started working again. I’m ashamed. I’m disgusted by the lifestyle I led. Eight years his slave, for what?”
“Because it made you happy.” She was silent a moment. Mephisto was glad she wasn’t denying that, at least. “He made you happy, and you made him happy. Don’t rewrite your time together as something disgusting and sordid. That’s very disrespectful to him, to his memory.”
“I don’t owe him respect anymore,” she snapped, moving away from the graveside. “I don’t owe him service, or sex, or obedience or any of that stupid shit. He’s dead, and I’m left with nothing but eight years of my life lost.”
Through his shock, through his anger at her words, he remembered that grief could mess with people. She didn’t mean any of this. She couldn’t mean it. “Nothing? He left you with
nothing
? He left you everything.”
“Money, houses.” She waved a hand. “Whatever. I want those years back. All the things he left me, were they worth what I gave him? The loss of myself? He seduced me. He used me. He erased me!”
“He loved you!” Mephisto’s words rang out in the quiet cemetery. He felt the strangest impulse to weep on behalf of his friend, who had loved Molly to the point of distraction. “Who have you been talking to? Who planted these ideas in your brain?”
“No one. I’ve just rejoined reality.”
“You’re still wearing his collar.”
“Because I can’t get it off. I need you to help me get it off.”
“No. I won’t help you.” He sounded as bitter as he felt. “If it means so little to you now, call a locksmith. Use a pair of fucking bolt cutters.”
Molly stared at the ground, her spine rigid. “I think I’d like to go back now. Or...you can call me a cab if you’d rather.”
“I’m not calling you a cab,” he muttered. They walked to his car and drove together in silence for some time. He couldn’t understand this. Sadness, yes. Grief and regrets, sure. But to go from deep love for Clayton to this revulsion? No. Shame? Disgust?
“I think you’re all mixed up right now,” Mephisto finally said. Molly shifted and sighed. “No, really. Your husband just died. Your world has been disrupted.”
“Yes, it has been disrupted. Thank God. I know this upsets you. I know your whole world is tied up in all this Master and slave shit—”
“Do not call it shit.” His anger resonated between them in the small car, and she fell silent beside him. Mephisto took deep breaths, in and out. “If you’re done with the lifestyle, that’s fine, but why don’t you keep your judgments and condemnations to yourself?”
“Because you advance this. Every day, in your club, you push submissive women toward dominants. You pushed me toward Clayton. You glamorize it like it’s some divine calling, something honorable and important.”
“It is! For those in the lifestyle, it is.”
“It’s sick. It’s exploitative. Of course you and the other dominants want to color it in pretty colors, make sure your victims remain blind and subservient. How else can you abuse and sexually exploit women without them fighting back?”
Mephisto slammed on the brakes and guided the car to the side of the roadway. Traffic buzzed past, mixing with the drumbeat of fury in his brain.
“How dare you?” he asked. “How dare you accuse me of abuse? No one in this community has spoken out more about consent, about safety, about emotionally healthy relationships. Not to mention, I saved your life, you ungrateful little bitch. Do you remember where you were when I met you?”
“At some bar on Pike Street. I remember. Whatever.”
“No,” he said, leaning closer. “Do you remember where you were mentally, in your life, when I met you? Let me remind you. You hated your life, you hated yourself, you hated Daddy, you hated every boy you beckoned between your well-traveled thighs. You were trying to destroy yourself with alcohol and drugs and hate, and came very close to succeeding. Do you remember that?”
She sat frozen beside him, her lips set in a stubborn line. Mephisto cursed under his breath and moved back onto the road.
“You don’t have to thank me,” he said after a moment. “You can be angry at me for trying to help you. But let’s be real. The life you gave up was no better than the life you had with Clayton.”
“At least it was my life!” she retorted. “At least I was myself!”
“Don’t you get it? You were yourself with Clayton too! You were at peace, you were happy. That week we spent together...” His voice faltered. “I spent the whole week testing you, questioning you, trying to be sure, and I was sure. When your Master returned for you, and he held you, and you cried, I was more sure of your love for each other than anything I’d ever been sure of in my life.”
Mephisto fell silent. There was nothing else to say, only the truth, and he’d said it. After a long while Molly said, “I don’t think you mean to abuse anyone. Not intentionally. But I think you do.”
Jesus fucking Christ. “I think I don’t.”
“I don’t think you understand how this feels, to surface after you’ve been held underwater for so long.”
“You were never held underwater. Don’t lie. You floated there yourself, with a big fucking smile on your face.”
“Because I was influenced, brainwashed.”
“Brainwashed. I knew that word would come.” He pulled up outside Clayton’s building and put the car in park, then rubbed his eyes and looked over at her.
“You know what I think? I think your view of reality is way, way out of wack right now. I understand your life has been turned upside down. I applaud your decision to reassess your goals in life and really think before you move forward. But it’s unfair to my friend to paint him as a villain, an abuser. After all he gave to you, how much he loved you. How much you loved him.”
She wouldn’t look at him. She stared out the window. “Of course you’d only see his side. You’re just like him.”
Mephisto gave a mirthless, resigned laugh. “Yes, of course. Partners in crime. Brainwashing buddies. If this is your view now of him, of me, of the lifestyle, then by all means, take off your fucking collar and join the vanilla world. I wish you the best.”
With those words, Molly opened the car door and left without a backward glance. So be it. Whatever made her happy. That’s what Clayton had wanted for her...to make her own choices about her future. But he and Clayton had both been so, so wrong about the choices she would make.
Mephisto threw himself back into his work. The Seattle fetish scene was growing, changing, and Mephisto was always working hard to be sure it was changing for the better. People in the community looked to him as a leader, and he took that responsibility seriously. He didn’t just host sex parties and club nights, but also organized classes on safety and responsible techniques. BDSM and power exchange involved a lot of pleasure, but the possibility of danger too. Nothing upset him more than someone getting hurt on his watch.
Like Molly.
Mephisto brooded for weeks about the parting talk they’d had. He finally had to admit to himself that perhaps he hadn’t saved her after all. That, perhaps, he’d pushed a damaged and emotionally fragile woman toward a man too powerful and charismatic for her to resist. What could he have done differently?
You could have kept her for yourself. You could have shown her a less controlling form of slavery.
But would that have been enough for her at that time in her life?
She had seemed so happy. He truly believed she’d been happy while it was going on. So, whatever guilt he felt, he had to temper it with the fact that he’d acted on what he believed was the truth. Now, truth was getting all tangled up in his brain, which was sort of crippling but sort of helpful. He could definitely use all of this upheaval to improve himself and his actions at the club and in the scene.
Mephisto also considered whether he owed it to Clayton to continue to supervise her. He decided he didn’t, that Molly would only resent his presence in her life. She knew where to find him if she needed him, but if she was truly done with the lifestyle—truly
disgusted
by it as she’d said—they didn’t have much more to talk about. He missed her, but the Molly he’d adored was gone anyway, replaced by a woman who saw him as an exploiter, if not an outright abuser. That part really hurt.
But Mephisto wasn’t one to live in the past. It was Saturday night, his favorite night, and he was determined to funnel renewed positivity to his kinky friends. The club was practically breathing, the walls contained so much energy and lust. Club Mephisto wasn’t just about getting your rocks off and going through the motions. The people who played here believed in connection and self-expression, and they cared for one another. That carefully-tended community attitude was the accomplishment of which he was most proud.
He circulated, monitoring a heavy impact scene for a while before he moved on to an equally intense, but much quieter rigging scene. The rigger wrapped rope around his nude submissive so lovingly, so carefully, outlining her breasts and making wicked little cinches for her nipples. Once she was tied, he started working over her chest with a crop. The woman moaned and pulled away on occasion, but she always presented her breasts for more. Mephisto studied her face, searching for something, anything, any clue that she wanted to be anywhere else than where she was...
“Master Mephisto?”
Mephisto turned at the sharp voice of his dungeon assistant, Glenn. “What is it?”
“A woman by the door. I think she’s altered.”
“If she’s altered, she can’t come in. You know the rules.”
“I think it’s Molly.”
Mephisto spun toward the door. Glenn was right. It was Molly, but she barely looked like herself. Dirty, disheveled, her face and eyes swollen, probably from substance abuse. She yanked at her collar, screaming something he couldn’t hear from across the room. Her eyes found his and she came storming his way, shrugging off the doorman trying to restrain her. She barreled right through a whip scene, evading injury by dumb luck.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Mephisto grabbed her arm and steered her to the side of the play space. “That singletail could have taken your eye out.”
“Get it off me,” she screamed, yanking at her neck, at the slim collar still gleaming there. “Take it off me, goddamn it. I know you know how.”
The dungeon monitors were drifting closer in case Mephisto needed help, and patrons were starting to watch. Molly pulled at her collar like a full-blown maniac. She was on something, rabid, out of her mind. He dragged her back past the bar into his private rooms. He flipped on the light in the kitchen and looked down at the girl in his grasp. Her eyes were dilated, her skin pallid. She’d lost fifteen pounds at least since he saw her last. Six weeks ago?