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  “If Clayton trusted them, it’s a safe bet you can trust them.”

  Of course. Her Master had been an excellent judge of character. He would have surrounded himself with the most trustworthy business partners. And her Master had told her outright, many times, that he didn’t trust his family, so Molly wouldn’t trust them either. Her Master trusted Mephisto...so she would have to trust him.

  “I think I’ll get dressed,” she said. “I’m sure you have to go. The club...”

  “Club Mephisto will be fine. But if you feel okay at the moment, I’ll go and take care of a few things.” He came to her and squeezed her hand. Molly couldn’t look at his face, so she didn’t know what his expression was. Sad, probably. Pitying. As soon as he was gone, she allowed herself to fall apart yet again, collapsing where she stood, sobbing until her eyes and head ached so much she had to stop. This is too hard. This is too hard, Master. Please, come back. I’ll be good, so good if you do.

  But no matter how good she was, or how perfect, this was all she had left at the end of it. Nothing.

  Nothing at all.

  *** *** ***

  Mephisto sat in the back of the sprawling city church at Clayton’s funeral, feeling uncomfortable in his suit and tie. He’d said his goodbyes to Clayton beside the hospital bed, but he wouldn’t have missed this. Clayton would have been happy with the grand, polished service, even though he was never a religious man. Clayton had always been very much about appearances and decorum, even though he accepted Mephisto’s scruffy goth image. Clayton, man, you should see me in this suit.

  Mephisto didn’t know how Molly was coping. He hadn’t done any more than talk on the phone with Mrs. Jernigan the last few days. Molly didn’t have a phone. No email address, no nothing. He could barely see the back of her bowed head where she sat in the front row.

  Later, at the graveside service, Mephisto was able to study her more closely. Beneath her smart black suit, her widow’s hat, she looked like a shell of the Molly he knew. An imposter. Clayton’s family, at least, seemed to be tending to her. She stood between two of his sisters, looking for all the world as wealthy and brittle as they were. He understood that Molly was in a tunnel now, in the dark. She had gone into the tunnel from Clayton’s light, and would come out of it some day, blinking and confused. For now, the tunnel probably felt like a safe place.

  Molly raised her head, looked up at him. Their eyes locked. She must have felt him staring.

  If I die tomorrow, tell her you love her.

  Clayton had known he might die. For two years, he had kept that secret. As for the other secret...that Mephisto loved his wife... Clay had sensed that too, and been okay with it. But Molly...she hadn’t known anything.

  There was no way she could know. Mephisto wasn’t sure of his feelings himself. He always insisted to Clay it was only because of their long history that he took such an interest in her. Mephisto had known Molly in her pre-slave years, when she’d been a wild, tormented young woman. He flattered himself into believing he’d saved her from that. Mephisto liked feeling powerful, liked the idea that he’d somehow had a hand in making her a new person. But the truth was, he had very little to do with creating the complex person who was Molly.

  As quickly as their eyes met, Molly looked away. Mephisto couldn’t read her face. He only knew there was grief there, and emptiness. What do I do, Clay?

  Mephisto could go for it. Wait a few weeks, until the worst of her grief had passed, and lay it all on the line, tell Molly his true feelings. I would like to be your next Master. I want you under my hand. I want that incredible submission you gave to Clayton, all for myself now. He did desperately want her to serve him. He loved her beauty, her calmness. Her deep feelings of worship and fidelity to her Master. But could he earn those feelings? She couldn’t just summon them up from nothing. Clayton Copeland had earned every iota of Molly’s admiration and love. Mephisto understood it wouldn’t be easy to fill Clay’s shoes.

  Then there was his own life to think about. He had Club Mephisto to run, and a lot of s-types who counted on him as an occasional play partner. What did it look like, if Molly came into his life? She could be his alpha-slave, sure, ranking above the others, but would that be enough for her? Could Mephisto participate in playful scene-type slavery relationships with his other partners and still demand the depth of Molly’s service? Molly’s...love? Mephisto had never been in a romantic-love relationship that wasn’t connected to power exchange or sex. What made him think he could fulfill Molly, with a history like that?

  It all came down to worthiness, something he’d never questioned in himself. Well, no, he’d questioned it before, during the one week Molly had stayed with him two years ago. That week had forced him to face many truths about himself, not all of them pleasant.

  That was the week he’d fallen for her like a boulder off a cliff.

  But boulders could smash people. He’d tried very hard, in a way, to smash her that week, and she remembered. Of course she remembered. Her Master’s wishes aside, it was very possible she dreaded nothing more than ending up in Mephisto’s hands.

  After the graveside service, everyone drifted away from the yawning hole in the ground, but Molly lingered, and so did Mephisto. For a while he kept his distance, watching her, trying to gauge if he was welcome. She stared down into the earth, thinking about God knew what. The man she loved, probably, cold now in the ground.

  “Molly.” Mephisto approached her, feeling very much like a supplicant. Her eyes traveled over him, over his suit and wool overcoat.

  “Hello. Thanks for coming today.” She bit her lip. “Thank you for the flowers. Tulips were his favorite.”

  “I know.” She was trying too hard to sound cheerful. It unsettled him. “How are you?”

  “Oh....” She shrugged, still in that fake-cheerful tone. “I’ve been better. I was actually going to call you after the funeral. I’ve been thinking.”

  Mephisto stepped closer, feeling nervousness snake up his spine at her unfamiliar briskness, her closed expression. “Thinking about what?”

  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 shr
ug. “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.

  Chapter Three: Shame

  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.