He turns to the small, stainless steel trolley he rolled in with him. It’s covered in a white cloth, a shroud for the gods of pain. With a flick of his wrist, he pulls it back.
I see them. The “tools.”
There’s a speculum, cold and gleaming under the predatory white lights. There are long, thin needles used for deep-tissue biopsies. And then there is the crown jewel of his madness: a modified portable cautery tool, the tip a needle-thin point designed to seal wounds—or create new ones.
“No,” I rasp, the word catching on the blood in my throat. My heart is a frantic bird hitting the cage of my ribs. “No, Aris, don’t be a fucking coward. Use your hands if you’re so goddamn brave.”
“Hands are for animals like Miller,” Aris whispers, picking up a pair of heavy, weighted metal clamps. “I am a man of science, Hallow. I prefer precision.”
He moves back between my legs, his shadow swallowingme. He doesn’t hesitate. He takes the first clamp and attaches it to my left labia, the serrated metal teeth biting deep into the soft, wet flesh. I scream—a high, thin sound that breaks against the ceiling—as the weight of the metal tugs at the raw opening of my pussy.
“That’s the first anchor,” he murmurs, his eyes wide and fixed on the way my skin stretches and pales under the pressure.
He takes the second clamp and attaches it to the right side, splaying me open with a brutal, mechanical finality.
I am a pinned butterfly, a dissected specimen, my pussy bared and stretched until the skin is translucent, the pulsing red of my clit standing out like a beacon of agony.
“Now,” Aris says, picking up the cautery tool. He presses a button, and the tip begins to glow a dull, angry orange. The smell of ozone fills the small, padded room. “Let’s see how that fire in your blood reacts to a real spark.”
He doesn’t touch me with it—not yet. He hovers the glowing tip just millimetres away from my clit, the radiant heat making the moisture on my skin sizzle.
I can feel the phantom sting before the contact even happens, my whole body vibrating with a psychotic level of fear and anticipation.
“Please,” I sob, my pride finally cracking like glass. “Aris, fuck, please don’t.”
“The ‘please’ is the most honest thing you’ve said in ninety-six days,” he purrs.
He touches the tip of the tool to the very top of my clit hood.
The pain is a white-hot lightning strike that fries my synapses. I don’t just scream; I howl, my body convulsing against the five-point restraints with such violence that I feel the leather begin to give way. The smell of burning hair and scorched skin rises between us, a foul, human incense.
He holds it there for three seconds—a lifetime—before pulling back.
“You’re so sensitive,” he observes, watching the way my pussy is clenching in agonising, rhythmic shocks around the weighted clamps.
“The nerves are screaming, aren’t they? They don’t know whether to give you pain or the shadow of a climax. Let’s find out which one breaks you first.”
He moves the tool lower, tracing the glowing orange tip along the inner edge of my pussy lips, the heat making me buck and weep.
He’s edging me with fire, his other hand reaching up to squeeze my throat, cutting off my air so that every sensation is magnified a thousand times in the dark of my oxygen-starved brain.
“You’re mine, Hallow,” he snarls, the mask of the doctor finally falling away to reveal the monster beneath the coat. “Miller had your body for a moment. But I am going to live inside your head forever.”
Aris doesn’t care about the tears streaming into my ears or the way my chest is heaving in ragged, broken hitches. He’s a man possessed by the architecture of my agony.
He sets the cautery tool down, its orange tip still hissing in the sterile air, and reaches for a small vial of clearliquid.
“This,” he whispers, his voice trembling with a dark, scholarly lust, “is a concentrated chemical irritant. It’s designed to heighten nerve sensitivity by four hundred percent. I want you to feel the air on your skin like a blade, Hallow. I want you to feel the weight of your own blood.”
He doesn’t wait for me to scream. He tips the vial, pouring the cold, viscous liquid directly onto the scorched skin of my clit and the raw, stretched-open meat of my pussy.
For a second, there is nothing but a terrifying, icy silence. Then, the fire wakes up.
It’s not a burn; it’s an electrocution. Every nerve ending in my pussy ignites, a million white-hot needles stitching into my flesh at once.
I’m bucking so hard the metal bed frame screeches against the floor, my heels slamming into the mattress as I try to escape my own skin.
My pussy is a weeping, pulsing wound, and the weighted clamps tugging at my labia make the sensation unbearable.