Mercy

He frowned. “I know that you belong to me. That you’re mine. You are mine, aren’t you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Why? Why are you mine? How did I get so lucky?”

“I don’t know that luck had anything to do with it,” I said, gazing up at the three paintings that now graced his bedroom wall.

“Mmm. How’s your ankle?”

“Almost completely better.”

“Lucy,” he said. “Do you think it’s time for you to stop dancing?” Oh, Jesus. “No, I’m fine. It barely hurts anymore.”

“I think you should stop before you hurt yourself. I can tell it’s not as easy as it was, even in the months I’ve known you.”

I buried my head in his neck. “Matthew, please. I don’t want to talk about it.”

“I worry about you.”

“Don’t worry about me. Just fuck me again.”

“Again? You’re a greedy little slut.”

He pinched my nipple hard, and caught my yelp in his mouth with a kiss. He kissed me a long time, then whispered, “Get a condom and roll it onto my cock. And yes, Lucy, I’m your fucking boyfriend. Your fucking dominant slave of love. If you ever try to top me, I’ll hurt you.” I smiled as he pulled me under him. I had no desire to top him, although I had a certain power over him of my own.

“Lucy, will you always be truthful to me?”

“God, yes. Yes, Matthew, I will.”

* * *

But I was a big liar. I wasn’t truthful to him, or truthful to myself. I slowly turned into a big, fat liar in the weeks that followed that sweet little talk, because I was in pain of the most excruciating kind.

Two decades of wear and tear on my joints had brought me to a point where the pain made it impossible to dance. So I did what any self-respecting dancer would do, which is drug myself in order to get by. I didn’t go to Grégoire. He wouldn’t have gone along with it. We all knew what dancers were hooked up to the pills, so I talked only to the people I had to. I took only what I needed, but that amount slowly increased, and then my flexibility started to go and the pain was that much worse.

In desperation, I considered seeing Matthew’s friend Dr. Rob, who’d been so very kind to me. But I had no doubt he would have told Matthew everything. Not only that, but he would have told me to stop dancing. So I soldiered through on what pain pills I could get my hands on, and I tried, I really tried to not let things get away. But sometimes, you know, they just do.

Chapter Thirteen: Lies

Hello, my name is Matthew and I’m an addict. I’m addicted to a drug named Lucy Merritt.

This girl, this little dancer named Lucy fills my every waking hour with either longing, craving, pleasure, or peace.

I met Lucy back in October. It was almost May now and spring was in the air. I was sitting and waiting now for her to come to me. It was one of “our” nights, the nights when she was mine. I suppose now that she’d moved in, every night was really “our” night, but there were only certain nights I required her to play. The other nights were by choice, her choice, because my own choice, of course, was a perpetual “yes.” Most of the time, yes was her choice as well, but she wouldn’t move in without a “no” choice clause, so we agreed that some days she belonged to me, and other days she would be able to choose if she was mine.

But tonight, no. No choice. I’d already planned what I was going to do to her. Some days I planned things, plotted pervertedly, other days I just went with the flow. It all depended on how much control I felt. When I really wanted her, it was better to make plans so things didn’t really get out of hand. Sure, it happened sometimes, but I never hurt her, not really, and I never ever would. By some freakish good fortune, she gets off on pain, the same way I get off on watching her endure it at my hands.

I was running through my plans of depravity when I heard Kevin bang in the door.

“Mr. Norris!”

I jumped up. “Where’s Lucy?”

“She’s out in the car.” The way that he said that, it wasn’t to reassure me, it was to tell me something was wrong. “She’s in the car. I can’t wake her up!” I was across the room in an instant, pushing past him.

“She was fine when I got her, and then I thought she fell asleep. But she won’t wake up.”

“Is she breathing?”

“Yes, she was when I left.”

I ripped open the car door, and she was breathing but she was so, so still, and so very pale. I lifted her and her warmth was reassuring, but she was limp and lifeless as a rag doll.

“Get her bag. Find her phone. Call that guy she dances with. His name’s Grégoire.” I took her inside and laid her on the couch. Her breathing was shallow and she was just utterly gone. I shook her and slapped her face a little, shook her harder again. Nothing. I gestured to Kevin to hand me the phone.

“Grégoire,” I yelled. “What’s wrong with Lucy? What did she take?”

“What? Who is this?”

“This is Lucy’s boyfriend, Matthew. What the hell did she take before she left the theater?”

“Nothing. I don’t know. I don’t know what she took. God damn it, she doesn’t tell me.”

“Who would know? This is not a fucking joke. She’s passed out on my sofa and she doesn’t look good.”

“Hold on, I’ll make some calls. I’m coming over.”

“Yeah, get over here, and call whoever would know.”

Kevin let Grégoire in hardly five minutes later.

“Where is she? Is she okay?”

“She’s dead to the world. I don’t know if she’s okay or not. What is she on?”

“Mariel said she thinks she took some pain pills she got from another dancer, that he bought off the street.”

“What the hell are you talking about? What kind of pain pills?”

“I don’t know. Some kind of painkillers. Vicodin. Something like that. Ellie said she thinks she took four.”

Four. Jesus Christ.

“She should go to the hospital, Mr. Norris.”

“No, I’ll call someone to come here. You stay with her.” I crossed the room and called a doctor friend of mine, and he arrived and examined Lucy while we watched. During that time, she woke up a little, and he told us her heart rate and pupils looked good. He advised me to have her sleep it off, and that any pills off the street were most likely not full strength.

After he left us with instructions to monitor her, I glared at Grégoire. “She danced tonight?”

“Yeah. She was fine.”

“Is she really fine, though? You’re her partner. Is she really fine?” He looked at me, and I saw the answer in his gaze.

“Who is doping her?”

“Lucy is doping herself.”

“Why?”

“Because she’s in pain! Because her joints hurt.”

“Well, why don’t you fucking make her stop?”

“Me? I’m supposed to make her stop? She doesn’t listen to me anymore. Her world revolves around you now, sick as that is.”

I ignored that barb. “She didn’t tell me. I didn’t know.” I scowled at him. “They don’t drug test dancers?”

“No,” he said like I was an idiot. “They don’t.”

“You knew she was taking drugs to keep dancing.”

“I suspected, yes, but I never saw her take anything.”

“You never asked her?”

“I didn’t want to know.”

“I thought you were a friend to her.”

“You don’t understand! You don’t know how it is! All dancers have pain, all dancers understand that, and dancers don’t tell each other how to cope!”

“Oh, nice. Same exact thing she said. ‘All dancers have pain.’ They teach that at the Dance Brainwash Academy.”

“Yeah, brainwashing.” He made an angry sound. “You wouldn’t know anything about that.”

“You have a problem with me and Lucy? We’re consenting adults. You have no idea, anyway. You shouldn’t talk a

bout shit you don’t know.”

“Exactly. And you’re not a dancer. So follow your own advice.”

“Tell me what I can do then. What do I do? Can’t you do anything? You’re her friend, can’t you convince her to stop?”

“To stop dancing?” He snorted. “It doesn’t work that way. There’s only one way she’s going to stop dancing and that’s to injure herself past the point of return. Which is not far off by the way.” He stopped a moment. “Or else...”

“Or else what?”

“There is one other way. To force her to stop.”

“What?” I would do anything, anything on earth to stop her from destroying herself.

“If she gets pregnant, she’ll have to stop dancing. At least, she’d have to stop long enough to not be able to come back.”

Pregnant. I shook away the thoughts that suddenly crowded my head. “She won’t let me anywhere near her without a condom.”

“I think if you came at her now, she’d never know.”

We both looked over at her, passed out senseless on my sofa, and I actually considered it for a moment before reason prevailed.

“I couldn’t do that to her. That would be heinous.”