It was delightful, those moans. True beauty, distilled into something more pure than any heavenly choir’s song. The sound of someone just on the verge of giving up, clinging to one last fiber of pleasure and pain, not sure which it was. I crouched down low over the chair, drawing the cool metal lightly along the line of his jaw, teasing another sound from his throat. It wasn’t a whimper, not quite, and it sounded almost like a ‘please’ if I listened just right. He twisted against his bonds again, the nylon rope silent; I lamented that concession to my art, the quietude of the stronger synthetic fibers. The creak that traditional hemp made was so much more atmospheric, a pitched counterpoint to the symphony I was creating in this dark room with his body and voice.

“As you wish,” I purred, continuing my art and languorously savoring every stroke and slide. His voice gave depth and life and verve to my creation, the piercing yin to my scalpel’s crimson yang. Another beautiful carving, another beautiful moan.