Burn for You Read Online Free PDF

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