Master of Pleasure Read Online Free PDF Page A

justice. You are here for the same reason he is: to be molded into something more.” Bissette watched him with a hard, stoic expression reserved for those who disappointed him. “You will write a detailed letter to your own father explaining why I extended your penance by another year. Be certain to include the costs involved. Am I understood in this? Or would you rather I write the letter?”
    It was pointless to even argue. His father would only take the side of the luminary. God before son. “I will write to him, Monsieur .”
    “Good.” Bissette pointed to the slab of stone set before him on the ground. “Let us now focus on your soul’s perpetual need for restraint. Pray for the forgiveness only God can give.”
    Malcolm grudgingly knelt on the stone, his knees long accustomed to the ache of a hard surface penetrating his bones. Bringing his hands together and folding them in prayer, he lifted his gaze beyond the man, beyond the old tree and beyond the stoned walls of the garden that were too high to climb. “O Lord, prepare my soul for the punishment I deserve. Amen.” It was the only prayer he could muster.
    “Stand.” Bissette wagged his fingers, demanding it.
    Malcolm rose to his feet.
    “Remove everything, including your boots.”
    Sometimes, he wondered if the bastard enjoyed whipping naked boys. Stripping his linen shirt with the shrug of both muscled arms, Malcolm tossed it aside onto the grass. Kicking off his boots and wool stockings, he unbuttoned the flap of his trousers and shoved them down along with his undergarments. The cool air tightened his bare skin.
    “Gather them and set them aside.”
    Malcolm neatly folded his clothes and set them aside.
    “Face me.”
    Squaring his bare shoulders, he faced the luminary and placed his hands against his cock for the sake of protecting it against blows. Help me, Lord. I have stupidly gotten myself into a situation I cannot get out of. I thought my time here would be spent in Your presence and in prayer. Not this. This is not what I want to be.
    Bissette snapped up the leather and metal strap laid out at his booted feet and approached, crushing the tall grass with solid movements. Wrapping its end around his hand, he whirled the length of the thick strap, forcing the air to whistle around it.
    Malcolm closed his eyes. The first lash was always the worst.
    The blow of the leather strap bounced off his back and made him gasp. The metal sewn between the leather spliced into his skin like a blade, but he defiantly remained standing.
    Grunting to keep the blows steady, Bissette struck downward with a full arm swing from over his head and down, skidding and dashing the strap into flesh and bone. “Four…five…six…”
    Blinded by tears he could no longer control, Malcolm staggered beneath each skull-penetrating impact of metal and leather, his legs growing unstable and weak. His heart responded by pounding so fast and so out of control, it made him lightheaded. Glimmers of euphoria found him only to remind him it was nothing but pain. He choked and gasped for breaths, unable to hear the count and eventually stopped fighting it. He let that dark, dark morbid part of himself, the one he’d always shoved away, enjoy the pain.
    He was now his brother.
    A loud crack shook his core as the metal snapped in half against the flesh of his upper thigh. Everything whirled white beneath his eyelids as the taste of blood filled his mouth. Malcolm staggered forward and back, no longer feeling a part of the world. It was beautiful. In a pulsing void, he watched his own blood slowly finger its way down his arms and legs.
    “ Enough !” someone boomed, sending an echo throughout the courtyard. “ How dare you go against what I commanded? You were not supposed to touch him! ”
    The air seemed to thicken. It was Nasser.
    A flurry of blurring words were feverishly exchanged between Bissette, Nasser and all of Nasser’s servants who grabbed the blood-soaked strap from