Violence made him hungry, or maybe he had associated most of his feeding with lust. He didn’t ask, glasses pressing into my cheek for a single moment before his teeth sunk into my skin. He wrapped his arms tighter around me, pressing his weight against me without really doing so. I could feel him swallow, tongue unmoving against my neck, he didn’t even need to remove his fangs from me to move us to the other side of couch. He kept me from falling backwards off his lap at the first moment I became dizzy, even going so far as to press my hips against his abdomen.

When he finally removed his canines from me, I was breathing hard, holding onto the back of the couch. He licked the blood dripping from the wound, at my Adam’s apple, making his way to my mouth. His tongue scraped the roof of my palate, stroked mine, tasting so saccharine I thought I would develop cavities the more we kissed. I felt weak the longer it went on, his hands haven’t even touched me skin to skin. I didn’t want him to pull back, to let me slide to the floor in front of him. “Put your bracelet on, August,” he said. He stared at me below him, panting still from the kiss, from him feeding.

I swallowed, inching closer to his knees on all fours. “I…I traded it.” Malachai leaned forward, pushing his glasses up his nose. “It was…It was the only thing I had…”

He grabbed my jaw, squeezing his fingers into my cheeks. “Did you offer it before or after your earrings?” I looked away, knowing neither answer was what he wanted to hear. “Save it,” he let go, picking up his box of toys hidden under the couch. He pulled out a leather collar, reminiscent of a dog’s with one metal loop on the front. He tilted my head up, setting the collar in place. “You’re just a dog, a mutt, really.” He hooked his finger through the loop, pulling me so my Adam’s apple was against his kneecap. “Maybe I should’ve started with this, make you really understand that I own you. And everything you own, is mine.” He slipped his finger from the loop, but I made no movements of my own, transfixed in his blue eyes. “I have final say in all your decisions, understand?”

 “Y-Ye—” He kneed my chin, my mouth clattering shut.

 “I don’t remember dogs talking.” He dug through his box, and I woofed for him, a sense of embarrassment growing in me. “I don’t remember dogs wearing clothes, either.” I took off my clothes, one piece at a time while my chin throbbed. I was down to my underwear. He rubbed his hand through my hair, down my cheek. “Every good boy needs his training.” He clipped a leash to the collar, giving him more control over me. “I will make you my dog until you learn.” He pulled the leash taught. “I suppose we should go over some rules.” His thumb moved back and forth against my chin, easing the pain in a rhythmic fashion while he spoke. I wasn’t to use language unless to say my safe word, or to ask him to use the bathroom. He may be treating me like a dog, but he wasn’t going to force me to do my business outside like one. When he would feed me, he would allow me to eat like a human. In every other way, however, I was to act like his dog. “If you can follow the rules, you’ll be rewarded, but,” he wrapped the leash around his wrist, choking me just slightly as the pressure double against my Adam’s apple, “you’ll be punished if you can’t.”

I spent a week acting as his dog, and at some point the embarrassment didn’t bother me. I followed all his rules, all his directions, as he “trained” me. Part of me wanted to slip-up just to find out what the punishment would be. The rewards he gave me put the growing curiosity to rest. It was different each time, he let me put my clothes back on, would praise me, or let me cuddle with him. It was starting to feel rather nice to follow his directions and orders. I didn’t want it to end, my head filled with the feeling of his hand in my hair, or his body next to mine. At the end of it, I really felt he owned me, at least in some sense; a wife that was to submit to her husband, if anything.

The last day, before he said he would end my little “training,” I was to do something for him. Not as a dog, but as myself, as the person he wanted to exercise control over. I was to put my experience as a dog into practice. I was ready for whatever it was he wanted, I didn’t expect he would show me a sewing needle. I was to put all my trust into Malachai, to let him lead me down a path I had barely traveled down.

He kissed me, letting my brain begin to soak in that stupefying sweetness. He took my shirt off, pushing me into the mattress, a needle between his teeth. He stabbed the needle next to my right areola, and I grabbed his wrist at the first instance of pain. “No touching,” he said, grinding it deeper. I moved my hands above my head, and as if to reward me, he started to grind his knee against me. “It’s not so bad.” He sucked at the tip of another needle. “Let me pierce your nipple.”

I breathed out, half in anticipation, and half in fear. “O…Okay.”

Malachai bit the needle. “Good answer.” He started pulling and pinching at my nipple, only agitating the first needle. It started burning a little and it scared me a little at how much fun he was having. He took the needle from his mouth and pulled my nipple taut. He touched the needle to the side of my nipple, pushing it just slightly. “It’ll be a pinch,” he said as if to a child and pushed the needle all the way, his knee kneading me more. I cried out a mix of pleasure and pain. I wasn’t sure what to feel, what was supposed to be the correct emotion in this case. “You’re being such a good boy. Oh—” he stopped himself for a moment, “Did me piercing your nipple make you that hard?”

 “I don’t…I don’t know,” I gasped, riding the mixture of emotions that was him pinching and pulling my now pierced nipple.

He pulled out the needle by my areola, twisting it as he did. “If you tell the truth I’ll do the other one.” He put the needle between his teeth, sucking at the little bead of blood on it as he slid his hands over my body and stopped right before the top of my jeans.

I looked into his blue eyes. “I…I liked it,” I decided. The jolt of pain that dissipated into something more pleasurable when he pulled at the fresh piercing…I wanted more. “Do it.”

He pulled my left nipple, stabbed the needle through in one quick motion, my hips bucking at the satisfying pain. Tears dripped from the corner of my eyes as he pinched it. “Don’t cry,” he cupped my cheek to wipe away my tears with one hand while he dug around his pockets with the other.

I leaned into his hand, kissing the palm. “I…want…more.” I grabbed the sheets above my hands.

He held another needle between his teeth, smiling. I was convinced I saw spirals in his eyes from how much he was enjoying himself. “You’re being such a good boy, August.”

He took the needle from his mouth, tugged at the skin above my belly button. It hurt a little bit from him pinching it and I squeezed the sheets even harder as he pushed the needle through. I thought he was going to tear through the skin as he moved the needle up, only to stab it through the skin underneath my belly button. The sharp pain was brief as it turned to a steady throb in every area a needle sat. Malachai finally slid my jeans off, peeling my underwear off next.

He licked at another needle. “You’re so wet,” he said as he took me in his hand. He held me still, then I was blinded by pain, my mind and eyes going black. His laughing, his words, “You came,” brought me back to my senses. “I have one more. I want to put it in your lips,” he barely moved his mouth, a needle against his lips. “Can I?”

“Can you…kiss me first?” I asked. He caught my lips in his. I was losing myself in his soft lips, his sweet saliva. Through the haze I found myself in, I pressed my foot into his crotch, and he swallowed back a groan as I added more pressure. “I want…this, too,” I let out a moan into his mouth.

He pulled his face away from me, letting the last bit of spit fall into my mouth as his glasses hit me in the face. “I know.” He lined up the needle with my bottom lip. I wanted to scream when he forced the needle through my bottom lip, and I wanted to cry when he pushed it through my upper lip. But I felt how aroused he was watching me squirm in searing pain. “You’re such a good boy.” He leaned off the bed to grab something off the floor.

Malachai doused his fingers in lube. With one hand he rubbed at my entrance, with the other, he picked his glasses off my face and placed them on his nose. I felt his finger in me before I felt him move my leg to his shoulder, his mouth by my ankle. He kissed it as he put another finger in, pressing where I loved it the most. His teeth grazed my skin, biting gently. I kept myself from kicking him when he slid another finger in, biting a little harder. He kept his focus on the veins in my ankle, and I tried to tell him not to bite through the needle in my lips, only for it to change into moans when he finally slid himself into me. I felt, heard, my spine crack as he forced me into a position I was certain no human should be in.

That was when I saw what had happened with the fourth needle: he had pushed it through the tip of my member. It was hard to be mad at Malachi for doing that when he pressed everywhere I loved, everywhere he started to cultivate to make me this way. I loved it. I loved it when he pulled on my throbbing nipples. I loved listening to him moan as he tried to get deeper and deeper in me. And I loved that he wasn’t going to stop until either of us were fully satisfied. I came as he hit that spot; my body trying to shut itself down from the pain now that the urge to leave an offspring was fading out of me. My mind was screaming to stay awake at least until he finished, but I started to get so dizzy I wasn’t sure when I fell asleep, and when he came.

I woke up in pain, in new clothes, the collar still around my throat. Malachai was missing, and I stood unsteadily from the bed. Standing doubled the pain, I hugged the walls as I made my way to the rest of his apartment. My nipples felt sore as my shirt brushed against them. They perked up the more the fabric rubbed against them, an odd outline appearing. I pulled my shirt up to see barbell piercings through them, staring at them as Malachai stared at me. “Did…Did you sleep well?” He asked. Before I could answer him, his phone rang. He fumbled with it, and while it was slightly muffled, I heard the words, “This is bigger than you and me.” The blood drained from his face, using all his willpower to keep from throwing his phone on the floor. “August,” he said, “we shouldn’t…we shouldn’t stay in the States any longer.”