But he wasn’t allowed to come yet. He had to earn it first.

She locked his wrists to the bars of the cross.

“So...St. Andrew. Fun guy.” She left him standing at the cross while she went to a tiny box and pulled out five silver needle-sharp fingernail extenders. Talons, she called them. How fortuitous that she’d gotten a brand-new set of them this week and sanitized them with fire that very morning. “He was Peter’s brother supposedly. The Peter—the first pope. They were fishermen, both of them. Brutal profession, catching fish. The rope nets tore up the hands. The work was backbreaking. And imagine how the fish felt—caught in a net, dragged to the surface, drowning in air. They couldn’t get free no matter how hard they struggled.”

He pulled on the bounds that held him to the cross.

“I can sympathize,” he said, the lightest hint of amusement in his voice.

“And worse than the net was, of course, the hook.”

With those words she pricked his back with her talons. He flinched and five tiny drops of blood appeared on his shoulder like a red constellation.

“That fucking hook,” she sighed. “Can you imagine how much it would hurt to have a hook in your mouth? And then to get dragged by that hook all the way to the surface...brutal.”

She moved her hand down and left another five bleeding pinholes in his back.

“We are solitary, poor, nasty, brutish creatures, we humans,” he said between winces. “We deserve all the punishment God has to give us.”

“I suppose that makes me an instrument of God’s wrath, doesn’t it? I kind of like the thought of that. Here’s a little more wrath for you.”

She ran her talons in a straight line down his back, leaving four shallow bleeding rivulets about three inches long. He panted through the pain and she could only smile. With her free hand she reached around his hip and felt his erection pressing against her hand. Nasty and brutish—his favorite way to play. Luckily, it was hers, too.

“Poor St. Andrew...he was crucified, too. An X-shaped cross, not a T-shaped. He didn’t think he was worthy to die on the same sort of cross as his Lord. His brother Peter had already been crucified upside down. He couldn’t go that route, either. They got very creative with their crucifying. We might have to get creative one of these days....”

The Mistress let that threat hang in the air as she unbuttoned his trousers. While she stroked him with one hand, her other hand continued to prick his back with tiny pinholes. She’d undergone this particular torture herself a time or two. Bee stings hurt worse but only barely. And at least the bee died after stinging you. No such luck with a sadistic Mistress. She wasn’t going anywhere and had nothing but more pain to give him.

“I’ve always wondered about your love of pain.” She ran a finger from the base of his erection to the tip and back down again. “Born masochist? Or made? Nature? Nurture?”