Chapter 4: Miss Kitty's Claws

Chapter 4: Miss Kitty's Claws

Magnus’s sharp command, “Continue,” was a cracked whip in the charged air. He believed it was an order, a reassertion of his authority as confessor. Elara knew better. It was a plea. He was the starving man, and she was describing the feast. He couldn't help but ask for another course, no matter how much poison it contained.

A slow, deliberate smile played on her red lips. She leaned forward, the dark green fabric of her dress whispering against the leather of the chair, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial purr. “This wasn't a story of sunlight and innocence, Father. This was a story of lamplight and shadows. It happened in my old apartment, the one I had before I left town. You would have hated it.”

She paused, letting him picture it. “Canvases everywhere, stacked against the walls. The constant smell of turpentine and linseed oil, mixed with the cheap red wine I favored back then. It was chaotic, messy… alive. Not like this place.” Her glance swept the ordered, sterile study. “There are no ghosts here. My apartment was full of them.”

Magnus’s face was stone, but his eyes, those turbulent grey storms, followed her every word, his imagination trapped and forced to build the world she described.

“The pressure from Liam’s family was… suffocating,” she explained, deftly weaving the truth he had thrown at her into her own tapestry. “We felt the world closing in, their world of money and expectations. So we created our own. We played games. It started as a joke, a way to feel powerful when we were so powerless.”

She took a breath, her gaze holding his, refusing to let him escape. “One night, he called me Miss Kitty. He said I was sleek and quiet but had claws I wasn’t afraid to use. I decided to show him he was right.”

The memory rose, potent and sharp, and she pulled Magnus into it with her, forcing the pious Father to witness the scene in the theater of his mind.

---

The apartment was dark, save for the glow of the city lights painting patterns on the floor through the large, unwashed window. Liam was sitting on the edge of the bed, anxious, expectant. He had no idea what she had planned.

Elara emerged from the small bathroom. She had discarded her usual paint-splattered clothes. Tonight, she wore only black lace—a simple, elegant bra and panty set that felt like a whisper of darkness against her skin. Her red lipstick was a slash of defiance in the gloom. She was no longer Elara, the struggling artist, the worried girlfriend. She was a creation. A persona. She was Miss Kitty.

Liam’s breath caught. He made to stand, to come to her, but she held up a single, slender hand, palm out.

“Stay,” she commanded. Her voice was different. Lower, huskier, stripped of all gentleness. It was the voice of pure authority.

He froze, his beautiful face a mixture of confusion and burgeoning arousal. She walked toward him, her bare feet silent on the worn wooden floor. She didn't stop in front of him. She circled him, like a predator assessing its quarry, her hips swaying with a confidence that was intoxicating. He tried to turn his head to follow her, but she was too quick.

“Rule number one,” she whispered, her lips brushing the shell of his ear, sending a shiver through him. “You look only where I tell you to look. Right now, you look at the floor.”

He obeyed instantly, his gaze dropping to the dusty floorboards. The simple act of controlling his gaze was a heady rush of power. She stood before him now, looking down at the top of his sun-streaked hair.

“Kneel,” she said softly.

There was a fractional hesitation, a flicker of his own pride, and then it was gone, replaced by a desperate need to please her, to follow this game to its end. He slid from the bed onto the rough texture of the sisal rug, his knees making a soft scraping sound. He was now at her mercy, his head bowed.

---

In the confessional study, the air was thick enough to choke on. Elara watched Magnus’s hands, which were no longer on the desk. They were gripping his own thighs, his knuckles stark white, his powerful body rigid with a tension that was almost unbearable to witness. He was a man whose entire existence was built on command and control, forced to listen to a story where she held all the power, where another man knelt before her in willing, worshipful submission.

She was twisting the knife he had tried to stab her with. He had wanted to shame her with Liam’s weakness, but she was transforming it, showing him that weakness, that submission, had been a gift given to her.

Her voice was a silken thread, spinning the rest of the scene. “I poured a glass of the cheap wine. I didn’t drink it. I knelt in front of him, so we were face to face. His eyes were still on the floor, dutifully. I could hear the ragged sound of his breathing.”

---

“Look at me,” she ordered.

His amber eyes, wide and dark with desire, lifted to hers. She brought the wine glass to his lips. “Drink.”

He parted his lips and she tilted the glass, letting the dark red liquid spill into his mouth. A single drop escaped, tracing a path down his chin. Without thinking, he started to lift a hand to wipe it away.

“Ah-ah,” she chided gently, catching his wrist. Her grip was firm. “Rule number two: you don’t touch anything. Not me. Not yourself. Not unless I tell you to.”

She released his wrist, and his hand fell limply to his side. Then, she leaned in and slowly, deliberately, licked the drop of wine from his chin. His whole body shuddered. It was the most intimate touch, yet it was not born of affection. It was an act of ownership.

---

“I made him wait,” Elara whispered, her eyes locked on Magnus. The priest’s face was pale, a fine sheen of sweat glistening on his temples. His breathing was no longer controlled; it was shallow, ragged. He looked like a man on the rack. “I explored every inch of him with my eyes, my words. I told him what I would do to him, how I would touch him. I made him beg for it. And when he did… when this beautiful boy was completely undone, pleading with me… I denied him.”

She let that final, cruel detail land. “I told him that the point of the game wasn't his pleasure. It was my power.”

This confession wasn’t about absolution. It was a vivisection. She was using her past like a scalpel, laying bare the raw, hungry man hidden beneath the holy robes. The line between penitent and seductress, between confessor and voyeur, had not just blurred; it had been utterly erased. They were two combatants in a silent, vicious war of desire, and she was watching with a wicked, triumphant satisfaction as the great Father Magnus Blackwood began to lose.

His control was a dam, and her words were the relentless, hammering water. Cracks were showing everywhere. She had challenged his authority, his masculinity, his very identity. She had painted a vivid picture of her in absolute command, and now, the image was burned into his mind.

She leaned back in her chair, the picture of cool composure, though her own body thrummed with a dangerous, live-wire energy.

“Was that a specific enough sin for you, Father?” she asked, her voice laced with honeyed poison.