Chapter 5: The Kennel at Dawn
The first thing Matt registered was the hardness of the floor against his hip. Not the plush, unbearable mattress of the dream-room, but unyielding cool tile. The second was a soft, shuddering breath from his left.He opened his eyes. Gray morning light seeped through the high, factory-style windows of the kennel room, painting the reinforced steel mesh of the enclosures in dull pewter.He was in his kennel. To his left, in an identical cage separated only by thick bars, Ryland lay curled on his side, naked, asleep or unconscious.A line of dried saliva traced from his mouth to the floor.
Memory returned not as a flood, but as a cold, settling fact.The pool.The kiss.The water.The ritual. He had done that.He had welcomed his best friend into this. A strange pride mingled with the ash-taste of shame.He had performed a function.He had been useful.
The click of the latch was deafening in the quiet.
Cat stood at the door, backlit by the softer light of the loft.She wore a crimson silk robe tied loosely at her waist. In her hands was a single steel bowl, steam curling lazily from its contents. She surveyed them for a moment, her sharp features neutral, then walked softly to Ryland’s kennel.
She unlocked it with a small key that appeared from her robe pocket.The squeak of the hinge made Ryland stir. He blinked, confused, his eyes taking in the bars, the room, then Cat silhouetted in the open doorway. A jolt of pure, animal fear flashed across his face, then smoothed into a placid, waiting blankness.The spell held, its roots already deep.
“Good morning, puppy,” Cat said, her voice a melodic hum. “Are you hungry?”
Ryland nodded slowly, pushing himself to his knees.
“Come.”
He crawled out of the kennel on his hands and knees.The motion was clumsy, unpracticed.He stopped at her feet, his head bowed. She placed the steel bowl on the floor in front of him. It held plain oatmeal, no sugar, no fruit.“Eat,” she commanded.
He leaned forward and began to eat, his face dipping into the bowl, lapping at the gruel. He didn’t use his hands.A low, submissive whine escaped him as he ate. Cat watched, one hand resting on her hip, her expression one of mild, clinical interest. She glanced over at Matt, meeting his eyes through the bars.She gave him a small, knowing smile.Matt watched. He felt his stomach growl.He watched his friend eat like an animal. He felt nothing but a quiet anticipation of his own role.When Ryland had licked the bowl clean, Cat picked it up. “Good boy.” She patted his head, fingers tangling in his damp blond hair. Then she turned to Matt’s kennel.She unlocked his door. “Out.”
Matt crawled out, mirroring Ryland’s posture, stopping beside him on the cold floor. The tile was unforgiving on his knees.
Cat gestured to Ryland’s face, which was smeared with bits of oatmeal.“Look at the mess you let him make, Matt. Clean him up.”
Matt didn’t hesitate. He leaned in and began to lick the oatmeal from Ryland’s chin, his cheek.The taste was bland, pasty. Ryland remained perfectly still, his eyes closed, his breathing shallow.When Matt was finished, Cat nodded.
“Stand up, both of you.”
They got to their feet, unsteady.The air was chill. Cat circled them, her robe whispering against the floor.“Ryland, tell me something about yourself.Before last night. What did you do?”
Ryland’s voice was hoarse but clear.“I’m a software developer. For a fintech startup.”
“Boring,” Cat said lightly. “What do you love?”
He frowned, the first sign of a struggle behind his eyes. “I… I like to take pictures.Photography.Portraits, mostly.”
Cat stopped her circling. A new, sharper interest sparked in her gaze.“Are you any good?”
“I… I think so. I had a show at a coffee shop last year.”
“Perfect,” she breathed.“A long weekend. No work for anyone. We’re going to do a little project.” She walked to a shelf and took down two simple black cotton robes, tossing one to each of them.“Put these on. Come to the main room. Ryland, you’ll need your phone.”
The loft felt cavernous after the intimacy of the kennels. Leo was at the workbench, polishing what looked like a set of intricate leather cuffs.Ben was folding laundry in a corner. David sat on the divan, reading a newspaper as if everything were perfectly normal. Cat went to a large antique chest and pulled out a digital camera—a professional-looking thing with a long lens. She checked the battery and nodded to herself.“Matt, on the divan. Sit in the middle.”
Matt obeyed, sinking into the deep velvet. David, without a word, shifted a few inches to give him room, never looking up from his paper.Cat handed the camera to Ryland. “You know how to use this better than I do.I want you to take his picture. I want you to capture… his essence.” She tilted her head. “But first, a little inspiration.”
She approached Matt, standing over him.She placed her thumbs on his temples.Her touch was cool. She closed her eyes, and a pulse of energy, invisible but palpable, shot through Matt’s skull. It wasn’t the brutal, dream-forging magic of before. This was a fine-tuned adjustment, a twisting of a dial already set to maximum.The effect was instantaneous and catastrophic. Every nerve ending in his body awoke, screaming.The rough nap of the velvet robe against his skin became a torment of sensation. The air moving past his face was a caress. The simple act of breathing felt obscenely intimate.A hard, aching need coiled in his gut, so intense it was dizzying. He gasped, his hands gripping the divan’s cushions.
“There,” Cat said, stepping back.“Now. Let’s see what you see through that lens, Ryland.”
Ryland lifted the camera, his movements becoming fluid, practiced.He peered through the viewfinder. The nervous submissive was gone, replaced by the focused artist. He circled the divan, the camera’s shutter clicking in rapid, soft bursts.“Good,” he muttered, more to himself than anyone. “The light from the window… turn your head just… yes.”
Matt tried to hold still, but the enhanced sensitivity made every minor shift feel like a seismic event. The robe felt like sackcloth and fire.He was painfully, visibly aroused.
“The robe is a lie,” Cat said, perched on the arm of the divan.“Take it off him, Ryland. Capture the truth underneath.”
Ryland lowered the camera.For a second, the artist conflicted with the slave. Then he stepped forward. He didn’t yank, but gently untied the belt of Matt’s robe and pushed it off his shoulders.The cool air was like a slap.Matt shuddered.
“Perfect,” Ryland breathed, raising the camera again.The shutter clicks became more urgent. He moved closer, crouching, capturing angles of throat, of torso, of trembling hands. “Don’t look at me.Look through me. Think about… about what you need.”
Matt’s vision blurred.He was thinking about it.He was drowning in it. Every click of the shutter felt like a touch he couldn’t have. Leo had stopped polishing and was watching, a faint smile on his lips.Ben had stopped folding.David had lowered his newspaper.
Cat watched Ryland work, her expression one of deep satisfaction. She wasn’t just having them perform; she was forging a new dynamic. Ryland, the observer, the documenter, was being made complicit in Matt’s exposure, in his agony. He was learning to objectify his friend with a professional’s detachment.
“Get on your knees on the floor,” Ryland instructed, his voice assuming a quiet authority.Matt slid from the divan to the hard concrete. The shock of the cold surface against his knees made him cry out softly.“Yes,” Ryland whispered, clicking away.“That. The contrast. The vulnerability against the hardness.”
He shot for what felt like hours, adjusting Matt’s poses with soft, direct touches—a hand tilting his chin, a finger tracing a line down his spine.Each touch was a brand. Matt’s world narrowed to the lens, to the desperate craving in his blood, and to Ryland’s focused eyes just behind the camera.
Finally, Ryland straightened up, lowering the camera.He looked drained, exhilarated. “I think… I think I got it.”
Cat stood and walked over, taking the camera from him. She scrolled through the images on the small screen, her face illuminated by the glow. She smiled, a real, bright smile.“These are extraordinary, Ryland.You have a gift.” She patted his cheek. Then she looked down at Matt, who was kneeling, shaking, utterly spent on the floor. “And you.You made such a beautiful subject. So… available.”
She handed the camera back to Ryland.“Upload these to my computer.Edit your favorites. I want to see them on the big screen tonight.” She then nudged Matt with her toe. “You can stay there for a while.Think about the pictures. Think about how pretty you looked.”
She turned and walked towards the kitchen, calling over her shoulder with casual lightness, “Leo, make some coffee, will you? It’s been a productive morning.”
Matt knelt on the cold floor, the phantom clicks of the shutter still echoing in his ears, his heightened senses now only feeding a deep, hollow exhaustion. Ryland was already at the computer, plugging in the camera, his fingers moving over the keyboard with a dutiful efficiency.He did not look back at his friend on the floor. He was already looking at him through a lens, a series of pixels, a project approved by his Mistress. The transformation was settling, hardening into a new and terrible normal.
Ryland’s eyes remained fixed on the computer screen, flicking across images of Matt’s exposed anguish. He zoomed in on a shot of Matt’s hands, clenched white on his thighs. Cat watched him from behind, her shadow falling over the keyboard. She placed her hands on his shoulders, feeling the tension there.
“They’re good,” she murmured into his ear. “You see the pain so clearly.” Her hands slid down his chest, over the soft cotton of his t-shirt. One drifted lower, palming the growing stiffness in his jeans. He let out a shaky breath but didn’t stop clicking and adjusting sliders on the screen. The color balance on a photo of Matt’s arched back shifted, the shadows deepening.
“Keep working,” she whispered, her fingers working his belt buckle, then the button of his jeans. He lifted his hips slightly to help her, a tiny, shameful compliance. She slipped her hand inside his boxers, finding him already hard and slick at the tip. Her other hand curled around his throat, not squeezing, just holding. She began to stroke him, her rhythm slow and exact, matching the deliberate clicks of his mouse.
She watched the photos flash by—Matt’s vulnerable throat, the desperate line of his jaw—as her hand moved on Ryland. “You framed his suffering so beautifully,” she said, her voice a hypnotic drone. She leaned in and began to lick the side of his face, a long, slow stripe from jaw to temple. He shuddered, his fingers stumbling on the keys.
“Why were you a virgin, Ryland?” she asked, her mouth near his ear, her hand never stopping. “Before I found you.”
The question hung in the air, a trapdoor beneath his focus. His hips gave a tiny, involuntary thrust into her fist. “I… it was… religious reasons,” he gasped, the confession torn from him. “My family. My… faith. It was important.”
“Faith,” Cat repeated, the word a soft, poisonous thing. She tightened her grip just slightly on his throat. “In what? A story? A list of rules written by dead men who were afraid of this?” Her hand moved faster, twisting on the upstroke. The computer screen blurred in his vision, the images of Matt dissolving into streaks of color and shadow.
“Those rules kept you empty,” she hissed. “They kept you waiting for a reward that never comes. There is no heaven, Ryland. There’s only this.” Her tongue traced the shell of his ear. “There’s only my hand. There’s only the truth of your body, which I own. Your god is a ghost. I am right here.”
She was rewriting his history with every stroke, erasing a lifetime of doctrine with visceral, physical fact. “Say it,” she demanded, her voice low and iron. “There is no god.”
A broken sound escaped him, part sob, part moan. “There… there is no god.”
“There is only me.”
“There is only you.” The words were a wet, shattered whisper. His entire body was rigid, a wire pulled taut. The logical part of his mind, the coder who built systems on rationality, collapsed under the sensory avalanche. It was the final, terrible conversion. His faith, the last untouched chamber of his old self, was now just another empty room for her to occupy.
“Then give me your prayer,” she breathed, her teeth grazing his earlobe. Her hand worked him relentlessly, a brutal, perfect tempo. His knees knocked against the desk. The world narrowed to that singular, building pressure, a seismic wave with no outlet but her command.
He came with a choked, silent scream, buckling forward over the keyboard, his release hot and abrupt inside his jeans. It was a violation of every former vow, a wet, shameful consecration of his new atheism. She held him through the pulses, her hand still, her body pressed against his shuddering back. On the screen, the photo editor flashed an error message, his face having pressed random keys.
She slowly withdrew her hand, wiping her fingers on his shirt. She kissed his sweaty temple. “There,” she said, her voice bright and horrifically normal. “Now you’re free. Clean yourself up. I want those edits finished in an hour.”
She walked away, leaving him slumped and stained at the desk, a different kind of virginity lost. The smell of sex and salt hung in the air. Across the room, Matt watched from his knees, understanding dawning in his hollowed-out eyes. He had been broken with dreams and need. Ryland had just been broken with truth. The methodology was different, but the result was the same. They were both hers, completely, and the photos on the screen were the proof.