Chapter 37: The Confession
The silence in the taxi back to the hotel was a physical thing, thick and suffocating. Iris stared out the window at the passing grandeur of Madrid, her body humming with a spent, metallic ache. The bell between her legs was still, a forgotten relic. Ben sat angled away from her, his jaw clenched so tight a muscle flickered in his cheek.
“You can say it,” Iris said, her voice hoarse from disuse.
“Say what?” Ben’s words were clipped. “That you’re a masterpiece? That’s what he called you, right? Mi obra de arte.”
Iris flinched. The memory of Esteban’s voice, possessive and reverent, sent a fresh, unwanted pang through her core. It wasn’t shame. It was hunger. A craving for the exact brand of obliteration he’d provided. “It was a transaction, Ben. A good one.”
“Yeah. I counted the money.” He finally looked at her, his eyes etched with a pain that was older than this morning. “Iris… when does it stop?”
She had no answer. The taxi pulled up to their hotel, just as impressive as the gleaming tower they’d left. They made their way up to the penthouse suite, Iris’s body protesting each step. Inside, she went straight to the shower, turning the water as hot as she could stand. She caressed her skin, reliving the feeling of Esteban’s hands, his mouth, his cock, all of which seemed imprinted beneath the surface. The soap stung her piercings. She welcomed the bite. She then slept.
Later, wrapped in a towel, she booted up her laptop. It was 2:55 PM. Her session with Dr. Thorne was in five minutes. A perverse energy crackled through her exhaustion. Ben hovered in the doorway.
“You have your call,” he said flatly.
“I do.”
“Are you going to tell him about your… punctuation marks?”
Iris smiled, a slow, cold stretching of her lips. “In exquisite detail.”
She waited until Ben retreated, the door clicking shut with finality. The room was dim, the afternoon sun blocked by heavy drapes. She opened the telehealth portal. The connection chimed, and Dr. Elias Thorne’s face filled the screen. His office was a study in controlled, bookish calm, a world away from the penthouse and the red-lit club.
“Iris,” he said, his voice measured. “How are you this week?”
Instead of answering, she stood up, letting the towel fall to the floor. The laptop’s camera captured her from the waist up. She watched his face on her screen. His expression didn’t change, but his eyes—his eyes darkened, the professional mask tightening imperceptibly.
“I met a man,” she said, her tone conversational. “A collector. He wanted to see my art.” She ran her hands over her breasts, her thumbs circling the raised metal of the barbells through her wet skin.
Thorne steepled his fingers. “Iris, this is a therapeutic space. We need to use words.”
“Words are inadequate, Doctor.” Her hands drifted down over her stomach. She leaned back slightly in the chair, angling her hips, and then spread her legs wide. The laptop camera now had a direct, intimate view. The chain glinted, the small bell dangling. The eight rings on her inner labia were still swollen and vivid against her flushed skin. “He commissioned this. Do you like it?”
Thorne’s breath audibly hitched. He recovered quickly. “The purpose of our work is to understand the compulsion, not to catalog its manifestations.”
“But the manifestation is the compulsion,” Iris whispered, her voice dropping. She let one hand slide down, fingers tracing the chain, setting the bell tinkling softly in the quiet room. A moan escaped her lips, theatrical and raw. She kept her eyes locked on his pixelated image. “He paid ten thousand euros to fuck this specific artwork. He had me in a penthouse overlooking the entire city. He pressed me against the glass and told me I was a perfect, filthy cunt.”
“Iris—”
“He fucked me so hard I saw stars,” she continued, her voice gaining a feverish pitch. Her fingers moved from the chain, parting herself, revealing the slick, pink flesh within. “And he came inside me.So deep. I can still feel it.” She slipped two fingers inside herself, her back arching. “Tell me I’m sick, Doctor. Tell me this is a pathology. While I’m fucking myself, thinking about his cock. Tell me.”
Thorne was silent. On the screen, his knuckles were white where he gripped the edge of his desk.
“He made me come from anal alone,” Iris gasped, working her fingers deeper. “No one’s ever done that. He just… took it. He used me like a toy, and I’ve never felt more whole. I’ve never felt more real.” Her performance was crumbling into genuine, shuddering need. She added a third finger, stretching herself, mimicking the overwhelming fullness of Esteban. “I was just a thing for him to use. A beautiful, expensive thing. And it was… it was everything.”
Tears, hot and sudden, streaked down her cheeks even as her body convulsed toward a simulacrum of orgasm. The contradiction was grotesque and true. “I’m so full of joy, Elias,” she sobbed, using his first name for the first time, her composure shattering. “And he filled me. He filled all the welcoming places. Why does that make me a monster?”
Thorne’s professional detachment finally fissured. “You are not a monster, Iris.” His voice was low, strained. “You are a human being in profound pain, seeking connection in the only way your psyche currently allows. This… this acting out. It’s a scream for help.”
“I don’t want help!” she screamed back at the screen, her body trembling. “I want to be used! I want to be owned! I want to be so thoroughly fucked that I forget my own name!” She was humping her own hand now, lost in a frenzy of self-love and electric desire. “He understood. He looked at me and he saw the need. He didn’t pathologize it. He fucked it.”
She came then, a silent, wrenching climax that contorted her face and made her thighs shake violently. She slumped forward, forehead against the cool wood of the desk, breathing ragged.
The digital silence stretched. When she looked up, Thorne’s face was pale, his expression one of devastated comprehension. He had seen the raw nerve, the gaping wound she hid from everyone, even Ben.
“Your friend, Ben,” Thorne said quietly, each word careful. “He cares for you. Deeply. This life… it will kill you, Iris. Or it will kill the part of you that can still feel anything beyond this.”
Iris wiped her face with the back of her hand. A grim smile touched her lips. “I think it's the exact opposite Dr Thorne....”
“The session is over,” Thorne said, his voice regaining some of its clinical steadiness, but it was hollow now. “I strongly recommend we move to in-person sessions when you return. This medium… has limitations.”
“You mean you can’t handle what you see?” Iris taunted, but the fire was gone from her voice.
“Goodbye, Iris.” The screen went black.
She sat in the gloom for a long time. The frantic energy was gone, replaced by a deep, marrow-level exhaustion. She pulled on a t-shirt and collapsed onto the bed, the memory of Thorne’s shattered composure playing behind her eyes. It was a different kind of power, unsettling and sour.
The door opened. Ben entered, carrying a paper bag of delicasies. He took in her prone form, the closed laptop.
“How was your head-shrinker?” he asked, his voice softer now.
“Enlightening,” Iris murmured into the pillow.
Ben put the bag down. He came and sat on the edge of the bed. He didn’t touch her. “I got you food. You need to eat.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“Eat anyway.” It wasn’t a request. It was an act of stubborn, loving care. He went to the small table and began unpacking: fresh bread, cheese, figs, slices of jamón. Simple, good things. He prepared a plate and brought it to her, setting it on the nightstand.
Iris finally rolled over. She looked at him, really looked. At the worry in his eyes, the steadfast, aching loyalty. The hollowness inside her echoed. She reached for a fig, bit into its sweet, seeded flesh.
“He said you care for me,” she said.
Ben’s gaze didn’t waver. “He’s a smart man.”
“He said this will kill me.”
Ben swallowed hard. “I know.”
They sat in the gathering darkness, the only sound Iris’s quiet chewing. The bell between her legs was silent. The money from Esteban would by in her crpto account already. The art on her body felt suddenly heavy, like chainmail. For the first time, the craving inside her felt like an unquenchable flame, unlike Elias who saw it as a cold, dead star, consuming everything from the inside out.