Hurt for Me

by Heather Levy

Thomas Highsmith. He looked powerless kneeling on the floor at Rae’s feet, which was exactly how she wanted him to feel. It’s what he paid her a lot of money to do. During the day, Thomas was an executive accountant for one of the big oil and gas companies, the kind that supposedly kept Oklahoma City at the forefront of growth and opportunity even as the prisons filled with people convicted of minor drug offenses and public schools crumbled and closed from lack of funding.

Thomas was thirty-three, a couple of years younger than her, and he was exactly her type—tall with dark, unruly hair and soft brown eyes that made him appear innocent when she knew he was anything but.

Viv made it easy for her to forget about Echo and everything that had happened in Santa Monica.

“Hurt is temporary, but harm is long term. And harm can also go much deeper than physical pain.

“Action without intention is like a novice artist slapping clay around, making a mess of it like you are now,” Viv once told her during a particularly grueling training session. “But if you put intention behind your commands, behind every impact on skin, that’s when clay shapes into art. That’s when you can create a masterpiece with a person’s desires.”

“Sometimes I forget,” Viv said, almost in a whisper. “Forget what?” Viv finally looked at her, the yellow streetlights creating a shadow mosaic across her face. “How dangerous wounded animals can be.”

Without a single reservation, she knew she’d have to hold certain secrets until the day she died. For the most part, it didn’t bother her too much, but she missed intimacy. Not sex but true intimacy, where you share those dark, hidden parts and feel acceptance. Since she could never tell a partner, “Hey, I once killed two men in a fire I started,” what she wanted would never be in the cards for her.

Rae took a few deep breaths and told Lily the rest. All of it, about how Clint accidentally killed Beth with an overdose, about Maria getting Katelyn before she died—whether an accidental overdose or not—and how Rae escaped with Katelyn after drugging Bobby, shooting Clint, and starting the fire.

“They killed him because he was taking money from them to pay me?”

“He knew he fucked up, but I don’t think he realized how deep he was in. After they knew he was fired from Arkana, they didn’t have a safe way to launder the money through him, and Thomas was in heavy debt. A man without a job can’t very well be transferring money to an investment account. He was no longer valuable to them, and he stole from them. Basically, he was screwed either way.”

Rae’s eyes hardened. “If they touch her in any way, they will hurt for me in ways they’ve never dreamed.”

And then I had the idea about the dominatrix business, and Angel had the brains to make it happen.”