After turning the knob as silently as a teenager sneaking back home after midnight, the door quietly opened with a gentle push. It was even more silen... than it had been before. Looking up, I found Jack facing into the corner of the shower. His body was lean but there was no sign of his ribcage; slim but not thin, toned but not unnaturally muscular. He didn’t appear to have heard me, or if he had he’d ignored my presence. I closed the door again, but not all the way. The shower was a walk in. Also, you will get assigned a cage and you will get a collar, and your own ball gag. You’ll get your tattoo tomorrow. I’ll go fetch Master.’ The woman leaves and I scan my surroundings. It is a large room with cages along one wall and sex tool and other worse things hang on another. The wall I’m on has 7 places for people to be hung as I am. The stairs come halfway down the last wall, and the women are on that wall, too. The door opens again in a few minutes, and the man who bought me walks. She is there, waiting to be released.’ ‘Have you found your mother?’ Bet appeared concerned, but knew the answer already. ‘No, but I will, sure as the dark gives way to light.’ All of a sudden, Bet remembered her conversation with Roy Arbengast the day before. Turning to the old fossil with a gesture of triumph, she smiled wickedly. ‘Are you Agatha Thwates?’ The old form blinked her eyes for a split second, then sashayed on her heels and sauntered away in the profound darkness. ‘Not in this. He stopped her. ‘No, not yet. I’m still not through with you’ he told her with that same gleam in his eye that she’d had that morning. With that, he picked her up in his arms and kissed her just as passionately as she had kissed him, she melted in his arms. He carried her over tot he loveseat situated across from the Jacuzzi. There he gently set her down and kissed her again as she lay back. He sat back and gazed at the incredible beauty that lay before him, the incredible beauty that was his.