"Hang me as a work of art, purify me with your passion and my pain my master.  Make me anew in the purity of the angels themselves against the sky."<br/><br/>Mati loved her speaking voice.  Had he even heard her speak before?  Or only sing?  Her speaking had a lilt to it.<br/><br/>She had volunteered for what he most wanted: the sexual joy of hurting her.  He wanted to fuck her while she was in agony, singing his name, as she'd sung in humiliation, on her knees, to his prick.<br/><br/>He took a deep breath, staring not at her, but at her in the mirror: her lithe, slender body, marked by his music.<br/><br/>He busied himself, so as not to say something foolish, about love, for instance.  He led her by the hand to the upright piano, 'I won't lie to you, this is something I used to have - ' he didn't want to say her name ' - my former slave do, but we can't pussyfoot around as if she were never there, and I liked it so...please climb up on top of the piano, and lie sideways, head propped on your hand.  You're going to have to hold a microphone, so make sure you're well-balanced.'<br/><br/>By the time he returned with the laptop and the mic she was lying there, a goddess disporting herself on a rock.  'We're just going to record the loop,<em>de Mati, je ma'ppelle Paulette de Mati</em>...once I play, just come in when you like, and sing it over and over, a dozen times.'<br/><br/>He played.  She sang.  He wasn't fulsome.  He didn't want her to be over-praised.  The drug-effect was wearing off.  Her own voice was coming through. It was quite beautiful.<br/><br/>But when it truly came through, would she still be a slave?<br/><br/>'That's good,' smiling, but she might have been a shy girl at an audition from his tone, 'now, down you come...'<br/><br/><div align="center">+</div><br/>In ten minutes he had her secured as he wanted.  He'd pulled the hanging frame out on to the balcony, into the sun.  Her wrists were cuffed above her head, the cuffs chained to the metal frame.  She was tall enough just to be able to stand, with her feet together; so he'd secured each ankle to each side of the frame, parting her legs quite wide, exposing her sex, and forcing her on to tiptoe.  That would make a nice, slow torture in itself, the strain in her legs and arms.<br/><br/>On the low wall of the balcony he'd set his video camera.  It was already filming her, facing ahead as he'd ordered, facing the sea, the sands, the laughing people, the cacophony of traffic below.<br/><br/>He'd found candles, long blue candles, in a drawer, a decoration perhaps, or a precaution against power failures.  He pushed two into her mouth, forked slightly.<br/><br/>He lit the ends of the candles.<br/><br/>'Now, Paulette,' she would see how excited he already was, hell, it had been so long since he'd tortured a woman, even mildly, like this, 'it's your breasts that are to suffer here.  The drip of hot wax, then the wax on the wax, will be progressively more and more painful.  But you are not to let your mouth burn in any way.  If you feel that happening and I'm not doing anything about it, sing a single long high note to me.'<br/><br/>She blinked, looking at him, holding the burning candles between her teeth.<br/><br/>His final touch: headphones on her, an i-pad sticky-taped to her upper back, playing in a continuous loop to her, her own voice, singing what was written on her, '<em>de Mati, je m'appelle Paulette de Mati..</em>.'<br/><br/>And he sat naked at the table, his feet up on it, a glass of gin and bitters, for all the world as if he wasn't as aroused as all hell.  He picked up his book: Keith Richard's autobiography.  His slave basked in the sunlight.  Anew in the purity of the angels themselves against the sky?  A little sound of suffering excaped her.  What more could he ask?