The pain was searing. It spread like wildfire into his very veins, down his spine, making his fists clench and his back curl. He tried, with all the might he held in his small body, not to scream.
But it wouldn't stop. It wouldn't end! And what made it worse was that for once, in all his controlled, reserved, planned-out life he was completely and utterly powerless.
A strangled groan escaped his mouth before he could stop it. "There, there…" his torturer hushed. The man was cruel. The man doing this to him was a monster, and the only thing Cutler could do to keep himself sane, sensible and conscious was the thought that one day, if God had any mercy, he would have him hanged.
The pain climaxed, and the thought of the end of this suffering would have comforted him somewhat if the pain wasn't burning into his bones and he was this close, this close, to shedding a tear.
But God did have mercy, it turned out.
As the pain slowly ebbed away, growing fainter with each beat of his racing heart, he looked up from where he lay. Gasping, he saw the prize of his torturer's endeavours.
"Your tooth, milord," the dentist coughed and he wrapped it in an elegant silk cloth, handing it to Lord Beckett in place of the modern-day lollipop or sticker.
"A little less sugar in you tea every morning, hmm, milord?"