Page 104 of Dominion’s Collar

Neither of us speaks. The silence sits between us like a held breath, charged and waiting.

His study is the room at the end of the hall. He doesn't tell me which door. He doesn't need to. The room looks like him.

The antique partners desk fills the center of the space, wide enough to spread a life across. The drafting table sits against the far wall. Light from the back garden comes through the window, and the afternoon sun turns the wood the color of honey.

The consideration collar is on his desk.

Braided black leather, ruby teardrop in blackened steel, the lock still open. Sebastien put it here and left it. That's who he is. The leather has lost the warmth of my skin. The ruby sits dark against the desk.

I pick it up. The heft is familiar. The braiding presses against my fingers like it pressed against my throat for weeks. Every scene, every negotiation, every night I knelt at his feet and told myself it was research. The leather remembers all of it. So do I.

Sebastien stands in the doorway. He hasn't followed me to the desk. He hasn't reached for me. He's gone completely still, the kind of stillness that costs effort, and Sebastien only holds himself that tightly when something matters enough to keep him in place.

I cross the study and place the consideration collar in his hand. His fingers close around it. His eyes don't leave mine.

Then I turn around. Lift my hair off my neck. Offer him my neck.

The silence behind me stretches long enough to hear the streetcar two blocks away. He doesn't move. The leather doesn't settle against my skin.

"I'm not putting this one back on you," he says.

My hand is still in my hair. The refusal lands like a fist between my ribs.

"Turn around."

I turn. He sets the consideration collar on the desk. Then he opens a drawer in the desk. The box inside is larger than the one he pulled from his jacket the night he collared me the first time. The hinges are brass, the leather blacker.

He sets it on the desk between us and opens it.

Four strands of black pearls lie against dark velvet. A large ruby teardrop pendant is set in blackened gold, deeper in color than the steel setting of the consideration collar. The lock mechanism is visible at the back closure, small and precise. The pearls are luminous, each strand slightly different in size, layered to sit flush against the throat.

'And a different collar.'

His words at Dominion, weeks ago. He's been waiting.

"Natalie." His voice is low. Steady. "I'm asking. Not telling."

"Yes," I say.

He lifts the collar from the box and steps behind me. His fingers gather my hair, lifting it away from my neck.

The touch is unhurried. Intentional. The back of his knuckles brush my nape and the contact sends heat down my spine.

The pearls settle against my throat. Four strands, cool from the velvet, warming fast against my pulse. The ruby finds the hollow between my collarbones. The geography of me that his leather already mapped.

His fingers close on the lock.

The click is small. Definite. The quietest sound in the room and the loudest thing he's ever said to me.

His hands rest on my shoulders. He doesn't turn me around. He stays behind me, breathing against the crown of my hair, his palms grounding me in the specific, physical reality of what I just agreed to.

"I know what this costs," he says. Quiet. Stripped of everything except the truth underneath. "I won't waste it again."

I kneel.

He didn't tell me to. He didn't challenge me or dare me or construct a scenario where kneeling was the only option that proved I was ready.

I lower myself to the heart-pine floor of his study because this is what I choose. One knee, then the other.