Page 9 of Dominion’s Collar

I'm hard. I've been hard since her thighs parted.

I pause. Let the silence press against her skin the way the last stroke did. She waits, taut, trembling. I hold my palm an inch above her hip and feel the warmth rising off her.

I lay the crop against the curve of her ass without impact. Let her feel the leather. She exhales hard, ragged with want.

I draw the tip in a slow arc from ass to inner thigh, and she tilts toward the contact. She's wet enough that the slickness has spread to the skin of her inner thighs.

"You're dripping, Marion."

She moans. The sound is raw, stripped of everything professional and controlled. Her fingers claw at the padding.

Two strokes in succession, placed close enough that the second builds on the first. She cries out. The noise carries across the scening area.

And the thought arrives: what would Natalie sound like?

I kill it. I'm here. Marion is here. Nobody else belongs in this room.

My grip on the crop has tightened. A fraction more than the scene requires. I adjust. Check my breathing, which is running faster than I set it.

My cock is still straining against my leathers, and the woman responsible for that is blindfolded on the bench, trusting me with every breath she takes. But the woman who just walked into my head uninvited is sitting at the bar. That she got in at all means my walls aren't where I left them.

"Color."

"Green." Barely formed. Thick, past thinking.

My hand replaces the crop. I press my palm flat against the skin I've been working. The impact radiates through my fingers. She leans into the pressure, grinding forward in a slow roll. I hold her there and let her take what she needs.

Orgasm isn't tonight's objective. She didn't ask for it. The shaking in her legs says she's taken exactly what she came for.

I ease the intensity in reverse. Decreasing pressure, lengthening pauses, the crop replaced by my hand, then by the cool cloth I brought from the supply station.

The blindfold comes off last. Marion blinks in the amber light, pupils blown, loose and heavy with satisfaction. The flush on her throat and the tremor still running through her legs say the rest.

"Good?" Always a real question.

"Very." She stretches against the padding, long and slow. "Same time?"

"Same time."

Aftercare is brief because Marion doesn't want more. She knows herself, knows the scene, knows the protocol. I hand her the boy shorts and she steps into them while I bring the water and the cool cloth. The cloth goes on her wrists and inner thighs where the sting lingers.

The marks on her thighs are already rising, pink lines she'll feel under her clothes tomorrow. A few minutes of quiet while her breathing settles and the flush recedes.

"You're wound tighter than usual tonight," she says, pulling her hair down. Not an accusation. An observation from a woman who's been reading my tension through a blindfold for over a year.

"I'm exactly as wound as I always am."

"Sure you are." She finishes her water and sets the bottle down. "Whoever she is, she's already won an argument you haven't started yet. That's new."

I don't ask how she knows. A year of scenes gives a woman data she doesn't need to explain.

She touches my arm on her way past. The touch is gratitude, not intimacy. We both understand the difference.

I return to the booth. The glass is where I left it. I pick it up. Don't drink.

Natalie hasn't moved. But she's sitting differently than before the scene. Her weight is forward on the stool, the careful containment stripped away.

One hand is wrapped around her glass. The other is pressed flat against her thigh. What she saw me do to Marion left something behind she hadn't planned to carry.