Matt's hand stayed on the small of Warren's back, warm through the latex, and he did not push. He just stood there on the corner with the door light on his face and looked at her the way a man looks at something he has already bought and is only now unwrapping. He started at the bottom. The mules — black patent leather, the ankle strap thin as a ribbon, the four-inch heel set under the arch so her calves had to work just to stand still. He looked at the strap for a long time. Then the heel. Then the way the wet sidewalk had put a shine on the patent that was not hers and not the shoe's, just the city's.

"Those are new," he said.

"Yes."

"Turn your foot."

She turned it. The heel came up off the pavement and the ankle strap pulled tight across the bone and the whole leg went long and thin in the light, and Matt watched the tendon move under the stocking like he was reading something written small. He nodded once, slow, and his eyes came up.

The legs. The black latex of the catsuit caught the streetlight and threw it back in a long wet line up the shin and the thigh, and where the fabric ended at the top of the leg the skin began, and there was no seam, no edge, no place where the costume stopped being a costume. The latex was painted on. It was the kind of suit that had been cut by somebody who had seen her body first and then decided what to leave out, and what had been left out was everything. The high neck came up to the hinge of her jaw and sat there cool and close, a band of black under the chin, and from that neck the V opened — a long clean slice down the front, past the breast plate, past the sternum, and it did not stop where a dress stops. It stopped below the navel. The edges of the V lay flat against her and moved a half-inch every time she breathed, and Matt's eyes went down it and back up it and down it again like a man walking a hallway he intends to live in.

"The hair," he said.

The red fell past her shoulders and lay against the black latex and against the bare skin of her chest where the V had opened it, and the streetlight made the red look wet. It was not her hair. It had never been her hair. But it moved when she moved and it smelled like the spray she had put in it and it was hers now the way the mules were hers, the way the name was hers.

"The lips," he said.

She had done them thick and glossy and they were still wet, and the wet caught the yellow door light and made them look fuller than they were. She had done the eyeliner heavy and the shadow smoky and the brows penciled in and the cheekbones blushed, and the whole face sat on top of the black latex like a small bright thing set into a dark room.

"The curve of your hip," he said.

He put his mouth on the words and not on her. His hand was still at the small of her back, and the small of her back was bare, because the catsuit's rear cut had been made to leave it bare — the fabric rose up between her legs and came to a point at the base of her spine and left the whole back open to the top of the buttocks, so that the two halves of her ass sat in the night air under the latex line, and when she shifted her weight the halves moved and the latex line moved with them and there was nothing under it at all. A man walking past on the other side of the street slowed and looked and kept walking. Matt did not turn his head. He did not need to. The look on the man's face had already been his.

"You know what you look like," Matt said. It was not a question.

"I know what I look like."

"Say it."

The breath went out of her and did not come back all the way. She stood on the corner in the six-inch mules with the plug heavy in her and the collar hidden under the high neck and the phone in the little black bag on her shoulder with David's unanswered message still sitting in it, and the door light was on her face, and Matt's hand was on her back, and the whole street was wet and loud and far away.

"I look like a fuckdoll," she said.

"A what."

"A fuckdoll."

"A fuckdoll on Christopher Street," Matt said. "In a latex catsuit. On a Tuesday."

"Yes."

"And whose are you."

She did not answer that one. It was the only question in the whole evening she did not answer, and Matt heard the silence and let it sit there between them like a third person, and then he took his hand off her back and put it in his pocket and turned his head and looked at the door.

"Not yet," he said. "You're not going in yet. I want to look at you out here first."

He stepped back one pace and the pool of light from the door did not reach him and he stood in the dark of the sidewalk and looked at her standing in the light, and the distance between them was one pace and it was the whole thing. She stood still. Her calves were already burning from the four-inch heel and the wet pavement, and the burn was good, and she let it be good. The city noise came back in — a cab somewhere, a siren far off, the low easy sound of the bar behind the open door — and it all faded again the moment Matt stepped in.

"The neck," he said. He came in close and put one fingertip on the latex at the hinge of her jaw, where the high neck met the skin, and the fingertip was warm and the latex was cool and the two temperatures met on her throat and she swallowed under his hand. He traced the edge of the neck down to where the V began, and then he did not trace the V. He left it. He put his finger on the point of the V, the place below her navel where the two edges came together, and pressed, once, flat, and let go.

"This is the whole suit," he said. "This cut right here. Somebody knew what they were doing."

"Somebody did."

"You picked it."

"No."

"Who picked it."

She looked at the open door and the yellow light and the low easy sound and did not say the name. Matt looked at her looking at the door and understood something, and did not press it, and that was the moment she stopped being able to tell whether he was the man from the soup place or something else entirely.

"It's the back," he said, and he stepped around her. He walked a slow half-circle and came up behind her, and she felt him there, at her back, in the dark, where the catsuit had left her open to the top of the buttocks. The night air had been on that skin for ten minutes and it was cold and it was bare and now it was being looked at from behind by a man she had known for three days. She kept her eyes on the door. The door was yellow and open and the sound coming out of it was a song she almost knew.

"Nothing to the imagination," Matt said, behind her. "That's what they say. Nothing to the imagination. But that's wrong. There's everything to the imagination back here. That's the point of it. You cut a suit like this and you don't hide anything and you still make a man imagine the whole rest of you, all night, every time you walk away from him."

His voice was low and even and it was not a compliment and it was not a threat. It was a man naming a thing he had paid for.

"Turn around," he said.

She turned around. The mules made her turn slow, one heel then the other, and the latex creaked across her hips as she did it, and when she faced him again he was close — closer than the pace he had stepped back, closer than he had been when he touched her neck. The door light was behind her now and it put her face in the dark and his face in the light, and his face was the same face from the table at the soup place, the same face from the corner, and it was a face that had already decided.

"I clocked you two weeks ago," he said. "In the office. You were at your desk with your hand on your thigh and you had your ankles crossed under the chair and you did not know you were doing either one. I watched you for a week before I said a word to you. I wanted to be sure."

"Sure of what."

"Sure you were real."

A man came up the sidewalk with a dog and the dog stopped and sniffed at the base of the streetlamp and the man looked at Warren the way men had been looking at her all the way down the two blocks from the Marlowe, and Matt did not move and did not turn and did not stop, and the man took the dog and went on, and the look went with him into the dark.

"You're not scared," Matt said.

"No."

"You should be a little scared. A man could do anything to you on this street in that suit. That's what the suit is for."

"I know what the suit is for."

"Do you."

"Yes."

"Then say the rest of it."

She stood on the corner with her heels in the wet and the plug in her and the collar under the neck and the red hair on her shoulders and the whole V of the suit open down the front of her, and she looked at the man in front of her and she said the rest of it, and her voice came out low and even and it was Willow's voice, the breathy purr that had been in the room at the Marlowe and on the phone and in the video she had sent him from the men's room, and it did not shake.

"I'm on display," she said. "I'm a fuckdoll on Christopher Street and I'm on display and I want to be looked at and I want you to look at me and I want every man who walks past to look at me, and I want to go in that door with you and I want them to see me go in with you."

Matt did not smile. He looked at her for a long moment, and something in his face went still and satisfied the way a man's face goes when a thing he has been waiting on arrives exactly on time.

"Good," he said.

He took the last step. He came in close enough that the door light was on both of them and the latex of her front was against the wool of his coat and she could feel the shape of him through the coat and the suit, and he reached up and took her chin in his hand — the whole chin, thumb on one side and the first two fingers on the other, the way you hold a thing you are about to turn — and he tilted her face up. Her neck went long under the high black neck of the suit. Her lips were an inch under his and wet and open and she did not close them.

"You're mine tonight," Matt said.

The words landed in the wet air between them and stayed there. The door was yellow and open behind her and the song was still going and a cab went by on Seventh with its tires hissing on the wet asphalt, and the plug sat heavy in her and the collar sat cold at her throat and the phone sat in the little black bag with David's message still unanswered, and Matt held her chin and looked down at her and waited, and the whole street waited with him, and she did not answer.

Matt's mouth came down on hers before the question could settle. Not a first kiss, not a testing kiss — a man taking what he had already been told was his. His hand left her chin and went into the red hair at the back of her skull, fingers curling into the synthetic strands like he was claiming a handful of something he intended to keep, and he pulled her into him. The latex of her front pressed flat against the wool of his coat and the shape of him came through it — chest, belt, the hard line of a man who had been waiting on this exact moment since the soup place.

Her lips opened under his. They had been wet and open and waiting and he took them, his tongue sliding in against hers, tasting the gloss she had put on thick in the Marlowe's mirror, and the taste was hers and the mouth was hers and the sound she made into his mouth was hers too — a small, swallowed thing that came from the back of her throat and had nowhere else to go, so it went into him.

The street did not stop. The cab went by. The dog walker had gone on. But the door light was still yellow and the song was still coming out of the bar and there were people on the sidewalk, a woman with a bag of groceries, two men in coats walking the other way, and none of them stopped and all of them looked, and Matt kissed her through all of it with the whole street watching, and she felt the looking like a hand on her skin.

Her hand moved on its own. It had been at her side, then it was at the lapel of his coat, and then it was inside — sliding past the wool, past the suit jacket, finding the flat of his stomach through the shirt, and then lower. She felt him through the trousers before she touched him, the heat of him coming off the fabric, and then her palm was on it and it was not a question.

He was hard. Not half-hard, not interested — fully, achingly hard, the shape of him straining against the wool of his trousers, and she felt the whole length of it through the fabric and her breath went out of her and into his mouth and he felt that too.

She broke the kiss. Not far — an inch, just enough to breathe, just enough to speak. Her lips were wet and swollen and the gloss was smeared and she did not care, and she put her mouth against his ear, the red hair falling over both of them like a curtain, and she purred it, low and breathy and exactly Willow's voice:

"What happens now, Matt?"

His hand tightened in her hair. Not hard. Just enough to let her know it was there.

"You come inside with me," he said. His voice was low and even against her ear. "And you let me look at you a while longer. And then I take you somewhere I can have you."

"Where."

"Does it matter."

"No," she said. Her palm was still on him through the trousers, and she pressed, once, feeling the shape of his cock under the wool, the heat of it, the way it jumped under her hand. "No, it doesn't matter."

He kissed her again. Harder this time, his free hand coming up to the bare skin of her back where the catsuit had left her open, his palm flat on the cold skin of her spine, and she arched into him and felt the plug shift inside her and the collar press against her throat under the high latex neck, and for one long moment she was exactly what she was — a fuckdoll on Christopher Street in a man's arms with the whole street watching — and she wanted nothing else.

He pulled back first. His hand stayed on her back, his fingers spread over the bare skin, and he looked at her face in the door light — the smeared gloss, the heavy eyeliner gone soft at the edges, the red hair tangled from his hand — and something in his face went dark and pleased.

"You're going to be trouble," he said.

"Yes."

"Good." He took his hand off her back and put it on the door. "Come on."

The bar was small and low-ceilinged and packed with the kind of crowd that did not look up when a woman in a latex catsuit walked in with a man's hand on the small of her back, and then did look up, and then went back to their drinks. The song that had been drifting out the door was coming from a jukebox in the back corner, red and gold lights spinning across the bottles behind the bar. Matt steered her to a booth near the back, dark enough that the streetlight did not reach, and slid in across from her, and for a moment they just looked at each other across the scarred wood.

The waitress came. Matt ordered two whiskeys without asking her, and the waitress looked at the catsuit and the red hair and the smeared lips and did not ask for ID, and when the glasses came Matt pushed one across the table and she took it and drank, the burn going down her throat and settling warm in her chest.

"Tell me about the suit," Matt said.

She set the glass down. "What about it."

"Who picked it."

The question hung between them. The collar was cold at her throat under the latex, and the plug was heavy in her, and the phone in the little black bag was still carrying David's unanswered message, and she looked at Matt across the table and did not answer, and he watched her not answer, and he nodded slowly.

"You don't have to tell me," he said. "I already know there's somebody. I clocked that before I ever crossed the room at the soup place. You've got a collar under that neck and a plug in your ass and a man's hand on your leash, and you're out here on Christopher Street with me with your hand on my cock through my trousers. So whoever he is, he doesn't own tonight. You do."

"I don't own anything."

"You own the choice of who's watching you." He leaned forward. "And you chose me. Out there, on the corner, with the whole street looking. You chose me."

She held his gaze across the scarred wood and let the words sit. The whiskey was warm in her chest and the jukebox was spinning something slow and the crowd had stopped looking, and for a moment she was just a woman in a bar with a man who had watched her choose him. The collar was cold under the latex and the plug was heavy and the phone was still carrying David's unanswered message, and she thought about all of it and then she thought about none of it, and she reached for his hand across the table.

"Show me where," she said.

His hand turned under hers, palm up, fingers closing around her wrist. Not hard. Just holding. His thumb found the inside of her wrist where the latex ended and her skin began, and he pressed there, feeling her pulse, and his mouth did something that was almost a smile and almost not.

"You're not going to ask where I'm taking you."

"You said it doesn't matter."

"It doesn't." He stood, pulling her up with him, his hand still around her wrist. "But you're going to find out anyway."

He left money on the table — more than the drinks cost, a folded bill that would cover the booth for the night — and he led her out through the crowd with his hand on the small of her back, the same hand that had been there on the doorstep, and the bar let them go without a word. The night hit her in the face, cold and wet, the street still slick from the rain that had stopped sometime before she arrived. The neon above the door buzzed pink and gold and the cab that had gone by was long gone and the corner was empty now, the dog walker and the woman with the groceries and the two men in coats all folded back into the city.

Matt turned her not toward Seventh but down the block, past the bar, past a shuttered deli and a laundromat glowing blue-white through its own wet glass. She walked on the six-inch heels and did not wobble, the plug settling with each step, the latex singing against her skin, the red hair swinging against her bare shoulders. He did not hold her hand. He walked beside her with his hands in his coat pockets and she felt the absence of his hand like a pressure, like the street was waiting for him to put it back.

"You live around here?" she asked.

"No."

"Then where."

He didn't answer. He turned them down a narrower street, the neon gone now, just the wet dark and the occasional fan of a car's headlights sweeping the brick. The plug shifted with every step and she felt herself getting wetter, the slick heat of it spreading against the latex, and she did not know if it was the walking or the not-knowing or the man beside her who had not touched her since the bar.

He stopped at a door. Not a hotel, not an apartment building — a plain steel door set into a brick wall, no sign, no number, just a keypad glowing faintly green in the dark. He keyed in a code with his body blocking her view and the door buzzed and he pushed it open and held it for her.

"After you," he said.

She stepped inside. The hallway was dim and narrow, exposed brick and a single bare bulb, and it smelled like old wood and something else, something clean and chemical. Matt came in behind her and the door closed and the lock clicked and the street sound died. She stood in the sudden quiet with her heart going and the plug heavy and the collar cold and she heard him move behind her, close, and then his hands were on her shoulders, turning her.

The bare bulb threw his shadow long across the brick. His face was half in the dark and half in the light and he looked at her for a long moment, the way he had looked at her in the door light on Christopher Street, and then he reached up and took the red hair at the back of her skull again, gentler this time, and tilted her face up.

"You're a long way from the office, Warren," he said.

The name landed like a hand on her throat. It was the first time he had said it since the soup place, the first time he had said it to the red-wigged woman in latex, and she felt it go through her, the two of them colliding in her chest, Warren and Willow and neither of them, and the collar pressed against her throat and the plug shifted and she looked up at him and did not answer.

"You've got a man's collar under that latex," he said. "And you've got my hand in your hair. And you came with me anyway. You know what that makes you?"

"What."

"Mine. Tonight." He said it simply, like a fact he had already verified. "Not his. Not whoever owns the collar. Mine. And I don't share."

She should have said something. She should have said the collar was cold and the plug was heavy and the phone was still unanswered and she was not his, she was never going to be his, she belonged to a man who had burned her suits and watched her through cameras and made her beg. But the bare bulb was hot on her face and his hand was in her hair and the street was gone and the only sound was the two of them breathing, and she felt the choice leave her body the way it always did, like a sigh she had been holding for a man who wasn't there.

"Yes," she said.

His mouth came down on hers again, harder than on the street, the bare bulb going dark behind her closed eyelids, his hand tightening in the red hair and his other hand coming up to her hip, pulling her into him. The latex of her front pressed flat against his coat and she felt the shape of him through it, the same shape she had felt on the corner, and her hand found the lapel of his coat and slid inside, past the wool, past the suit jacket, finding the flat of his stomach through his shirt and then lower.

Her palm found the shape of him through the wool and she did not hesitate. She pressed, feeling the full length of his cock under the fabric, the heat of it coming off his trousers like a stove, and his breath went out of him in a low, rough sound that was half groan and half surprise. She massaged him through the wool, her fingers working the length of it, feeling it jump under her hand, and she felt her own mouth go wet at the thought of it, at the thought of what it would feel like without the fabric.

His hand tightened in her hair. "You're going to be the death of me," he said, and there was something in his voice that was almost laughter, almost wonder, like he had not expected this from the shy accountant who had barely met his eyes at the soup place.

"That's the idea," she purred, and she pressed her palm flat against him, feeling the shape of his cock through the trousers, the ridge of it, the way it strained against the wool. She could feel the heat of him coming off the fabric, and she wanted to be on her knees in the bare bulb light with her mouth open, wanted to feel him in her throat, wanted to taste the salt of him on her tongue. The plug shifted inside her and she felt herself get wetter, the slick heat of it spreading against the latex, and she pressed her thighs together and did not care that he could see her doing it.

"What happens now, Matt?" she asked again, her mouth against his ear, her fingers still working the shape of him through the wool. "You said you were going to take me somewhere you could have me. Is this it?"

His hand came up and took her wrist, stilling her. Not rough, just deliberate, and he held her hand against the shape of him, letting her feel the full length of it through the fabric, and he looked at her in the bare bulb light with something dark and pleased moving behind his eyes.

"Not here," he said. "There's a room upstairs. It's mine. I keep it for nights like this."

He took her up the stairs with his hand flat on the bare skin of her lower back, where the catsuit had left her open, and the stairwell was narrow and hot and smelled of the same clean chemical smell as the hall. The bulb at the top was out. He pushed a door open onto a room that was nothing like a hotel room — one window with a black shade pulled down, a low bed with a dark cover, a dresser with a lamp and a bottle of water and a folded towel on it, and nothing else. No art. No clock. A room a man kept for one purpose and did not decorate.

"On the bed," Matt said. "On your back."

She went. The mules caught on the cover and she stepped out of them one at a time and set them side by side on the floor, because she could not help it, because some part of her still lined things up. Then she lay back on the dark cover with her heels still in the patent mules, the latex creaking against the bed, the red hair fanned out around her head, the plug seated deep and heavy, the collar a cold band under the high black neck.

Matt stood at the foot of the bed and unbuttoned his coat. He hung it on the back of the door and came back and looked down at her the way he had looked at her on the corner — bottom to top, patient, unwrapping. He loosened his tie and pulled it off over his head and dropped it on the dresser. He unbuttoned his shirt from the top down and shrugged out of it and his chest came out of the cotton, broad and dark-haired, and she watched his hands go to his belt and she felt her mouth go wet before he had even touched the buckle.

"You know what's under that suit," he said.

"Yes."

"Say it."

"A zipper."

"Where."

"Between my legs. Under the V. It runs from the front to the back."

"Open it."

She reached down between her own thighs and found the tab where the latex seam came together under the point of the V, and the tab was small and black and flush with the fabric, and she pinched it and pulled. The zipper ran with a small dry sound, down and back, and the latex opened along her crotch and along the seam behind, and the cool air of the room touched the insides of her thighs and the soft thing between them and the place behind, and she felt the whole of it exposed at once, the way she had felt it in the fitting room at L'Atelier when Marguerite had measured her for the suit and told her what the suit was for.

Her clitty lay out on the open latex, soft and small and pink at the tip, already shining. It had been leaking since the corner. The head of it was wet and the wet had run down the shaft and made a little gloss on the latex under it, and it did not stand and it did not harden and it never would, and it ached with a low steady ache that had no bottom to it. Her balls sat small and tight under it, drawn up against the open seam. Behind them the plug sat in her, the base of it black and flared and set between her cheeks, and the whole of her — clitty and balls and plugged hole — was on display in the opening of the suit like a dish uncovered at a table.

Matt looked at it for a long time. He did not touch it. He stood at the foot of the bed with his belt in his hands and looked at the small soft leaking thing between her legs and the black plug behind it, and his face did the thing his face did, dark and pleased and certain.

"There it is," he said. "The whole reason you're on this street."

She felt the flush go up her chest and into her cheeks and she did not look away from him. The shame was in her like heat and the heat was in her clitty and the two of them were the same thing, and she lay there with her legs open and her clitty leaking onto the latex and let him look, because being looked at was the only thing that had ever made her feel like she existed.

He dropped the belt on the dresser and stepped out of his trousers and his shorts and his cock came out of them and she stopped breathing.

It was thick. It was long — eight inches of it, she could see the length of it from where she lay, the shaft thick as her wrist and the head broad and dark and shining at the tip, and it stood up off his body on its own, hard and heavy, the vein down the underside standing out, and it moved with his heartbeat. She had not been looked at by a hard cock in three years of marriage and a month of David and she had never once had one inside her, and she looked at it and her clitty leaked fresh onto the latex and her mouth opened and she did not close it.

"Bend your knees," Matt said. "Heels to your shoulders."

She bent her knees and brought them up and back, and the mules came up with them, the patent heels hooking over the tops of her shoulders, and she took her own ankles in her hands and held them there, and the position pulled her open from the front to the back, the open seam of the catsuit splitting wide, her clitty and her balls and the black plug all lifted and presented, and she felt the air on the inside of her and the pull in the backs of her thighs and the plug pressing down into the bed under her.

Matt came onto the bed on his knees between the mules. He put one hand flat on the back of her left thigh and pushed it back a little further, and the stretch went through her hip and she made a small sound, and he looked down at the open seam and the leaking clitty and the plug and he took the base of the plug in his fingers.

"This has been in you all night," he said.

"Since this morning."

"Who put it in."

She did not answer. He did not wait. He pulled the plug out slow, and the widest part of it dragged against the ring of her and her whole body clenched around it and she heard herself make a sound she did not plan, a thin high sound that came out of her throat and went nowhere. The plug came free and he set it on the towel on the dresser, black and wet, and she was empty and open and the empty place kept clenching on nothing.

He put two fingers in her. They went in easy — the plug had done its work and she was slick and open and the fingers slid to the second knuckle without a push — and he curled them up and found the place and pressed, and her hips came off the bed and the mules rattled against her shoulders and she heard the wet sound of it in the quiet room.

"You're wet," he said. "You're dripping. I've got two fingers in your ass and you're dripping down onto the bed."

"Yes."

"Say what you are."

"I'm a sissy." The word came out of her low and easy, the way it always did when a man made her say it. "I'm a sissy and my clitty doesn't work and I'm wet for you."

He pulled the fingers out and put the wet of them on the head of his cock and stroked it once, twice, down the length of the shaft, and the head of it shone in the lamplight, and then he moved up between her legs and put the head of it against her and stopped there.

"Look at me," he said.

She looked at him. His face was over hers, dark-eyed and calm, and the head of his cock was pressed against the ring of her, thick and hot and blunt, and the pressure was there and not going anywhere and her whole body was waiting on it.

"Fuck me, Matt," she purred. "Please. Fuck me."

He pushed in.

The head of it went through the ring and the stretch was everything — a burning wide stretch that opened her from the inside out, thicker than the plug, thicker than anything that had ever been in her, and she felt her mouth come open and her eyes go wide and a sound come out of her that was not a word. He did not stop at the head. He went in slow and steady, inch by inch, and she felt every inch of it pass through her and settle deeper, the shaft dragging along the inside of her and the vein of it and the heat of it, and her hands went white on her own ankles and the mules knocked together over her head and she held on.

"Breathe," he said.

She breathed. The breath came in ragged and went out ragged and the burn of the stretch eased into a fullness that was its own kind of pleasure, a deep heavy pressure that sat right where the fingers had pressed, and she felt her body open around him the way it had opened around the plug, only more, only better, and she let her head fall back on the cover and looked up at him with her lips open and wet.

He bottomed out. His hips came flat against the backs of her thighs and the mules pressed into her shoulders and the whole length of him was inside her and she could feel the head of him deep and the base of him stretching her at the ring and the thick middle of him filling the space the plug had kept warm all day.

"There," he said. "That's the whole thing."

He pulled back slow until only the head was in her, and the drag of it going out made her clench and chase it, and then he pushed back in, and the second time was easier and deeper and she felt it in her stomach, and the third time he set a rhythm, long slow strokes that went all the way out and all the way in, and the bed moved under them and the mules rattled and the wet sound of it filled the little room.

Her clitty leaked onto her own stomach. It was soft and small and it did not get hard and it did not need to — every stroke of his cock inside her went through her like a wire, and the head of him pressed the place the fingers had found and pressed it again and again, and she felt the pleasure building somewhere behind her clitty and below it and all through her, a full-body thing that had no single place to land, and her hips started moving on their own, meeting him, taking him deeper.

"That's it," Matt said. "Take it. Move with me."

"Harder."

"Say it again."

"Harder, Matt, please —"

He gave it to her harder. His hand came off her thigh and took her hip and pulled her onto him with every stroke, and the slap of his skin against the backs of her thighs got loud in the room, and she heard herself moaning on every push, low and open and shameless, and she did not stop and she did not want to. The collar pressed against her throat under the latex and the red hair was stuck to her cheek with sweat and the mules were over her head and a man she had known for three days was fucking her ass in a room with a black shade pulled down, and she was exactly where she had been made to be.

He leaned down over her. His chest came down onto her lifted thighs and his face came close to hers, and he looked into her eyes the way he had on the corner, and he fucked her slow and deep and did not look away, and she looked back at him with her mouth open and her clitty leaking between them and her whole body opening and closing around his cock.

"Whose are you tonight," he said.

"Yours."

"Say the whole thing."

"I'm yours tonight," she said. "I'm your sissy and my clitty's leaking and you're in my ass and I'm yours."

He kissed her then, hard, his tongue in her mouth while his cock was in her ass, and she kissed him back with everything she had, and the pleasure went up through her like water rising and she felt the crest coming, the full-body thing she only ever got with a cock in her, and she broke the kiss and put her mouth against his ear.

"I'm going to come," she said. "Matt — I'm going to come, please —"

"Come," he said.

It took her all at once. Her whole body locked and then shook, her clitty twitching soft against her own stomach and spilling a thin clear pulse onto the latex, and the clench of her around his cock was hard and rhythmic and went on and on, and she heard herself cry out — a long open sound with his name in it — and the mules knocked against her shoulders and her heels dug into his back and she rode it out under him with her eyes open on his face.

He watched her the whole way through. He did not speed up and he did not stop and he fucked her through it slow and deep, feeling every clench of her around him, and when the last of it passed and her body went loose under him he pushed in hard and held there and came.

She felt it. The first pulse of it went deep inside her, hot and thick, and then the second and the third, and his hips jerked against her and his breath came out of him rough and low, and he held himself buried to the base in her while his cock emptied into her ass. She lay under him with her ankles in her hands and her heels over her shoulders and felt the heat of him filling her, pulse after pulse, and she did not move and she did not want him to pull out.

When it was done he stayed in her. His forehead came down onto the cover beside her head and his breath was warm on her ear, and the room was quiet except for the two of them and the bed settling. Then he pulled out slow, and the drag of it made her clench one last time, and she felt the wet of him start to run out of her and down between her cheeks onto the latex and the dark cover under her.

He got up off the bed and went to the dresser and came back with the towel. He did not hand it to her. He knelt on the bed between her legs and wiped her — the open seam, the soft leaking clitty, the place behind, the latex — and then he folded the towel and set it on the floor and lay down on his back beside her.

She let her ankles go. The mules came down off her shoulders and her legs came down onto the bed and the stretch in her hips unwound all at once, and she lay there beside him in the open catsuit with the red hair spread on the pillow and the collar cold at her throat and the wet of him still working its way out of her.

Matt reached over and put his hand flat on her stomach, just above the open seam, and left it there.

"You didn't ask me his name," he said. "The man with the collar."

"No."

"Why not."

She looked at the black shade over the window and the thin line of yellow streetlight at its edge, and she thought about the phone in the little black bag on the floor with David's message still unanswered, and the plug on the towel on the dresser, and the four men and the mirrored ceiling waiting on Saturday, and she did not say any of it.

"Because it doesn't matter tonight," she said.

Matt's hand stayed on her stomach. He did not answer. Out in the hall, past the door and down the narrow stairs, the bar's jukebox was still going, the same slow song, and a cab went by on the wet street below and threw a fan of headlight across the black shade and took it away again.

She lay there with his hand on her stomach and the wet of him still working its way out of her, and she did not know how long they stayed like that. Long enough for her heart to slow. Long enough for the room to go from hot and close to merely warm. Long enough that the black shade over the window had a different quality of light at its edge, the yellow of the streetlamp gone greyer, the city settling into the small hours.

Matt's hand moved. Not off her — up. His palm slid from her stomach to the base of her ribs and then to the center of her chest, over the latex, over the place where her heart had been going, and he pressed there flat, feeling it. She watched his face in the low light. He was not looking at her. He was looking at his own hand on her chest like he was reading a gauge.

"You're still going," he said.

"So are you."

He almost smiled. He did not quite make it, but she saw it start in his eyes and then stop, and he took his hand off her chest and rolled onto his back and lay beside her with his arms behind his head, looking at the ceiling. The bare bulb was off. The only light was the grey line at the edge of the shade and the faint glow of the lamp on the dresser, and it put his profile in dark against the pillow.

"I should go," he said.

She did not answer. The word go sat in the room and she let it sit. The plug was on the towel on the dresser. The collar was cold at her throat. The phone was in the little black bag on the floor, still carrying David's unanswered message, and she thought about it and then she thought about none of it.

"You work tomorrow," she said.

"So do you."

"Do I."

He turned his head on the pillow and looked at her. His face was half in the grey light and half out, and the look on it was not the look from the corner or the look from the bar. It was something else, something she had not seen on him before, and it took her a moment to name it. It was the look of a man who had gotten what he wanted and was now trying to decide what it cost him.

"Warren," he said.

The name again. It landed differently this time — not like a hand on her throat, not like the bare bulb moment on the stairs. It landed like a door opening onto a room she had been avoiding all night.

"Don't," she said.

"Don't what."

"Don't say it like that."

"Like what."

"Like it's a question."

He was quiet for a moment. The jukebox had stopped somewhere below, or the bar had closed, and the room was very quiet, and she could hear the two of them breathing and the faint hum of the lamp and nothing else.

"You're going to go home tomorrow," he said. "And you're going to put on the gray suit and the blouse and you're going to sit at your desk and I'm going to sit at mine, and nobody in that office is going to know that I spent tonight with my cock in your ass in a room off Christopher Street."

"I know."

"And you're going to walk past my desk and I'm going to watch you do it, and you're going to know I'm watching, and neither one of us is going to say a word."

"I know," she said again.

He rolled onto his side and propped his head on his hand and looked down at her. The grey light was on his face now, and his eyes were dark and steady and there was something in them that had not been there on the corner — not the buyer's look, not the unwrapping look, but something quieter and more dangerous.

"Tonight was real," he said. "Whatever else it was, it was real. You understand that."

"Yes."

"And tomorrow it's not."

"No."

"But you'll be there."

"I'll be there."

He looked at her for a long moment and then he leaned down and kissed her. It was not the hard kiss from the street or the deep kiss from the bed. It was slow and thorough and it went on a long time, and his hand came up and cupped her face, his thumb moving along her jaw, and she felt the whole night in it — the corner and the bar and the bare bulb and the bed — and she kissed him back with everything she had left.

When he broke it, he rested his forehead against hers for a moment, and then he got up.

He stood beside the bed, and the grey light from the shade put him in silhouette, and she watched him find his boxers on the floor and step into them. He did it without looking at her, and there was something in the set of his shoulders that she had not seen before — not the swagger from the corner, not the hunger from the bar, but a man putting himself back together in the right order, the way you button a shirt you mean to wear into the world.

She did not sit up. She lay in the wreck of the sheets with the red hair spread around her and the latex still holding the heat of him inside it, and she watched him dress. His shirt came off the back of the chair where he had hung it, and he shook it once before he put it on, and the gesture was so ordinary, so domestic, that it made the whole night feel suddenly fragile, like something that could be folded up and put in a drawer and forgotten by morning.

"You should get some sleep," he said. He was buttoning his cuffs, and his voice was different — lower, steadier, the voice of a man who had already started the drive home in his head.

"I don't sleep much anymore."

He stopped with the second cuff half-finished and looked at her. The grey light caught the side of his face, and for a moment he was the man from the soup place again, the one who had watched her across the table and not known what he was seeing.

"That's because you're not tired," he said. "You're wired. It's different."

She did not answer. The word wired sat in the room, and she turned it over and found it true, and she did not want it to be true, and she let it sit anyway.

He finished the cuff and bent to pick up his shoes. He sat on the edge of the bed to put them on, and the mattress dipped under his weight, and she felt the shift of it through her own body, the last physical proof that he was still here, that he had not already gone.

"Matt."

He looked up.

"What happens tomorrow?"

He held her eyes for a long moment, and then he smiled — not the smile from the corner, not the smile from the bar, but something smaller and more careful, a smile that did not quite reach his eyes.

"Tomorrow you sit at your desk," he said. "And I sit at mine. And we pretend we don't know each other, and we do a very bad job of it."

"And after that?"

The smile faded. He looked at the floor for a moment, and then he stood and finished dressing, and she watched him tuck his shirt in with the same careful domestic hands, and she felt the night closing around them like a door swinging shut.

"After that," he said, "we find out if this was real or if it was just the room."

He crossed to the dresser and picked up his phone and his wallet, and he stood there for a moment with his back to her, and she saw his shoulders rise and fall with a breath he did not let out. Then he turned.

He crossed the room and stood at the foot of the bed, looking down at her. The grey light was on his face, and his eyes were dark and steady, and there was something in them that she had not seen all night — not the buyer's look, not the unwrapping look, but something quieter and more dangerous, something that looked like a man deciding to risk something.

"I'm going to kiss you now," he said. "And then I'm going to leave. And I'm not going to look back, because if I look back I won't leave, and I have to leave."

She did not say yes. She did not say anything. She lay in the wreck of the sheets and looked up at him, and he leaned down, and the kiss was not the slow kiss from the bed or the hard kiss from the street. It was something else entirely — a kiss that tasted like goodbye and maybe and see you soon all at once, a kiss that went on long enough to say everything neither of them had the words for, and then it ended.

He pulled back and looked at her one last time, and his hand came up and brushed the red hair off her forehead, a gesture so tender it hurt, and she felt it in her chest like a hand closing on something she had not known she was holding.

"See you at the office tomorrow, darling," he said.

The word darling landed in the room and she felt it land in her, and she did not know what to do with it, so she just lay there and let it sit.

He turned and walked to the door, and he did not look back, and she watched him go. His hand found the handle, and the door opened, and the light from the hallway spilled in — yellow and ordinary and full of the world — and for a moment he stood in the frame, a dark shape against the light, and then he stepped through and pulled the door shut behind him.

The click of the latch was very loud in the quiet room.

She lay there and listened to his footsteps go down the stairs. They were steady, unhurried, the footsteps of a man who had made up his mind. She counted them. She did not know why she counted them, but she did — twelve, thirteen, fourteen — and then they stopped, and there was a pause, and then the street door opened and closed, and then there was nothing.

The silence after the street door closed was not empty. It was full of the small sounds she had not noticed while he was there — the hum of the lamp on the dresser, the tick of a radiator somewhere in the wall, the distant hiss of a cab passing on Seventh Avenue. The room felt larger without him in it. The bed felt wider. She lay in the middle of it with the red hair spread across the pillow and the latex cooling against her skin, and she did not move.

Her body was still his. She could feel it — the ache in her thighs, the slow pulse deep inside her where he had been, the wetness still working its way out of her onto the sheet. She let herself feel all of it, every last trace, because she knew that by morning it would be gone, and she wanted to keep it for as long as she could.

The phone buzzed in the little black bag on the floor.

She did not get up. She lay there and listened to it buzz again, and again, and she knew it was David without looking, knew it the way she knew the collar at her throat, the way she knew the plug on the towel on the dresser. The message sat in the bag like a stone dropped into still water, and the ripples spread out from it and reached her where she lay, and she let them.

She counted the buzzes. Four. Five. Six. Then it stopped, and the silence came back, and it was different now — heavier, waiting, the silence of a man who had sent six messages and expected an answer.

She sat up.

The sheet fell away from her, and the air hit her skin, and she looked at the room — the dress on the floor where Matt had peeled it off her, the heels kicked toward the corner, the wig on the dresser like a severed head in the lamplight. She looked at all of it and she did not reach for any of it. She swung her legs off the bed and stood, and her body protested, a deep ache in her hips that she walked into, and she crossed the room naked and picked up the little black bag.

The phone was warm when she lifted it out. The screen lit up under her thumb, and the messages were there, stacked one after another, and she read them standing in the middle of the room with the grey light on her bare shoulders.

Did you send it.

Willow.

I asked you a question.

It's almost two in the morning. I know you're not asleep.

You're going to answer me in the morning and I'm going to decide what that answer costs you.

Goodnight, doll.

The last one had been sent eleven minutes ago. She read it twice, and then she set the phone down on the dresser face-up, and she stood there looking at it, and the word doll sat in the room with her, and she did not know what to do with it, so she let it sit.

She picked up the wig. It was heavier than it looked, the red hair dense and cool in her hands, and she held it for a moment and then she set it back down and turned to the towel on the dresser where the plug lay. She looked at it. She had worn it for nineteen hours. It had been inside her when Matt fucked her, when he held her down and said her name, when he kissed her goodbye at the door. She had not taken it out, and he had not asked her to, and she had not offered.

She reached for it — and then she stopped, her hand hovering over it, and she stood there with her fingers an inch from the steel and she heard Matt's voice in her head: Tonight was real. Whatever else it was, it was real.

The collar was still at her throat. She had not taken it off. She had not thought about taking it off. It had been there all night, under the latex, and Matt had kissed her and fucked her and called her darling with David's name engraved against her pulse, and he had never known it was there.

She picked up the plug. The steel was cold in her palm, and she looked at it, and then she put it down on the towel and she picked up her phone instead.

The message box was still open. The video of her in the office men's room sat there, forty-one seconds of her with her blouse open and her hand down her trousers, sent to Matt, sent to a man who had called her darling and kissed her at the door. The second video — the one from her bed, the one she had made in the dark with the collar cold at her throat — was still in the sent folder. She scrolled past both of them and opened the thread with David and she typed with her thumb, one word, and she stared at it for a long moment before she sent it.

Yes.