The door opened at 2:14 by the clock on the wall behind him, and Dom didn't turn around. He'd heard the heels in the corridor first — quick, unhurried, a woman who walked like the building belonged to her — and then the click of the latch, and then nothing. No tentative pause. No breath held at the threshold.

"You're the guy." Her voice was bright and flat at once, like a woman reading a menu she'd already decided on. "The one they call Dom. I expected taller."

He turned then, slow, arms still crossed over his chest, and took her in the way he took in every one of them: from the shoes up. Black boots, scuffed at the toe. Dark jeans that fit like they'd been bought to be looked at. A leather jacket over a thin grey shirt, and above the collar of it, a face that wasn't nervous — that wasn't anything close to nervous. Mid-twenties. Sharp-eyed. Mouth already curling at one corner like she'd won something he hadn't been told about yet.

The padded room swallowed the sound of her steps. That was the point of the foam under the drywall — every word she said landed soft, close, like she was speaking directly into his ear no matter where she stood. He'd built it that way. He liked the way it made women feel alone with him even when the door was unlocked.

"You've heard about me," he said.

"I've heard you're the one who breaks the ones the others can't." She shrugged out of the jacket and let it drop. It hit the floor with a soft thud and she didn't look down at it. "I've also heard you're all talk. A lot of theater. Big room, big words, and then the girl walks out at the end of the day saying the same thing every girl says."

"Which is what."

"'It was fine.'" She tipped her head. "I don't pay for fine. I pay for the real thing. So I'm here to find out if the real thing exists, or if you're just a handsome man with a nice room and a script."

Dom let the silence sit. Two seconds. Three. Long enough that most women filled it — apologized, backtracked, laughed it off. She didn't. She stood there with her weight on one hip, watching him the way he watched her, and he felt the first small flicker of interest move through him, low and warm, the way it always did when one of them walked in with teeth.

"Contract's on the bench behind you," he said. "You signed it in the office. You know the word. You know what it means if you say it."

"I know I won't."

"Everyone says that."

"Everyone's not me." She smiled, and it was a good smile, wide and unbothered, and it didn't reach her eyes either. "So. Are we doing this, or are you going to keep standing there like a bouncer deciding whether I'm on the list?"

He uncrossed his arms.

He didn't move fast. That was the first thing he wanted her to understand about him — that he had all the time in the world and she was the one who was going to run out of it. He walked a slow half-circle around her, and she turned her head to track him but kept her feet planted, which was the second thing he noticed. Most of them turned their whole body. Followed him like a compass needle. She just watched, chin level, letting him come around her and go.

"Posture's good," he said, from behind her. "Shoulders back. Weight even. You've done this before."

"I've done a lot of things before."

"Not like this."

"We'll see."

He came around her front again and stopped close — close enough that she had to lift her chin to keep his eyes, and she did, without flinching, and that was the third thing. He reached out and caught the collar of her shirt between two fingers, tugging it straight where the jacket had pulled it crooked. A small, almost domestic gesture. She let him do it. Her pulse moved in her throat, quick and visible, and he watched it move and said nothing about it.

"Clothes are wrong," he said.

"They're expensive."

"They're armor." He let the collar go. "You dressed to be looked at, not to be touched. Jeans that tight, you can't kneel in them without thinking about it. Jacket you can drop and feel like you've done something. It's a costume. I've seen it before."

"And what do you wear, a tactical vest and a scowl?" She was grinning now, fully, the way a person grins when they think they're winning. "I've seen your pictures. You look like a guy who owns one belt and calls it a personality."

He laughed. He actually laughed — short, real, the sound bouncing off the padded walls and dying there — and her grin widened, because she thought she'd landed one.

Then his hand was around her throat.

Not a choke. He'd have told her that if she'd asked. His palm sat against the front of her neck, thumb on one side, fingers spread on the other, and he walked her backward — one step, two, three — until her shoulders met the padded wall and the foam gave a little under her and then held. He didn't squeeze. He didn't need to. The weight of his hand was the whole sentence, and the sentence was: this is mine now, and you can feel it, and you're going to stand here and feel it.

Her mouth was still open around the tail of whatever she'd been about to say. The grin hadn't died. It had just stopped, mid-curve, like a record lifted off the groove.

"Go on," he said, low. "You were saying something about my belt."

She swallowed against his palm. He felt it — the whole column of her throat working, the tendon moving under his thumb — and he watched her decide whether to keep going. The vein in his forearm stood up as his grip settled, and her eyes dropped to it, and then came back up to his face.

"It's a nice belt," she said. Her voice had gone a half-step lower and she clearly hated that he'd heard it.

"It is." He held her there a beat longer than he needed to, letting the silence do the work, and then he let go and stepped back. His boot heel clicked once on the mat and then went quiet. "Take the shirt off."

"Make me."

"I will. But I want to see if you'll do it yourself first." He crossed to the bench against the far wall and picked up a length of black rope, weighing it in one hand, not looking at her. "Everything in here is a test. You know that. You walked in knowing that. So here's the first one: you can stand against that wall with your arms crossed and your clever mouth, or you can take the shirt off and find out what you actually came here for. Either one's fine by me. I get paid the same."

"You get paid to be a bully."

"I get paid to be the best part of your year." He turned around. "Shirt."

She held his eyes for a long moment. Then she reached down, crossed her arms at the hem, and pulled the grey shirt up over her head in one motion, and her hair fell back into place around her face like it had been rehearsed. Underneath she was in a plain black bra, and she stood there with her chin up, arms loose at her sides, and he could see the gooseflesh rise on her forearms from the cool of the room and she didn't rub them. Didn't cover herself. Just stood.

"There," she said. "Was that so hard?"

"Bra too."

"You first."

He smiled at that one. It was a good retort, and he liked good retorts, and he was going to enjoy taking it apart. He crossed back to her, rope still in his hand, and stopped close enough that she had to tip her head back again. He reached behind her, unhooked the bra with one hand, and let it fall forward off her shoulders. She caught it before it hit the floor — reflex — and stood there holding it, tits bare, arms half-crossed now, and the grin was gone and something else was moving behind her eyes.

"Drop it," he said.

She dropped it.

"Good." He took her by the upper arm and turned her, walked her across the mat to the center of the room where the chains hung from the ceiling on their pulleys, and he could feel her trying to keep her feet under her, trying to walk like she wasn't being walked. He let her. He liked them trying. It made the moment they stopped trying worth more.

"Wrists," he said.

"Please."

"Please what."

"Please and thank you and may I have another." She said it fast, mocking, and held her wrists out anyway — both of them, together, palms up — and he took the rope and wrapped her left wrist first, three turns, cinched, tested it with a thumb between the rope and her skin. Tight. Not too tight. She watched him do it with her head tilted like she was grading him.

"You've got good hands," she said. "Steady. I figured you'd be shakier, honestly. All that testosterone."

"You talk a lot."

"It's a personality."

"It's a wall." He finished the right wrist, looped the rope up through the chain, and pulled. Her arms rose over her head, slow, and her body stretched with them — ribs, belly, the small hollow under her sternum — and he watched her face as the stretch went through her and she had to decide whether to keep talking. She kept talking.

"So what's the plan here, big guy? Going to hang me up and lecture me? Because I've had that one before, and I've got to say, it's not the—"

He put his hand over her mouth.

Just his palm, flat, covering her lips and her jaw, and he leaned in close over her raised arms and looked down into her eyes, and she went absolutely still. He could feel her breath hot and fast against his fingers. Her eyes were wide and bright and — there it was — not afraid. Not even a little. Hungry. Waiting. He held her like that, palm over her mouth, his other hand coming up to rest on the side of her throat again, thumb pressed into the soft place under her jaw, and he counted to five in his head and watched her not fight it.

"Here's the plan," he said, quiet, right against her ear. "I'm going to take you apart in this room for the next twenty-four hours. You're going to talk the whole time, because you can't help it, and I'm going to let you, because I like hearing it. And every single time you say something clever, I'm going to make you pay for it. Not because I'm angry. Because it's Tuesday and I feel like it." He took his hand off her mouth. "Nod if you understand."

She nodded. Her lips were parted and wet from his palm and she licked them, and then — because she couldn't not — she said, "That's a lot of words for 'I'm going to fuck you.'"

He stepped back and hit her across the tits with the flat of his hand.

Not hard enough to mark. Hard enough to sting, hard enough to make her gasp and arch and pull against the rope, and the sound of it cracked off the padded walls and came back to them twice. Her tits reddened where his palm had landed. She hung there breathing through it, and when she looked at him again her grin was back, smaller now, a little crooked, a little less sure of itself.

"Okay," she said. "Okay, that was good."

"You're going to say that a lot." He walked a slow circle around her, trailing one finger down her spine as he went, and she shivered and tried to pretend she hadn't. "You came in here to find out if I'm real. So I'm going to show you. You're going to be here for a full day, and by the end of it you're going to be hoarse from asking me for things you swore you'd never ask anyone for. That's the deal. You already signed it."

"And if I don't?"

"Then you'll have spent a lot of money to learn that you're exactly like everyone else." He came around her front again, and this time when he stopped he was close, and she had to look up past her own raised arms to see him. "I don't think you are. I think you're meaner than you look and hungrier than you admit, and I think you're going to be a lot of fun. But we'll find out."

He reached up and unhooked the rope from the chain, and her arms came down, and she shook them out, wincing, and he let her have the moment. Then he took the rope and used it to walk her down — a light tug, not a yank — and she followed it, because she wanted to, and her knees hit the mat.

The exhale that came out of her was the first honest sound she'd made since she walked in. Low. Slow. He heard the last of the performance leave it.

She looked up at him from her knees, wrists still bound, hair in her face, and the smirk was fading — not gone, but thinning, giving way to something with more teeth in it. Hungrier. Realer. She wet her lips again and didn't say anything, and that, more than anything she'd said all afternoon, told him he had her.

He put his hand on his belt.

"Good girl," he said. "Now we can begin."

He put his hand on his belt, and she watched him do it. That was the part he liked best — the watching. She was still on her knees on the mat with her wrists bound in front of her and her hair hanging in her face, and she didn't look away from his hands. She tracked them like a woman tracking a card she was sure she could name.

The buckle clicked. Leather slid through the loops with a whisper, and he pulled the belt free in one slow draw and let it hang from his fist, doubled over, the end of it swinging a little. Her eyes followed the swing. Her mouth was still wet from his palm.

"You going to hit me with that?" she asked. Still going. Still talking.

"Not yet." He dropped it on the bench behind her, out of her sight, and her shoulders shifted a fraction when she heard it land — that small animal flicker of not knowing where a thing had gone. "You'll know when."

"Because you're so unpredictable."

"No." He stepped in over her, close enough that his shadow fell across her face. "Because I'm patient. You haven't figured out the difference yet."

He unbuttoned his jeans, one button, and dragged the zipper down. The sound of it was loud in the padded room, sharper than it should have been, and he watched her chin come up a degree — not backing off, just adjusting, recalibrating what she'd walked in expecting. He worked the denim down over his hips and his cock came free of it already hard, heavy, standing up off his body, and he let her look at it for a second before he touched her.

She looked. Her mouth did something — a small, involuntary pull at one corner that wasn't the smirk and wasn't quite a smile. He'd seen that face before. It was the face of a woman discovering that the thing she'd been mouthing off about was real, and bigger than she'd budgeted for.

"That's what you came here for," he said. Not a question.

"That's what you came here for."

He took her hair. Not the ends of it — the roots, up close to the scalp, a fistful gathered at the crown of her head, and he twisted it once, tight, so her face came up and her throat stretched and her bound wrists lifted off her lap. She made a small sound, half surprise and half something with more heat in it, and her hands came up on reflex and stopped, because there was nowhere to put them and she knew it.

"Open your mouth," he said.

"Make m—"

He put the head of his cock against her lips. Just the head, resting there, and he held her hair and waited. He could feel her breath coming out hot across the wet tip of it, fast and shallow, and he could feel her thinking — the whole calculation running behind her eyes, whether to keep the bit going or take the thing she'd paid for. He let her take her time. He had all day.

Her lips parted.

He pushed in. Slow, the first inch, and her tongue came up under him and her jaw worked to take the width of it, and he watched her eyes — still open, still up on his face, still doing math. He pushed deeper and her mouth stretched around him and her eyes narrowed, and he felt the soft roof of her mouth slide along the underside of his cock and the wet heat of her close around the head of it, and he breathed out through his nose and didn't move.

"There it is," he said. "That's the first honest thing you've done all afternoon."

She made a noise around him — a low, annoyed hum that vibrated up the length of his cock and made his jaw tighten — and he laughed, quiet, and pulled back until just the head was resting on her lower lip again.

"Go on, then," he said. "You've been running your mouth since you walked in. Put it to work."

She did. She took him back in and this time she didn't wait for him to set the pace — she bobbed down over him, taking him halfway, her tongue flat and dragging along the underside, and her bound hands came up and braced against his thighs for balance and he let her have that. Her mouth was good. Wet and hot and unpracticed in the way that meant she was doing it for him and not for show, and he stood over her with his fist in her hair and watched her work and let her think she was in charge of it.

Then he took it.

He gathered her hair tighter and pulled her down onto him, all the way, until her nose pressed into the muscle of his stomach and her throat closed around the head of his cock and her whole body jerked. She gagged — hard, a wet, wrenching sound, and her hands slapped flat against his thighs and her eyes flew wide and watered, and he held her there. Two seconds. Three. Her throat worked and spasmed around him and her breath came out of her nose in a hot, panicked rush against his skin, and she did not pull away.

He pulled her off. She came up gasping, a string of spit breaking between her lip and the head of his cock, and she dragged air in through her mouth and her eyes were wet at the corners and bright, and she looked up at him and — there it was — she was grinning. Crooked. Wrecked. Real.

"Okay," she rasped. "Okay, that's — that's the real thing."

"That's the first inch of it." He wiped his thumb across the wet corner of her mouth and then put it back in her hair. "Open."

She opened.

He set the rhythm this time, and he set it hard. Both hands in her hair now, one on each side of her head, and he fucked down into her mouth in long, deep strokes, pulling her onto him and letting her rock back, and the wet sound of it filled the padded room — that soft, swallowed, slapping sound of a throat taking a cock, no echo, the foam eating it, so it stayed close and private between the two of them. Spit ran down her chin and dripped onto her bare tits and she didn't lift a hand to wipe it. Her wrists stayed bound in her lap. Her eyes stayed up on his face, streaming water at the corners, blinking hard, and every time he bottomed out in her throat she made a sound — a strangled, choked little moan that he felt in his balls.

"Look at you," he said, low. "Came in here talking about my belt. And here you are."

She couldn't answer with her mouth full. She answered with her tongue, dragging it up the vein on the underside of him on the pull-back, and he felt his stomach tighten and his grip on her hair go white.

He changed the angle. Tilted her head back further with the fist in her hair so her throat opened up straight, and pushed in deep and held it there and watched her throat bulge around him, watched her swallow against the head of his cock, felt her swallow, felt the whole ring of her throat close and open around him. Her hands curled into fists against his thighs. Her eyes rolled up and came back. She held it. She held it longer than he expected her to, and when he finally pulled her off she came up coughing and laughing at the same time, a wrecked, wet, gasping laugh, spit hanging off her chin.

"You're going to make me earn it, aren't you," she said. Hoarse now. The bright flat voice from the doorway was gone and this one had gravel in it.

"You already earned it." He pulled her back down. "You just haven't figured out what you earned."

He fucked her mouth until his thighs started to shake. Until the rhythm went ragged and his breathing came out of him in short, hard pulls and he stopped counting and just used her — her mouth, her throat, her hair, the wet heat of her, the little choked sounds she made every time he bottomed out. She stopped fighting the pace and started meeting it, leaning into him, taking him deeper on her own, and that was the thing that finished it. Not the heat. Not the wet. The moment she stopped being taken and started taking.

"That's it," he said, and his voice came out lower than he meant it to, rougher. "That's it. You want it, don't you. Say it."

She pulled off just far enough to talk, her lips still dragging on the head of him, spit and pre-come smeared across her mouth. "I want it."

"Say the rest."

"I want your cock." Her voice cracked in the middle of it. "I want you to come in my mouth."

"Good girl."

He pulled her back down and held her there and let go. It came up through him fast and hard — his hips jerking, his fist tight in her hair, his head going back, and he came down her throat in three long pulses and felt her swallow around him, felt her throat work and take it, felt her tongue stay flat and pressed under him while he emptied into her mouth. She didn't pull off. She stayed down on him until he was done and his grip loosened in her hair and his cock started to soften against her tongue.

He pulled out slow. A last thread of spit and come stretched between them and broke.

She stayed on her knees. Mouth open. Come sitting on her lower lip, catching the light, and her chin wet, and her eyes still up on his face, streaming, blown wide, and she didn't wipe it. She didn't swallow it yet either. She just knelt there with her mouth open and her hands bound in her lap and waited, breathing hard through her nose, for whatever he was going to say next.

He watched her hold it. The come sat on her lip and her throat worked once, twice, the way a throat does when it's deciding, and she didn't decide. She kept her mouth open and her eyes on him and let him see it there, and something in the back of his chest went quiet and satisfied in a way he didn't bother to examine.

"Close your mouth," he said. "Swallow."

She did. He watched her throat move around it, watched her tongue come up and clean the inside of her lower lip, and she made a face — not disgust, something smaller and more private, the face of a woman tasting what she'd asked for and finding out it tasted like what it was.

"There," he said. "Was that so hard."

"You're a real piece of work." Her voice was wrecked. Gravel and water. She didn't sound like she meant it as an insult.

"I've been called worse by better." He stepped back off her and let go of her hair, and her head came down on its own, chin to chest, and she stayed like that a second, breathing, before she looked back up. He tucked himself away and didn't bother with the button. Let the denim hang open on his hips. He was still half-hard and he wasn't done with her and she could see both things on him if she looked, and she looked.

"Get up," he said.

She got up. It took her a second — her knees had gone stiff on the mat and her bound wrists made it awkward, and she had to roll forward onto the balls of her feet and push up without her hands. He didn't help her. He stood there with his arms crossed and watched her figure it out, and she figured it out, and when she was standing she was a head shorter than him and still had come drying on her chin and spit cooling on her tits and she didn't move to fix any of it.

"Hands," he said.

She held them out. The rope was still on her wrists, the same neat figure-eight from earlier, and he took the loose end and pulled it apart, unwinding the loops one at a time, and the skin underneath was pink and creased where the rope had bitten. He rubbed his thumb across the worst of it, once, feeling the heat in it, and she let him do that too.

"Turn around," he said.

She turned. He walked her to the bench with a hand flat between her shoulder blades — not pushing, just there, the weight of it telling her where to go — and she went, and he sat her down on the edge of it and knelt in front of her, which put his face level with her knees, and he spread them with both hands. She made a sound. Not a word. Just air.

"You've been wet since the doorway," he said. "Haven't you."

"You don't know that."

He put two fingers between her legs and dragged them up through it, slow, from the back to the front, and brought them out shining and held them up where she could see them in the light. She looked at his fingers. She didn't look away. Her jaw was set and her chest was going up and down faster than it had been a minute ago and she still had the nerve to hold his eye while he showed her what she was.

"Say it," he said.

"I'm wet." Flat. Almost bored. The brat was still in there somewhere, doing damage control.

"Say the rest."

She breathed out through her nose. "I've been wet since the doorway."

"Good." He put his fingers in his mouth and cleaned them, and her eyes tracked that too, and he watched her watch it and filed it away. "Now lie back."

She lay back. The bench was padded leather and it creaked under her and her hair spread out across it and her tits went flat and her stomach pulled taut and he looked at her laid out like that for a second before he moved. Bound hands, spread legs, come drying on her chin, and still that little flare of attitude behind her eyes, waiting to see what he'd do with her. He'd had women cry by this point. He'd had women go quiet and glassy and grateful. This one was still running her mouth in her head.

He stood up and walked to the wall and came back with the strap.

She saw it and her whole body went still, and then — there it was — she smiled. Small. Crooked. The same wrecked grin from the mat, and she lifted her chin at him like she was the one holding the cards.

"Finally," she said.

He put the strap down on the bench beside her hip, close enough that she could feel the leather against her skin, and he leaned over her and put his mouth against her ear.

"Not yet," he said. "You came in here talking. You're going to leave here quiet."

Her breath caught. He felt it against his cheek. He straightened up and left the strap where it was, lying across the leather by her thigh, and walked to the door and put his hand on the handle and looked back at her over his shoulder — spread out, bound, wet, come on her chin, the strap within reach of a hand she couldn't use.

"Don't move," he said. "I'll be back when I feel like it."

He opened the door and stepped out and closed it behind him, and through the foam he heard her start to laugh — a low, hoarse, disbelieving laugh that cut off when the latch caught.

The corridor outside was concrete and cold and he stood in it for a minute, breathing, letting his cock go down. That was the part the women never saw — the part where he had to stand in a hallway and get his head back on straight before he went back in. She'd laughed at the door. Most of them didn't laugh at the door. Most of them cried or went quiet or started talking to fill the silence, and he heard all of it through the foam because the foam didn't eat everything, just most of it, and he'd built it that way too.

He checked the clock on the corridor wall. Fourteen minutes since he'd left her. He'd meant to give her twenty.

He went back in.

The latch clicked and the padded room took the sound and swallowed it, and she was exactly where he'd left her — laid back on the bench, hair fanned out, wrists still bound in her lap, the strap lying untouched across the leather by her thigh. She hadn't moved it. She hadn't moved at all, near as he could tell, and when the door opened her head came up off the bench a half-inch and her eyes found him and something in her face went through about four expressions in the space of one breath before it settled back on the smirk.

"Fourteen minutes," she said. "I counted."

"You counted."

"I'm good at waiting. It's the one thing I'm good at."

He crossed the room without answering. He didn't stop at the bench — he walked past it, to the wall, and pulled the second strap off its hook. The one with the wider tongue, softer leather, the one he used when he wanted the sound of it more than the sting. He brought it back and laid it on the bench beside the first one, and she looked at the two of them lying there and her throat moved.

"Two," she said.

"Two."

"Am I supposed to be scared now?"

"You're supposed to be quiet." He put his hand flat on her sternum, over the bone, and pressed her back down onto the leather. She went. Her shoulder blades hit the bench and her bound hands came up on reflex and stopped against his forearm, and she let them stay there, curled, not pushing. "You had your mouth the whole time you were alone in here with me and you couldn't keep it shut for a minute. So now I'm going to keep it shut for you."

"How."

He answered by kneeling.

He went down in front of the bench with his knees on the mat and his face level with her cunt, and he didn't touch her yet. He just looked. She was spread the way he'd left her, thighs open over the edge of the bench, and the wet was already there — the shine of it down the inside of one thigh, the lips swollen and dark and parted, the whole thing flushed from the strap he hadn't used and the mouth he had. He put his hands on the insides of her knees and pushed them wider, and she let him, and then he pushed them wider still, until she was open past comfortable and he heard her breath change.

"That's — that's wide," she said.

"You'll live."

He put his mouth on her.

Not on her clit — on the outside, first, the flat of his tongue laid against the wet seam of her, dragging up slow from the back to the front, and her whole body came off the bench a quarter-inch and her bound hands slapped down flat on the leather. He tasted her — salt and copper and the clean animal musk of her — and he took his time with it, dragging his tongue back down the same path, feeling the lips part under it, feeling the wet well up fresh under the pressure.

"Oh," she said. Just that. The smirk was gone out of her voice.

He did it again. Slower. Wider. He worked his tongue up through her in long, flat strokes and let the tip of it flick the hood of her clit on the way past — just once, just enough to make her hips twitch — and she made a small sound in her throat that she clearly hadn't authorized, and he pulled back and blew cool air across her and watched her cunt clench on nothing.

"Say it," he said, against her thigh.

"Say what."

"You know what."

She was quiet for a second. He could hear her breathing. He put his mouth back down and licked her once, soft, right up the center, and stopped with his tongue resting just below her clit.

"I want it," she said. Hoarse. "I want your mouth."

"Where."

"On my — on my pussy."

"Good girl."

He gave it to her then. He put his mouth on her clit and sucked, and her whole body arched off the bench and her heels came up and her bound hands grabbed at his hair — grabbed, not pushed, fingers knotted in the curls at the back of his head and holding on like she was on a ledge. He let her hold. He kept the suction steady and worked his tongue flat and fast against the underside of her clit, and she started to shake, the muscles in her thighs going tight and jumping under his palms.

"Fuck," she said. "Fuck, that's — okay. Okay."

He pulled off. Just like that. Took his mouth away and sat back on his heels and looked at her, and she stared down the length of her own body at him with her mouth open and her eyes wide and furious.

"No," she said.

"Yes."

"That's — that's not — you can't just—"

"I can do whatever I want. That's the contract." He wiped his mouth with the back of his wrist and put his hand back on her thigh and pushed it down flat against the bench. "You want it or you don't."

She breathed. Her chest went up and down and her bound wrists came down and pressed flat against her own stomach, and she looked at him down there between her legs with his mouth wet and his eyes on her, and she made the calculation and she lost it on purpose.

"I want it," she said. "Please."

"Please what."

"Please — fuck, please, sir. Please."

"There it is."

He put his mouth back and this time he didn't play. He went at her hard and fast, tongue flat and wide, then pointed and quick against her clit, and he slid two fingers into her while he did it — two, and she took them easy, slick to the knuckle, and he curled them up and found the rough place inside her and pressed, and her whole body locked.

"Oh — oh, that's —"

He hummed against her. That was the trick. He hummed low in his chest and the vibration went up through his tongue and into her clit and she made a sound that wasn't a word, a broken, high, caught sound, and her heels dug into the bench and her hips started to move — small rolls at first, then bigger, riding his mouth, and he let her. He let her fuck herself on his face, and he kept his fingers curled up inside her and his tongue working and his free hand flat on her belly holding her down onto the leather, and he watched her come apart from underneath.

"Don't stop," she said. "Don't you dare stop."

He stopped.

She made a sound like she'd been hit. He pulled his fingers out of her and sat back and looked at her.

"You're a fucking — you're a real piece of work," she said. "You're — I said please."

"You did." He put his fingers in his mouth and cleaned them, slow, watching her watch it. "I'll give it to you when I want to give it to you. Not when you want to take it."

He leaned back in. Slower this time. He put his tongue on her clit and licked her in long, patient strokes, and he slid his fingers back into her — three now, and she took those too, wet enough that they went in without a sound, and he worked them slow and deep while he licked her, and he kept his eyes up on her face the whole time. Her mouth was open. Her eyes were on the ceiling and then on him and then on the ceiling again. Her hands were fists against her own stomach. She was shaking all over, a fine, constant tremor, and she was trying not to say it. He could see her trying.

He curled his fingers up and pressed and licked her clit fast and she broke.

"Please," she said. "Please, sir, please let me — I'm going to — please."

"Go ahead."

She came on his mouth.

It came up through her in a long, rolling wave — her hips bucking off the bench and her heels sliding and her whole body bowing under him, and he didn't pull off. He kept his mouth on her and his fingers curled up inside her and rode it out with her, feeling her cunt clench and pulse around his fingers, feeling the wet of it come fresh and hot across his tongue and his chin, and she cried out — a raw, torn, unguarded sound that filled the padded room and died there, no echo, just her, just the two of them, and she said his name. Not Dom. His name. The one she wasn't supposed to know.

"Dominic."

He held her through it. He kept his mouth there until the last of the shudder went out of her and her hips came down onto the leather and her hands unclenched and her breathing started to even out, and then he pulled his fingers out slow and sat back on his heels and wiped his mouth with his wrist.

She didn't open her eyes.

He stayed where he was, kneeling between her spread knees with the taste of her still in his mouth, and looked at her — laid out flat on the bench, hair everywhere, chin still faintly shining with his come from before, tits rising and falling, wrists bound, the two straps lying untouched by her thigh. She was still shaking. Small aftershocks, running through her thighs.

He said nothing.

He waited.

It took her a while. He watched her come back to herself the way you watch a tide come back in — her breathing slowing, her hands opening, the tremor fading out of her legs. And then, finally, her eyes came open and found him still down there between her knees, and he was looking up at her with his mouth still wet and his face giving her nothing, and she looked at him for a long second and then she laughed — low, wrecked, hoarse, the same laugh from the door but with all the smartness gone out of it — and she lifted her bound hands and put them over her own face.

"Jesus Christ," she said, into her palms.

He stood up. He didn't wipe his mouth again. He picked up both straps off the bench and hung them back on the wall, and then he came back and stood over her, and she moved her hands off her face and looked up at him from flat on her back with her hair spread and her throat bare and her eyes still wet at the corners.

"Now," he said, "you can talk."