The sheets were rough against her thighs. That was the first thing she felt, before the ache in her shoulders, before the silk at her wrists, before the dark pressed against her eyes like a palm. Rough cotton, worn thin in places, the kind of fabric that had been washed a hundred times and had given up any pretense of softness. She shifted, and the movement pulled at her arms, and the ache bloomed fresh, a dull fire running from her shoulders down into her elbows.

She opened her eyes. The room was dark, the curtains drawn against what might have been morning or might have been noon. She couldn't tell. Time had stopped meaning anything in this house, had stopped meaning anything the moment she'd been brought back through the gate, the moment Elle had handed her over like a package, the moment Adrian had looked at her with those warm honey-brown eyes and seen something she didn't want to name.

Her wrists were bound to the headboard. Silk, the same silk as ten days ago, before everything broke. She remembered the feel of it knotted around her wrist when she'd stood at the farm gate, both hands on the chain-link, the cold of the metal against her palms. She'd thought she was free then. She'd thought the worst was over.

The silk was knotted twice, tight enough that she couldn't slip a hand through, loose enough that it didn't cut off the circulation. Whoever had tied it knew what they were doing. She tugged anyway, testing, and the knot held, and the ache in her shoulders sharpened, and she let her head fall back against the pillow.

She was wearing only her underwear. The same set she'd worn the night she was taken — pale blue cotton, practical, the kind of thing she'd bought in a three-pack at the drugstore. It felt absurd now, here, in this room that smelled of his cologne, that faint cedar-and-amber scent that had soaked into the pillowcase beneath her cheek. She'd been wearing these same underwear when she'd stood at the farm gate. When she'd run through the pines. When she'd fallen.

She didn't want to think about what had happened after she'd fallen.

The door was closed. The room was still. For a long moment, she let herself believe she was alone, that he had left her here and forgotten her, that the silence would stretch on until she starved or the silk rotted and she could pull free. It was a stupid hope, and she knew it, but she held it anyway, the way you hold a breath underwater.

Then she heard his voice.

It came through the wall, low and patient, the kind of voice you'd use to soothe a spooked horse. "You know what to say, Mila."

The words landed in the dark, and her body reacted before her mind could stop it — a flush of heat that started in her chest and spread down, down, settling low in her belly. She hated it. She hated the way her skin remembered his voice, the way her thighs pressed together of their own accord, the way the ache in her shoulders suddenly felt less like pain and more like something else.

"Say it," he said, through the wall, patient as ever. "Say it and I'll come in."

She closed her eyes. The word sat on her tongue, heavy and wrong, a word she'd never thought she'd say to anyone, a word that belonged to a different kind of life, a different kind of woman. She'd been a weather presenter. She'd smiled at cameras and told people to bring umbrellas. She'd had a life, a real life, with a condo and a car and a plant she'd remembered to water most of the time.

Now she was here, in his bed, in her underwear, her wrists bound to his headboard, and he wanted her to say one word.

"No," she whispered. The word came out thin, barely a sound, but she said it. She said it because she was still her, still Camila Rodrigues, still the woman who'd fought and run and almost made it to the gate.

The silence stretched. She held her breath, listening, waiting for the sound of his footsteps, the creak of the door. Nothing came.

"Mila." His voice again, through the wall, not angry, not even impatient. Just patient. Just certain. "You're going to say it eventually. You know that. I know that. So why don't you save us both the time and say it now?"

She bit her lip. The old habit surfaced without her permission, her teeth sinking into the soft flesh, and she tasted blood, faint and metallic. She'd been biting her lip when she'd stood at the farm gate. She'd been biting her lip when she'd told the old man about Elle, when she'd traded the only person who might have saved her for a few more hours of not being alone in the dark.

She'd been biting her lip her whole life, it felt like. Biting back the things she wanted to say, the things she was afraid to want.

"I can hear you thinking," Adrian said through the wall. There was something almost warm in his voice, almost fond, and that was the worst part. "You're trying to find a way out. You're telling yourself you can hold out, that if you just stay quiet long enough, I'll get bored and leave you alone."

She didn't answer. She couldn't. Because he was right, and she hated that he was right, hated the way he could read her from the other side of a wall, hated the way her body was already betraying her, the wetness gathering between her legs, the heat that had nothing to do with the temperature of the room.

"That's not going to happen," he said. "You know that too. You've been here long enough to know how this works."

She had. That was the worst of it. She'd been here long enough — days, or was it more, she couldn't keep track anymore — to know that he would wait. He would wait all day if he had to. He would wait until her throat was raw from screaming and her wrists were bloody from pulling at the silk, and then he would wait some more.

And eventually, she would say it.

Because that was how this worked. That was how it had worked the first time, and the second, and every time after. She would fight, and she would lose, and she would say the word, and he would come in, and her body would betray her, and she would hate herself for it.

She hated herself for it now, hated the way her hips shifted against the sheets, hated the way her thighs were slick, hated the way she could feel her own pulse between her legs, a slow, insistent throb that had nothing to do with fear.

"Sir," she whispered.

The word was barely audible, a breath against the pillow. She said it again, louder, hating the way it felt in her mouth, the way it tasted like surrender.

"Sir."

The door opened.

He moved like a shadow, crossing the room in a few long strides, and then he was there, standing over the bed, looking down at her. The light from the hallway spilled in behind him, catching the edges of his face, the warm honey-brown of his eyes, the slight smile that played at the corner of his mouth. He was wearing a loose linen shirt, unbuttoned at the collar, and soft gray trousers, and he looked like he'd just woken up, like this was all perfectly normal, like he hadn't been standing on the other side of the wall listening to her fight herself.

"Good girl," he said.

The words hit her like a slap. She flinched, and the movement pulled at her wrists, and the silk bit into her skin, and she hated him, hated him with a clean, bright hatred that she could feel in her teeth.

He sat on the edge of the bed. The mattress dipped under his weight, tilting her toward him, and she had to fight the urge to lean into the warmth of him, to press her cheek against his chest and let herself stop fighting for just one moment.

"You took longer this time," he said. "I was starting to think you'd forgotten the word."

"I didn't forget it." The words came out sharp, harder than she'd intended. "I just didn't want to say it."

"And yet you said it." He reached out, and she flinched again, but his hand didn't go to her face. It went to her hip, resting there lightly, his thumb tracing a slow circle on the bare skin above the waistband of her underwear. "Why is that, Mila?"

She didn't answer. She couldn't. Because the truth was that she'd said it because her body had demanded it, because the ache between her legs had grown unbearable, because she'd needed him to come in and touch her and she'd hated herself for needing it.

"You said it because you wanted me," he said, and his thumb slipped lower, hooking under the waistband of her underwear, tugging at the elastic. "You said it because your body knows what it needs, even when your mouth won't admit it."

"That's not—"

"Isn't it?" His hand slid under the waistband, and she felt his fingers against her skin, felt the heat of his palm against her hip, and her breath caught in her throat. "Tell me you don't want this. Tell me you're not wet right now, thinking about my fingers inside you."

She couldn't tell him that. Because she was wet, had been wet since she'd heard his voice through the wall, and he knew it, and she knew he knew it, and there was nowhere left to hide.

His fingers moved lower, sliding through the slick heat of her, and she gasped, her hips bucking against his hand before she could stop herself. He made a low sound of approval, something between a hum and a growl, and she felt it vibrate through his palm, through her skin, down into her bones.

"There she is," he murmured. "There's the girl who said my name through the wall."

"I didn't say your name." The words came out breathless, broken. "I said—"

"Sir." He found her clit, and she jerked, her whole body arching off the bed, the silk at her wrists pulling taut. "You said Sir. And I liked it. I liked hearing you say it through the wall, knowing you were fighting yourself, knowing you were going to lose."

She wanted to tell him she hadn't lost. She wanted to tell him that this didn't count, that she was only saying the word because he'd made her, that her body's betrayal meant nothing. But his fingers were moving in slow, deliberate circles on her clit, and the words wouldn't come, and all she could do was lie there and take it, her breath coming in short, sharp gasps.

"You're so wet," he said, and there was wonder in his voice, genuine wonder, like he was seeing something beautiful. "You're so wet for me, Mila. You hate me, and you're so wet for me."

"I do hate you." The words came out on a moan, and she hated that too, hated the way her voice broke on the word, hated the way her hips were moving against his hand, chasing the pressure. "I hate you so much."

"I know you do." His fingers slid lower, and she felt one of them press against her entrance, felt the slick heat of her own arousal, and she whimpered, her head falling back against the pillow. "And I don't care. Because your body knows what it wants, even if your mind won't admit it."

He pushed his finger inside her, and she cried out, her back arching, her wrists straining against the silk. He was slow about it, deliberate, pushing in inch by inch until he was buried to the knuckle, and then he paused, letting her feel the fullness of it, letting her adjust to the intrusion.

"That's it," he said. "That's it, Mila. Take it."

She couldn't have done anything else. Her body had taken over, had stopped listening to her mind, had become a thing that wanted and needed and ached. She could feel herself clenching around his finger, could feel the wetness spreading, could feel the heat building low in her belly, a slow, insistent pressure that she knew was going to crest whether she wanted it to or not.

He added a second finger, and she gasped, her hips bucking, her whole body trembling. He was stretching her, filling her, and she could feel every inch of it, could feel the way his fingers curved inside her, searching, finding the spot that made her see stars.

"There," he said, and she knew he'd felt her reaction, felt the way her body had clenched around him. "There it is. That's the spot, isn't it?"

She didn't answer. She couldn't. She was too far gone, too lost in the feeling of his fingers inside her, the slow, deliberate rhythm he'd set, the way he was watching her, his honey-brown eyes dark with something that might have been hunger, might have been possession, might have been something else entirely.

"I asked you a question," he said, and his fingers curled, pressing against that spot, and she cried out, her whole body convulsing. "Answer me."

"Yes," she gasped. "Yes, yes, that's—"

"That's what?"

"That's the spot." The words came out broken, desperate. "Please, Adrian, please—"

"Please what?" His thumb found her clit again, circling, and she was so close, so close, the pressure building and building until she thought she might shatter. "Please what, Mila?"

"Please let me come." The words were torn from her, raw and shameful, and she hated herself for saying them, hated the way they'd just fallen out of her mouth like they belonged there. "Please, I need—"

"You need to come?" His fingers moved faster, harder, and she was gasping, writhing, the silk at her wrists cutting into her skin. "You need to come on my fingers, is that it? You need to come for me, and then you need to thank me?"

"Yes." She was sobbing now, tears leaking from the corners of her eyes, her whole body trembling on the edge. "Yes, yes, please—"

"Then come." His voice was low, almost gentle, and that was the worst part, the way he could be gentle while he was doing this to her. "Come for me, Mila. Come on my fingers."

She did. The orgasm hit her like a wave, like a wall of water, like something that had been building for days and had finally broken through. She cried out, her back arching, her hips grinding against his hand, and she could feel herself clenching around his fingers, could feel the wetness flooding out of her, could feel the shame and the pleasure and the hatred all tangled up together until she couldn't tell where one ended and the other began.

He kept moving his fingers through it, slow and steady, drawing it out, wringing every last tremor from her body until she collapsed back against the mattress, limp and shaking, her breath coming in ragged gasps.

And then he withdrew his hand.

The absence was sudden, almost cruel, and she felt herself clench around nothing, felt the emptiness where his fingers had been. She lay there, trembling, her wrists still bound, her body still aching, and she heard him move, heard the soft sound of him wiping his hand on the sheets.

She opened her eyes. He was looking down at her, his expression unreadable, and there was something in his gaze that made her stomach clench, something that wasn't quite satisfied, something that was still hungry.

"Thank you," she said. The words came out through gritted teeth, bitter and shameful, and she hated herself for saying them, hated the way they tasted in her mouth. "Thank you, Sir."

He smiled. It was a slow, warm smile, the kind of smile that had probably charmed a hundred women, and she hated him for it, hated the way it made her chest ache, hated the way her body was already stirring again, already wanting more.

"Good girl," he said. And then he leaned in, close enough that she could feel his breath on her cheek, and he said, "Now. Let's talk about what happens next."

His palm was still warm from her, still slick, and he wiped it slow down the plane of her stomach, leaving a wet shine across her navel. She watched his hand move over her skin and felt each inch of it like a separate thing, like something being written on her that she couldn't wash off.

"You know what I've been thinking about?" His voice had dropped into that register she'd learned to dread — the one that sounded like a conversation, like they were two people talking over coffee. He traced the waistband of her underwear, back and forth, the elastic snapping soft against her hip. "Since you ran. Since the gate. Since you put your hands through the fence and screamed for help like somebody out there was going to hear you."

She turned her face into the pillow. The cotton smelled of him, cedar and amber and the salt of her own drying sweat, and she breathed it in because there was nowhere else to put her face.

"I thought about it a lot," Adrian said. "More than I should have. I'd be in a meeting and I'd see the pine trees out the window and think about you running through them barefoot. I'd be eating dinner and wonder if you'd found anything to eat. I'd lie in this bed — this exact bed — and think about how it smelled when you were in it." He laughed, soft, almost embarrassed, and the sound was worse than anything else he could have done. "That's a lot of thinking, Mila. For a girl who left me."

A whimper climbed up her throat before she could catch it — small, high, the sound of an animal that had been stepped on. She swallowed it down, pressed her lips together, but he'd heard it. He always heard it.

"Shut it." His hand left her waistband and found her jaw, thumb and forefinger, not rough, just there — holding her face still. "You don't get to live in pleasure all the time anymore. You had your come. You said thank you. That's over now."

She blinked at him. The words took a second to land, to mean anything, and when they did, her stomach dropped like the first second of a fall.

"You're going to do some things for me from now on," he said. "Tasks. Real ones." He let go of her jaw and sat back, one hand braced on the mattress, looking down at her bound wrists and her flushed chest and the wet patch already cooling on the sheets between her thighs. "You can enjoy them. I hope you do. I hope you learn to love them, actually — I think you could, if you let yourself." He paused. "But you'll do them either way. Whether you love every second or you hate every second, you'll do them. That part's not up to you."

She opened her mouth. She didn't know what she was going to say — something about how she wasn't his, something about how this wasn't real, something that started with you can't — and the words were already forming behind her teeth when his hand came across her face.

It wasn't hard. It wasn't a blow that would leave a mark. It was a slap, flat-palmed, quick, the kind you'd give a dog that jumped up on the counter — and it turned her head to the side and stopped her voice in her throat and left her cheek stinging with a heat that spread all the way up into her scalp.

"Try again," he said. Calm. Almost kind.

She lay still, cheek burning, eyes stinging, and felt the shape of the thing he wanted her to understand settle into her chest like a stone dropped into water. She wasn't going to get to argue. She wasn't going to get to plead. The only question she was allowed to ask was the one that started with what.

"What—" Her voice cracked. She tried again. "What would my tasks be?"

The sobs came on the end of the question, wet and humiliating, and she couldn't stop them. She hated that most of all — that she could hold the tears back when she was fighting and lose them the second she gave in.

Adrian smiled. It was the smile he'd worn at the farm gate, the one that had made her think, for one stupid moment, that he might let her go. He reached out and smoothed a strand of hair back from her forehead, tucking it behind her ear with a care that made her want to throw up.

"You'd be my good girl," he said. "My maid."

The word landed like a second slap. She stared at him.

"Sofia's job," he said, and now he was watching her face, watching the exact moment it hit. "The one she left behind. You know she's gone, don't you? She walked out the gate and she didn't look back, and she left the whole house to rot. Nobody's been doing the dusting. Nobody's been changing the sheets. The kitchen's a mess." He gestured around the room, at the drawn curtains and the empty water glass on the nightstand. "Unoccupied. Unattended. That's what you walked into. You don't get to be my queen in a house nobody's taking care of."

She didn't say anything. She couldn't. The tears had started and they weren't the loud kind — they were the silent kind, the kind that slid sideways down her temples and into her hair and made no sound at all, and she hated him for making her cry like that, quiet, so he could keep talking over it like it wasn't happening.

"Shh." He put his palm flat over her mouth, not hard, just resting there, and her breath came hot and wet against his skin. "Shh. Listen to me."

She listened. She had no choice but to listen.

"This is better," he said. "Than being my queen. Do you understand that? As my queen you'd sit in a room and wait for me. You'd be a thing I visited. As this—" He pressed his palm a little harder, cutting off the sob that tried to climb out of her. "As this, you get to serve me every day. You get to touch my things. You get to know the house. You get to be useful." He lifted his hand away and let her gasp in air. "You'd be surprised how much better it is to be useful."

"Please." The word came out of her without permission, raw and small. "Please, I don't—I don't know how to—"

"You'll learn." He said it the way you'd say you'll see, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. "You'll learn the way Sofia learned. She was terrible at it at first. Cried in the pantry for a month. Then she got good." He paused, and something flickered through his eyes — memory, maybe, or appetite. "She got very good, actually. I'm going to miss her work."

Mila turned her face into the pillow again, and this time the sobs came louder, and she pressed her mouth shut against them and felt her whole body shake with the effort of keeping quiet. She thought about Sofia. She thought about the maid's room with the mattress seam and the stolen keys and the way Sofia had looked at her in the pines, promising right behind you, and she thought about the fact that Sofia had gotten out and she hadn't, and now she was going to scrub the floors Sofia had walked on.

"Look at me."

She didn't.

His hand found her chin and turned her face back to his, and she opened her eyes and looked at him because there was nothing else to do, and he was so close she could see the flecks of darker brown in the honey of his irises, could see the faint crease at the corner of his mouth that she'd once thought was kindness.

"This is your reality now," he said. "I'm not going to pretend it isn't. You're not going home. You're not going to be rescued. Nobody's coming for you — you already know that, because you're the one who ran and nobody came." He wiped a tear off her cheek with his thumb, slow, like he was cleaning a window. "So you can spend the next year crying about it, or you can learn your job and stop being miserable. I'd prefer the second one. I like you better when you're not miserable."

She hated him. She hated him with a clarity that felt almost clean, almost holy, and she held onto it because it was the only thing in the room that was still hers.

"What do I do," she whispered. Not a question. A surrender. The two sounded the same in her mouth.

He smiled again, and this time it reached his eyes. "Tomorrow morning you'll get up when I get up. You'll make the bed. You'll draw my bath and lay out my clothes and you'll learn the difference between the gray trousers and the charcoal ones, because there's a difference and I care about it." He counted on his fingers, lazy, enjoying himself. "You'll dust the study. You'll change the linens in the east rooms once a week. You'll take my coffee at seven and again at four, and if it's cold when it reaches me you'll bring me a fresh one and you'll apologize, and you'll mean it."

"And if I don't."

"Then I'll teach you." He said it without heat, without threat, the way you'd say then it'll rain. "The way I taught you to say Sir. The way I taught you to come on my fingers. You're a fast learner, Mila. You just need the right incentive."

She closed her eyes. Behind her lids she saw the farm gate, the chain-link biting her palms, the dark shape of someone stopping on the other side. She'd believed, for one full second, that she was saved. She'd believed that the world outside had finally heard her.

"I'll do it," she said. Her voice sounded like it belonged to someone else. "I'll do your tasks."

"Good girl."

Those two words again, and this time she felt them land somewhere deep and low, worse than the slap, worse than the fingers, and she understood that he'd been building toward this the whole time — that the orgasm and the thank you, Sir and the little slap had all been steps on a staircase, and this was the landing, and there was no way back down.

He leaned in and kissed her forehead, soft, almost tender, and she lay still under it with her eyes closed and her wrists bound and her thighs still slick, and she let him.

"Sleep," he said, and stood up off the bed. The mattress lifted and she rolled slightly toward the empty space where he'd been, and she caught herself before she could follow him. "You've got a long day tomorrow. First day on the job."

He crossed the room. The hallway light cut a bright wedge across the floor and then narrowed as he pulled the door, and she watched his silhouette in the gap, the loose linen shirt, the soft gray trousers, the hand on the frame.

"Mila."

She didn't answer. She was too tired to answer.

"When you're dusting the study," he said, "there's a photograph on the shelf behind the desk. Sofia put it there. You'll want to look at it." A pause. "I'll leave it up to you."

The door closed. The wedge of light vanished. She lay in the dark with her wrists bound above her head and the smell of him in the pillow and her own come drying on the sheets beneath her, and she thought about the photograph, and she thought about Sofia's hands on that shelf, and she thought about the fact that tomorrow she would wake up and make his bed.

She didn't sleep for a long time.

When she finally did, she dreamed about the gate. She was on the outside of it this time, looking in through the chain-link at a woman kneeling on the gravel in a maid's uniform, and the woman's face was her own, and she was dusting the ground with her bare hands, and she was smiling.

She woke with her cheek wet and the room still dark and the silk still tight at her wrists, and she lay there listening for his footsteps, because she had a job now, and her first day started when he got up.

She woke to light she didn't recognize.

Not the gray pre-dawn she'd grown used to in the dark room, not the thin blue of a moon through curtains. This was morning — real morning, golden and slanting through a gap in the drapes she hadn't noticed the night before, cutting a bright line across the floorboards like a blade laid flat.

Her wrists were still bound above her head. The silk had softened overnight, gone from a bite to a memory of a bite, and when she moved her fingers she felt the blood rush back into them in a dull, prickling wave. Her cheek was wet again. She'd been crying in her sleep. She didn't remember dreaming this time — just the wetness, and the ache in her shoulders, and the smell of him still in the pillow like a stain that wouldn't wash out.

She lay still and listened.

Nothing. No footsteps. No voice. Just the house settling around her, the creak of old wood, the distant sound of something that might have been a door closing somewhere far away. She thought about the photograph on the shelf in the study. She thought about Sofia's hands on that shelf, dusting it, polishing it, leaving it clean. She thought about the fact that she was going to have to learn the difference between gray trousers and charcoal ones, and that she cared about neither, and that she was going to have to pretend to care about both.

The door opened.

She didn't flinch. She'd been waiting for it, listening for it, and when it came it came soft, no knock, just the turn of the handle and the widening of the light, and Adrian stepped through it carrying something over his arm like a waiter carrying a towel.

He was dressed. That was the first thing she noticed — dressed, fully, in a pale blue shirt with the sleeves rolled to his elbows and those soft gray trousers, and his hair was still damp from a shower, and he looked like a man who had already started his day while she lay in bed with her wrists tied and her thighs still tacky with the evidence of what he'd done to her.

"Good morning," he said.

She didn't answer. She couldn't. Her voice was still buried somewhere under the sobs from the night before, and her throat was raw, and she didn't trust it to make a sound that wasn't a question she didn't want answered.

He crossed to the foot of the bed and laid the thing over his arm down on the mattress, and she watched it settle and unfold and become a shape she recognized, and her stomach turned over.

It was a uniform. A maid's uniform, but not the kind Sofia had worn — not the sensible gray dress with the white apron and the flat shoes. This was something else. This was a costume, a fantasy, a thing designed to be looked at and then removed.

The dress was black, short, cut high on the thigh, with a neckline that plunged in a deep V that would show the tops of her breasts and the lace of whatever she wore beneath. The apron was white, tiny, more of a suggestion than an apron, tied at the waist with a bow that would sit just above her ass. There was a collar — a black velvet band with a small silver bell attached to it, the kind of thing you'd put on a cat. And beside it, folded neatly, a pair of black lace panties so small they looked like they'd been made for a doll, and a garter belt, and stockings, and a pair of heels so high and thin they looked like they'd snap under her weight.

She stared at it. The bell. The bow. The heels.

"I had it made," Adrian said, and his voice was easy, conversational, like he was showing her a new car. "After Sofia left. I thought about ordering another one in her size, but then I thought — no. I'll wait. I'll find someone who fits it better." He ran a finger along the edge of the apron, tracing the bow. "You'll fit it better."

"Please." The word came out of her before she could stop it, small and cracked. "Please, I can't—"

"You can." He said it gently, the way you'd reassure a child. "You will. And you'll look beautiful in it, which is the point."

She shook her head. The motion made the silk pull at her wrists, and she felt the ache flare up her arms and into her shoulders, and she hated the way her body kept reminding her of the position she was in, the helplessness of it, the fact that she couldn't even turn away from him without feeling the bindings.

He sat down on the edge of the bed, close enough that she could smell the soap on his skin, clean and sharp. "Before you get dressed. Before you start your day. I want to make sure you understand the first task."

She looked at him. His eyes were warm, honey-brown, the same eyes that had looked at her through the chain-link at the farm gate, and she hated them, hated the warmth in them, hated the way they made her want to believe that maybe he wasn't as cruel as he seemed, even though she knew better now. She knew better.

"Every morning," he said, "when I come in, you'll be on the bed. On all fours. Waiting for me. And your first task of the day — the first thing you do, before you make the bed, before you draw my bath, before you do anything else — is you'll take my cock in your mouth, and you'll suck me until I come, and you'll swallow it, and you'll thank me." He paused. "And you'll call me Sir."

The words landed in her chest like stones dropped one by one into still water. She felt them sink. She felt the weight of them settle at the bottom of her, where the hate lived, where the fear lived, where the small, stubborn thing that was still hers was trying to hold on.

"Every morning," she repeated. Not a question. A confirmation. A surrender.

"Every morning," he said. "That's the deal. That's the job. You get up, you position yourself, you wait for me, and you ask me politely for my cock. And then you earn your day."

She closed her eyes. Behind her lids she saw the farm gate again, the chain-link, the dark shape on the other side. She'd believed, for one full second, that she was saved. She'd believed the world outside had heard her.

Nobody had come.

"I'll do it," she whispered. The words tasted like ash. "I'll do it, Sir."

He smiled. It was the smile she'd once thought was kindness, and now she knew it was something else — patience, maybe, or satisfaction, or the pleasure of watching a thing bend exactly the way he'd planned for it to bend.

"Good girl." He reached out and untied the silk at her wrists, and she felt the blood rush back into her hands in a hot, painful flood, and she brought them down to her chest and held them there, flexing her fingers, feeling the ache of having been held so long. "Now. Get dressed. I want to see you in it."

She sat up slowly. The sheet fell away from her body, and she felt his eyes on her — on her breasts, her stomach, the dark marks on her thighs where he'd been between them — and she didn't try to cover herself, because there was no point, because he'd already seen everything, because he owned all of it now.

She reached for the uniform. The fabric was soft, expensive, and it felt like a betrayal to touch it, like putting on a costume that had been waiting for her, sized for her, made for a body that was supposed to be hers.

She put on the panties first. The lace was thin, almost transparent, and it rode high on her hips, and she felt exposed in a way that had nothing to do with being naked. Then the garter belt, the stockings, rolling them up her legs with hands that trembled, feeling the silk catch on her skin. Then the dress, pulling it over her head, settling it over her shoulders, and it fit like it had been sewn onto her — the V of the neckline falling exactly to the top of her breasts, the hem riding high on her thighs, the fabric clinging to every curve like it had been poured.

She reached for the collar. The velvet was soft, the bell small and silver, and when she fastened it around her throat she heard it ring — a tiny, bright sound, like a cat's bell, like a warning.

She stepped into the heels. They were tall, too tall, and she wobbled for a moment before she found her balance, and she stood there in the middle of the room in the maid's uniform with the bell at her throat and the bow at her waist and the heels making her legs look longer than they were, and she felt the tears start again, hot and silent, sliding down her cheeks.

Adrian watched her. He didn't say anything for a long moment. He just looked at her, his head tilted slightly, his eyes moving over her like he was memorizing the shape of her, and then he smiled — a different smile, softer, almost fond — and he said, "Beautiful."

The word hit her like a slap.

"Now," he said, and he gestured at the bed. "Position."

She looked at the bed. The sheets were tangled, still marked with the shape of her body, still smelling of him and of her. She looked at him. His eyes were patient, waiting, and she understood that this was the test — not whether she could do it, but whether she would do it without being forced, whether she would choose to kneel.

She climbed onto the bed. Her hands were shaking, and the heels made her unsteady, and she had to grip the headboard to keep from falling. She turned around, on her knees, and she lowered herself onto all fours, her wrists planted in the mattress, her ass raised, the tiny apron riding up her back, the bell at her throat ringing softly with every movement.

She waited.

He didn't move. He stood at the foot of the bed, watching her, and she could feel his eyes on her — on the curve of her back, the lift of her ass, the way the dress had ridden up to expose the lace of the panties. She could feel the heat of his gaze like a hand on her skin, and she hated the way it made her body respond, the way her nipples tightened against the fabric, the way she could feel herself getting wet again, slick and hot between her thighs.

"Ask me," he said.

She swallowed. Her throat was dry, and the bell at her neck rang with the motion, a tiny, bright sound in the quiet room.

"Ask me," he said again, and this time his voice had lost its patience. It was softer, lower, a blade wrapped in silk. "Ask me properly, and I'll give it to you."

She opened her mouth. The words were there, lined up behind her teeth, and she could feel them fighting her, refusing to be spoken, because once she said them they would be true, they would be a contract, they would be the thing she could never take back. But the silence stretched, and his eyes stayed on her, and she understood that the silence was also a choice, and that the choice was worse.

"Please," she said. Her voice cracked on the word, and she felt the bell at her throat ring with the effort of it. "Please, Sir. May I have your cock?"

He smiled. It was the same smile, the patient one, the one that said he had all the time in the world and she had none. He undid his belt with slow, deliberate movements, the leather sliding through the loops with a sound that filled the room, and she watched his hands, the way they moved, the way they knew exactly what they were doing. He unbuttoned his trousers and pushed them down, and his cock sprang free, already hard, already waiting, and she felt her stomach turn over and her mouth go dry and her thighs press together, and she hated herself for all of it.

"Come here," he said, and he stepped closer to the bed, close enough that she could smell him, soap and skin and something else, something male and warm. "Take it in your mouth. Slowly. I want to feel you work for it."

She crawled forward. The heels made her unsteady, and the bell rang with every movement, and she could feel the dress riding up her thighs, exposing the lace of the panties, and she knew he could see it, knew he was watching, knew this was part of the test. She reached him and knelt up, her hands on his thighs, and she could feel the heat of his skin through the fabric of his trousers, and she looked up at him, and his eyes were dark, hungry, waiting.

She opened her mouth and took him in.

He was thick, and she had to stretch to accommodate him, and she felt the tip of him press against the back of her throat and she gagged, a reflexive, involuntary thing, and she pulled back, gasping, a string of spit connecting her lips to his cock. He didn't move. He just watched her, his hands at his sides, and she understood that he wasn't going to help her, that this was hers to do, that she had to learn how to take him on her own.

She lowered her head again. This time she took him slower, inch by inch, letting her mouth adjust, letting her tongue find the shape of him, the vein on the underside, the soft skin at the tip. She heard him exhale, a long, slow breath, and she felt a small, dark thrill at the sound, at the knowledge that she had made it, that her mouth was doing this to him.

"That's it," he said, and his voice was rougher now, less patient. "That's it. Take me deeper. Use your tongue."

She did. She took him deeper, and she used her tongue, tracing the length of him, swirling around the head, and she felt him grow harder in her mouth, felt the pulse of him against her lips, and she hated the way it made her feel, the way her body was responding, the way she could feel herself getting wetter between her thighs, the lace of the panties growing damp against her skin.

She bobbed her head, finding a rhythm, and she heard him groan, a low, guttural sound that seemed to come from somewhere deep in his chest, and she felt his hand come to rest on the back of her head, not pushing, not forcing, just resting there, a weight, a reminder of who was in control.

"Look at me," he said, and she did, lifting her eyes to his, and she saw the hunger there, the raw, naked want, and she felt a shiver run through her, a thing she couldn't name, a thing she didn't want to name. "That's it. That's my good girl. You're learning."

She kept her eyes on his as she took him deeper, as she let him push past the back of her throat, as she swallowed around him, and she felt his hand tighten in her hair, a small, possessive grip, and she heard him say her name, not the name he'd given her, but her real name, the one her mother had given her, and the sound of it in his mouth made her feel something she couldn't explain.

"Camila," he breathed, and the word was almost tender, almost kind, and she hated him for it, hated the way it made her want to please him, hated the way her body was betraying her, the way her hips were moving, the way she could feel the ache between her thighs, the need, the want, the thing she didn't want to feel.

She sucked him harder. She took him deeper. She let him fill her mouth, let him press against the back of her throat, and she heard him groan again, and she felt his hips begin to move, a small, involuntary thrust, and she knew he was close, knew she was doing this to him, knew she was the one making him lose control.

"I'm going to come," he said, and his voice was strained, tight, barely holding on. "Swallow it. Don't waste a drop."

She nodded, as much as she could with him in her mouth, and she felt him pulse, felt the first hot spurt of him on her tongue, and she swallowed, and he came again, and she swallowed again, and again, until he was spent, until she had taken all of him, until she pulled back, gasping, her lips swollen, her chin slick with spit and the evidence of what she'd done.

She looked up at him. His eyes were closed, his head tilted back, and she saw the pulse in his throat, the rise and fall of his chest, and she felt a strange, hollow satisfaction, a thing she didn't want to feel, a thing she couldn't name.

He opened his eyes and looked down at her, and he smiled, a slow, satisfied smile, and he reached down and wiped a strand of spit from her chin with his thumb, a gesture so gentle it made her want to cry.

"Thank you," she whispered, and the words tasted like ash, like him, like the thing she was becoming. "Thank you, Sir."

"Good girl," he said, and he tucked himself back into his trousers, and he looked at her, at the uniform, at the bell at her throat, at the tears that were starting to slide down her cheeks again, and he said, "Now. Let's see how you look on your knees."

She slid off the bed.

The heels hit the floorboards first and she nearly went over — the ankle rolled, the bell at her throat rang out, and she caught herself on the edge of the mattress with one hand, the other flailing at the air like a woman on a ledge. She heard him make a sound behind her. Not a laugh. Something lower and quieter than a laugh, and worse.

She got her feet under her. Stood. The dress had ridden up in the climb down and she felt the cool of the room on the backs of her thighs, on the lace, and she didn't fix it. Fixing it would be a kind of dignity, and she had already given up the right to that this morning.

The floor was cold through the stockings. She crossed the two steps to where he stood, and the bell kept ringing with every step, tiny and bright, announcing her like something being brought to the table. She stopped in front of him. He was taller than her even in the heels, and she had to lift her chin to find his face.

He didn't reach for her. Didn't touch her. He just stood there with his hands loose at his sides and looked at her — her mouth, still swollen and wet from him, her chin still tacky, the tear-tracks drying to salt on her cheeks — and he waited with the patience of a man who had already won and was simply enjoying the walk back over the ground.

She knew what he wanted. Her mouth was still full of the taste of him — salt and skin and something bitter underneath, and she could feel it in the back of her throat like a residue that wouldn't rinse. She swallowed against it. Her jaw ached from the stretch of him and now he wanted her to open it again, and her body said no before her mind could form the word. Her lips stayed shut. Her hands curled at her sides.

He saw it. Of course he saw it.

His hand came up fast and flat and caught her across the cheek — a short, stinging snap, no wind-up, no warning, the kind of slap you'd give something that had reached for the wrong thing on a shelf. Her head turned. The bell rang. The sting bloomed up her cheekbone and into her eye and she stood there with her face turned away and her mouth open in a small, soundless shape.

"Open," he said.

Not loud. He never raised his voice. That was the thing about him — he could put a hand across your face and say the next word like he was asking you to pass the salt, and somehow that was the part that made you want to fold.

The sob came up out of her before she could stop it. It wasn't a big one. It was small and wet and it broke in the middle, and she nodded — nodded like a child who'd been told to apologize, quick little dips of the chin, the bell ringing with each one — and she hated the nodding more than the slap. The slap was his. The nodding was hers.

She opened her mouth.

He was already hard again. She didn't know how — she'd just emptied him down her throat, she'd felt him soften on her tongue — but there he was, thick and flushed and standing up against his stomach, and she understood that the first time had been a warm-up. That the first time had been for her. This was the other thing.

She leaned in. Took the head of him between her lips without enthusiasm, without any of the rhythm she'd found before, just the mechanical open-and-close of a mouth doing a job it had been told to do. She kept her eyes down. She tried to breathe through her nose and keep her throat still and not cry, because crying made her gag, and gagging made her throat clench, and she didn't want to give him that.

He let her work for maybe a minute. Maybe less. She had no sense of time left — the bell marked it, a small bright tick each time she moved, and that was the only clock in the room.

"Hands behind your back," he said.

She stopped. Pulled off him with a wet sound that made her ears burn. "What?"

"Behind your back." He said it slowly, the way you'd explain something to a person who was being deliberately stupid. "Like a good submissive little slut. Go on."

The word went through her like a wire pulled tight. Slut. She'd been called things before — on the internet, mostly, by men who didn't like a woman on the weather desk — but never with her mouth full and her knees on his floor and a bell at her throat, and never by someone who meant it as a job description.

She sobbed. A real one this time, wet and ragged, and the whimper that came after it was worse, thin and animal, and she stood there with her hands at her sides and her face crumpled and she didn't move them.

"Mila."

She moved them.

Slow. Slower than she had to, because every inch of the movement was a confession, and she wanted to stretch the last of it out. Her arms came back and her wrists crossed at the small of her back, one hand finding the other, and the position pulled her shoulders open and pushed her chest forward, and she felt the V of the dress gape, felt the cool air find the tops of her breasts, and she knew exactly what she looked like. She'd seen it in his eyes. She was a woman on her knees with her tits pushed out and her hands cuffed behind her by nothing at all.

"There," he said. "That's better. Now stay like that. Don't pull back. Don't move your hands. If I feel them come up, we start the morning over."

She nodded. The bell rang. She opened her mouth again and leaned back in and took him, and this time her balance was wrong — no hands to steady her, nothing to brace against, just her knees on the floor and her wrists crossed behind her and her whole body pitched forward on a thin axis — and she wobbled, and the bell rang, and she caught herself with her thighs.

He let her settle. Let her get one slow, careful rhythm going, shallow, her lips working just the head of him, her tongue flat and tentative. She was doing it. She was doing it without crying, mostly, and she felt a small stupid flicker of something that had no business being in her chest.

Then his hands came down on either side of her head.

She had one half-second to understand what was happening — his palms over her ears, his fingers in her hair, the room going muffled and close — and then he pulled her forward onto him and drove.

The first thrust hit the back of her throat and her whole body convulsed. She gagged hard, a deep, wrenching spasm that rolled up from her stomach, and her hands flew back — no, they didn't, she caught them, she caught them at the last inch and held them crossed behind her back while her throat seized around him and her eyes flooded.

He didn't stop. He pulled her back by the hair until she could drag one thin whistle of air through her nose, and then he pushed her down again, all the way down, until her lips were pressed flat against the base of his cock and her nose was buried in the skin of his belly and she could smell him and taste him and feel the pulse of him against her tongue. She stayed there. He held her there. The seconds stretched and her chest started to burn and the bell at her throat rang once, muffled, crushed between them.

He let her up.

She came off him gasping, a long wet drag of air, and a string of spit hung between her lower lip and the head of his cock and broke across her chin. Tears were running down both cheeks now, cutting through the dried salt of the earlier ones, and she looked up at him with her mouth open and her hands still crossed behind her back because he'd told her to keep them there and some animal part of her had decided that was the safest thing in the room.

"You could have been my queen," he said.

He said it conversationally. He said it while he gathered her hair into one fist at the back of her skull, and he said it while he pushed her back down, and the words came out over the wet sounds of her throat and the small broken noises she couldn't stop making.

"I offered you that. At the gate. I offered you a room and a bed and a life where I came to you." He pulled her off, let her suck air, pushed her down again. "You put your hands through the fence instead. You screamed for help in front of me. Do you remember that?"

She remembered. She remembered the chain-link biting her palms and the dark shape of him stopping on the other side and the one full second when she'd thought the world had heard her.

"So this is what's left," he said. "My slut. My maid. My mindless little servant with a bell on her neck." He thrust deeper on the last word and she made a sound around him that wasn't a word, that was barely a sound, a wet strangled thing. "Sofia was better at it than you'll be. She had three years of practice and she never once cried in front of me after the first month. You'll cry every day. I know you will. I'm counting on it."

Her hands. Her hands wanted to come up. They wanted to push at his thighs and claw at his wrists and get her mouth off him long enough to breathe, and the wanting was so loud in her arms that they trembled, and she kept them crossed behind her back because the alternative was starting the morning over and she did not think she could survive starting the morning over.

He fucked her face in a rhythm now — not fast, not frantic, but deep and steady and completely unhurried, like a man with an afternoon to fill. Every stroke bottomed out in her throat. Every pull-back dragged her lips along the length of him and left her gasping for half a breath before the next one. Spit ran down her chin and onto the front of the dress and she felt it soak into the fabric, cold, and the bell rang and rang and rang, a tiny bright sound under all of it, ridiculous, obscene, the sound of a thing being played with.

"Look at you," he said. "You ran through the pines for this. You fell in the dark for this. You gave up a whole life for a chance at a gate, and here you are on your knees in a costume, swallowing my cock with your hands behind your back like a good girl."

She whimpered. It was the only sound she had left. The sob and the gag and the breath had all collapsed into one long, broken noise that came out of her every time he pushed in, and she could feel her own arousal running down the inside of her thigh — slick, unmistakable, the lace of the panties soaked through — and she hated it, hated that her body had picked this exact moment to answer, hated that some part of her was wet and hot and clenching around nothing while he used her mouth like a hole in a wall.

He felt it. He must have felt it. He tilted her head back with the fist in her hair and looked down the length of her, at the shine on her thighs, at the way she was pressing them together, and something in his face changed — softened, almost, into something worse than cruelty.

"You're dripping," he said. "You're on your knees crying with my cock in your throat and you're dripping down your legs. Do you want to tell me why?"

She couldn't. Her mouth was full. He knew her mouth was full.

"That's all right," he said. "You don't have to answer. I already know." And he drove into her throat one more time, hard, and held it, and she felt him swell and pulse and then he was coming again, hot and thick, straight down her throat where she couldn't spit it out or swallow it properly, and she had to work her tongue and her throat around him just to keep from choking, and she did, she did it, she swallowed every pulse of it with her hands crossed behind her back and her eyes streaming and the bell ringing softly against his skin.

He pulled out slowly. Let her go. Her head dropped forward and she hung there on her knees, gasping, strings of spit and cum hanging off her chin, and she did not lift her hands. She kept them behind her back. She didn't know if he was still watching. She kept them there anyway.

"Hands," he said, after a while.

She brought them around. Her shoulders screamed. She wiped her mouth with the back of her wrist and the lace cuff of the apron came away wet, and she looked up at him from the floor with her hair stuck to her cheeks and her throat raw and the taste of him still coating her tongue.

He was tucking himself away again. Calm. Tidy. A man finishing a phone call.

"First day," he said. "You did well enough. Now go make the bed."

She looked at the bed. The sheets were tangled and damp and marked with the shape of her, and she was going to have to strip them and carry them down a hallway in this dress with the bell ringing at her neck, and she was going to have to find the linen closet, and she did not know where the linen closet was, and she was going to have to ask him, and asking him was going to cost her something she hadn't decided yet whether she could pay.

She got up. The heels made it a slow, graceless business, and she had to put a hand on the mattress to do it, and the bell rang the whole way. She stood in the middle of his room in the maid's uniform with her chin still wet and her thighs still slick and her hands shaking at her sides, and she waited to be told where to go.

Adrian walked to the door and opened it. Morning light came in from the hallway, flat and ordinary, the light of a house where people ate breakfast and read the paper and did not know what was happening in this room.

"Down the hall, left, past the study," he said. "Linen closet's the narrow door. You'll want the blue set — the one with the piping." He paused at the threshold and looked back at her, and his eyes were warm again, honey-brown, kind. "And Mila — when you pass the study. The photograph's still on the shelf. I meant what I said."

He left the door open behind him. She heard his footsteps go down the hall, unhurried, and then the distant sound of a door somewhere in the house, and then nothing.

She stood there with the bell quiet at her throat and the sheets waiting and the study down the hall with a photograph in it that Sofia had put on the shelf, and she did not know which of those two things she was more afraid to look at.

She picked up the corner of the top sheet and pulled.