She stayed exactly where he left her. The wet cotton had gone cold under her knees, and the theatre's air moved across her skin in a slow draft that she felt everywhere the fleece dress clung. The taste of him sat thick at the back of her tongue — salt and something bitter she couldn't name — and she did not swallow it away. She held it, the way she'd been taught to hold a stitch until it set.

Around her, the seats breathed. Forty-six people, she'd counted them when the lights came up, and now she heard them in pieces: a shoe scraping stone, a woman laughing low at something, the creak of a chair taking someone's weight as they leaned forward. None of it was for her. All of it was for her.

Her own spit had dried to a stiff line down her jaw. She could feel where it cracked when she worked her mouth, trying to bring feeling back into it. Her lips were swollen. She knew without looking that they'd be red, that the cameras had caught every angle of her chin slick and her eyes streaming, and that somewhere in the dark a lens was still fixed on her, patient, waiting for her to do something worth recording.

She did not give it anything. She held her chin up. The poles took her weight and her wrists had stopped aching a while ago, gone numb above the ties, and she thought — in the small, clear voice that had been with her since the binding — that this was what the morning chits had been for. Not the choosing. The being chosen. She'd known that when she'd put her hand in the bowl.

"Chit number twelve."

The voice cut across the murmur like a fingernail over silk, and the theatre went quiet so fast that Alara heard her own breath in it. Mistress Lyra had not stood. She stayed on her dais in the crimson gown, one long red nail resting on the edge of a ledger, her eyes moving over the rows with the flat patience of a woman checking a sum.

A ripple moved through the third row. People turned to look, then away, then back, the way people do when a thing is happening and they want to be seen not looking. A man rose.

He was lean. That was the first thing — the way he came up out of his seat in one motion, no wasted weight in him, dark hair slicked back from a sharp face that caught the stage light and gave it back pale. A thin silver chain hung at his throat and swung as he walked, and his hands, when he lifted them to part the crowd along the aisle, were long and fine-boned, the hands of someone who did small careful things.

He did not hurry. He climbed the three steps to the podium with his eyes on her the whole way up, and Alara felt each step land somewhere under her ribs.

He stopped a pace away. He did not touch her face. That was the second thing — Darius had taken her mouth first, had filled it and used it and left the taste of himself behind, but this man looked at her mouth and then looked past it, at the line of her throat, at the thin fleece over her shoulders, at the way the dress had ridden up her thighs when she'd arched against the poles.

"Hello, little one," he said, and his voice was low and easy, the voice of a man who was used to being listened to. "You've been left in a state."

She said nothing. She'd been told not to speak unless asked a direct question, and she did not know yet whether that counted.

He circled her. She felt him go — the air shifting, the soft scuff of his shoes on the platform — and then his fingers found her arm, just above the tie, and trailed down. Light. Almost tender. Down the inside of her forearm, over the curve of her elbow, and she had not known until that moment how much of her skin had been waiting to be touched.

"You're warm," he murmured, somewhere behind her now. "That's good. They like to see that."

His hand slid down her spine. Through the fleece, flat-palmed, slow, counting the bones with his fingertips the way a person counts something they intend to keep. Alara's back arched before she told it to, and she heard a low sound from the seats — not laughter, something hungrier — and her face went hot.

"There," he said. "That. Do that again."

His fingers reached the hem of her dress. He hooked it — one knuckle, unhurried — and lifted.

The air hit her cunt and she felt it: the cool draft across slick skin, the sudden exposure of everything she'd been holding clenched between her thighs. She was wet. She had been wet since Darius had first pushed into her mouth, and she had felt it gather and cool and gather again, and now the whole theatre could see it. The light found the wet shine on her inner thighs. She heard the cameras adjust — a small mechanical whir, a lens turning — and her hips flinched, and the man behind her laughed, soft, right against the shell of her ear.

"Look at that," he said. "You've made a mess of yourself and no one's even touched your cunt yet."

He let the hem fall. It settled against her hip and she felt the wet spot immediately, the fleece going translucent where it touched her, and she understood that he'd done that on purpose, that the dress was a frame and he'd just moved it to show the picture.

He came around to her front again. Up close, she could see the fine lines at the corners of his eyes, the small silver links of the chain, the way his focus never left her face even while his hands were busy elsewhere.

"You've had a taste of cock," he said, quiet, for her alone. "Now let's see how you take a toy."

He turned to the table. It sat at the edge of the podium, a low thing draped in dark cloth, and on it the instruments of the first round were laid out in a row — she'd seen them when they'd brought her up the steps and she hadn't let herself look since. Glass, mostly. Wood. One brass thing shaped like a question. He considered them the way a woman considers fruit at a stall, turning two over in his fingers, and chose a curved piece of smooth glass, thick as two of her fingers at its widest, bent in a slow arc that caught the light and threw a bright line across his palm.

He held it up. Turned it. Let the crowd see it, and the crowd made a sound, and he smiled at nothing and brought it back down to her.

"Watch," he said.

She watched. The cool tip came to rest against her folds — not entering, just resting — and the shock of the temperature went through her like a struck bell. Her whole body tightened. Her cunt clenched around nothing, hungry, and she heard the wet sound of the glass settling into her slick and her face burned and she could not stop it.

"Easy," he said. "I haven't done anything yet."

His other hand found her nipple through the fleece. He rolled it — hard, two fingers and a thumb, the way you'd work a knot loose — and Alara's breath came out of her in a broken sound she hadn't authorized. The pinch went straight down through her, a bright wire from her breast to her cunt, and she felt herself get wetter around the glass, felt it smear, and the man made a low approving noise in his throat.

"There it is," he said. "You like that."

She didn't answer. Her jaw was locked. He pinched again, harder, and twisted, and this time the sound came out of her whole and unmistakable, and somewhere in the third row a man said something and the woman beside him laughed.

"You can say it," he murmured, close to her ear, his breath hot on the damp skin of her jaw. "No one's going to think less of you. Everyone here wants to hear it."

The glass rocked. Just a little — the tip sliding up through her folds, over her clit, a slow drag that made her thighs shake against the poles, and then back down to her entrance, where it stopped and pressed and did not go in. A circle of pressure. A promise. Her hips followed it without asking her, tilting up, trying to take it, and he pulled it back an inch and held it there and let her fail.

"That's it," he said. "Feel it."

She felt it. She felt everything — the cold glass at her entrance and the heat of her own cunt around it and his fingers still working her nipple, the fleece gone damp and clinging, the wet spot spreading across her thigh. She felt the cameras on her and the crowd on her and the poles holding her open, and under all of it, in a place she had not known was there until tonight, she felt the thing she'd been taught to want.

His thumb found her clit. He pressed, slow, and the glass pressed with it, and she made a sound that was almost his name, except she didn't know his name.

"You want it," he said. It wasn't a question.

She looked at him. His eyes were steady and dark and entirely on her, and she understood, with a clarity that went through her like the glass, that he would wait. That he would stand there all night with the tip of it at her entrance and let the crowd watch her come apart without ever giving her the thing she was aching for, if she didn't give him what he wanted first.

She swallowed. The taste of Darius was still there, faint now, salt at the back of her tongue.

"Yes," she said. Her voice came out low and cracked and she barely recognized it. "Please."

He smiled. It was the first real expression she'd seen on his face, and it was not kind — it was pleased, the way a man is pleased when a thing he's built holds its weight.

"Good girl," he said — the same words Darius had used, and she felt them land somewhere different this time, lower, in the place that had been waiting for them. And then he pushed the glass inside her.

It went slow. He gave her the whole of it, inch by cool inch, the curve of it sliding in and finding the shape of her, and Alara's mouth fell open and stayed open. She was so wet that it made a sound — a slick, wet sound that the mic beside her picked up and sent out into the dark, and she heard it, heard herself, and her cunt clenched down hard around the glass and the man groaned under his breath, close to her ear, like it was his own body doing it.

"There," he said. "All the way. Look at you take it."

He turned it. Just a quarter-turn, the curved tip dragging against something inside her that she had no name for, and Alara's vision went white at the edges and she pulled hard against the ties, both wrists, her whole body bowing, and the poles held and the crowd made a sound like water moving.

He worked it. Slow at first, then not slow — the long smooth length of it sliding out until only the tip stayed in her, then pressing back in, deeper each time, until she was taking it to the base and the wet sound of it filled the quiet and her thighs were shaking hard enough that she could feel the cushion moving under her knees. His free hand never left her nipple. He rolled it, pinched it, pulled it through the damp fleece until it ached in time with the thing inside her, and he talked the whole way through, low and steady, a running murmur that she caught in fragments.

"That's it. Take it. You've been waiting for this since you were a girl, haven't you. Since the first time you touched yourself and didn't know what it was for. This is what it's for. This."

She was climbing. She could feel it building, the same thing that had built behind her teeth when Darius had fucked her mouth, but bigger, deeper, coming up from somewhere the mouth-thing hadn't reached. Her breath was coming in short pulls. Her wrists burned against the ties and she didn't care. He angled the glass and hit the place again and she cried out — a real cry, loud, unmuffled by anything, and the crowd answered it with a rustle of movement, people leaning, people touching themselves in the dark, she could hear it, and the thought of it pushed her higher.

"Not yet," he said, and pulled the glass almost all the way out.

She sobbed. She was not proud of it. She heard herself and she sobbed, her hips chasing the glass, and he held it just out of reach and let her chase it and did not give it to her, and his thumb circled her clit, light, so light, keeping her right at the edge where she could feel the whole shape of the drop waiting under her.

"Ask me," he said.

"Please."

"Ask me for it."

"Please," she said again, and her voice broke on it. "Please, I want — please let me."

He put it back in. All the way, hard this time, one stroke that bottomed out and pressed and stayed, and his thumb came down on her clit and did not stop, and Alara came.

It took her whole. Her cunt clenched down around the glass in long rolling waves, again and again, so hard she felt the glass move with her, and her thighs shook and her hips ground down onto the cushion and her mouth was open and she was saying something, she didn't know what, a name she didn't have, and the wet ran out of her and down the glass and onto the white cotton under her knees, dark and spreading, and she heard the crowd and the cameras and the mic and none of it mattered, none of it, because the thing she'd been taught to want had finally happened and it was happening in her and to her and through her and she was not going to survive it and she was.

When it let her go, she sagged against the poles, and the ties took her weight, and she hung there with her cheek against her own arm and her breath sawing in and out of her.

The glass was still inside her. She could feel it, cooling now, the shape of it heavy in her cunt, and she could feel her own cream running down her inner thigh, and she did not lift her head.

She heard him breathe out, slow, satisfied. His fingers left her nipple and she felt the absence like a cold spot. Then his hand came up and found her chin and lifted it, and she had to look at him, and he was looking at her with those steady dark eyes and the small pleased smile still on his mouth.

He did not pull the glass out. He left it in her, holding her open, and turned his head toward the dais.

"Mistress," he said. "She's ready for the next."

And he stepped back and left her there, kneeling on the soaked cushion with the toy still seated deep inside her and her cream drying on her thighs, and waited for Mistress Lyra to call the next number.

She moved. It wasn't a decision — her hips had done it before her mind caught up, a slow roll down onto the cushion that pressed the glass deeper, and the curved tip dragged along the inside of her and found that place again, and Alara's breath came out of her in a thin, high sound she couldn't have stopped if the whole theatre had gone silent to listen.

The crowd did not go silent. It leaned. She heard the shift of weight across the tiers, the low murmur that moved through the rows like wind through grain, the small wet sounds of people touching themselves in the dark where they thought no one could see. She could see them. From the podium, with her chin up, she could see everything — the woman in the second row with her hand already down the front of her dress, the man beside her with his jaw working, the pair in the back who had stopped pretending to watch the stage and were watching each other instead.

She rolled her hips again. Slower this time. Deliberate.

The glass slid out an inch and she felt the loss of it, the empty cool air rushing in where it had been, and then she pressed back down and took it again, all the way, the curve of it scraping that spot and lighting her up from the inside. Her wrists pulled against the ties. The poles creaked — a small sound, almost nothing — and it was the first time she'd heard them give.

Marek had stepped back to the edge of the podium. He stood with his arms crossed and his head tilted, watching her the way a man watches a fire he's just lit, and he hadn't said a word since he'd called her ready. He didn't need to. His silence was the permission, and she understood it, and she used it.

She found the rhythm. Down and back, down and back, the glass moving inside her in a long steady stroke that she controlled, that no one else controlled, and the wet sound of it rose up into the mic beside her and she let it. Let them hear. The cream that had run down her thigh had cooled and gone tacky, and the new wet gathering under her was warm and slick and hers, and she worked it like she'd worked her own fingers in the dark of the dormitory when the lights were down and the other girls were breathing soft in their beds and she thought no one knew.

Someone in the third row stood up. Just stood — didn't leave, didn't move toward the aisle, just came up out of his seat with his hands at his sides and his eyes fixed on her, and the woman beside him pulled at his sleeve and he didn't sit down. Alara saw him, saw the outline of him through the stage light, and something in her chest went tight and hot at the same time.

She arched her back. The fleece had ridden up and stayed up, bunched at her waist, and the cool draft moved over her stomach and the undersides of her breasts where they pressed against the sheer fabric, and her nipples had gone so hard they ached. She wanted hands on them. She wanted the glass deeper. She wanted — and this was the thought that came to her with the clarity of a struck match, kneeling there with the whole theatre on her — she wanted all of them to keep watching.

"She's still moving," a man's voice said from somewhere in the dark, flat and appreciative, and Mistress Lyra's voice came back over it without warmth.

"She was not told to stop."

Alara's hips faltered. She turned her head toward the dais — as far as the ties allowed, which was not far — and found the crimson gown, the severe bun, the long red nails resting on the ledger. Mistress Lyra was not looking at her. She was looking at the ledger, writing something, and the small motion of the pen was more terrifying and more thrilling than any of the eyes on her body.

She was being recorded. She was being scored. And she was being permitted.

She moved again. Harder. The glass bottomed out and she ground down on it and let the sound she made carry, and the man in the third row sat down at last, slowly, without taking his eyes off her.

Her thighs were shaking. The orgasm she'd had was still in her, banked low and hot like coals, and every stroke of the glass stirred it back up, and she could feel it building again — not the same, deeper, slower, something that would take its time with her. She chased it. She found the angle that hit the place and held it, rocking in small tight circles, the base of the glass pressing against her palm-soft folds and her clit caught between the glass and her own weight, and the pleasure came up through her in long rolling waves that made her toes curl against the wet cushion.

Marek uncrossed his arms. He took one step back toward her, then stopped, and she saw him glance at the dais the way a dog checks a door.

"Mistress," he said. "She's going to come again."

"Let her."

The pen kept moving. The crowd made a sound that was almost a sigh, forty-six people breathing out together, and Alara heard it and understood that she'd been given the thing she hadn't known she wanted — not the glass, not the hands, but the room's full attention while she took her own pleasure in front of it. It was the last thing she'd expected to want. It was the thing her body had wanted from the first moment the lights came up.

She chased it. She stopped thinking about the angle and let her body find it, the way it had found things in the dark of the dormitory, and she rode the glass in long strokes that made the wet sound fill the theatre, and her mouth hung open and her eyes were half-closed and she could see the blur of the crowd through her lashes, a hundred points of light and skin and watching, and she was so close.

Not yet. She held it. She didn't know why she held it — some last scrap of the girl who'd knelt here a virgin, some instinct that said the waiting was part of it — and she made herself go slower, made herself feel every inch, let the pressure build until it was almost pain, until her whole body was one drawn wire, and then she let go.

It came up through her from her cunt and took everything. Her back bowed against the poles and her wrists burned and she didn't feel it. Her hips ground down onto the glass and held there, grinding, and she came with her mouth open and no sound coming out, the pleasure so deep it had gone past sound, and her cunt clenched and released and clenched again around the glass in long squeezing waves that she felt all the way up into her stomach. The wet ran out of her and onto the cushion, more of it, a spreading dark stain under her knees, and she heard the mic pick up the slick sound of the glass moving in her as she shook.

She held it as long as it would last. Then it let her go, and she sagged, and the poles took her weight, and she hung there with her forehead against her arm and her breath coming in ragged heaves.

Silence. Then the crowd — not applause, they didn't applaud, applause was for performances and this was not a performance — the crowd made the sound of people who have watched something real and are deciding what to do with it. A chair scraped. Someone coughed. The woman in the second row pulled her hand out of her dress and wiped it on her own thigh without embarrassment, and Alara saw her do it and felt a strange, fierce kinship with her, this stranger who had come apart in the dark while Alara came apart in the light.

Marek walked back to her. His shoes were quiet on the platform. He stopped in front of her and looked down at her for a long moment, and his face had changed — the pleased smile was gone, replaced by something more careful, more assessing.

"You kept it," he said. "You could have come the moment I left you. You waited."

She lifted her head. Her throat was raw. She didn't know if she was allowed to answer, and she didn't care.

"I wanted them to watch," she said.

His eyebrows went up — a small, real motion, the first unguarded thing she'd seen on him. Then he laughed, low, and it wasn't cruel.

"Then you're going to do very well here," he said.

He reached down. His long fingers closed around the base of the glass, and Alara's whole body flinched as he began to draw it out — slow, so slow, the curve of it dragging against every place it had touched, and she heard herself make a sound, a thin broken thing, and her hips followed it up off the cushion as if she could keep it.

He pulled it free. The rush of cool air into her empty cunt made her gasp, and the wet sound of its leaving was loud enough that she saw a man in the front row shift in his seat. Marek held the glass up where the light could find it — slick from base to tip, glistening, a long string of her cream stretching from the tip to her thigh and breaking — and he turned it slowly so the whole theatre could see what she'd made of it.

"Mistress," he said, and his voice carried now, pitched for the room. "She's wet through. She's bled nothing yet, but she's ready to be opened."

Mistress Lyra set down her pen. The small click of it on the ledger carried across the hush, and Alara felt every hair on her arms lift.

"Chit number four," the mistress said.

Alara's breath stopped. The chits. She'd drawn them blind this morning — four, seven, twelve — and she had known the numbers and not the men, and now the third of her three numbers was coming up out of the seats somewhere in the dark, and she had no idea whose body it belonged to.

She shifted her hips. The empty ache of it made her want to press her thighs together and she couldn't, the cushion held her open, and so she did the only thing left to her body: she rolled her hips once, slow, into nothing, feeling the wet drag of her own folds against each other, and the glass-wet cushion squelched faintly under her knees.

Down in the rows, a man stood up. She couldn't see him yet — the stage light was in her eyes and he was still in the dark — but she heard him rise, heard the seat fold behind him, and she felt the whole theatre turn to look at him the way it had turned to look at her.

Marek stepped back to the edge of the podium, still holding the glass, and watched her face. He wasn't smiling anymore. He was waiting, like everyone else, to see what she'd do when the next man climbed the steps.

Alara held her chin up. The taste of Darius was gone from her mouth now, replaced by the flat clean taste of her own breath, and her thighs were slick and her knees were soaked and the cameras were still turning, patient, recording her from every angle as she waited to find out who was coming for her.