Warren's key turned in the lock, and the sound was already part of the ritual now—four evenings of it, the brass teeth catching, the deadbolt sliding back, the door swinging open onto the dim apartment. The lamp was on in the living room, a single pool of gold on the polished oak, and the air smelled of old leather and whiskey and something floral that belonged to Dawn. He stepped inside and closed the door behind him, and the quiet settled around him like water. On the hall table, propped against the base of the lamp, was a folded note in her hand, and beside it, waiting for him, was a wig—a black bob, blunt and glossy, cut to the jaw, the kind a whore on a street corner at midnight would wear.
He didn't need to be told. His hands went to his tie, loosening the knot, pulling the silk free. The jacket came next, shrugged off and hung in the hall closet with a care that felt almost ceremonial. He toed off his shoes, first the left, then the right, setting them side by side against the baseboard. His socks followed, peeled off and tucked into the shoes. The shirt unbuttoned from the top down, and he folded it with the precision of a man who had folded a thousand shirts, laying it over the arm of the chair by the door. He picked up the note and read it where he stood. Today you become Willow. For me. Wear the new wig when you come out. The black bob. The kind a whore on a street corner at midnight would wear.
Each piece of clothing that came off was a layer of Warren Cole dissolving. The trousers, unbuckled and unzipped, slid down his smooth legs—legs that had been shaved bare three days ago and were still bare, still smooth, the skin almost luminous in the lamplight. He stepped out of them and folded them, and then he stood in only his boxer briefs, the harness, and the steel, and the steel pressed against him, a constant cold reminder.
The boxer briefs came off last. He let them drop to the floor and stepped out of them, and the air hit his skin, and he felt the shape of himself under the harness—the narrow shoulders, the flat tummy, the long slender limbs. The leather harness hugged his torso, crossing his chest, the straps buckled snug, and beneath it, at the junction of his thighs, the flat stainless steel cap of the chastity device gleamed in the lamplight, flush and tight against his lower tummy, his small reduced sissy balls hanging uselessly below the tight ring. Then he stepped into the mules—strapless, shiny ebony black, six inches of heel that only a stripper in a men's club would wear—and the floor tilted, and his hips swayed to find their balance.
Three days. He had been locked for three days, and the device had become a part of him, as familiar as his own heartbeat. He could feel the small hard pebble of his cock trapped beneath the steel, compressed and useless, and the constant low ache that lived in his groin, a hunger that never quite stopped. He had leaked and dripped and oozed precum all day at work, sitting in meetings with a wet spot blooming on his silk boxers, his locked clitty throbbing against the steel cap, and no one had known. No one had seen. He had sat there in his expensive Italian suit, giving quarterly projections, and all he could think about was the steel between his legs and the promise of coming home.
He picked up his folded clothes and carried them to the bedroom, where he laid them in a neat pile on the chair. Then he walked back through the apartment, naked except for the harness, the steel, and the ebony mules, his heels clicking softly on the oak floor. The apartment was clean and still, the way Dawn kept it now, and the only sound was the soft hum of the refrigerator and the distant whisper of traffic from the street below. The note said the bathroom, and the bathroom was where he went.
The shower first. He stood under the hot water and let it run over him, and he washed himself slowly, thoroughly, the way she had taught him, and when he stepped out he dried himself and sat down at the vanity in a towel and looked at the bulbs and the mirror and the little pots and brushes laid out in a row.
He did his face. It took him a long time, longer than it ever had, and his hands were not steady at the start, but the note was propped against the mirror and he read it again and again. The sluttiest, hottest, sexiest makeup yet, my doll. You can do it. You want it. You need it, don't you? Admit it. He drew the liner out past the corner of his eye in a long wing, and he painted his mouth plum and then again until it looked wet and swollen, and he loaded the big soft brush with glitter and tapped it across his cheekbones and his shoulders and the tops of his thighs.
Then the wig. It was new—a black bob, blunt and glossy, cut to the jaw, the kind a whore on a street corner at midnight would wear—and he settled it on his head and combed the fringe down over his brow, and the face in the mirror changed and kept changing. He buckled the strappy harness on over his bare chest, and he stepped into the strapless mules, and last of all he fitted the breast plate into place, and the weight of it settled against his chest and gave him a shape he had only ever imagined.
He looked at himself. An Amsterdam window dancer looked back—black bob, plum mouth, glitter everywhere the light found him, the harness strapping him in, the steel a small hard gleam between his thighs. A very sissy fuckdoll, locked and flushed and tight. He stood there a long moment, and his heart went like a bird in a box, and he admitted it, silently, the way she had told him to. He wanted it. He needed it.
Dawn was waiting in the living room, and he was wearing the new black bob when he stepped out to her.
She stood in the middle of the room with the city behind her, and she was wearing a black dress that was barely a dress at all—a slip of wet-look fabric, cut low and clinging, the hem stopping high on her thighs, the neckline plunging to show the full swell of her breasts, and beneath the thin black fabric her nipples stood out hard and plain. Her platinum hair fell sleek and straight down her back, her lips were painted a deep wet red, her eyes lined dark and smoky, and her legs went on forever in sheer black stockings and black stiletto heels. She turned at the sound of his heels on the oak and looked at him, and she looked at him for a long time, and then she smiled—a slow, private smile—and the machine that was Dawn felt her hidden cock thicken and throb beneath the black fabric, a thick smooth eight inches that Warren had never seen and did not know was there.
"There you are," she said. "My pet. My sissy slave. I like your new look." Her voice was soft, a purr, and she crossed to him and walked a slow circle around him, and he stood very still under her gaze. "Look at you. Humiliated. Ashamed. Hungry." She stopped in front of him. "You're blushing, and you can't stop, and you don't want to. Do you."
"No," he whispered. "I don't want to."
"Good girl." She reached out and ran a finger along the strap of his harness, tracing the leather where it crossed his chest, and then her hand drifted down over the flat steel cap and pressed, lightly, and he gasped. "Four days. Still locked. Still mine."
Something moved in her then—a warmth behind the calm, a hunger she did not bother to hide. The machine that was Dawn felt her hidden cock begin to throb and drip with desire for her sissy doll, thick and smooth and hard under her dress, and she let him see it in her face. She knew what he desired—a thick hard cock between his lips and in his ass, cum ejaculating on his face—and she smiled, and said nothing of it.
"I want to look at you," she said. "All of you. Turn around. Slow."
He turned, and the mules made his hips sway, and the black bob swung against his jaw, and he felt her eyes on him the whole way around.
"Beautiful," she said, when he faced her again. "The sluttiest, hottest, sexiest thing in this apartment, and it's mine." She smiled, that small private smile.