She woke him with two fingers under his chin, tilting his face up off the pillow. Gray light through the smoked glass. Her hair was loose and flattened on one side from sleep, and she smelled of last night's smoke and her own skin.

"Shower. Don't take long."

The water ran cold for the first thirty seconds and he stood under it anyway, palms flat on the tile, letting it hit the back of his neck where the ache lived. His cock ached, half-hard from nothing but waking up in her apartment, and he kept his hands on the wall. When he came out she was sitting on the edge of the mattress in a black silk robe, one foot on the floor, the other leg crossed over it, watching him drip.

"You showered. I didn't." She shrugged the robe off one shoulder and let it fall to her waist. "You'll clean me. With your mouth as I want."

He knelt on the rug at her feet and she leaned back on her elbows, tits settling heavy and loose, nipples dark and already stiff from the cold room. He started under her jaw where his mouth had been, worked down her throat with the flat of his tongue, then took one nipple into his mouth and sucked it clean — salt and the faint bitter of her sweet, the skin pebbling against his lips. She made a low sound and threaded her fingers into his wet hair. He licked the underside, the crease beneath, dragged his tongue across to the other and did it again, slower, until she was breathing through her nose and her thighs had fallen open. "Good," she said. "Now the rest of it." He worked his tongue down her body, under the curve of each breast, into the soft pouch of her belly, and she watched him the whole time with her head tipped back, one hand keeping him where she wanted him.

Then she pushed him flat on his back on the rug, swung a leg over his chest, and settled her cunt down over his mouth. "Stay still. This one's mine." She rocked forward and he got his tongue up into her, wet and hot and tasting of the whole night, and she rode his face with her hands braced on his shoulders, slow at first, grinding her clit down onto the bridge of his nose, then faster, her breath going ragged and her thighs clamping hard around his ears. "There — right there, don't you dare move —" He couldn't breathe and didn't care. She came with a long shudder and a sound pulled up from somewhere low, and stayed seated on him for a few seconds after, twitching, before she lifted off and looked down at his slick face.

"Patty's coming by at nine to so lets get you pretty ," she said, standing, tying the robe back on like nothing had happened.

She led him to the closet and pulled out the hanger with a practiced hand — the crop top a scrap of white cotton that would barely cover his ribs, the mini skirt red pleats that wouldn't reach mid-thigh, and the stockings sheer black with a seam running up the back. The heels were red ankle-straps, and she set them on the floor in front of him like an offering.

"These. All of it." She sat on the edge of the bed, one leg crossed, watching. "And don't give me that face. You've worn worse."

He stepped into the stockings first, rolling them up his calves, his thighs, the nylon catching on the smooth waxed skin that used to have hair. The seam he had to line up by feel, running his fingers up the back of his leg until it sat straight. The skirt went on next, the waistband snug, the fabric barely covering his ass when he stood straight. The crop top he pulled over his head and it rode up, leaving a strip of his belly bare between the hem and the skirt's waist. He reached for the heels and she made a sound.

"No. Sit on the bed. I'll do those."

He sat. She knelt at his feet and took his ankle in her hand, warm and sure, and slid the strap through the buckle. The red heel made his foot arch, his calf flex, the seam of the stocking pulling taut. She did the other one without asking, her fingers working the buckle like she'd done it a hundred times, and when she was done she sat back on her heels and looked at him.

"There she is," Denise said, and she reached out and smoothed the hem of the skirt flat against his thigh. "Patty's going to like this. She likes when you look the part." She stood and held out her hand.

Denise's hand was still extended, the skirt hem cooling against his thigh, when the front door opened. Patty's boots crossed the threshold before the rest of her — black leather, scuffed at the toes, the jacket following, and her pale eyes landing on Tim like she'd already known exactly where he'd be.

"There she is," Patty said, the words flat, approving. She shrugged off the jacket and hung it on the hook by the door, her tank top showing the corded muscle of her arms. "Denise said you'd be dressed."

Denise's hand found Tim's chin, tilting his face up. "He's all yours for the morning. I've got work to do." She pressed a kiss to the top of his head and walked past Patty, her robe whispering against the floorboards, and then the bedroom door clicked shut behind her.

Patty stood in the middle of the living room, hands on her hips, looking down at him. The scar on her chin caught the gray light. "On your knees."

He dropped. The carpet bit into his bare knees through the stockings, the red pleats of the skirt fanning out around his thighs. She walked to the armchair and sat, leaning back, one boot planted on the floor, the other hooked over the armrest. She wore jeans — tight, faded at the thighs — and she looked at him the way she looked at everything, like she was calculating the distance of a throw.

"You know what I want. Come get it."

He crawled. The heels clicked soft against the carpet, one knee after the other, until he was between her boots. She undid the button of her jeans and lifted her hips just enough to shove them down to her thighs. No underwear. Her cunt was already slick, dark hair trimmed close, the smell of her hitting him — salt and sweat and something deeper, the morning's musk. She spread her knees wider and her hand came down on the back of his head.

"Lick me like you mean it, girl."

He leaned in. The first stroke was flat, broad, from the bottom of her slit up to her clit, and she made a sound — short, breathy, almost surprised. He did it again, slower, and her hand tightened in his hair, holding him there. He worked his tongue into her, lapping at the wet heat, tasting her, and her hips rolled up against his mouth in a rhythm she didn't bother to control.

"That's it," she said, her voice going low and rough. "Right there. Don't stop."

He found her clit with the tip of his tongue and circled it, and her thighs clamped hard around his ears, her boot heel digging into the carpet. She was breathing through her teeth now, her hand fisting his hair, pulling him in harder. He sucked her clit into his mouth and she swore — a single sharp word — and came with her hips grinding down against his face, her cunt clenching against his tongue, a long shudder running through her body that she let him feel every inch of.

She held him there for a moment after, breathing hard, her thighs still shaking. Then she pushed him back by the hair and looked down at him, his mouth slick and swollen, his eyes watering.

"Not bad," she said, and her thumb came up and wiped the corner of his mouth, slow. "You'll do."

Before she could say more, a heavy knock rattled the front door. Patty's head came up, her hand still on Tim's hair, and she called out without turning. "It's open."

Three cardboard boxes came through the door first, carried by a kid in a delivery vest who set them on the floor and was gone before Tim could see his face. Patty rose from the armchair, zipping her jeans, and stood over the boxes with her hands on her hips. "Your stuff. All of it. The landlord was glad to hand it over, three cops hauling it out like it was nothing, never once checking what was growing in his flowerpots.

Tim stayed on his knees, the carpet biting through the stockings, watching her fold back the flaps of the first box. She pulled out a tangle of his things — a faded coffee-stained apron, a cracked phone charger, a paperback with the spine broken — and held each one up like evidence before tossing it into a growing pile on the floor. "This is garbage. This is garbage. This is—" She stopped at a framed photo, a younger him squinting at the camera, a girl's arm around his shoulder he didn't recognize anymore. She looked at it, then at him, and dropped it into the throw pile without a word.

Denise came out of the bedroom in her robe, a mug in her hand, and stood behind the armchair watching. Rosa and Yuki came in behind her from the hallway he has not even known they were in the apartment, Yuki in a gray sweater, Rosa in track pants and a tank, both of them moving to the boxes like they'd been called for the job. Tim's knees were starting to ache, t but he didn't move. He wasn't told to.

"What's this?" Rosa pulled out his laptop, a dented thing from his college years, and held it up. "Does this work?"

"It's his," Denise said. "Check the files. Anything personal, we keep in the box. Anything he needs for the contract—" She sipped her coffee. "—goes in the safe."

Yuki knelt by the second box, unfolding a worn pair of his jeans and holding them up by the belt loops. "These?"

"Throw."

His band tees went to the pile. His expensive sneakers, one sole peeling, went to the pile. The women worked through the boxes with the efficiency of people who had done this before, sorting a life into keep and discard, and Tim watched from his knees, his hands folded in his lap, the red pleats of the skirt spread around him like a pool of blood.

They kept the photo of his mother — the one from his graduation, her proud and tired in a too-small dress — and boxed it with a stack of his journals. They kept his passport, his birth certificate, the deed to a car he'd sold two years ago. Everything else went into a black trash bag that Patty tied off with a single pull.

Denise set her mug down and came to stand in front of him. She crouched, her robe falling open at the knee, and took his chin in her hand. "Look at me." He did. "You understand what just happened? That apartment, those boxes, that life — it's gone. You don't need it. You have us now." Her thumb traced his jaw, the bruise from the bar still tender. "You're going to serve us, and we're going to keep you. That's the deal you signed."

She smiled, her voice low and smooth. "The apartment's been handled. I resigned from that filthy café on your behalf, closed all your accounts, paid off the credit cards. Don't worry—I'm covering that too, along with your student loans. Four years in my service, and you'll walk out free of debt. In fact, you'll leave with money.

Denise straightened and clapped her hands once, the sound flat and final in the quiet room. "Up. my pretty girl." She pointed at the middle of the living room rug, the gray light coming through the smoked glass and laying a long pale stripe across the floor. "Stand there. Feet apart."

He got up off his knees, the stockings dragging against the carpet, and stood where she pointed. The red heels put him a half-inch taller and threw his weight forward onto the balls of his feet, so he had to work to keep his balance. The skirt pleats settled against his thighs. The crop top rode up and he didn't fix it.

Patty dropped back into the armchair and stretched her boots out in front of her, ankles crossed, one arm slung along the backrest. Rosa and Yuki drifted over to the sofa, Rosa folding her arms, Yuki settling onto the arm with her mug. Nobody said anything for a second. They just looked at him the way you look at something you bought and haven't unwrapped yet.

"Dance and strip," Denise said. She'd picked up her coffee again and stood hipshot by the bedroom door. "You remember how. make it sexy."

He didn't have music. That was the first thing he thought — no music, so he had to find a beat in his own head, and the only one that came was the slow thump of his pulse. He started with his hips, a roll that made the pleats swing, and reached up and took the hem of the crop top in both hands. He pulled it up slow, baring his stomach, the waxed skin catching the light, then over his head and dropped it on the rug. Rosa made a low noise, not quite a whistle.

The skirt was harder. He turned his back to them — that felt right, felt like something he'd seen — and hooked his thumbs into the waistband, working it down over his hips an inch at a time. The stockings had a seam up the back and he bent at the waist as he pushed the skirt past his knees, so the seam ran straight and the red pleats pooled at his feet. He straightened up in nothing but the stockings and heels, his cock hanging half-hard against his thigh, and when he turned back around all four of them were watching his face, not his body. That was worse.

"Keep going," Denise said. "You're not done."

So he did the stockings. He sat on the edge of the rug to peel them off, one leg at a time, rolling the nylon down his calf and over his heel, and when he stood up again he was bare except for the red heels, and he danced in those — slow, weight shifting from foot to foot, arms loose, letting his cock swing with the movement because there was no point hiding it and hiding it was the one thing they'd punish. His knees ached.

Patty watched the whole thing without moving. When he finally slowed, breathing hard, she uncrossed her ankles and sat forward. "Come here."

He walked to the chair and she caught him by the wrist and pulled him in between her knees, and then her hands were on him — flat palms dragging up his stomach, thumbs pressing into the soft muscle under his ribs, and she grunted like she was checking a used car. "Ribs are fine." Her hand slid down and closed around his cock, working it once, twice, feeling the weight of it. "This is fine too."

Then Rosa was there, off the sofa, her hand on the back of his neck while the other one palmed his ass and squeezed. "Turn around. Let me see the belt marks." He turned and she ran her thumb along the welts Dana had left, . "Those are healing clean," she said. "Good." Yuki came last, quiet, and took his jaw in both hands and turned his face to the light, checking the bruise, pressing just under the bone until he winced. She looked at Denise over his shoulder. "Jaw's ready to please."

Denise set her mug on the side table and came over. She took him by the chin the way she always did, tilted his face up, and studied him — the pink nails, the bare waxed chest, the cock Patty had left standing. Whatever she was looking for, she found it. "He's recovered," she said, and it wasn't a question. "He can take the afternoon shift, no question — we'll have the girls over and put him through his paces. But the morning's his for the chores, and he can manage those in nothing but the heels.

Patty cracked her knuckles against her palm, one hand then the other, and stood up out of the chair. "Then let's put him to work."

"Kitchen first," Patty said. She didn't point, didn't gesture — just turned and walked, boots heavy on the floorboards, and Tim followed with the heels clicking behind her, the two of them a small parade through the apartment. She stopped at the counter, pulled open the cabinet under the sink, and set a caddy of spray bottles and rags on the granite. "Bleach, glass, wood. Don't mix them. Bathroom's the same caddy. When you're done with the kitchen you move to the bath, and you don't come out until I can see my face in the tile."

He took the caddy. The handle was cold and the bottles clinked against each other, and the weight of it pulled him forward onto the balls of his feet. Behind him the living room had gone back to work — Rosa had dragged a laptop onto the coffee table and sat cross-legged on the floor with it, Yuki had claimed the far end of the sofa with a stack of invoices and a red pen, and Denise had settled into the armchair with her mug and a folder of papers she was marking with a yellow highlighter. Patty lowered herself onto the sofa arm nearest the kitchen, one boot on the floor, and watched him the way she'd watch a suspect through a two-way mirror.

"He does the floors on his knees," she said, to nobody in particular. "Stockings get ruined, that's his problem."

"He's got lots," Denise said without looking up. "Let him ruin one."

He started with the counters. The spray bottle hissed and the rag went gray fast — coffee rings, a smear of butter from that morning, a dried drip of something at the base of the espresso machine he hadn't noticed before. He worked the rag in circles and the muscles in his shoulders started to burn within the first ten minutes, because the counters were long and the heels pitched him forward and every time he reached across the sink his calves had to catch him. Rosa looked up from the laptop once and said, "He's doing it wrong. You're supposed to go left to right, not in circles."

"He's doing it fine," Yuki said, and didn't look up from her invoices. "Leave him."

"I'm not leaving him, I'm telling him. Left to right. It's a method." Rosa turned the laptop toward Yuki and pointed at something on the screen. "

The kitchen took him forty minutes. He did the stovetop, the sink, the inside of the microwave, the front of the fridge, the floor on his hands and knees with a bucket of hot water and a splash of bleach, and by the time he stood up the small of his back had gone tight and the run in his stocking had climbed to his thigh. He carried the caddy down the hall to the bathroom and started over — the sink, the mirror, the toilet, the tub, and last the tile, which he did with a rag and the bleach spray and his arm going in long arcs, and the smell of it made his eyes water so he kept his face turned away from the wall. The mirror caught him once: a boy on his knees in a red heel with a laddered stocking and a bare chest, scrubbing a stranger's bathroom, his exposed cock hanging and he looked away from it before he could finish the thought.

When he came back down the hall the women had rearranged themselves. Yuki had the laptop now and Rosa was standing behind her chair with a hand on her shoulder, and they were talking quietly. Denise had finished her folder and was on the phone, low-voiced, Patty had moved to the armchair and had her boots up on the ottoman and a glass of whiskey she'd poured herself from the sideboard, and she watched Tim set the caddy down by the sink and straighten up with his hand pressed to the small of his back.

"Sheets," she said. "All of them. Denise's, the guest rooms, and yours."

Patty sipped her whiskey. "Linen closet's at the end of the hall. Don't drag them on the floor."

He stripped Denise's bed first — the sheets still smelled of her, jasmine and smoke, and he bundled them against his chest and carried them down the hall to the laundry basket without letting the corners touch the floorboards. The two guest rooms took longer; the bed was made up tight and the fitted sheet fought him at every corner, and his sheets were dirty and easy to get off and he replaced them with white cotton sheets

He came back down the hall with the last bundle of dirty sheets and found all four of them watching him from the living room — Rosa with her arms crossed, Yuki with her pen still in her hand, Denise off the phone and leaning back in the armchair, Patty with the whiskey glass resting on her thigh. Nobody said anything for a moment. Then Denise set her mug down and stood.

"Good girl," she said. "Now go and shower and get ready for some fun well fun for the ladies

He took the shower scalding, palms flat on the tile, and when he came out the women had pulled the armchair and the sofa around to face the middle of the room like a small audience. He walked into the living room naked and dripping, and the red heels were still on his feet because nobody had told him to take them off.

"There she is," Rosa said. She was on the sofa with her legs tucked under her, track pants and a tank top, and she patted the cushion beside her. "Come here. ."

He crossed the floor. Rosa caught his wrist and pulled him down onto the cushion, and her hands were on him before he'd settled — flat palms up his stomach, thumbs dragging through the water on his chest, nails raking light over his nipples until they went tight and he sucked a breath through his teeth. Yuki came around the back of the sofa and leaned over his shoulder, and her fingers found the back of his neck and pressed there, working the knot of muscle at the base of his skull while Rosa's hands moved lower.

Rosa said. "Feel that." She wrapped her fingers around his cock and squeezed, slow, and he was already half-hard and getting harder under her hand. "That's from nothing. That's just how we keep him."

Patty hadn't moved from the armchair. She had the whiskey glass balanced on the armrest and she watched him with her pale eyes while Rosa worked him, and when Rosa's thumb slid over the head Patty said, "Don't let him come."

"I know," Rosa said. She let go of him and sat back, and Yuki's hand slid down his spine, over the small of his back, and two fingers pushed between his cheeks and found him there, dry, and pressed just enough to make him jerk forward.

Denise came out of the bedroom in the black silk robe, her hair brushed now, and she stopped in the middle of the room and looked at him sitting there with Yuki's fingers between his ass and Rosa's hand resting on his thigh and his cock standing up from his lap. "Good," she said. "He's ready. Listen to me, Tim." She waited until he lifted his head. "some girls are coming over this afternoon. some you know some you have yet meet You're going to be on tthe bed on your back and they're going to take turns, and you're going to come when a lady wants you to come and at no other time. Not when you want. Not when you think you can't hold it. When she says. Do you understand?"

"Yes," he said, and his voice came out rough.

"Say it back."

"I come when a lady wants," he said. "And not before."

"And not before," Denise repeated, and she smiled at him the way she'd smiled the first night at the bar, and something in his chest went loose and frightened at the same time. Rosa's hand slid back up his thigh and took his cock again, and this time she worked him properly — a slow fist up and down, thumb circling the head on every pass, and he let his head fall back against the sofa and his hips push up into her hand because there was no point pretending he didn't want it. Yuki's fingers left his ass and came around to his mouth, two of them, wet from somewhere, and pushed past his lips and he sucked them clean while Rosa's fist went faster and the heat built low in his belly and climbed.

"There it is," Rosa said softly. "Feel that?"

"Yes."

"That's the edge. You know the edge by now." She slowed her hand to a crawl, barely moving, and the heat in his belly twisted and sank and didn't break. "That's where you live now. Right there. Over and over, until one of us says different." She took her hand away and wiped it on his bare stomach, and Yuki pulled her fingers out of his mouth and wiped them on his cheek. He sat there with his cock aching and wet and nothing touching it, and all four of them looked at him.

Patty set her whiskey down and stood. "Get him on the rug," she said. "Face up. Hands where I can see them."

He went down onto the rug and stretched out flat on his back, arms out to the sides, palms up, the red heels still on his feet and pointing at the ceiling. The carpet was rough under his shoulder blades. Above him the ceiling was plain white with one crack running out from the light fixture, and he fixed on it the way you fix on anything when four women are arranging themselves around your body.

Patty came around him without hurry. She stood at his head and looked down the length of him — bare chest, cock erect and sore looking already and then she stepped out of her jeans the rest of the way and dropped them onto the arm of the chair. No underwear, same as before. She planted one knee beside his ear, then the other, and settled her weight down over his chest so his ribs took it and his next breath came shallow.

"Hands stay where they are," she said.

She reached back and took his cock in her fist — not to work it, just to hold it, to keep it out of the way of her ass — and then she shifted her hips forward and brought her cunt down onto his mouth.

The first thing was heat. She was already wet from the armchair, wetter now, and the whole of her came down slick and open over his lips and chin, and he got his tongue up into her because there was nowhere else for it to go. She tasted like salt and whiskey and the morning's work, and under that the deeper thing he'd had on his tongue an hour ago, stronger now for having been stirred. She rocked forward once, slow, dragging her clit along the bridge of his nose, and made a low sound in her chest that he felt travel through her thighs.

"That's it," she said. "Keep your tongue flat. Let me do it."

She did it. She braced both hands on his shoulders, fingers digging into the muscle there, and rode his face in a rhythm she set and did not vary — long forward strokes that ended with her clit pressed hard against his nose, then a slow drag back so his tongue slid the whole length of her slit. Her knees pinned his ears to the rug and the room went to a muffled roar. He could hear Rosa say something from the sofa and couldn't make out the words. He could hear Yuki laugh, low and short. He could hear his own breath fighting for space between Patty's thighs, and the wet sound of her moving on his mouth, and the small grunt she let out at the end of every stroke.

She went faster. Her hands slid off his shoulders and onto the rug on either side of his head, caging him, and her hips took over — short, hard grinds now, her clit grinding down onto his nose and upper lip, her cunt spreading wet over his whole lower face. He couldn't breathe through it and didn't try. He got his tongue as deep into her as it would go and held it there and let her fuck herself on it, and when she bore down and clenched around his tongue he felt the pulse of her from the inside, quick and rhythmic, the way a heart beats in a wrist.

He sucked her clit into his mouth and worked it with his tongue, fast and flat, the way she'd been teaching him all morning with her hand in his hair and her boot heel dug into the carpet. Her thighs clamped hard around his ears and her whole body went rigid over him, and then she came — a long, grinding shudder that started somewhere above his mouth and rolled down through her hips, her cunt clenching and releasing against his tongue in waves he could count. She held him there through all of it, seated, breathing through her teeth, and he kept his tongue moving because stopping was the one thing he'd been told not to do.

When it was done she stayed a moment longer, twitching, then lifted off him and sat back on his chest with her knees still bracketing his head. His face was slick to the jaw and his eyes were streaming and he could breathe again, and the first breath he got was mostly her.

"Not bad," she said. She reached down and wiped the corner of his mouth with her thumb, slow, the same gesture as before, and looked at the shine of herself on his chin. "You're getting good at that."

Patty climbed off him and stood, and Tim stayed flat on the rug with his arms out where she'd left them,. His cock was still hard and untouched and aching abut hard, and nobody had said a word about it, and he understood that was the point. Patty pulled her jeans back on and zipped them and picked her whiskey up off the armrest, and she looked down at him the way she'd looked at the boxes.

"Clean yourself up," she said. "You're on for the afternoon."

He pushed up off the rug, and his knees complained He stood in the middle of the living room in nothing but the red heels and a body that belonged to somebody else, and he waited to be told where to put himself.

Denise came back from the sideboard with a fresh mug and set it down on the end table. She'd put the robe back on loose, the sash hanging, and she walked around him once without touching him — a slow half-circle, heels clicking on the floorboards, her eyes going down his front and up his back like she was reading a page she'd written herself. "Stand up straight. Shoulders back. Hands at your sides."

He did it. The heels pitched him forward and he had to find his balance again, weight on the balls of his feet, calves flexing. She stopped behind him and he felt her breath on the back of his neck before he felt her hands.

Her palms came down flat on his shoulders and pressed, testing, thumbs digging into the muscle where Yuki had worked the knot earlier. "Still tight," she said. "You'll loosen up this afternoon." Her hands slid down his arms, over the deltoids, down to his wrists, and she lifted one arm out to the side and turned it in the light, checking the waxed skin, the pink nails. She let the arm drop and did the other one the same way.

Then her hands came around his ribs. Fingers spread wide, palms dragging up the sides of his chest, thumbs finding the soft muscle under his arms, and she pressed there until he made a sound. "Ribs are fine," she said, and it landed like a verdict. Her hands moved to his chest, cupped the flat muscle there, thumbs brushing over his nipples once, twice — not to tease, to check — and when they went tight under her touch she hummed low in her throat and moved on.

She walked around him again and stopped at his hip. One hand on his waist, the other flat on his stomach, and she pressed her thumb into the soft place just above the bone until he sucked in a breath. "Nothing left over from the café," she said. "Good. You'll keep it that way." Her hand slid around to his ass and took a handful of it, kneading, and her fingers found the welts Dana had left and traced them one by one like she was counting. She turned him by the hip, and he went, and she bent him forward with a hand between his shoulder blades until his ass was up and his head down and the blood went to his face.

She looked at the marks for a long moment. Her thumb pressed along the worst of them, the one that had gone purple at the edge, and he felt the bruise answer with a dull ache that wasn't quite pain. "You'll take more of these," she said. "You'll take them better than you did." She straightened him back up with the same hand and turned him to face her, and her eyes went down to his cock, which had been half-hard since Rosa's hand and was now standing up off his thigh like it had its own opinion about the inspection.

"You don' thave to be hard for this," she said, and she took it in her fist — not to work it, just to hold it, thumb resting on the head, weighing it. "You're hard because we've had our hands on you all morning. That's not the same as wanting. Understand the difference."

"Yes," he said.

She let go of him and stepped back, and her eyes went over him once more, top to bottom, and whatever she was adding up in her head, the total came out to something she liked. She picked up her mug and drank, watching him over the rim. "Turn around. Slow. I want to see the back."

He turned. The heels made him do it in small steps, and the ruined stocking dragged against the floor, and he felt her eyes o on the welts, o on the pink tips of his hairt. When he came back around to face her she was still watching, and she set the mug down and reached out and took his chin in her hand — the same grip, every time, like a handle she'd installed there herself.

"Presentable," she said. She turned his face left, then right, studying the bruise under the jaw, the swollen corner of his mouth from Patty's thumb, the pink nails on the hand that hung at his side. "Patty was right about the jaw. It's ready." She let go of his chin and smoothed the hair back off his forehead with two fingers, and the gesture was almost tender and didn't mean anything like tenderness. "You'll do for the afternoon."

She stepped back, and her hand came down flat and hard on his ass — the crack of it loud in the quiet room, the sting blooming red and hot across the welts — and he jerked forward onto the balls of his feet and stayed there, breathing through his teeth, while she picked her mug back up.

That's for luck," Denise said. The sound of her palm against his skin was still ringing in the air when she said it, and then she was already moving, already done with him, her voice dropping into that low, flat register that made his stomach clench. "Go and eat some food. There's some left over bread and cheese."

She paused. Let the words hang. He could smell the bread, stale and faintly sour, from the basket on the table. His mouth watered despite himself.

"Then go and do your teeth," she said, slower now, each word a deliberate step. "And shave your face."

He felt the ghost of her hand on his jaw, the way she'd tilted his head up, the way her thumb had pressed into the soft flesh just under his chin. That was a minute ago. That was a lifetime ago. Now she was just standing there, holding her mug, watching him with those flat, patient eyes.

"Then, sweetie," she said, and the word landed like a drop of honey on a hot stone, "to your bed. And lie waiting for the first woman."

He couldn't move. His feet felt nailed to the floorboards. The sting on his ass was still blooming, a slow red tide spreading across the welts, and he could feel the heat of it pulsing in time with his heart.

"And you will be pleased," she said, taking a sip from her mug, the ceramic clinking against her teeth, "or rather, horrified, by how many women can take time off to have a pretty girl boy serving them."

He found the kitchen, a loaf of bread a day old but still edible, some cold meat, and he wolfed it down fast, then in the bathroom shaved his face and brushed his teeth, and after that he went and lay down, bare-ass naked, just like she'd told him to.