Page 10 of Dominion’s Collar

She didn't leave. That registers. An inexperienced woman sitting through an impact scene for the first time could have looked away, moved to the lounge, decided this world wasn't for her.

Natalie stayed through it, and whatever conclusion she's reaching has nothing to do with her research. Her posture says she didn't merely endure it.

Her gaze is no longer systematic. The cross-referencing has stopped. She's looking at the scening area I just vacated.

The expression on her face is one I recognize. I've seen it on women discovering they want something they didn't know they wanted. Most of them don't fight it this hard. Natalie is white-knuckling her composure like it owes her money.

Then she looks at me.

She doesn't drop her gaze when I catch her. She holds it across the room, and the impact hits low in the gut.

She's here for something she hasn't found yet. What she felt during Marion's scene is still running through her. The containment has come back, but it's wearing thin.

Then she looks away. Her chin dips toward her drink in a gesture her body understands even if she doesn't.

The arousal I managed through Marion's scene shifts and refocuses. I don't look away from the place where her chin dropped.

She can rationalize it later. Convert it into data. File it in whatever system she's running. The body answered before the system did. I saw it.

I want to be the one who shows her what that answer means. And the wanting is the problem.

I've built every rule I operate by for a reason. I don't scene with members I haven't vetted exhaustively. I don't take responsibility for a submissive who hasn't reckoned with what she's asking. I don't collar. And I don't let the room disappear around one person.

I learned what a blind spot costs at Elysium. A woman died in a room I wasn't looking at, and I didn't understand what I'd missed until it was too late. Natalie is becoming one.

Every rule I've built exists for a reason. It won't be long before I'm going to break the most important one.

CHAPTER THREE

Natalie

Each visit gets easier, and the ease is its own kind of warning. The door still has the same deliberate weight, the same resistance that makes you commit before it opens. The hallway still smells like cedar and bourbon and that floral note I can't identify.

My body has stopped bracing and started settling into the rhythm of a place it has no business getting comfortable in.

Comfort is a liability. Comfort is what happened to Claire.

I push the thought into the compartment where it lives, next to the pendant that isn't on my throat and the case files that brought me through this door.

I enter the club anyway.

Dominion is quieter tonight than my first visit. A weeknight crowd, a few dozen members scattered across the main floor in clusters that read as intimate rather than performative. The scening areas are occupied but not crowded. The energy is steadier, more focused, the kind of night where the regulars come to be themselves rather than to be seen.

I find my stool at the bar. My stool. Three visits and I already have a stool. The investigator in me logs that under variables I need to manage.

"Negroni?" Renata is already reaching for the gin before I've fully sat down.

"You're going to stop asking and just pour one day," I tell her.

"Give it two more weeks." She builds the drink with the exactness I've come to expect, the orange peel curled with the careless skill of a woman who could do this blindfolded. "Weeknight's a different crowd. The people who come midweek don't need an audience."

"I noticed."

"You notice everything." She slides the drink across with a look that's equal parts warmth and assessment. "Writers. You're all the same. Sitting in corners, watching people live their lives."

"That's not what I do."

"Sure it is. You just write it down later instead of during." Her smile changes her whole face. "What's the book about, specifically? You said trust and power in closed communities. That's a big net."