Page 107 of Dominion’s Collar

He enters me in one long stroke. Deep. The stretch fills me completely. The angle of the desk tips my hips so he reaches a depth that stops my breath. The sound that tears out of me isn't composed or edited. It's raw, unscripted need.

He pulls back. Drives in again. The rhythm he sets is relentless, each thrust deep enough to feel in my spine. His hands grip my hips, controlling the angle, tilting me so every stroke hits the spot his fingers found. The pearls bounce against the hollow of my throat with each impact.

The desk creaks beneath us. My back slides against the polished surface with every thrust, and I brace my heels against the edge to keep from being pushed across it. The friction of his body between my thighs, the fullness of him inside me, the slap of skin.

Sounds I'd normally edit out of my own hearing. I let them exist.

"This is mine," he says. Not a question. A statement, delivered between thrusts while I'm too far gone to argue with the possessiveness. "You're mine. Say it."

"Yours."

He reaches between us. His thumb returns to my clit, matching the rhythm of his hips. The combined pressure of him inside me and his hand on me builds to something enormous and impossible to hold back. My thighs are shaking. The tension coils tighter with every stroke, every circle of his thumb, until I'm balanced on the edge with nothing left to hold onto except the desk and his name.

"Now," he says. "Give it to me now."

The orgasm tears through me. It starts where his thumb is pressing and radiates outward, clenching around him in waves that make my back arch off the desk. I hear myself say his name. Possibly more than once. The pleasure rolls through in aftershocks, each one tightening around him until he swears and loses the rhythm entirely.

He follows. His hips slam forward twice more, deep and hard. I feel him pulse inside me while his grip on my hip tightens enough to leave marks I'll find tomorrow.

The desk holds.

Afterward, he's braced above me, breathing hard against my collarbone. The pearls are warm from both our bodies. I can feel his heartbeat against my ribs, slowing by degrees.

"Sebastien."

"Mm."

"Your desk is not comfortable."

His laugh is the rarest sound I've collected from this man. Low, genuine, and slightly wrecked. He lifts his head and looks at me with an expression I haven't seen on him before. Open. Almost disarmed.

"I'll buy a softer desk."

"You'll do nothing of the kind." I push at his shoulder. "That desk is an antique."

He pulls me upright. Smooths my hair.

His thumb traces the line of pearls at my throat, checking the lock. The gesture is proprietary and careful and exactly Sebastien: claiming me while making sure the claim fits.

"I love you," I say. Plain. No performance. The truest sentence I've spoken since I started telling lies in this city.

His hand stills on the pearls. He doesn't answer immediately, and the silence is long enough that I nearly fill it with something clever.

"I love you," he says. The words sound like they cost him something. On Sebastien, that's how I know they're real.

The streetcar rattles past on St. Charles. We stand in his study with scattered papers on the heart-pine floor. The consideration collar is under the drafting table where it landed. Late afternoon light turns the room gold around us.

Later, we go to Dominion.

The dresser laces me into my corset with the efficient hands I've come to trust. The lounge is familiar, leather conditioner and perfume, women helping each other with clasps.

Every other night, the collar went on outside this room. Sebastien waiting in the hallway, the click of the lock, then the bar. Tonight I walk in already wearing it, and every woman in the room registers what that means.

Tonight the pearls sit above the corset's neckline, and the weight is different from the leather. Heavier. More certain.

The woman at the next locker catches sight of them in the mirror. Her lips part. She nudges the friend beside her. Both of them look at me with the quiet recognition of women who know exactly what four strands of black pearls locked around a throat mean in this building.

I find Renata behind the bar. She sees the collar before she sees my face. Her hands pause on the glass she's drying.