Page 39 of Dominion’s Collar

The sight of her in my rope, exposed and soaked, hits me somewhere I wasn't bracing for.

I run two fingers through her folds. The sound she makes when I find her clit is guttural. Raw.

"There." I circle the swollen nerve with my thumb. Slow. Deliberate. "You're going to feel this in every binding. Every time the rope shifts, you'll feel my hand."

Her hips strain against the harness. The rope creaks. I watch the flush spreading from her throat down to the skin above the corset.

I set the pace. Measured circles that build without giving release. Every time her hips try to chase the rhythm, the rope pulls taut and holds her still.

My own arousal is an ache that's becoming harder to set aside. I want to bury myself inside her until neither of us can think. I'm choosing not to because this scene isn't about what I want. Not yet.

"You don't come until I tell you." My voice is rougher than I intend. "Nod if you understand."

She nods. Jerky. Desperate. The motion makes the ruby swing.

I push two fingers inside her. She clenches around me, tight and slick. I curl forward. Find the spot that makes her whole body seize against the bindings.

"Sebastien." My name breaks out of her, unplanned.

"Again."

"Sebastien." Closer to a plea.

My jaw tightens. The sound of my name in that register hits a nerve I have to consciously override.

I've maintained discipline through scenes that would test any Dom at this club. This woman saying my name like a prayer she didn't mean to offer is costing me more than all of them combined.

"Listen to yourself." I press deeper. She gasps. "This wet. This tight. My rope did this to you."

She starts to tighten. The bindings strain against the knots. Her breathing has gone shallow and ragged. She's close.

I stop.

She makes a sound that is pure need, stripped of language. Her hips buck against the harness, chasing contact that isn't there anymore.

"Not yet." I hold my fingers still inside her. Fullness without friction. "When I decide."

Her head drops forward. The collar glints in the amber light. The ruby pendant swings with her breathing. A line of sweat traces down her spine between the rope lines.

I wait. Let the denial burn.

Then I lean in. My lips graze the curve where her neck meets her shoulder, just above the collar. The contact is barely there. She shivers harder than she did when I put my hand between her thighs.

"You're trying to stay ahead of me," I murmur against her skin. "You've been trying all night." My thumb finds her clit and circles. Slow. "Stop."

Not a command. An invitation. The quietest thing I've said since the scene started, and it lands differently from the commands. The commands told her what to do with her body. This tells her what to do with the part of her that won't stop calculating.

She makes a sound that's closer to a sob than a moan.

I keep the pressure steady. My mouth stays against her neck, my breath on the skin above the leather. I'm giving her what the rope can't: the knowledge that the man behind the technique is here. Present and specific to her.

Watching her come apart in my rope is dismantling the structure I've built around myself. The same structure that let me sit in a booth for five years and watch a room without losing a step. Natalie is pulling it apart from the inside.

The second build is faster. She knows the path now. Her body has learned the rhythm of denial and return, and the learning has bypassed every defense she walked in with.

Then something changes.

She stops chasing the rhythm. Stops bracing for denial. Stops trying to anticipate what I'll do next.