Chapter 8: The Next Roll
The wine bar was a cathedral of subdued noise. Amber light pooled in the glasses on the zinc counter, glinting off the bottles stacked like silent spectators. Shauna traced a finger through the condensation on her own untouched chardonnay, watching the door. The air smelled of citrus peel and oak, a civilized mask over the raw animal memory of concrete and his palm.
Hayden slipped in, a shadow in a navy blazer. He saw her, gave a curt nod that was neither friendly nor hostile, and made his way over. He didn’t sit immediately. He placed his hands flat on the table, leaning forward slightly.
“You look recovered,” he said. His eyes scanned her face, clinically assessing the woman he’d bent over a stairwell railing. “No lasting musculoskeletal issues from the positioning.”
It was such a Hayden thing to say. Shauna felt a hysterical laugh bubble in her throat. She swallowed it with a sip of wine. “I’m flexible. You?”
“Operational.” He finally sat, signaling the server for a Scotch, neat. The three days of silence hung between them, a void filled with the phantom scent of his come and the echoing marimba tone of her phone alarm. He’d texted only once: Bar. Thursday. 8pm. She’d replied Ok. That was it. The game was the only language they had left.
From her bag, she produced the velvet pouch. She upended it onto the table between their glasses. The four grey dice clattered onto the wood, stark and geometric against the warm grain.
“Your set?” he asked, picking one up, rolling it between his thumb and forefinger. He held it to the light.
“Of course.” Her voice was steady. The loaded die was among them, indistinguishable. Its weight in the pouch had felt like a tumor these past three days. A secret she carried instead of the other one, the biological one she’d flushed away in a public bathroom stall, shaking.
He put the die down. “Procedure stands. One roll each. Sum dictates the theme. High roller defines parameters.” He recited it like a contract clause. “Any objections?”
“No objections.”
He reached for a die. She did the same, her fingers bypassing the cooler, heavier one by instinct. They made eye contact across the small table. The hum of the bar faded. It was just this moment, the plastic clatter, the arbitrariness they were about to sanctify.
He rolled first. A two. It settled without drama.
Her turn. She shook the die in her fist, her palm slick. She let it go. It bounced, hit the base of a wine glass, and spun to a stop.
A four.
Her heart hammered. Filth. Again. The memory was too recent, too raw—the taste, the abasement, his hand at her mouth. She couldn’t do a variation on that, not now, not while her treasonous purchase was winging its way to her apartment. The guilt would choke her.
Hayden stared at the result, his lips pressed into a thin line. “Six. Filth.” He looked up at her. There was no triumph in his face. If anything, he looked contemplative. “Given that we did that so recently do you want to re-roll?”
Hayden suddenly wondered whether Shauna might have another manifestation of “filth” up her sleeve already. Apparently not.
“I agree,” she said slowly, tapping her finger next to her four. “But my roll stands as the winner. Agreed?.”
A flicker of something—amusement, respect—crossed his face. He couldn’t deny her obvious victory without looking pathetic. Nervous as to what he might have to face. He gave a single, sharp nod. “Yeah, agreed. You won this round. The re-roll is just to choose the theme.”
They gathered the dice. This time, he selected his carefully. She, without hesitation, picked up the loaded one. Its weight was a confession. She felt a cold clarity. She wasn’t cheating for pleasure; she was cheating for survival, for a chance to steer the ship before it ran aground on the rocks of his clinical imagination.
He rolled. A one.
She barely shook hers before letting it tumble from her fingers. It didn’t even seem to roll. It just landed.
Four.
Five total.
Piss.
Hayden went very still. He looked from the dice to her face. All the casual assurance bled out of him, leaving something quieter, more watchful. She’d defined ‘Filth.’ He’d orchestrated ‘Free-use.’ But this was different. This was visceral in a way that bypassed power dynamics and spoke to something primitive, something about the body’s deepest, most private shame.
“Well,” he said finally, his voice drier than before. He picked up his Scotch and drained half of it. “You define.”
Shauna leaned back in her chair. She felt the power settle on her shoulders, an unfamiliar, heavy mantle. She saw the subtle tension in his jaw, the way his thumb rubbed against the pad of his forefinger. He was anxious. The knowledge was a drug, clean and bright.
“Finish your drink,” she said, her tone conversational. “We’re leaving.”
“Where?”
“My place. The rules are mine. The location is, too.” She stood, sliding the dice back into their pouch. The loaded one clicked against the others, a sound only she could hear.
The drive to her apartment was silent. Hayden sat in the passenger seat of her hatchback, staring out the window at the streaming city lights. He’d surrendered the navigational role without comment. In her brightly lit, cluttered living room, he looked like a museum piece out of context—too sharp, too contained for the vibrant chaos of her art books and throw pillows.
“What are the parameters?” he asked. He stood rigidly in the centre of the room, his arms at his sides.
“Sit,” Shauna said, gesturing to her deep, threadbare sofa. Her voice was calm, almost detached. “Not there. On the floor. Against the front of the couch.”
Hayden’s eyes held hers for a long moment, a silent negotiation. She didn’t blink. He moved, the crisp line of his trousers bending as he lowered himself to sit on the worn rug, his back against the sofa’s base. The posture was already diminishing. He looked up at her, his face illuminated by the soft glow of her floor lamp. The sharp engineering executive was gone, replaced by a man waiting for a verdict.
Shauna stood over him, her shadow falling across his chest. The plans she’d mentally drafted in the car crystallized. This wasn’t about a single act of degradation. It was about architecture. It was about building something new from the rubble of the last seventy-two hours—his fingers inside her while she slept, the public, grinding orgasm in the stairwell, the taste he’d forced into her mouth.
“Have you ever drunk piss before?” she asked. The question was blunt, clinical.
Hayden’s throat worked as he swallowed. “No.” The word was quiet. His heart was a frantic drum against his ribs, a chaotic rhythm of dread and a dark, submissive joy. This was the edge he’d craved, the ultimate loss of control, and it terrified the part of him that needed to dictate every variable.
“Good,” she said, kneeling in front of him. She placed her hands on her thighs, leaning forward slightly. “This isn’t a one-time thing. I’m not going to force you to choke it down once just to prove a point. That’s a party trick.”
He stared at her, comprehension dawning, his pupils widening.
“The win is ‘Piss’,” she continued, her voice steady. “My definition is that you drink mine. Whenever I decide I need to go. That’s the function. You’ll be my human toilet.”
Hayden flinched. A visible tremor ran through his shoulders. “Shauna, come on. That’s… that’s extreme. That’s not a game, that’s a… a lifestyle adjustment.”
“A lifestyle adjustment,” she repeated, tilting her head. She let the phrase hang in the air between them. “You had twenty-four hours of open access to me. I had to do anything. Anything. You woke me up with your fingers inside me. You fucked me in a public stairwell and made me lick your come from your hand. I did ass-to-mouth for you.”
She leaned closer, her voice dropping to a harsh whisper. “You rolled a total for ‘Free-use’ and you used it. Fully. So don’t talk to me about ‘extreme’. This is one function. One. But yes, it will be whenever I want. And it will take a period of training for you to accept your new role.”
Hayden opened his mouth, then closed it. The argument died on his tongue. She had cited the rules, their own history, back to him with devastating accuracy. His dominant self was horrified, scrambling for a loophole. His submissive core was throbbing with a terrifying, electric awe.
He looked away, his gaze fixing on a frayed corner of the rug. His breathing was shallow. “Training,” he echoed, the word tasting foreign.
“You’ll learn to crave the taste of it,” Shauna said, standing up. She looked down at him, at the perfect part in his hair, the crisp collar of his shirt. The disparity was the whole point. “The first lesson is anticipation. Stay there. Don’t move.”
She walked to her kitchen and filled the largest glass she owned with cold tap water. She drank it slowly, watching him over the rim. He hadn’t moved a muscle. He was staring straight ahead, his mind clearly racing through scenarios, bargaining, breaking.
She refilled the glass. Drank half. Her bladder began to feel heavy, a low, dull pressure. She placed the empty glass in the sink with a definitive clink. The sound made him jump.
Walking back, she stopped just before him. “Look at me.”
His eyes lifted. They were wide, stripped of their usual calculating sheen.
“This begins tonight,” she said softly. “You don’t have to like it. You just have to obey. That was the deal you loved when you were holding my head down, wasn’t it?”
A shadow of shame passed over his features. He gave the faintest nod.