Chapter 94: Dr Marco Rossi
The moment the heavy oak door swung had swung inward, and Sandi stepped across the threshold, something changed. Her past fell away and her sole focus became this new start. Her whole body felt like a single raw nerve after thirty-six hours of sex with so many men in so many different phases: the hotel, the restaurant, the apartment. the limousine. A lifetime compressed into a day and a half of sweat-slicked skin, pounding hearts, and the relentless, aching stretch of being used. She felt hollowed out, a vessel emptied by a storm. Her muscles trembled with a fine, constant vibration, and behind her eyes, a deep, drowsy ache threatened to pull her under.
Then the château air hit her.
It was cool and gentle, smelling of beeswax, ancient stone, and the faint, sweet perfume of cut flowers from a vast arrangement on a Louis XV console. Sunlight streamed through tall, lead-paned windows, painting diamonds of gold on the worn herringbone parquet. The exhaustion didn’t leave her, but it was suddenly countered by a lifting sensation, as if the very grandeur of the vaulted entrance hall, with its sweeping stone staircase, was physically propping her up. Her spirit, so recently frayed to a thread, uncurled slightly, reaching for the light.
“Mrs. Walker. Sandi. Welcome.”
The stranger's voice was a warm baritone, smoothed by a soft Italian accent. When she studied him properly she saw that he seemed carved from the same dignified material as the château itself. Tall, with hair as dark as espresso and swept with threads of silver at the temples. He was maybe forty-five, his face all intelligent angles—a strong jaw, a blade of a nose, eyes the colour of rich earth under thick, expressive brows. He wore a tailored navy sweater and grey trousers, an elegance that was effortless.
“Dr. Marco Rossi,” he said, taking her hand not for a shake, but to hold it gently between both of his. His skin was warm, his grasp firm. “You must be exhausted. Come. Let me show you a little of your temporary home.”
His charm was not a performance; it was an atmosphere he carried. He offered his arm, and she linked hers through it, the simple contact sending a shock of awareness through her weariness. He leaned close as they walked, his voice a confidential murmur near her ear.
“I trained as a physician in Florence,” he began, guiding her slowly past tapestries and austere portraits. “Then psychiatry. The mind, it fascinated me more than the body, or so I thought. I went to America, studied psychology, anthropology. I wanted to understand the root of desire, the architecture of taboo.” He paused, his eyes scanning a landscape painting as if it contained a secret. “My specialization, my intellectual obsession, if you will, became the sexuality of the human female. The most complex, beautiful, and misunderstood landscape in existence.”
He turned his head to look at her, and she stared into his eyes. It was there, plain as day. It wasn’t just intellectual. It was a hunger, a consuming focus that made her feel utterly seen, not just as a body, but as a phenomenon. It pulled at the newfound obsession in her own core, answering it with a terrifying gravity.
The tour was a gentle blur of sunlit salons, a library smelling of leather and dust, a conservatory where emerald leaves brushed against glass. All the while, his presence was a steady, attractive force, her need for sex transforming from a frantic ache into a deep, resonant thrum directed at him.
Lunch was served in a small, semi-circular dining room that felt like a sun trap. Windows offered a breathtaking panorama of the Loire Valley, the river a silver ribbon threading through green and gold. They ate a simple, perfect meal of poached fish and asparagus. He poured her a glass of crisp Sancerre, his fingers brushing hers.
“You have been on a journey,” he stated, his eyes holding hers. “François is… thorough. But this next part, it is different. It is conscious. It requires intent.”
He set his fork down.
“So, Sandi. Tell me your story. Not the story of the last thirty-six hours, but the story of you. Why are you here? Why do you want to be pierced, tattooed, branded? What does that desire speak of?”
The question hung in the sunny, fragrant air. It demanded truth. She took a sip of wine, buying a second, her mind racing from the chaos of Caleb, Francois, Ian, Maya and Imogen, to the quiet, ordered man before her. This was the pivot. The moment where sensation was to be given a name.
She opened her mouth to begin.
The shift was instantaneous, a mental click she recognized from a hundred boardrooms and strategy calls. The fatigue, the lingering ache from all the sex, the emotional whirlpool—all of it was compartmentalized into a neat file labelled “Background Data.” She sat straighter, her hazel eyes fixing on his with a clean, analytical focus. Her voice, when it came, was even, measured, devoid of tremble or apology.
“Do you want the whole story?” she asked. “Of my journey...”
Marco nodded appreciatively.
“Okay... I met Caleb aged sixteen. I got pregnant at eighteen. We married at nineteen.” She stated it as facts on a ledger. “Do you want to know why I got pregnant? Because though Caleb thinks it was an accident... It was quite deliberate on my part...”
“You don't mind sharing that with me?” asked Marco.
Sandi shook her head.
“It's all behind me now,” she said. “Caleb... The twins... It's like I've been whisked away, out of that life... And they'll all happy... They don't mourn me... But I'm lost to all that now...”
“Really?” asked Marco, sincerely.
She was touched by his concern.
“Yes, really,” she said. “It's like my journey was fated to happen...”
Marco nodded and took a sip of his wine while he considered the situation.
“What makes you think it was fate?” he asked, out of genuine interest and not because he doubted her.
“I was unfaithful when I was twenty-seven,” she said. “A brief interlude... But a foretaste of what was to come...”
Marco leaned back slightly, steepling his fingers. “Would you mind telling me about that?”
“It didn’t last long,” she said, the clinical tone unwavering. “Just one family holiday... But I needed raw sex so blindly that nothing else mattered. Not my marriage, not my children playing on the beach, guarded by my husband. Only the physical imperative.”
“Can you give me some inkling of how that physical imperative affected your behaviour?” he asked, his voice a soft probe.
“I didn't even try to hide it... I bought the most shockingly brief bikini I could find, and the highest stiletto heels, and I dared to pack them for our family holiday to Crete with Caleb and our eight-year-old twins.”
A faint, almost imperceptible smile touched her lips at the memory of it.
“I made excuses to leave the beach in the afternoons - headaches, too much sun. Then I would parade myself through the hotel corridors and sit in the virtually empty lounge bar wearing only that bikini and those heels, with just one thing in my mind.”
“Sex,” Marco stated.
“Fucking,” Sandi corrected, the obscenity delivered with crisp precision. “I just needed fucking.”
“Like now?”
She didn’t blink.
“I always need fucking now. The strange but wonderfully liberating thing is that I can say it now with no guilt or shame. ‘I need fucking. I always need fucking.’ It’s a statement of operational fact.”
Marco’s earthy eyes held hers, then drifted to a deep, wine-coloured armchair near the unlit fireplace. A tripod stood beside it, a professional video camera mounted and ready, its red standby light a single, watchful eye. “Would you like to take your dress off and sit on my knee in that armchair?”
Sandi’s gaze flicked to the camera. A thrill, sharp and electric, shot through her gut, pulsing directly between her legs.
“Yes, that would be nice.”
She stood, her movements efficient. She reached for the zip at the back of her simple but totally see-through dress, drew it down, and let the fabric pool at her feet. The cool château air washed over her naked skin, over the faint stubble on her pubic mound. She followed Marco to the chair, and settled herself sideways onto his lap. His arm came around her shoulder, solid and warm, its hand caressing her arm, as his other one settle on one of her thighs.
“It will be incorporated into your portfolio,” he explained, referring to the video, his free hand picking up a small remote from the chair’s arm. “So your patrons can get to know what you’re like.”
He pressed a button. A soft, digital whirr came from the camera, its red light now glowing steadily. Its lens was a dark, unblinking pupil pointed directly at them. Sandi felt its gaze on her skin like a physical touch, a third presence in the sunlit room. She shifted on Marco’s lap, her bare thigh pressing against the fine wool of his trousers, and a fresh wave of slick heat bloomed between her legs.
“It’s recording,” he said, his voice a calm, clinical note in her ear. His hand on her thigh didn’t move. “This is the beginning of your file. A baseline. So tell me, how do you feel about the things you're leaving behind?”
The question was a scalpel. It cut through the lingering fog of her journey from Paris, through the numbing aftermath of the limousine. She looked at the camera, then at the sun-drenched valley beyond the window, and the answer assembled itself not as a trauma, but as a simple, operational report.
“I'm leaving everything behind,” she said, her voice clear and stripped of hesitation. “Caleb, my husband. Liam and Chloe, my twins. The house in Wimbledon that Caleb built and I turned into a home. Friends, family, and career... I'm leaving it all behind...”
She listed them like items on an inventory she was discarding.
“I loved them. I love him. But that person, that life, it’s a suit of clothes I took off and left on the floor in Neuilly. I can’t even conceive of putting it back on.”
Marco’s fingers traced a slow circle on her inner thigh, an inch from her cunt.
“And what have you put on instead?”
She turned her head, her hazel eyes meeting his earth-brown ones. Her body arched subtly into his touch, her hips tilting.
“I just want to be viewed as sexual now,” she said “Whether or not a man finds me attractive is up to him... But I don't want any of them to think that I'm after anything else...”
“What's motivating you then?” asked Marco, before changing tack. “I would normally ask searching questions to find out for myself... But you're an intelligent, educated woman... You know yourself... You'll have studied basic psychology... You will know all about submission and masochism, dominance and sadism... Low self-esteem... Narcissism... Voyeurism... Exhibitionism... Fetishes... So tell me...”
She smiled mischievously at his challenge, feeling a definite connection developing between them.
“You mean reveal all like an exhibitionist?” she quipped.
“Are you an exhibitionist?” he asked.
“Amongst a great many other things, yes,” she said, liking his interest.
“Like what?” he asked, as she clearly hoped he would.
She thought about it.
“I like my sexual partners,” she started, “when we've reached a certain depth of understanding, to use me as a sex object... At any time they want... In any place they like... With my new attitude being... Now that I've left my past behind me completely... That so long as the man, or men, take responsibility, I will pay no heed to where we are, who we might be with, the appropriateness of what we're doing, or what they're having me do... And I'll immerse myself in it...”
“Wow,” said Marco, shifting to give his growing erection more room inside his trousers.
“Can I just add,” said Sandi. “That it includes... Such men... Feeling that they can give me to others...”
“Fuck,” sighed Marco, squirming again. “Anything else?”
“I like people knowing that I'm like that,” said Sandi. “With having had to hide it for so long... I now want everyone to know... And I mean everyone...”
Marco stared into her, and saw that she meant every word.
“I like being blindfolded,” she mused. “With men who make me feel safe... For that's the sexiest thing about a man... It's what impresses me the most... Not money or muscles... Looks, height, or clothes... It's feeling safe... To be myself... To speak my mind... To let myself go... To put my trust in him completely... Even if I know he's going to focus solely on my sexuality... I will always, always want him to be drawing more and more of it out of me... Even to the point of it shocking him... To the extent that he walks away...”
Marco lapsed into thought.
“So step one you have sex with a man,” he said. “And then, in subsequent steps, he gets to know you deeper and deeper... With that being the nature of your sexuality... Because you started off my saying that you just want to be viewed as sexual now...”
“Exactly,' said Sandi.
“So what about exclusivity?” asked Marco. “What if such a relationship worked out? And you revealed all of yourself to him? And he wanted you all to himself?”
She shook her head.
“No, no,” she said. “He would have to accept the fact... That if I was attracted to another man, and he to me... That I would have to be totally free... To have sex... With anyone I want... Any time I like... Any place that's suitable...”
“So any relationship that developed would be based on sex, in the moment, and nothing else?” asked Marco.
“Pretty much,” said Sandi, thinking about it and nodding.
“So are there any other aspects of your sexual nature that you'd like to share?” asked Marco, nodding towards the video camera.
“I like being filmed,” she said. “I like being watched...”
“And as you like people knowing what you're like,” said Marco, hesitantly. “How would you feel about any video footage being shared... Or even made public?”
“I'd love it,” said Sandi.
“Really?” asked Marco. “What if Caleb saw it? Or your twins... What were their names... Liam and Chloe... Or your mother...”
Sandi shook her head as if he just didn't understand.
“This me has always been inside me,” she said. “Just buried deep... She wanted to wear stockings when I made her wear tights... She wanted to wear high-heels, short skirts, see-through blouses, the skimpiest of bikinis, wet-look tops with no bras, skin-tight dresses with no underwear at all... She wanted to strip seductively for Caleb... She wanted him to demand that she flaunt herself purely for his own arousal... She wanted him to fuck her with no restraint... With no regard for her sensibilities... No concern for her self-respect... She wanted him to force himself on her... Get her so worked up that she lost control... Completely... All moral judgement gone... A totally sexual creature he could do what he wanted with... Who would do whatever he wanted... Wear whatever he wanted to see her in... Out in the world... On his arm but turning heads... His so completely... And in such a totally sexual state of body and mind... That he could give her to other men... With me so consummately immersed in it... That I'd be unable to hide how much I loved it... How powerfully it affected me physically... With the other man or men being merely proxies for masculinity itself... Such that we were both using them... Caleb and me... Both wanting them to bring out my total femininity... And for it to prevail over them... No matter how many of them there might be... I would know that he'd be wanting me to show him that I was insatiable...”
Marco took a deep breath and put his arm around her as she lay her head against him, not wanting to see how he was reacting.
“Is that what all this is about?” he asked her. “You wanting to show him that you're insatiable?”
“Hardly,” she said. “So far as he's concerned I imagine he thinks it's over... We haven't even spoken about this... Being here... We neither of us ever imagined the enormity of it... The step I'm taking... So we most definitely aren't conspiring...”
“So you don't regard it as over?” asked Marco, picking up on one of the things she's said. “Your marriage?”
“It's similar to what I said about exclusivity,” said Sandi, the realisation coming to her in the moment. “I'm being me... It it works out then fine – I might never see him gain... If it doesn't... I will present myself to him... A failure but unapologetic... His if he wants me back...”
“I sense a tinge of masochism in your tone,” said Marco. “In your demeanour, now...”
“I don't fear humiliation,” she said. “I'm thirty-seven... My figure is past its best... My looks are fading... My social standing is heading for non-existent... I am what I am... With regard to masochism, I don't want to be beaten but I quite like bondage... And I won't mind being abused by cock...”
“Is there anything else?” asked Marco, clearly wanting to move on.
“Dirty talk,” said Sandi. “I love dirty talk...”
“Then talk dirty to me,” whispered Marco, in her ear. “Tell me your goal maybe...”
“I want to surrender... To sex... To cock...” she said, kissing his neck. “To being used up by it... I want to be consumed by it...”
Her hand drifted down, her own fingers brushing over his, then guiding them firmly up to her vulva. She was soaked. She pressed his fingertips against her swollen lips, a blatant, wordless offer.
“This is all I am for now,” she said. “You can fuck me. It's all I want to be for you. Something you fuck. That’s the essential thing about me now...”
He didn’t insert his fingers. He simply let her grind her wetness against them, his expression thoughtful, analytical even as his own breathing deepened. The camera whirred softly.
“It was a significant statement,” he murmured. “Your total abandonment of exclusivity... Your virtually complete availability. But I see nothing pathological in any of it.”
“Good,” she said, letting out a sigh of relief.
He moved his hand away from her cunt, placing it back on her leg, a deliberate withdrawal that made her tut with frustration.
“My role here is not to be just another man who fucks you, Sandi,” said Marco. “Though I want to. I very much want to bury my cock in that eager cunt of yours.”
“Then do it,” she whispered, grinding down on the hard ridge of his erection beneath her.
“What you need to know is that I'm being paid to be here, assessing you,” he said. “And you have to know that you are just one of many... The latest in a long, long, line...”
“So how do I compare?” she asked.
“You're different,” he said. “Very different... And it's not just your age...”
She stared at him – refusing to fish for compliments.
“You're intellectual for one,” he said. “It gives you an extra dimension... The men won't just want sex with you...They'll want to be seen with you, in company, safe in the knowledge that you'll be able to hold your own no matter what the nature of the conversations you might get drawn into... Knowing that there's nothing fragile about your psychological foundations... That you're grounded... Detached even... Proud... Defiant... Immovable in all matters except sex... Where all you want to do is find common ground and take things to their natural destination... Thus the men will want to dress you on the risqué side of elegant... Or in different situations, sexily rather than merely attractively. Or even erotically... And you will revel in it... Not wallowing in the attention... But focussing almost entirely on the man you're with... Because you understand the dynamics... The hierarchy... The unspoken rules... Such that you'll let yourself be handed over to a more powerful man... And let him give you to whomever he wants... For whatever reason... Whether, like Caleb, it gives him a kick... Or like Francois... He wants to curry favour...”
Sandi merely stared at him as her mind took in what he was saying.
“So after that aside... If I have sex with you,” he continued, his voice steady, “it will be part of my assessment. I am not your lover. I am your classifier. I will be observing your responsiveness, your psychological triggers, your endurance, and the specific texture of your submission. I will categorize you. Then, I will make my recommendations. I will do my best to ensure you're only ever put with men you will, at a profound level, want to give yourself to.”
The words landed like stones in the quiet room. Assessment. Classifier. Recommendations. They framed the aching want in her core as data. She felt a sudden, cold space open up between them, an emotional distance as vast as the valley outside. He was a scientist, and she was the subject on the slab. The realization should have horrified her, chilled her arousal.
It did the opposite.
The clinical detachment of his purpose fused with her own raw hunger, creating a feedback loop of intense, depersonalised lust. Her need to be fucked wasn’t diminished by his diagnosis; it was vindicated by it. This was the system. He was the gatekeeper. Using her body was the key.
“So fuck me and assess me,” she said, her voice low and rough. She reached for his belt, her fingers fumbling with the buckle. “Assess how badly I need it. Assess how open I am. I won’t care why you’re doing it, Marco. I just need your cock in me. Now.”
He allowed her to unbuckle his belt, to unzip his trousers. He helped her shift, lifting her slightly so she could push his clothing down his thighs. His cock sprang free, thick and already fully hard, the vein along its length pulsing. She moaned at the sight of it, her hand wrapping around the shaft, feeling its heat and weight.
“There is a second part,” he said, even as she positioned herself above him. His hands gripped her hips, not to guide her down, but to hold her still for a moment longer. “I'll only be available to you during this stage. After my assessment, you will progress. The cultivation of your… availability… will intensify. You will be expected to have sex with any man who wants you. Any man the system assigns to you.”
She froze, poised over the head of his cock. The reality of it, baldly stated, punched through the fever. Any man. Not just charming Italians in sunlit rooms. Not just powerful financiers in apartments. Strange men. Men she might find ugly, crude, frightening. Men whose touch might curdle her stomach even as she spread her legs.
The conflict flickered across her face, a shadow of the old Sandi—the mother, the wife, the woman with preferences and aversions. Marco saw it. He watched the struggle in her eyes, the tremor in her lower lip.
Then he saw her slowly shaking her head.
“It's got to be real,” she breathed, and the statement was a final, internal execution. “I have to want the man... Just as he has to want me...”
“Some of them aren't going to like that,” he told her bluntly.
She shrugged as if she didn't care.
“There's something else,” he said, staying her before she sat herself down over him.
She swallowed her frustration in the interests of demonstrating her stated principle; that whatever sex she had with anybody at all had to be consensual, even for the men.
“You're still to be assessed for infections,” he told her. “I'm certified as disease free... But you are not...”
“So use a condom,” she said, bluntly.
“I can't,” he said. “I have to assess every nuance of what you feel inside... And for that I need the most intimate physical and emotional contact possible...”
She looked at him blankly.
“So you're not sure that you want to take the risk of catching something,” she said, getting annoyed.
“So can we proceed with the-” he said.
“Interrogation?” she interrupted.
“Sandi, it's much more of an open and honest confession,” he said. “Of what you like and what you don't like... With the goal being that unsuitable men never even get to know of your existence... So the more I know about you the better... For you... So what happened in Greece? What triggered the big change in you?”
She forced herself to stop fuming, compose herself, and get the questions out of the way as quickly as possible.
“It was a normal holiday,” she started. “Until he brought up the one from ten years previous when I'd been unfaithful... He said he didn't want to know the truth... He explained that he wouldn't have been able to handle it a the time... But things were different now... That as the years went by the thought of it started to turn him on more and more... To cut a long story short he said he wanted me to be openly unfaithful to him there on that holiday... I agreed... I did it... It was emotionally difficult for him but he got over it and confessed that he liked the idea... A lot... That he wanted us to build it into our relationship... And take it to the next level...”
“What was 'the idea' that he liked?” asked Marco.
“He liked the thought of my sex drive being so strong that I'd set my marriage vows aside... Abandon fidelity completely and forever... And become the opposite... A wanton adulteress... Not one who did things guiltily behind her husband's back... But one who could share her need to be promiscuous with the man she loved and who loved her – not just as the woman he'd shared his life with for twenty years – but as the woman she was becoming – the one who had always been latent inside her – the one he'd glimpsed on occasion at the height of passion – the one he'd been scared of that time I'd strayed – the one he'd dared himself to draw forth and engage with on that Greek island...” said Sandi. “And one thing led to another... And I ended up having sex with a lot of men on that holiday... And I mean a lot...”
Marco nodded thoughtfully and he let quite a period of silence open up before he continued.
“So what happened when you got home?” he asked.
“I couldn't come down from it,” she said. “I couldn't censor my desires.. I liked being attractive to men... I wanted them to want me... I wanted to give myself to them... But the opportunities were limited... And I ended up flaunting myself in the most inappropriate way, in the most inappropriate of places... Like Caleb's workplace...”
“One of his building sites...” said Marco, revealing the fact that he knew much more than Sandi had ever imagined.
She nodded, not caring that Caleb and possibly others had shared her secrets with the cabal she was now on the brink of being inducted into. And in reality she was relieved that they had conspired and played their part in bringing about her current situation - for it meant it was a shared enterprise.
“I don't care that you know,” she said. “I don't care who told you... That life is behind me now...”
Marco smiled approvingly and it settled Sandi tremendously.
“I wanted to create a spark of interest in my short skirts and high heels,” she said. “I wanted it to lead to a fire...”
“It led to Ian coming to live with you,” said Marco. “To him sharing you equally with Caleb...”
“But even that wasn't enough for me,” said Sandi. “There was Ryan... The was the debacle with Klaus... Then Francois... Till now...”
“What do you want from now?” asked Marco.
“I want to drop all pretence that I'm anything other than sexual,” she said. “If that's not asking too much...”
Marco laughed.
“I just want to flaunt myself,” said Sandi. “Let all men see that if I find them attractive, or even interesting, then I'll have sex with them...”
“Some men might want the thrill of the chase,” said Marco.
“What about the thrill of a spark leading smoothly to almost instant sex?” asked Sandi. “From a glance to a look... From a smile to a kiss... From an embrace to the most intimate connection...”
He took a condom from his back pocket and put it on. She lowered herself onto him, impaling her soaking cunt on his length in one slow, inexorable sink. Her head fell back, a choked cry escaping her as he filled her, stretched her, claimed the hollow ache. “I don’t care about your assessment. I just need this. I will always need this.”
She began to ride him, there on the chair, in full view of the recording camera. Her movements were not graceful or seductive; they were urgent, piston-like, a mechanical working of her hips. She fucked him with a desperate, driving rhythm, her breasts swaying, her skin sheening with sweat. “Oh God, yes, assess this,” she panted, her words slurring with each downward plunge. “Assess how my cunt grips you. Assess how I’m your fucking slut. Just don’t stop.”
Marco’s composure fractured. A groan tore from him, his hands clenching on her hips, his own hips thrusting up to meet her drives. He was fucking her now in earnest, his cock spearing up into her wet, clutching heat. “The category is clear,” he grunted, his voice ragged. “Primary driver is penetrative need. Psychological abandonment of prior identity is total. Receptor status… is optimal.”
His clinical language melted into filth as he thrust harder. “Your cunt is perfect for this. So fucking greedy. In this state you’d take any cock I sent in here, wouldn’t you? You’d let a stranger bend you over this chair and empty his balls in your ass if it was the next item on the schedule.”
“Yes!” she screamed, despite all she'd said, the affirmation ripped from her core. Her orgasm approached, a tidal wave built from equal parts physical friction and psychological surrender. “I would! I will! Because the more I get the more I want!”
He slammed up into her, once, twice, three more times, his body rigid. “Then come for me,” he commanded, his voice a guttural snarl. “Come for the assessment. Show me how a woman comes when she’s traded her whole life for this.”
The wave broke. Her body convulsed around his cock, her inner muscles fluttering and clamping in a brutal, rhythmic seizure that milked him instantly. A raw, shapeless sound was torn from her throat as her own climax triggered his. He spilled into her, hot and deep, his release pulsing in time with the final contractions of her cunt.
She collapsed against his chest, trembling violently, his softening cock still nestled inside her. The camera’s red light glowed. The valley slept in the sun.
His hand, once clinical, now stroked her damp hair with something almost like tenderness. “The assessment is favourable,” he whispered into her ear, his breath hot. “You will progress. You will get exactly what you asked for. More. And more. And more.”
Sandi, buried in the smell of sex and his skin, believed him. It felt like a promise. It felt like a sentence. She nuzzled closer, her body already craving the next filling, from him, from anyone, from the endless line of men waiting in the wings of her new, empty world.