Chapter 1: Chapter 1
The air in the editorial office smelled of old paper, expensive espresso, and ambition. Julian tugged at the collar of his new shirt, the starch already itching his neck. His first day. His foot tapped a frantic rhythm against the polished concrete floor as he waited for his supervisor.
“You must be Julian.” The voice was a smooth, warm alto.
He looked up and his brain short-circuited.
She was leaning against the doorframe of a glass-walled office, one ankle crossed over the other. Vivienne. He’d been told her name in the welcome email. The Senior Arts Editor. The description hadn’t come close. She had that classic, cool beauty—sharp cheekbones, a severe blonde bob, eyes the colour of winter sky. But it was the accessory that utterly derailed him.
Draped around her shoulders, its glass-bead eyes seeming to glint with secret knowledge, was an enormous fox fur stole. It was lush, a cascade of russet and gold fur that spilled down the front of her elegant black dress. His fingers twitched at his sides with a sudden, bizarre urge to touch it, to feel its depth. A visceral, unintended image flashed in his mind: that soft, heavy fur brushing against bare skin, somewhere in a dark room, a gasp that was half laugh, half sigh. He felt a treacherous heat rise in his cheeks and, more alarmingly, a tightening in his trousers.
“I am. Julian Cross. It’s a privilege to be here,” he managed, his voice thankfully steady.
Vivienne’s gaze was assessing. It didn’t linger on his face. It traveled down, just for a fraction of a second, a quick, professional sweep that somehow missed nothing. It paused at his waist, where the betraying strain of his chinos was now unmistakable. Her expression didn’t change. No smile, no frown. Just a slight, almost imperceptible narrowing of those pale eyes before her look was back on his, perfectly polite.
“Welcome aboard. The team’s gathering in the conference room. Follow me.” She turned, the fur swaying with her movement.
He followed, miserably aware of the awkward fit of his pants, hoping the tailored line of his jacket was enough cover. The office was a hum of muted activity. She led him past rows of desks where people peered at glowing screens.
“This is Margot, our culture editor. A savant with a brutal red pen,” Vivienne said, stopping at a desk occupied by a woman with fierce green glasses.
“Don’t scare him on day one, Viv,” Margot said, smiling warmly at Julian. “Ignore her. We’re actually quite nice.”
“Debatable,” Vivienne said, a ghost of a smile touching her lips. “And Leo, our photo director.” A man with a sleeve of tattoos gave a two-fingered salute without looking up from a lightbox.
Finally, they reached a small conference room with a view of the steel-and-glass canyon of the city. Three other interns were already there, looking equally young and out of place. Vivienne introduced them—Samir, Chloe, Priya—with an efficient courtesy.
“You’ll be shadowing different departments this month,” Vivienne explained, leaning against the table. The fox’s head nestled in the crook of her arm, its snout pointing directly at Julian. “First week, you’re with me in Arts. We’re finalizing the feature on the new immersive theatre scene. Julian, I’ll have you start on fact-checking the venues list. The database logins are in your packet.”
She pushed a folder across the table toward him. As he reached for it, his sleeve rode up. Her eyes flicked to his wrist, then away.
“Any initial questions?”
Samir asked something about overtime policy. Julian barely heard. He was watching Vivienne’s hand, idly stroking the fur of the stole. It was an absent-minded gesture, her fingers sinking deep into the pelt. The earlier, inappropriate thought returned, stronger now, more detailed. He imagined those same fingers, just as deliberate, just as knowing, but elsewhere. The image was so vivid, so specific, that he had to shift his weight, clearing his throat.
Vivienne finished answering Samir. Her eyes found Julian’s again. This time, there was a knowing glint in them, a silent acknowledgment that felt more intimate than a touch. She had seen. She had noted. And she had filed it away.
“Julian? Any questions from you?”
“No,” he said, too quickly. “The database. I’ll get started.”
“Good.” She straightened up, the moment broken. “The team usually grabs coffee at Bean There on Fourth at ten. Don’t be late.” She gave the group a final, curt nod and left, the rich fur swaying behind her like a silent punchline.
Julian sank into a chair, the folder cool in his hands. The meeting continued around him, but the sound was muffled, distant. All he could feel was the stubborn, persistent thrum of his own heartbeat, and the lingering, unspoken weight of that look. She had seen his reaction, the physical proof of his infatuation, and she had said nothing. That was the most thrilling, and most terrifying, part. The game, he understood with a jolt, had already begun. And he had no idea what the rules were, or what she intended to do with what she’d just observed.
And he had no idea what the rules were, or what she intended to do with what she’d just observed.
The first two days were a masterclass in professional agony. Julian existed in a state of hyper-awareness, a live wire strung tight between his desk and Vivienne’s glass office. He fact-checked addresses and opening times until his vision blurred, the dry data a poor distraction. Every time her door opened, his head snapped up. She’d glide past his desk, leaving a trace of her scent—clean linen and something sharper, like frost—and a directive. “The file on the Gronberg exhibit, Julian.” “This copy is sloppy. Do it again.”
She was always correct. Always impeccably dressed, though the fox stole didn’t make a reappearance. Instead, her silhouettes became a quiet, devastating provocation. A silk blouse that clung to the formidable swell of her DD-cup breasts, the top button undone just far enough to hint at shadow. A pencil skirt that sculpted the generous curve of her hips and what she’d so clinically referred to as her ‘fat ass’ in the briefing—a phrase that now looped in his mind, co-opting every professional thought. The fabrics were expensive, whispering as she moved. The office noticed, of course—Leo’s glances lingered a second longer, Samir the intern stumbled over his words once—but it was all filed under ‘Vivienne being Vivienne.’ A raised benchmark of allure. Only Julian felt the targeted precision of it, like a laser on his skin.
He was her intern. She was his superior. That was the public script. He rehearsed it, trying to believe it.
On Wednesday afternoon, the tension snapped. She appeared at his desk, a manila folder in hand. Her expression was all business. “The Gronberg proofs. There are annotated edits. My office, now. We need to go over them before the printer’s deadline.”
His heart hammered against his ribs. “Of course.”
Inside her office, the world muted. The glass walls, with their slatted blinds half-drawn, created a space that felt both exposed and secret. The hum of the newsroom was a distant ocean. She closed the door with a soft, definitive click and walked to her desk, not sitting, but leaning against its edge.
She didn’t look at the folder. She looked at him.
“You’ve been staring at my tits for three days, Julian.” Her voice was calm, conversational, as if noting the weather.
He froze, blood roaring in his ears. “I… no, I haven’t…”
“Don’t lie. It’s tedious.” She placed the folder aside. “The first day, in the conference room. You got hard just looking at a bit of fur. I saw the outline in your cheap trousers. It was pathetic. It was also… interesting.”
He couldn’t speak. Shame, hot and slick, coated his throat. But beneath it, a darker, eager current pulsed.
“You want to touch, don’t you?” she continued, tilting her head. “All that looking. It’s a kind of touching, I suppose. But it’s cowardly. Do you want to be a coward, Julian?”
“No,” he whispered.
“No, what?”
“No… I don’t want to be a coward.”
“Good.” A faint, cool smile. “Come here.”
He took two steps, stopping a foot from her. She was taller in her heels. This close, the scent of her was overwhelming.
“You’re my intern. You will do as I say. In this room, the rules are mine. You will not speak of this. You will not act differently outside of this room. Do you understand?”
He nodded, a quick, frantic jerk of his head.
“Verbal agreement, Julian.”
“I understand.”
“Excellent.” Her hand moved so fast he didn’t register it until the sharp, loud crack exploded against the side of his face. His head snapped to the side, shock ringing through his skull more than pain. Heat bloomed on his cheek.
“That,” she said, her hand returning calmly to her side, “is for the staring you thought I didn’t see on Tuesday. It’s rude.”
He stood, breathing hard, his face burning. The shock was giving way to a blinding, confusing arousal.
“Turn around. Bend over. Put your hands on my desk.”
His body moved before his mind could protest. He turned, leaned forward, the cool glass of the desk surface meeting his palms. He heard the shift of fabric behind him.
“This,” she said, her voice closer now, “is for the sloppy copy you submitted yesterday. I expect precision.”
The first spank was a shock of sound and sensation, her open palm connecting with the seat of his trousers. It stung, a bright, clean pain. The second followed, harder. The third landed lower, on the tender space where thigh met buttock, and he gasped. She spanked him in a slow, methodical rhythm, not frenzied, but deliberate. Each impact was a period, a full stop, punctuating his humiliation. The pain spread, warming him, mixing with the shame until they were indistinguishable, a cocktail that made him lightheaded. He was hard, painfully so, pressed against the zipper of his pants. He was certain she could see.
She landed a final, searing swat and stopped. He heard her step back, her breathing barely elevated. “Stand up.”
He pushed himself upright, his face flushed, his body trembling with adrenaline and a desperate, unwanted need.
She was watching him, her eyes like chips of ice. She saw everything—the tent in his trousers, the submission in his posture. She gave a small, satisfied nod. “You can go back to your desk now. The proofs are fine. I just wanted to see if you’d do it.”
He stumbled out, the ghost of her handprint a brand on his skin. The office air felt different, colder. Priya asked if he was okay, said he looked flushed. He muttered something about the heat from the server room.
The next day, Thursday, the summons came just after lunch. A terse email: My office. Now.
The click of the door lock this time was a sound he knew. He was already vibrating with a terrible anticipation.
She was sitting in her chair, one leg crossed over the other. She was wearing knee-high leather boots today, sleek and black, that shone under the office lights. The skirt was shorter. His mouth went dry.
“You’ve been a good boy today,” she said, not looking up from her computer screen. “Quiet. Efficient. Not a single lingering glance.” She finally looked at him. “I want to reward that.”
A reward. The word twisted in his gut.
“Come here. Kneel.”
He did, the carpet rough against his knees. She swiveled her chair, extending one booted foot. She planted the heel on the floor between his legs, the toe pointing up toward his face. The leather smelled rich and new.
“Lick it.”
He stared. The command was so absurd, so debasing, his mind blanked.
“You heard me. Clean it. The pavement outside is dirty.”
A shudder ran through him. He leaned forward, closing his eyes as he did. He touched his tongue to the cool, smooth leather at the toe of the boot. It tasted of salt, of the city, of nothing. He licked a slow, broad stripe along the instep.
“Thoroughly,” she murmured, watching. “All of it. The sides. The heel.”
He obeyed, moving like an automaton, his tongue following the contours of the boot. The act was so profoundly humiliating it bypassed thought and went straight to his core. He was an object, a tool for her whim. The arousal was a constant, low-grade burn now, a part of his new baseline.
When he finished, she hummed. “Now the other one.”
He repeated the process, a sickening dedication to the task. When he was done, she uncrossed her legs. She slipped her foot from the boot. She was wearing sheer black stockings. She wiggled her toes, then placed her stockinged foot flat against his chest, pushing him back slightly.
“The feet themselves. They ache.”
He didn’t need instruction this time. He took her foot in his hands, bent his head, and pressed his mouth to the arch through the nylon. He kissed it. Then he used his teeth to gently catch the material at her toes, pulling it down. She let him, watching with detached interest. He peeled the stocking off her foot, exposing pale skin, the delicate bones, a faint scent of lotion and leather. He licked from her heel to the ball of her foot, then took each toe into his mouth, sucking gently.
A soft sigh escaped her. “Good.”
The word, a drop of praise in the desert of his degradation, sent a jolt of pure triumph through him. It was worse than any blow.
Friday. The week’s end. The office was buzzing with weekend energy. Vivienne wore a dress of deep emerald that wrapped and tied at the side, emphasizing every dangerous curve. The neckline was a plunge. Conversations stalled when she walked to the kitchen for coffee.
Her email came at 4:45 PM. Final weekend notes. My office.
Inside, the blinds were fully closed. The room was a dim, green-tinged cocoon. She stood in the center of it, a queen in her domain.
“Close the door. Lock it.”
He did.
“Come here.”
He approached. She didn’t touch him at first. She just looked at him, her gaze traveling over his face, his body, as if taking inventory of the week’s work.
“You have done everything I asked,” she stated.
“Yes.”
“Do you want to stop?”
The question hung in the air. It was his out. A thread of sanity he could grasp. He thought of the spanking, the boot leather on his tongue, the taste of her skin. He thought of the power in her eyes, the focused intensity she bestowed on him in these stolen moments—a intensity he received from no one and nowhere else.
“No,” he said, the word leaving him in a rush.
The cold smile returned. “I didn’t think so.” She reached out, her fingers curling into the front of his shirt. She pulled him closer, then turned, steering him toward her plush, executive chair. She sat down, spreading her thighs. The emerald fabric strained.
“Sit,” she said.
He looked at the space, at her lap. He hesitated for only a second before lowering himself, his body awkward and large across hers. She adjusted him, pulling him back so his head rested against the breathtaking softness of her breasts, his back against her stomach. Then she wrapped her arms around his chest, one hand splayed possessively over his heart.
“This is a smothering,” she said, her voice a whisper by his ear. Her other hand came up, pressing over his mouth and nose. “Don’t struggle.”
It wasn’t a violent deprivation. It was constant, steady pressure. The soft, fragrant skin of her palm and fingers sealed off his airways. He lay perfectly still, cradled in the incredible warmth and softness of her body. He could feel the rise and fall of her breath against his back, the steady beat of her heart. His own heart began to pound, a frantic drum seeking oxygen. Spots danced at the edges of his vision. A primal panic started to claw its way up from his brainstem.
Just as the panic crested, she moved her hand, letting him drag in a ragged, desperate gasp. Then the pressure returned. On and off. A cruel, rhythmic mercy. The world narrowed to the feel of her, the scent of her perfume in his starved lungs, the darkening tunnel of his vision. He was drowning in her. He was disappearing. It was the most peaceful and most terrifying sensation he had ever known.
She removed her hand for the last time and kept it off. He lay there, gulping air, trembling violently, utterly spent. She held him through the tremors, one hand stroking his hair in a grotesque parody of comfort.
“Your first week is complete,” she said, her voice resonant in his ear. “You may go.”
She gave him a gentle push. He staggered to his feet, his legs weak, his head swimming. He straightened his shirt with clumsy hands. She was already turning back to her computer screen, the moment sealed away as if it had never happened.
“Have a good weekend, Julian,” she said, not looking at him. “Don’t be late on Monday.”
He walked out into the buzzing newsroom. Priya and Samir were laughing by the water cooler, packing their bags. Leo was yelling at a photographer about aperture settings. The world was bright, loud, and normal.
He collected his things, his body feeling foreign, carrying the secret map of the week’s torment on his skin, in his mouth, in his lungs. No one noticed a thing. No one saw how his gaze, as he shouldered his bag, flickered for one last second to the closed blinds of the glass office. It wasn’t a look of dread.
It was a look of starving anticipation.
It was a look of starving anticipation.
The weekend was a phantom limb. Julian moved through his tiny apartment, through the grey January drizzle outside, feeling the absence of her directives like a physical hollow. He tried to jog. He stared at his laptop screen, rewatching old films for a film essay he’d neglected. Nothing held weight. The world had become a bland, low-resolution version of itself, and high-definition life only existed behind the locked door of her office. He found himself, on Sunday night, standing in the shower with the water scalding his skin, his hand moving toward his erection with a habitual, lonely intent. He stopped. The thought of her cool, assessing eyes watching, even in theory, drained the urge completely. He felt both cheated and eerily proud.
Monday morning dawned brittle and cold. A sharp wind knifed between the buildings. Julian arrived early, his skin buzzing. He saw her before she saw him. She was at the kitchen island, pouring steaming black coffee into a porcelain mug. His breath hitched.
She wore a suit, but it was a dismantling of the concept. The jacket was severe, tailored, but cut from a charcoal wool so fine it looked soft. It was unbuttoned. Beneath it, instead of a shirt or shell, was what could only be described as a harness of black leather, intricate and stark against her pale skin. It outlined the full, formidable curves of her breasts, leaving the tops and a deep, shocking valley completely bare. The suit trousers were high-waisted and wide-legged, the only nod to coverage. Draped over her shoulders, its silvery fur catching the fluorescent light, was a vast arctic fox stole. It was longer than the first, with a luxurious tail that brushed the back of her knees.
She turned, catching his stare. Her expression didn’t change. “Julian. The Gronberg follow-up notes are on your desk. I want them formatted by ten.”
“Yes, Vivienne.”
She walked past him, the fur brushing his arm. It felt electric.
The week became a study in exquisite torture. The daily summons continued, but the rules were shifting, the stakes quietly climbing. The clothes were a silent manifesto. Tuesday: A mock-neck dress of cream cashmere, clinging and thick, but so short that when she sat, the hem retreated high up her toned thighs. A matching cream fox cuff wrapped around her wrist like a regal bracelet. Wednesday: A tailored waistcoat over nothing, paired with a pencil skirt slit to the hip. A stole of dyed blue fox, electric and unnatural, draped like a waterfall of ice from one shoulder.
And it was cold. A deep, penetrating January cold that seeped through the office windows, making her furs seem both practical and perversely decadent. Everyone commented on it. “Aren’t you freezing, Viv?” Margot asked, rubbing her own arms.
Vivienne would just shrug, her fingers sinking into whatever pelt she wore that day. “I run warm.” Julian knew it was a lie. He’d felt her skin after the smothering; it was cool, like marble. The furs were for effect. For him. They were a taunt of softness, a luxury he was allowed to see, sometimes to touch, but never to truly have.
The tasks behind the locked door escalated in their humiliations. She made him kneel and recite her editorial corrections backwards while she used his back as a footrest, her stiletto digging between his shoulder blades. She forced him to write, with his non-dominant hand, a detailed confession of every lewd thought he’d ever had about a teacher, a boss, a stranger on the subway. He wrote until his hand cramped, the words becoming a smudged, shameful testament. She read them in silence, her lips curving, and then filed them not in the shredder, but in a drawer of her desk.
“For later,” she said.
Through it all, the constant, aching erection was his companion. It was there when he woke, a dull throb. It was there as he formatted documents, a distracting pulse. It was painfully present during every session with her, a vulnerable, betraying flag of his submission. She ignored it, or rather, she noted it and used it as a lever. The denial of release became the unspoken core of their game.
Then, on Thursday, she made it explicit.
She was wearing a leopard-print coat, fake but convincingly plush, belted tight at her waist over a black leather minidress. The office was particularly frigid, and she kept the coat on inside, the collar framing her sharp jaw.
“Close the door,” she said, not looking up from a contract.
He did. He stood, waiting. The routine was familiar now.
She set the contract down. Swiveled her chair to face him. Her gaze was different today—less playful, more clinical, like a surgeon outlining a risky procedure.
“We need to establish the prime directive, Julian,” she began, her voice flat. “Everything so far has been… conditioning. Testing the limits of your obedience. But there is one rule. The most important one.”
He said nothing, his heart beginning a slow, heavy drumroll against his ribs.
“You can never cum,” she stated, as if saying he could never disclose company secrets. “Not here. Not at home. Not in some pathetic, lonely shower. Not with someone else. Never. For the entire duration of your internship.”
The finality of it hung in the air. It was so absolute, so impossible, it felt like a joke. But her face was stone.
“You’re joking,” he whispered, the words escaping before he could stop them.
“Do I look like I’m joking?” She leaned forward slightly, the leopard fur brushing the desk. “This is the control. This is the point. Everything else is just… scenery. The aching is the work. The denial is your actual job. Do you understand?”
He felt a dizzying wave of nausea. It was one thing to be used in her office. It was another to have his private, bodily autonomy revoked. “How… how could you even know?”
A slow, cruel smile. “I’ll know. The energy will be different. You’ll be less focused. You’ll get sloppy. You’ll think you’ve won some small victory over me. And I will see it.” She paused, letting that sink in. “And if I ever believe you have broken this rule, the consequences will be permanent. For you, at least.”
“What consequences?”
She unlocked a different drawer in her desk. She didn’t pull anything out, just let him see inside. Nestled amidst paperclips and USB drives was a small, ominous shape of polished steel and dark plastic. A chastity device. It looked medical and brutally simple.
“I will put you in this,” she said quietly. “For the rest of your six months here. You will wear it to work. You will wear it home. You will sleep in it. You will live in it. The only key will be mine, and it will stay right here.” She tapped the drawer. “This is not a fantasy, Julian. This is a pledge. Break the rule, and you become my locked property in truth. Do you believe me?”
He looked from her impassive face to the cold, gleaming device in the drawer. He did. With every fiber of his being, he believed her. The threat wasn’t erotic; it was institutional. It was a binding, non-negotiable clause in the contract he had silently signed.
“I believe you,” he said, his voice hollow.
“Good. Now get back to work. The Parsons Gallery copy is a mess.”
Friday was the stiletto day.
The cold had reached a new peak, a dry, biting freeze that made the windows rattle. Vivienne arrived in a full-length coat of sheared mink, so dark it drank the light. She shed it in the office kitchen, and Julian, fetching his own coffee, nearly dropped his mug.
She wore a two-piece ensemble: wide-legged, high-waisted trousers in black wool, and a matching cropped bolero jacket that ended just below her breasts. The jacket was fastened by a single, large jet button. It covered nothing. The vast, smooth plane of her stomach, the pronounced curve of her hips, the deep, tantalizing dip of her navel—all were starkly, professionally exposed. It was office wear from a dystopian fashion magazine. A slender choker of black fox circled her neck.
She caught his stare and held it, a faint challenge in her eyes, before turning to speak with Leo about photo margins.
The summons came just after lunch. My office. Now.
The click of the lock was the sound of a cell door shutting. She was standing by the window, backlit by the pale winter sun, a silhouette of impossible proportions. She turned.
“Kneel.”
He knelt on the carpet, the rough texture familiar now.
She didn’t speak. She walked to her chair, sat, and crossed one leg over the other. She was wearing stiletto boots today, not the knee-high ones from before, but ankle boots with a heel so high and thin it looked like a weapon. The black patent leather shone like a dark mirror.
“Come closer.”
He shuffled forward on his knees until he was at her feet.
“The heels,” she said, her voice devoid of inflection. “They were filthy from the sidewalk. Clean them.”
He had licked her boots before. This was different. The heel was not a surface to be cleaned; it was a narrow, treacherous spike. He hesitated, then leaned forward, opening his mouth. He took the very tip of the stiletto heel between his lips. The taste of cold leather, street salt, and rubber filled his mouth. It was an awkward, demeaning angle.
“Not just the tip. The whole thing. Deep.”
He obeyed, trying to take more of the narrow heel into his mouth. It pressed against his tongue, against the roof of his mouth, triggering a gag reflex he had to fight down. He licked, he sucked, he swirled his tongue around the slender column. It was a futile, grotesque act. He could not possibly clean it this way. That was the point.
“Now the other one.”
He switched, his jaw beginning to ache from the unnatural strain. The room was silent except for the wet, soft sounds of his submission and the distant, muffled traffic from below. Time dissolved. It stretched and warped. His knees screamed from the hard floor. His neck ached from the bent position. His mouth was sore, his tongue feeling thick and used.
He lost track of how many times she made him switch. He would finish one heel, and she would silently point to the other. It was a Sisyphean task. The heels were doubtlessly clean after the first minute, but the instruction was not to achieve cleanliness. The instruction was to perform the act. To endure it.
His mind unraveled. It floated out of his body, observing the scene from a corner of the ceiling: a handsome young man in a nice shirt, on his knees, sucking obsessively on a woman’s shoe. The absurdity was total. The humiliation was absolute. Yet, the erection, trapped and straining against his trousers, never flagged. It was a separate entity, a dumb, animalistic truth that thrived on this degradation.
Tears of frustration and exhaustion pricked at his eyes. He blinked them back, a new layer of shame. He didn’t want her to see them.
She saw everything.
Finally, after what felt like geological time, she uncrossed her legs. She planted both feet on the floor, the freshly “cleaned” heels clicking softly on the hardwood.
“Enough.”
He sat back on his heels, his body trembling with fatigue. His mouth was tender. He couldn’t meet her eyes.
“Look at me.”
He forced his head up. Her expression was unreadable. She looked down at him, a queen surveying a particularly devoted, and particularly pathetic, slave.
“Remember the rule,” she said softly, almost kindly. “This ache you feel? This need? This is the fuel. You will not spill it. You will burn with it. It will make you brighter. It will make you sharper. It is the only thing of value you have right now. Do you understand?”
He understood. In that moment, he felt he understood the universe. The great cosmic joke was control. The surrender of it was the only real power he had left to offer. And he was offering it all.
“Yes,” he croaked, his throat raw.
“Good.” She glanced at her watch. “It’s three-fifteen. You have forty-five minutes to proof the entirety of the spring arts preview. Go.”
He stumbled to his feet, his legs numb, his body a shipwreck. He unlocked the door and stepped back into the fluorescent buzz of the newsroom. The sounds were too loud, the lights too bright. Priya was on the phone, laughing. Samir was eating an apple at his desk.
Julian walked to his chair, sat down, and opened the document. The words blurred. All he could feel was the phantom pressure of the stiletto heel on his tongue, and the deeper, more profound pressure of her rule clamping down on his life. The chastity device in the drawer was no longer just a threat; it was a promise. A logical conclusion. The only thing that stood between him and that cold, polished steel was his own will, a will she was systematically dismantling and reassembling as her own.
He took a deep, shuddering breath, and began to read about gallery openings and avant-garde dance premieres, the familiar throb between his legs a constant, faithful metronome counting down the minutes until he would see her again.