Chapter 4: The Collar's Return
The clean, white lines of his bathroom felt like a lie. Marcus stood before the sink, the door locked behind him, the silence broken only by the drip of a faucet and the ragged sound of his own breathing. The memory of the rooftop was a fresh stain on his mind—the cold air on his exposed skin, the gravel under his knees, the animal sounds he’d made.
He wanted to scrub it away. Instead, he opened the medicine cabinet and took out the collar.
It lay across his palms, simple black leather, the buckle cold. He brought it to his face. His nostrils flared. Beneath the scent of leather and his own sweat from the day’s wear, he found it—the ghost of her perfume, something darkly floral and expensive, clinging to the inner lining. He pressed his lips to it. A dry, shuddering kiss.
His reflection in the mirror was a stranger. The heroic jaw was tight with tension, the eyes hollow. Solaris looked back, but Marcus saw only a fraud.
“Do it,” he muttered to the ghost in the glass. His fingers were clumsy. The buckle clicked, the sound deafening in the tiny room. He adjusted it, sitting it just below his Adam’s apple, and fastened it.
The change was instantaneous.
It was a key turning in the lock of his spine. A wave of warmth washed from his throat down through his chest, settling deep in his gut, a heavy, liquid pull. The anxious tension in his shoulders melted, replaced by a syrupy lassitude. His focus, usually laser-sharp, blurred at the edges. All the noise in his head—the guilt, the shame, the fear—simply hushed, replaced by a single, broadcast signal of low, throbbing need.
He looked at his reflection again. This time, a slow, dazed smile touched his lips.
His hands went to the clasps of his uniform. The heroic gold-and-blue fabric, the symbol of everything he was supposed to be, pooled at his feet like discarded skin. He stepped out of it, kicking it aside without a glance. Naked, he was just a man. A beautifully built one. His skin pebbled in the cool air.
He turned slightly, admiring the cut of his obliques, the powerful swell of his pectorals. He ran a hand down his torso, the touch feather-light. His cock, already half-hard, gave a thick twitch against his thigh. The sight of it, curving up toward his navel, sent a fresh jolt of submission through him.
“She likes this,” he whispered, his voice husky. He wrapped his hand around his shaft, not to stroke, just to feel the heat and weight of it. “She likes knowing you’re built like a god and you’re still just her fucking animal.”
He began to pump, a slow, luxurious motion, his eyes locked on his own darkened gaze in the mirror. His other hand came up to cup his balls, rolling the heavy weight in his palm. Precum beaded at his tip, a slick promise.
“Talk to her,” the voice in his head—her voice—coaxed. It wasn’t a true hallucination, just the pathway she’d carved.
“Mistress,” he breathed, the word humid against the glass. His stroke accelerated. “I’m touching myself. I’m so hard for you. Look at me. I’m… I’m your show.”
The fantasy solidified. She was there, in the room, lounging on the closed toilet lid, watching him with those amused, pitiless eyes. Naked. Her legs spread just enough to show the shadow between them.
“You look needy, pet,” the fantasy-Selene said, crossing her arms under her breasts. “But you’re only playing with the front. A real slut opens up everything for his Mistress.”
A whimper escaped him. His stroking hand stalled. He knew what she wanted.
He bent forward, bracing his hands on the cool porcelain of the sink, his ass presented to the empty room—to her. He looked over his shoulder at the mirror, at the debauched picture he made: the collar, the sweat-sheened back, the cheeks clenched in anticipation.
His fingers, slick with his own spit, found the tight, hidden pucker between them. He pressed. The resistance was profound, a shocking intimacy. He pushed past it, a single finger sinking into the hot, clenching heat of his own body.
“Fuck!” he gasped, his head dropping. The sensation was a violent invasion, utterly foreign and instantly, shamefully electric. It radiated through his pelvis, a direct line to his cock, which jerked and leaked onto the tiles below.
“Another,” the phantom commanded.
He sobbed, but obeyed, working a second finger in alongside the first. The stretch burned, a bright, clean pain that morphed into a devastating fullness. He began to fuck himself with his fingers, shallow, frantic jabs, his other hand returning to his dick, jerking it in a brutal, mismatched rhythm.
“You’re a hungry little hole, aren’t you?” he moaned, voice cracking, speaking her words for her. “Taking my fingers like you’d take my cock. You wanna be filled, you dumb bitch? You wanna be ruined?”
The obscenities, spoken in his own voice, shattered the last pretense. He was nothing. A tool for pleasure. His and hers.
The coil in his gut wound impossibly tight. His movements became frantic, piston-driven, the sounds wet and slapping, his breath fogging the mirror in ragged bursts. The world narrowed to the triple points of sensation: the clench of his ass around his driving fingers, the friction on his swollen cock, and the relentless, grounding pressure of the leather around his throat.
“I’m gonna come! Mistress, please, I’m gonna—”
The orgasm tore through him with the force of a supernova, but it was dark, devoid of light. It was a rupture. His back arched violently as his cock spasmed, jetting thick ropes of cum across the mirror, the sink, his own reflection. He cried out, a raw, broken sound, as his fingers buried themselves to the knuckles, milking the convulsive waves from his very core.
He collapsed against the sink, shuddering, spent, his fingers slipping out of him. He was a mess of sweat and spit and semen. The evidence of his degradation was smeared across the glass, blurring his face.
He looked at that blurred reflection, at the collar, stark and final against his skin. A deep, profound emptiness yawned inside him. There was no resistance left. It had been fucked out of him.
His lips, bruised and dry, moved against the cool porcelain.
“Thank you, Mistress.”
The words weren’t a whisper this time. They were a prayer. And in the silence that followed, he knew the prayer had been answered. He belonged to the collar, and the collar belonged to her. Solaris was just a name for a corpse that hadn’t stopped moving yet.