Chapter 3: The First Group Session
The soreness was a living thing. It followed Sarah out of sleep, a deep, radiating ache that mapped every place their hands had been, every stretch and violation. She lay in the narrow bed of the spare room, listening to the house breathe. A toilet flushed. Pipes groaned inside the walls. Someone was making coffee, the bitter scent threading under her door.
She should have felt shattered. Empty.
Instead, a low current hummed beneath the ache. A memory, not of pain, but of the shocking fullness, the sheer weight of their attention pinning her in place. Of not being alone.
The door opened without a knock. Marcus leaned against the frame, already dressed in dark jeans and a grey t-shirt, a mug in his hand. He looked her over, her body barely covered by the thin sheet. “You’re awake.”
It wasn’t a question. She pulled the sheet higher, a reflex that felt stupid even as she did it. He’d seen everything. They all had.
“Here.” He placed the mug on the nightstand. Black coffee, one sugar, just how she’d fixed it the morning before yesterday, back when she was just the sad subletter in the kitchen. He remembered. “Get up. Shower. You look used.”
The word should have stung. It just landed, factual. She was used. The evidence was written in bruises on her hips, a tender stiffness between her legs.
“Where are the others?” Her voice was rough, unfamiliar.
“Jake’s at the gym. Tyler’s got class.” Marcus’s eyes were cool, assessing. “Diego’s around. He doesn’t talk much before noon.”
She sipped the coffee. It was perfect. A stupid, small kindness that untied something in her chest. “And you? Don’t you have a job?”
“I work from home. My job right now is you.” He said it like he was stating a project timeline. “The shower. Now. Don’t lock the door.”
The bathroom steam was a sanctuary. She let the hot water beat down on her neck, watching the suds swirl at her feet. The events of the night replayed not as a blur, but in sharp, sense-memory fragments. The crush of Jake’s body behind her, the kitchen counter’s edge biting into her palms. Later, the dizzying rotation of bodies in Marcus’s dark room, the orchestrated way they moved her, used her. Marcus’s voice, a steady director. Turn her over. Open her mouth.
She hadn’t said no. Not once. After the initial shock in the kitchen, a switch had flipped. A terrifying, thrilling curiosity. What would they do next? How far would they go? The deeper feeling, the one she was afraid to name: it felt like belonging. A fucked-up, brutal belonging, but it was a heat in the void her ex had left.
She was rinsing her hair when the shower curtain rasped back.
Diego stood there, fully clothed, his dark eyes taking in her nakedness with a slow, detached interest. He didn’t grin like Jake. Didn’t command like Marcus. He just watched, his lean frame blocking the exit.
“He said you were up,” Diego said, his voice a quiet rumble. He reached past her and turned the water off. The sudden silence was deafening, broken only by the drip from the showerhead onto her shoulder.
He handed her a towel. She took it, clutching it to her chest.
“You’re not scared,” he observed. It wasn’t a question either.
“I should be.”
“But you’re not.” He stepped closer, the bathroom small enough that the heat from his body replaced the steam. He didn’t touch her. He just looked, his gaze traveling over her wet skin, the bruises, the places she was tender. His scrutiny was more intimate than Jake’s hands had been. “You liked it.”
She swallowed. Denial was pointless. They’d all felt her body respond, eventually. “It was… a lot.”
“It was the beginning.” Finally, he raised a hand. He didn’t grab. He traced the line of her jaw with his knuckle, a feather-light touch that made her shiver. “Marcus has a plan. He always does. Jake just wants to fuck. Tyler… he’s along for the ride.” His thumb brushed her lower lip. “But I want to know what you want.”
No one had asked her that. Not since she got here. “I don’t know.”
“Yes, you do.” His eyes held hers. They were bottomless. “It’s why you’re still here. You could have run this morning. Called a friend. You didn’t. You drank his coffee. You’re standing here, letting me look at you.”
Her breath hitched. He saw right through the confusion, the residual shock, to the raw, pulsing truth she was hiding from herself. The need to be wanted, to be consumed, to be so essential to someone’s—to their—purpose that she couldn’t be discarded.
“I want…” She hesitated, the words clinging to her throat.
“Say it.”
“I want to be good at it,” she whispered, the admission tearing out of her. “Whatever it is.”
A flicker of something—approval, interest—passed through his eyes. It was like winning a prize she hadn’t known was being offered. He leaned in, his lips barely a centimeter from her ear. His smell was clean, like soap and something earthy. “Then you will be.”
He stepped back, leaving her cold and trembling in the damp bathroom. “Get dressed. Marcus wants you in the living room.”
He left, pulling the door closed behind him. Sarah stood there, dripping, the towel damp in her fists. The ache was still there. But the humming current beneath it was stronger now, a clear, directed signal.
She dressed in the same jeans and t-shirt from her bag. No makeup. Her hair damp down her back. When she walked into the living room, Marcus was on the couch, laptop open. Diego was in the armchair, a book in his hands, ignoring her. Sunlight cut through the blinds, painting stripes on the dusty floor.
Marcus glanced up. “Sit.”
She sat on the floor, near his feet, not by design but because it felt like the right place. He didn’t object.
“The rules are simple,” Marcus said, his eyes on his screen, fingers typing. “You live here. You contribute to rent, which you’ll do through service. You don’t bring outsiders here. You don’t talk about our arrangement. You are available when we want you. Your safe word is ‘red.’ Use it if you need to. We’ll stop.”
He said it all so clinically. Service. Arrangement. Available.
“What if… what if I just say no? Without the safe word?”
He stopped typing and looked at her. Diego turned a page in his book, slowly.
“Then you’ll be persuaded,” Marcus said simply. “And you won’t enjoy the persuasion. The safe word is for your physical or psychological limit. Regular refusal is just… bad manners. We’ve all seen what you are, Sarah. You agreed last night. Every time you came, you agreed.”
Heat flooded her cheeks. He was right. The shame was tangled up with a sharp, possessive pride. She had come. Again and again, until she was sobbing with it.
“Okay,” she said.
“Okay, what?”
“Okay… I understand.”
“Good.” He went back to his laptop. “Jake will be back by one. He’ll want you. Be ready.”
Diego’s eyes met hers over the top of his book. There was no smile, no warmth. Just that same deep, knowing look. He’d heard her confession in the bathroom. He knew the secret she was just starting to admit to herself.
She looked down at her own hands, folded in her lap. The trembling had stopped. The hum inside her had settled into a steady, waiting rhythm.
She was ready.