“Thank you. Are you excited about tomorrow?” he asks.
“Yeah,” I say. “First time taking the crop instead of the collar. New client. New dynamic.”
His smile goes wolfish. “Then tonight I’ll let you leave with your legs steady. Come here.”
He kisses me until the steadiness fails anyway, then takes me to the shower and makes a point of washing the mess from my skin with his hands. We dress without hurry. He walks me back to the bar like we’re ordinary people who didn’t just fuck.
He presses a kiss to my wrist softly and murmurs something I don’t quite catch before disappearing into the crowd.
I linger for a moment, letting the noise and low light settle around me again before I slip off the stool. The hostess catches my eye as I pass; I thank her quietly, promising I’ll see her tomorrow.
I Uber home with my legs crossed and my mind already writing the script for tomorrow. I’ll take the power I keep under the table and set it out where everyone can see it. I’ll hold thecrop and set the rules. I’ll ask the newbie what he wants and then tell him what he actually needs.
At my apartment, I text Gideon before I can talk myself out of it.
Me: Home. Safe. Thinking about your hands on me at dinner.
His reply arrives fast.
Gideon: Be ready to be looked at like you are the only thing worth wanting. Sleep, Pen.
I set the phone on the nightstand and slide beneath the sheets. My skin still smells like Silas and the soap from the club.
But as the pleasure settles into something softer, something steadier, my mind drifts somewhere I haven’t let it go in a long time.
Not to Silas but to Gideon.
God, Gideon.
I remember the first time I saw him.
Not touching anyone or being touched. Just leaning against a wall like he didn’t belong but refused to leave. Watching everything—watching me.
I should’ve walked past him.
But when our eyes met, something in my chest stuttered. He didn’t smile. Didn’t look away. Just dipped his chin once, like he was giving me permission to approach—or warning me that he’d see straight through me if I did.
He didn’t play the way the others did.
Didn’t kneel.
Didn’t ask.
He just followed when I told him to. Not because he needed the role. Because he neededme.
And God, I wasn’t ready for someone like him. He made me feel… powerful. But not in the way others did.
With Gideon, it wasn’t performance or fantasy.
It was real.
So I kept him separate. Nights with him were quiet, private, careful. He never asked for more, and I never offered. If he wondered about the other men I saw, he never said. And I told myself it was better that way.
But lying here now, my body loose from Silas’s hands, my mind wandering where I don’t want it to go, I can finally admit what I wouldn’t back then: Gideon was the first one who made me feel something beneath the pleasure. The first one who looked at me like I wasn’t just a role or a fantasy or a night. The first one who made me think I was in trouble in a way that had nothing to do with the games we played.
So when he asked for my number to take me to dinner, I said yes without a second thought. And after that first dinner—when he only kissed me goodnight and nothing more—I knew I was hooked. We went out again and again, and before I knew it, we were talking every day, sending texts through the night like neither of us wanted to let the other go.
Thinking about it now sends a tight, aching warmth through my ribs. I shouldn’t let myself linger there. Not tonight. Not when everything is already shifting under my feet. I drag in a breath and force my mind forward—to what tomorrow demands of me.
