“Teach me, then,” she says, the words a ragged admission. “Teach me to obey.”
The consent is a bell, and my whole body answers.
I set the short lash to my nose and inhale; the memory of other rooms, other disciplines, rises briefly and is gone. This will not be the brutal lesson of the dungeon. This will be worship disguised as schooling.
I kneel on the bed, the fur warm under my knee, and run the flat of my palm once down her spine. Her flesh is warm and soft. I trace from the swell of her hip to the hollow of her tailbone, then to the generous rounds of her ass. The sight of her now—bound, flushed, defiant—is a sacrament.
“I will enjoy marking you,” I murmur, and there is no malice in the promise, only the hungry reverence of a maker adoring his favorite thing.
“Go to hell,” she spits, but the sharpness is quickening. There is fire in her voice, and I will use that spark. “I thought you were better than any man.”
“Oh,” I answer, low and pleased. “I am much better than any man. I am yours.”
I let the whip fall once across her ass, a measured, stinging kiss that makes her hiss. I do not aim to bruise; I aim to write my name across the places she yields.
I let the leather sing, watching her breasts heave and her hands clench at the bedposts. With clenched teeth, I watch how she takes it and then takes it again. Each strike is metered mercy: sometimes sharp, then soft, all working toward the heat that blooms into pleasure.
Between lashes, I kneel and slide one palm between her legs, seeking the place that makes her whimper.
She trembles under my touch; her breath stutters like a flame.
When she begins to writhe, her ankles pulling and back arching, I press a thumb to the spot and whisper, “Good. See? You are exquisite.”
She spits out a string of curses and then—suddenly, dangerously—fists her hands beneath her on the bed, fingernails digging into the furs. The sound she makes isn’t pleading.
“You son of a—” she says, and then breaks off into a sobbing laugh.
I slide down to her ass again and, with the gentlest force, glide a finger along the crease before going deeper. Stroking a rhythm to match my next crack of leather. My wings curl, enclosing us, their shadow creating an intimate, warm little den where there’s no other world beyond the heat of her body and my touch.
I want to teach her how exquisite surrender can be.
She fights still, in hisses and in twisting hips and in the angry red flare of her cheeks. But when she meets my eyes, our hungers roar together, and I see her choice.
She is giving herself, not as a beaten thing, but as a worthy prize.
I smile, and it is soft.
“Then learn,” I whisper tantalizingly. “Learn how to beg. Learn how to savor. Learn that when you bind yourself to me, I will not break you. I will build a place inside me for you. And inside you, for me.”
She spits one last defiant thing, then gives in with a single breath, the kind that is not surrender but a receiving. “Teach me,” she says again, and it is the most beautiful thing I have heard.
So I teach.
I sting and I soothe. I take care that every mark is balanced by a kiss. I press my thumb to the pulse of her neck and murmur about how she smells. How she is mine, how she is perfect. My commands are soft, my palms careful; my roughness is a language of worship.
I teach her not to answer from fear but from want. That want—raw, honest, bright—is the honey I will drown in.
When at last I step back, my chest heaves and my wings are heavy with motion. She is breathless and weeping and laughing all at once. Her limbs are still tied, but there is no panic in her eyes anymore. There is a new something there: a hard, shining thread of trust that had not been spun before.
“You did well,” I tell her, and mean it more than any threat I could make. “Obedience is a practice. So is pleasure.”
She glares at me, but there is a small, crooked smile hiding the fury. “Don’t think this means I’m yours for the taking,” she mutters.
“No,” I answer, and bow my head in a mock courtly motion that makes us both laugh, brittle and soft. “You are yours. I am only the fortunate beast who gets to keep you.”
We both know we are playing a dangerous game.
That is the point.
