“Mara.” I whisper her name, pulling her close, and I feel her breathe out.
“I know,” she whispers. "I needed it too."
I pull her close, wrapping my arms around her, and I just hold her—this woman who's become everything, to me who's seen my darkness and stepped into it with me. Who killed a man by my side and didn't break.
"Say it," I murmur into her hair. "Say you're mine."
I need to hear that what we just did, what we just shared, means what I think it means. That she's not going to walk away now that the adrenaline is fading, now that reality is setting in.
Mara pulls back slightly, looking up at me, and I see something shift in her expression.
"I want to be yours," she says carefully. "But Ilya, I can't be a possession. I can't be something you own and control and keep locked away."
She hasn’t relented. It isn’t surprising, but a part of me, the part that I don’t know if I can ever fully quell, rebels against it. I want to argue, to tell her that's exactly what she is—mine to protect, mine to keep safe, mine to control. But I force myself to listen, because I almost lost her tonight. Because my needfor control, my obsession with keeping her safe, almost got her killed.
"What are you saying?" I ask, my voice tight.
"I'm saying I need to be your equal, not your possession." She takes a breath, and I can see her gathering courage. I can see in her face that this is the last time, my last chance. That it’s now or never, if I want to keep the woman I love.
"I need to keep my career. I need honesty from you—no more secrets, no more keeping me in the dark about what's happening. And I need freedom. You don’t watch me, you don’t follow me. You let me go and I come back home to you.”
My gut twists. It goes against everything I am, everything I've built my life on. Control is what keeps me alive, and letting go of it, even a little, feels like stepping off a cliff.
But then I think about her face when I left for the warehouse. The disappointment in her eyes. The way she looked at me the morning after, with my collar on her throat before she took it off because I couldn’t give her what she needed.
"What kind of freedom?" I ask, swallowing hard.
"I need to be able to go to work without a dozen guards following me. I need to be able to see my friends, live my life, make my own choices." She pauses. "I need to know that you trust me enough to let me exist outside of your control."
Trust.The word feels foreign, dangerous. I've never trusted anyone completely, never ceded control over anything important. But Mara is asking me to trust her with her own life, her own safety, the thing that means the most to me.
She's asking me to trust her not to leave. To trust her to be able to take care of herself.
"And if I can't?" The question comes out harsher than I intend. "If I can't let go of that control?"
"Then we don't have a future." Her voice cracks, but she holds firm. "I can't live in a cage, Ilya. Even a beautiful one, even one built out of love.”
I want to argue. But the words stick in my throat, because I know she's right.
I've been so focused on keeping her safe that I've been suffocating her. So obsessed with control that I've been pushing her away.
“And if I can do that?” I ask quietly. “If I say yes?”
Mara's expression softens slightly. "If you can give me that—my career, honesty, freedom—then I'll give you everything else." She reaches up, her fingers tracing my jaw. "In private, in our home, I'll wear your collar. I'll be yours completely. I'll submit to you, give you whatever pleasure you want from me. I’ll crawl for you, beg for you, because I want you as much as you want me. I’ll trust you with that, if you can trust me to know what’s best for my own life.”
The image her words paint makes my breath catch. Mara, collared and willing, giving herself to me completely. It's everything I've wanted, everything I've fantasized about since the moment I saw her.
It's a negotiation. A compromise. She's offering me everything I want in exchange for the one thing she needs the most—freedom.
I force myself to think about it—what it would mean to let her go to work without guards, to trust her to come back to me. About what it would mean to be honest with her, to let her into my world instead of keeping her separate from it. To believe that she will be safe without me constantly monitoring her, keeping her behind the safety of walls I control.
It terrifies me. But the alternative—losing her because I can't let go—terrifies me more.
“I don’t have to just be something beautiful you keep,” she says quietly. “I can help you. I can be a partner in more ways than just romantically.”
I blink at her, confused as to what she’s talking about. "What?"
“I can be a part of your world. I can help your businesses. I can?—”
