I couldn’t understand it. Something had happened and I didn’t know what it had been. She hadn’t made eye contact since I’d dropped her off at her car that night.
I’d been close enough to breathe her in.
Close enough that my restraint had snapped taut, one breath away from kissing her.
One breath away from detonating everything I’d built.
And she must’ve felt it too, because now she was pulling away like distance would fix it.
It wouldn’t.
It never did.
I shoved a hand through my hair and paced the length of the private room I’d chosen tonight, the tension in my spine coiling tighter with every step.
Everything was ready for tonight. The restraints. The implements. The scene I’d designed for complete control.
I hadn’t planned on punishment—but the thought of it… Christ, it lit something in me. Not because she’d avoided me, but because she’d lied. And lies needed correction.
I flexed my hands, rolling the tension out of my wrists. Would she have canceled if she knew who was behind the mask?
My jaw clenched so hard it ached.
I kept replaying the look in her eyes the night we had dinner. She’d been wide-eyed, breath caught in her throat, her body humming and then the next morning, she couldn’t look at me at all.
The way she made me feel, I hadn’t felt in years, if ever. It was something raw, unfiltered, but more than anything it was dangerous, and I wasn’t sure I liked it. I was even less sure I could stop it.
Yesterday, she’d gone home to avoid me, but she jumped at the chance to play with her master.
What she didn’t know was that I was her master. I should tell her. I should walk away, but as much as I knew I should, nothing on this godforsaken earth would make me.
My gaze flicked to the wall where the cuffs hung, waiting for me. For her.
One entire side of this room was covered in tools—everything from cuffs to hoods to sensory-deprivation blindfolds to impact toys arranged in a way that would make most people blush or bolt.
But not Mira.
Not the Mira who knelt for me with her thighs trembling and her pulse fluttering at her throat.
In the center of the room sat the adjustable bondage chair—my personal favorite when I wanted precision. Full restraint. No wiggle room. No escape. A device designed for one purpose: to take a submissive apart piece by piece exactly the way Iintended. Everything before tonight had been a warm-up. This would test her.
When I was done tonight, she wouldn’t be able to move a single inch.
And oh, the things I had planned for her.
Christ.
There was something exquisitely intoxicating about stripping every sense away—sight, sound, movement—until the only thing she could feel was me.
Complete control. Exactly what she claimed she wanted. Exactly what she had emailedhim—me—about.
She was walking into a storm she didn’t realize she’d created.
And when she understood?
When she felt the truth pressed into her skin, breathed against her neck, whispered into her ear while she sat helpless and bound?
She would never look at me the same way again.
