"How are you feeling?"
The question isn't soft. It's tactical assessment. He wants to know if I'm okay with what just happened, with how thoroughly he dominated me, with the way I surrendered. With the way he made me feel things I've spent years pretending I didn't need.
"I'm..." I search for words that feel true instead of performative. "I'm shaken. But good. Really good."
"Shaken how?"
"I've never..." I trail off, unsure how to explain what just happened. "That wasn't like anything I've done before."
"Because you actually submitted instead of performing it." He helps me sit up, wrapping a soft blanket around my shoulders. "Your body knows the difference even if your mind is still catching up."
He's right. My body feels used in the best possible way—satisfied and claimed and utterly wrung out. But my mind is reeling, trying to reconcile the woman who walked into this room with the one who just came apart on Luc's cock.
"Drink this." He hands me a bottle of water.
I drink, grateful for the hydration and the moment to process. Luc settles beside me on the bed, close enough that I can feel his warmth but not crowding me. The care in the gesture catches me off guard. Vincent always left after scenes, treating aftercare as a checkbox rather than actual connection.
"Talk to me," Luc says. "What's going through your head right now?"
"I don't know how to go back." The admission slips out before I can stop it. "To performing. To pretending that's enough."
"Then don't." His hand finds mine, lacing our fingers together. "You can choose something different."
"What if I can't? What if I try to submit like that again and it doesn't work? What if this was just?—"
"It wasn't." He cuts me off. "You finally let go long enough to feel it. Now you know the difference. Can't pretend you don't."
His phone buzzes on the small table beside the bed. He glances at the screen, frowns.
"Margot." He answers. "What's wrong?"
I watch his expression shift from concern to something harder. Tactical.
"How long ago?" A pause. "Still active?" Another pause. "Don't touch it. I want the signal traced before we pull it. Get Andy on the phone."
He ends the call and turns to me. "Get dressed. We need to move."
"What happened?"
"Margot's tech team detected an active transmission coming from this room." His voice is flat, tactical. All business now. "Hidden camera. Still transmitting. They're tracing the signal now."
Cold dread washes over me. Someone was watching. The entire time. Everything we just did?—
"They saw—" I can't finish the sentence.
"They saw what we wanted them to see." Luc's already moving, retrieving my clothes from where they were discarded. "You submitting to me. Me claiming you. Proof that you're under my protection now."
He helps me dress—the micro-mini, the corset, his hands efficient despite the urgency. I'm still shaky from the scene, my mind struggling to shift from the intimacy of what just happened to the reality of surveillance.
"Can you walk?" he asks.
"Yes." I force steadiness into my voice, into my legs. "I'm fine."
"Good." He pulls on his own shirt, fastens his leather pants. "Stay close to me. We're going straight to the operations center."
The hallway outside is quiet. Other members moving between rooms, lost in their own scenes, oblivious to the hunt happening around them. Luc keeps me tucked against his side, one hand on my lower back, guiding me through the club with the same confidence he showed in the private room.
Margot meets us at the entrance to the third-floor operations center. Her expression is grim.
