Actual, genuine, terrifying love.
The kind that unmakes you completely.
The kind I have no idea how to survive.
Chapter 9
Scarletta
This is day ten.
Ten days. That's how long I've been meeting Ryan at the gym for personal training. His goal to make me so fuckable, every man within two hundred miles will be lining up to ask me out, wasn't a euphemism.
He literally meant it.
And he's been punishing my body ever since.
With my absolute permission.
It's not a spanking, there are no nipple clamps or cuffs. He's been… I would not say distant. But he has been professional.
He'll let certain things slip—like that fuckable comment. Or the other day, when I was doing weighted squats and focusing on my form in the floor-length mirror that runs the entire length of the free weights section, he positioned himself behind me, arms crossed, watching my reflection with an intensity that made my thighs tremble for reasons that had nothing to do with the barbell across my shoulders.
When I finished my set and straightened, catching his eyes in the glass, he said, "Your ass looks really good when you squat. I've been watching it in the mirror. I'm gonna put one up in frontof you next time, at just the right angle so you can see what I do." Just like that. Matter-of-fact. Professional tone. But his gaze lingered half a second too long before he turned away to adjust the weight rack.
Which seems normal, if you are normal.
But if you're a person who lives and breathes the D/s lifestyle—who understands it down to your bones—the mirror becomes something else entirely.
It transforms from a simple reflective surface into an erotic tool, a psychological weapon, a method of control. It's about being forced to witness your own submission, to see yourself through your Dominant's eyes, to watch your body respond in ways you can't hide or deny.
And my mind immediately went to the gyno table in Caleb's playroom.
How he positioned me on that cold leather surface, securing each limb before spreading my legs wide in those metal stirrups.
He made me watch in the mirror as he penetrated my pussy with that cheap blue Bic pen.
The same pen from my story. The same deliberate, clinical movements. The same psychological warfare disguised as medical examination, exactly the way I'd written it in The Appointment, down to the smallest detail.
The humiliation of it, the wrongness of it, the fact that something so mundane could be transformed into an instrument of such exquisite degradation—all of it played out in perfect detail in that mirror.
I force Caleb out of my mind.
I'm completely over Caleb. Ryan is the one commanding my attention now, filling the spaces in my head that used to belong to someone else. The other day he complimented my new sports bra. He said he liked the colors, coral and black, that they really gave me a 'good outline'.
I've replayed those words approximately fifty times since he said them.
It's maybe not entirely uncommon to comment on a woman's upper body athletic wear at the gym. People talk about brands, about moisture-wicking fabric, about whether Lululemon is worth the insane price tag.
But Ryan's comment wasn't about the brand or the fabric technology.
It was about what the sports bra did for my body, which means it was about my body itself. Which means—and I'm not imagining this—he was looking at my breasts.
Studying them, even.
Okay, fine. Maybe it's just me and my perpetually dirty mind interpreting Ryan's words to be something more than just casual gym pep talk. But he's the one who started it.
He chose those specific words. 'Good outline.' Not 'cute bra' or 'nice color choice' or any of the thousand neutral things he could have said that wouldn't have made my brain spiral exactly where it's spiraling now.
