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The confession pushed me over the edge. My climax hit hard, making my whole body arch off the bed as waves of pleasure crashed through me. I heard Brequa cry out softly, then Mabola, all three of us coming together in the darkness.

As the pleasure faded, I felt something shift inside me. The shame was still there, but it was mixed now with something else. Not acceptance: definitely not that. But maybe acknowledgment. I couldn’t keep denying what my body wanted, what some deep part of me craved. I would deal with it without serving any Magisterian, but it didn’t help to deny it.

I pulled my blankets back up, suddenly cold and exposed. Beside me, Mabola and Brequa did the same. For a long moment, none of us spoke.

“Do you think they’ll really contact us?” Brequa finally whispered.

“I don’t know,” Mabola answered. “But I hope so.”

I said nothing. Because the truth was, despite everything I believed, despite everything Ms. Opalin had taught me, despite all my resistance and my principles…

Part of me hoped so too.

The thought terrified me as I drifted toward sleep, my body finally satisfied, but my mind more confused than ever. What did it mean that I wanted this? What did it mean that I had touched myself while thinking about submission and discipline and being owned?

Tomorrow I would go see Ms. Opalin. Tomorrow I would try to make sense of all this. But tonight, I let myself sink into dreams filled with strong blue hands and commanding voices and the sting of correction across a naughty bottom, offered obediently to the man who owned it.