Page 71 of Dominion’s Collar

"Now the alcohol."

I squeeze a thin line of isopropyl across her upper back. The liquid is cool on her heated skin. She flinches at the temperature contrast, and a soft sound escapes her. Not pain. Anticipation.

I touch the wand to the alcohol.

The flame blooms blue across her skin and burns off almost instantly. A brief flash of fire on her body, the warmth flooding the surface.

Her shoulders tense and release, and the exhale that follows is long and shaking.

"Color?"

"Green." Her voice has dropped a register.

I apply the alcohol again. Wider this time, tracing diagonally across her back. The wand touches the trail. The flame races across and vanishes. Her breathing deepens, audible to anyone close enough to the stage to hear it.

I work my way down her back. Each pass covers more skin. Each flash lasts a fraction longer as I learn how her body takes the heat. Shoulders, ribs, the curve of her waist, the small of her back.

Her hands have curled into fists. The goosebumps haven't subsided since the first pass.

A low, involuntary moan rolls out of her when the flame traces her lowest rib. The resonance of it settles at the base of my spine.

At the edge of the floor, the two Doms have stopped talking. They're watching. Not crowding. Not commenting. The stillness of men who know they're seeing something above their level.

I set the wand down. Put my hands on her back. She softens under my palms almost immediately. Her skin is flushed and hot where the flame has been, every nerve primed. I press my palms flat against her upper back and drag them slowly down to the small of her back.

She arches into the contact. Involuntary. The motion pushes her hips into the table, and the faint roll that follows isn't something she planned.

"Everything I do now registers louder," I tell her.

I drag my fingertips back up her back. Feather-light. She shivers, and the shiver runs from her neck to her hips.

I trace the heated path with my mouth. My lips against the curve of muscle where flame was. The skin is hot under my tongue.

A guttural, unguarded noise escapes her. Her hips grind into the table, and this time the motion is deliberate. She's looking for friction. For contact.

The fire has done what fire does: stripped away everything analytical and left the body running the conversation. And the room can see it happening.

"Turn over."

She rolls onto her back. The flush from the fire has spread across her collarbones and down between her breasts. She's naked on an open stage with the room behind my shoulders, and she doesn't look past me. Not once.

Her eyes are dark, pupils blown wide in the low light. She's looking at me with an openness I've seen twice before—the shibari, the flogging—and both times only at the end.

This is the beginning.

I apply the alcohol to her sternum. A thin line between her breasts. She watches the wand come toward her skin, and she doesn't close her eyes.

The flame runs the line and vanishes. Her back lifts off the table. A ragged exhale breaks out of her, wrecked and wordless.

I bend down and put my mouth where the flame was. The skin is scorching under my lips.

I kiss the heated line between her breasts, and her hands come off the table and grip my hair.

"Hands down."

She drops them. The obedience is immediate and costs her a whimper that has my cock throbbing harder against the leather.

I alternate fire and hands. Fire and mouth. A flash of flame across her ribs, then my tongue tracing the heated skin. A pass of the wand above the curve of her hip, then my palm flat where the heat lingers. My thumb stroking the sensitive crease where hip meets thigh. Every time the fire recedes, my body arrives. Every time she adjusts to the touch, the flame returns.