Marguerite stepped into the dark shadows of the observatory, nodded to Tony. He moved past her and the door snicked shut, leaving her and Tyler alone.

Whenever she'd stepped into this room before, she'd had a sense of who the submissive was, a glimmer of something she'd seen in his soul. Something she would use to get all the way in, open him up and use that to balance them both.

She wasn't sure if she'd found that glimmer in Tyler, a key. She wasn't even sure if that's what she intended to do tonight. She was still waiting for her inner compulsion to speak to her as it always did, telling her where she wanted to go tonight.

In the meantime, she let herself look. The video screen didn't do him justice but then she'd known he'd be more potent to her senses like this. The observatory wasn't an overly large room, the shadows covering all the equipment stocked on the walls, the few storage areas. All the focus was on the dais under the spotlight. She didn't look up, wasn't even aware of her audience any longer. The room was silent, as she'd requested, no music. And the audio output was not turned on. Their play was visually public only.

She'd had younger, more handsome men in here. But as her eyes coursed over the rugged lines of bone and muscle, the scars, that fascinating expanse of silky hair layered on his chest and forearms, she knew those bodies had never attracted her the way this one did. Nor the shadows that lay beneath their surfaces. He'd barely even cracked a window for her there, though he'd had no compunction about kicking in the door to her psyche and demanding she offer her soul to him, every black corner.

"I was beginning to think you'd changed your mind." His voice was as tactile as the touch of his fingers running down her back, raising nerve endings to high alert, but it was also velvet. Like the comfort of a known voice coming out of the dark when walking alone in a graveyard.

"You won't speak unless I command it."

When he was facing her, she flipped the switch that stopped the movement of the platform. Then she moved along the outer crescent to the items she'd had left for her. A downshielded dim light showed her a five-foot-long latigo braided Mexican whip with wooden handle which she used frequently and a tool she used on her more hardheaded subs such as Marius. A thirty-inch-long Scottish tawser that she'd customized. Tawsers were originally used for punishment of schoolchildren, to strike their hands. The tool typically was one or two straps of leather put together and toasted over a fire to make it more rigid. For modern-day BDSM play, they were more flexible and she'd had a trio of cuts made along the length of the strap to increase the sting and maneuverability. It was a highly effective punishment tool, used when the sub's endorphins were rushing high and he needed that ultimate pain experience to push him to orgasm.

Still not speaking, she unfastened her cloak and hung it up, picked up the whip.

Swung it, re-accustomed herself to its weight and balance. Stepped into the spotlight with him.

Letting her gaze travel from low to high, she started with his bare feet. The manacles fit snugly around his ankles. She'd requested steel because she wanted the discomfort factor on his bones. Not excruciating for a couple hours but they'd leave red marks when removed. The manacles on his arms were the same, so movement was attended by the clanking reminder of imprisonment. Then she moved on to the calves, knees, long muscular thighs, the cock that had been semi-erect when she entered and was now fully erect. Lower abdomen, broad chest, smooth shoulders. The scars that altered him here or there, the tension in his neck that suggested her biceps adjustment had resulted in the discomfort she'd intended. The firm mouth beneath the blindfold's cover. That fine, dark hair. Aristocratic nose. Clean, trimmed fingernails.

She took her time, standing there for some minutes, just looking at every part of him, enjoying the ability to do so without interruption or interference. She'd had subs that she'd made stand with their eyes downcast while she sat a few feet away, enjoying the visual feast of them, watching them get more and more aroused as her silent regard stimulated them.

The purpose of her sessions was as she had described it to Tim. The attempt to compel stillness in a world that was never still, by achieving a connection with another that went beyond words and noise. But if she took Tyler into that still moment, would she find such contentment that she'd never crave motion again?

She stepped forward, one step, two steps. In a smooth motion she arced the latigo whip, struck his thigh, just below and to the left of the scrotum, exactly where she'd intended it to fall.

He hadn't anticipated that as her first move. She could tell by his start, the flex of his fingers against the manacles. She moved closer, past him, dragging her fingernails across his leg, over the reddened skin, letting the trail of the whip follow and tease his testicles. She stopped, her gaze level with his outstretched arm, her eyes and mouth inches from the smooth, muscular skin. All hers. Offered to her freely.

"When I speak to you, you will answer 'Yes, Mistress'." Her breath moved the fine hair on his arm.

She flicked her glance right, watched his jaw muscle flex, his head tilt toward her.

"Yes, Mistress."

She made a precise left turn, walked the length of his arm, circled it. Coming back to stand behind him, she went to work.

First the whip. Across the back several times, different spots. Shoulder blades, lower back, buttocks, striking with the braided thong. Then she stepped back further and used the trail, the single string at the tip, to sting. Then alternating.

He remained silent, his breath coming out of him in short bursts as he managed the pain. She did not speak either, letting the pain she was inflicting be her words to him.

Pain and sensory deprivation together were powerful focus tools. She wanted him mindless, as mindless as she'd been. On a pause, he angled his head, showing he was trying to relieve some of the tension she had created between his neck and shoulders.

Moving forward again, she stopped right behind him, the curve of his firm ass against her hip, the tip of her breast pressed to his marked back.

"Christ, touch me," he murmured. Raw. Not begging. Demanding.

Her hand hovered over his flesh as she fought the compulsion to obey. At length, she laid her fingers on him as lightly as a moth landing, at that aching juncture of his neck, feeling the knotted muscle. Not to caress but to determine the status of his discomfort. She reached up, made the adjustment to the restraint, eased it out a half inch, giving him a bit of relief.

"I control your comfort as well as your pain." She noted his cock jumped at the sound of her voice, reacting as if the smooth slick velvet of her cunt had closed over him.

"I don't doubt that at all. Not since I met you." She slid under his arm, her hair brushing his sensitized skin. Her hand pressed briefly at his side.

As she stood before him, Tyler felt her breath near his chin, telling him she was within kissing distance, but when he stretched out, tentative, she was gone again, a frustrating illusion. No. A fantasy come to life, teasing him.

Just like a covert operation, he knew the goal going in, had prepared himself for it to the maximum extent possible, knowing there would be unforeseen contingencies.

She'd been an obsession before their partial weekend together but now that he'd touched her, tasted her, left his scent on her, he hadn't counted on how being this close to her but unable to touch her would goad the alpha in him. It took concentrated effort not to use his full strength against the chains in a futile attempt to burst loose. And as if she knew that, she stayed just out of reach, a distance calculated to madden him.

She moved behind him again and those long nails, the slim fingers, went to his neck, playing in the hair at his nape, but only to release the blindfold. It tumbled from him, the black silk rolling down, spreading out and floating to the floor. Her palm followed the length of his right arm, the top of it, caressing the muscles of his biceps, his forearm. When she reached his hand, she drew away, avoiding the intimacy of fingers touching fingers. Then she stepped around and in front of him, increasing his torture by showing herself to him at last.

The dress she wore was her signature white. No diamonds tonight. It was long-sleeved, high-necked and fit like a second skin, but not like the bodysuit which was seductively tight. This dress molded every portion of her anatomy. The size and shape of her breasts, the bud of the nipple, even the slight uneven transition between the areola and the smooth curve of the breast itself. The stretch fabric outlined her hips, her buttocks. Her legs, bare, smooth, long and fine as a deer's, were tucked into white stilettos with a sharp toe reinforced with silver.

It took him some time to reach her face. She wore no makeup. No adornment whatsoever. Just the dress which quite obviously had nothing under it. With her clear blue eyes and that moonlit hair, what else did she need?

He wanted nothing more than to worship and cherish every part of her body. In that he was sure he was little different from the submissives who had shared this room with her. But he wondered if they noticed other things about her. The fact she so rarely smiled. That there were often shadows under her eyes. How thin her arms were, despite the lean muscle tone. The fragile slenderness of her neck, her wrists, her ankles.

Everything he'd observed of her suggested that she lived the life of an ascetic. Very restrained, very controlled. Turning denial into an art form.

When she turned to lay the latigo down on the rack, the dark shadow between her buttocks made his blood boil closer to the surface. The way the fabric creased and moved with her ass, rode up high on her thighs in the back. If she bent over, he knew he'd get a view of her soft, delectable pussy.

He could almost sense the reaction of the crowd above. She was a vision. She always was. Her beauty didn't rest in a feature or group of features. It was in her otherworldly quality. He stood in a room with something not quite of this earth.

Perhaps an angel with a broken wing, forever consigned to walk among humans, puzzled by them, never quite in sync.

All the miserable things he'd seen, all the things he'd been unable to prevent, had given him what he needed to be the man who could love her and care for her forever.

He knew it. He would fight the demons in her dreams for her, give her back her smile as a gift she'd earned a thousand times over. It wasn't egotism or wishful thinking, he simply knew it as truth. He just had to get her to believe it. When he looked at her he saw his own soul looking back at him, the lost piece of himself.

"I want you."

She stilled for a moment, but then she lifted her arms, her back still to him, to tuck up the tail of her hair in a knot. When she turned around, her arms still raised, he swallowed, noting the way the dress stretched tight over her breasts. She came to him, her eyes on his cock, not acknowledging him or his words. Slowly she moved her body against his, rubbing her mons along the length of his turgid arousal, the fabric of her dress the thinnest of barriers. She bent her knees to rub her nipples against his hard abdomen, then straightened, taking them up his chest, tilting her head back a little so he could not reach her with his mouth.

"I want to fuck you. Now." He growled it.

Marguerite managed, just barely, to prevent her body from giving itself away with a shudder at the words. She was ravenous for him, too. And he was hers to touch, wasn't he? With her free hand she curled her fingers around his oiled cock while his breath drew in. She felt his eyes on her face. After a moment, she ducked under his arm to his back. Running her palms up each side of his tense buttocks, she eased her now oiled knuckle in between the cheeks.

"You don't follow direction very well, Tyler. I told you not to speak. What if I decide to fuck you? How would you like that? What if I want you to come for me? Your seed jetting out into the air. What if..."

She didn't want any of those things. She wanted this. Pressing her body close against his back, she rubbed her pubic bone against the seam of that delicious ass, raised on her toes to seize a handful of his hair in her hand. Yanking his head back, she sank her teeth into the juncture of his shoulder and throat. This was savage need, the desire to draw Tyler's blood and essence into her, keep his taste on her tongue forever, hoping it would still the restless desire raging through her. Her other hand came up, collared his throat to hold him at the uncomfortable angle, pressing, restricting his air as she sank her canines in deeper, tasting his blood, his life.

Focus, Marguerite, focus. The roaring was hard to push back but she did it. Abruptly she released him, listened to him take a harsh breath to pull air back in his lungs, watched his broad chest expand. Stepping back into the shadows, she wiped the back of her hand against her bloody lips as she walked it off, circled in the darkness. Her body trembled, her breath coming as rapidly as if it were her air that had been constricted.

She stopped when she was straight across from him again. Her eyes drifted down to find him even more hard and erect.

Obviously, she hadn't frightened him. She raised her lashes and found the same look he'd had when she first removed his blindfold. Possessiveness. Even chained, his eyes made it clear he considered her his. And he was waiting. Waiting for what? Blood ran down his shoulder, over his nipple. She raised a hand to her mouth, feeling it there again, seeing it smear on her hand. Looking down, she saw a stain of it over her left breast.

"You put anything in my ass, angel - " He spoke now, low and dangerous, as if she'd just asked the question. "And you'd better keep me tied until you're in the next state. And even then, I'll find you. You won't walk comfortably for a week."

"I'm not your submissive. You don't spank me. Not ever again."

"I don't need to spank you to make it hard for you to walk." The amber had become gold fire. Just as a lashing could rouse a slave's submissive devotion to fever pitch, it had fully roused the Master in him, the Dominant male. She knew if he were free right now, there was nothing she could do to escape him, to keep from being shoved to her back, her legs parted and his body thrust into her, fucking her into submission. The thought made her quiver hard and deep down in the dark places of her soul. Something primal was moving in his eyes but a wave of the same was raging through her body, taking her over.

"I didn't give you permission to speak. Do so out of turn again and I'll gag you."

"Do I get to choose what you gag me with?" He cocked his head. "The silk of your hair would make a lovely gag. The full ripeness of your breast, your nipple for my pacifier...your plump cunt. Are you still smooth for me, Marguerite?"

She seized the latigo from the shelf. As it uncoiled with a hiss, she snapped it out of the shadows, making sure the tail struck the base of the scrotum with stinging accuracy.

He flinched but it just increased the challenge in his eyes. When he bared his teeth, she was flooded by the turbulent storm moving within her, driven by hurricane-force winds of emotion. She didn't step back to let it settle. Not this time.

"Is this how you respect a Mistress? Challenging me, daring me to top you like a green submissive? Did you expect me to buy that bullshit line about honoring the Mistress in me?" Her voice did not sound steady, even to herself. She stepped deliberately out of the shadows, every part of her going still, zeroing in on one objective. To give the power within her an outlet.

Focused on the blatantly male display before her, she swung the whip.

His eyes never left her face. Not as she landed strike after strike on his front, knowing exactly what level of pain would be felt. A man could be hit harder than a woman because their skin was less sensitized. Using her well-practiced skills, she striped his body with red marks, never breaking the skin but delivering the maximum amount of pain. While she didn't touch his genitals again, she abraded the skin near them with harrowing frequency.

But throughout the flogging, though his breath began to labor as the pain level increased, he remained still. The more he didn't move, the more the energy vibrated off him until it filled the room with heat, fueling the thing building in her and between them.

His body gleamed in sweat. Her dress had become transparent as she became damp with her own reaction, the stress of the scene, the demand of her own desire.

Stepping back, she picked up the tawser in her free hand. Tyler knew she was considering another round and where to place it. The whip moved with her, coiling around her calves like a sinuous snake permanently enamored of Eve. Or Lilith. His nerve endings were roused, vibrating, affecting his emotions as well as his body. He could admire her ability, her stamina, even as he knew he was losing the ability to hold on to his own control, driven to the edge by pain and his own alpha lust. The desire to become a raging beast, tear the chains from the wall and take her over, was becoming as excruciating as the rawness of his skin.

He could read her emotions through the strikes. Anger. Controlled anger for the moment but definitely teetering on the brink. Frustration. With herself as much as him as she struggled to reach the state of mind she wanted. Pride was part of this, too. He'd mastered her and she needed to balance that, to prove to him she was a Mistress. He'd suspected that would be a component of tonight's session even before they started. He also suspected he'd become the manifestation of the things that frightened her. He'd stirred them up, things perhaps she'd never allowed herself to want. And then he'd let her go, left her to deal with that alone. This was his penance. He wasn't going to leave her like that again, damn it, no matter what.

She lifted her gaze, met his with eyes like a blue wasteland. "Do you know what pain is, Tyler? Really know? You're so fucking determined to be inside of my head. But you give me nothing."

"I'd give you everything, Marguerite, if you'd just let me."

"Don't try that. Don't you dare." His voice, his truth, hit her like a return blow and she lashed back out.

This time she didn't hold back, didn't think of rules, only the fact that she was breaking open, her darkness spilling into every corner of the room. It was going to swallow them both up, so what did it matter?

Two steps forward and she at last brought the tawser into play, the handle wet from the sweat in her palm. A strike on his abdomen earned her a grunt of pain as the strap proved its reputation as a weapon of extreme BDSM play.

But his eyes were calculating. Waiting. Still waiting.

For something she couldn't give him. Why didn't he understand that? Or maybe he did and this was just his special torment for her, to try and pry it from her.

Lashing out wild, control slipping away from her, this time she struck the left nipple dead-on. His jaw clenched, breath whistling out between his teeth. And still that same steady, waiting look. She needed to obliterate it. Her fingers clenched on the handle and she snarled, took him across the jaw with the tawser.

Striking in the face for any reason except with the flat of a hand was a cardinal sin at The Zone. She didn't care. They'd come, they'd stop her, she'd never see The Zone again, she would never see him again.

"Marguerite - "

"Shut up. Just...don't...speak." She spoke through the roar, the white noise in her head so loud that his voice grated across it like a jagged dull knife over a wound already infected. She struck out again, not caring where, just wanting to hurt. She heard a stifled curse and redoubled her efforts. Safe words. There were no safe words. He hadn't asked and she wouldn't give him any. No mercy. Nothing safe. Nothing but pain.

She struck again and again. The face, the torso, his legs. She cried out with each blow, each one feeling as if it were ripping the flesh from her soul.

When she couldn't take any more, she dropped both weapons, threw them from her and spun away, covering her face with her hands, squatting down on her heels in an effort to protect her vital organs, vibrating from the pain she was sure was going to shatter her into a million pieces.

She'd hit him, she'd hurt him. Deliberately, not for pleasure but to inflict pain, to impose the agony that was burning through her. She was dying inside. There was so much darkness, she couldn't see. She was afraid to take away her hands to see what might lie in wait for her in that darkness. And the roaring would not stop, the rush of water behind a dam of memories she thought she'd secured away from herself. They were going to come crashing down, pummel her with an eternity of this mindless, screaming pain.

"Marguerite."

She had no idea how long he'd been saying her name, that gentle repetition. Not angry, not panicked, simply calling to her. A little bit of a hoarse strain to his tone. She had no idea where in the room she was. In the shadows, in the light, it didn't matter. It was all the same.

"Come here, angel. It's okay."

It couldn't possibly be okay. She couldn't see anything. Didn't want to. Didn't want to see the crime she had committed, the pain she'd inflicted on his body merely because she wanted it so much.

"Come here, Marguerite. Now."

She turned toward his voice, that fierce tiger's power, the mouko, compelling her at last. She stumbled, stepped out of her shoes, took one barefoot step, another. He'd stopped talking, so she stopped. There was only darkness.

"Right in front of you, angel. Just a few more steps." He knew. He could tell she was lost, lost in broad daylight. If she could just huddle in that darkness, stay in the shadows, it would pass. She would find herself again as she always did, find the balance she was able to maintain as long as she stayed in solitude.

But now she didn't need silence. She needed that voice. Needed it more than she'd ever needed anything, more than she'd allowed herself to need in a very long time.

Reaching out, she found him. It was his rib cage, the skin hot to the touch, wet with sweat. When she blinked, a haze moved through the blackness. Moving closer, she felt his heart beat against hers. Slow. Even. Hers reverberated back. Fast. Erratic. But the pulse of the world was in him, going on steadily even under chaos.

Leaning in, she pressed the side of her face against his neck, smelled blood where she'd bitten him. As she nuzzled the wound and licked it gently, he made a soft sound of reassurance. She had just beaten the hell out of him, broken every rule a Dominant could break but she sensed nothing from him but...sanctuary.

Turning her cheek, she rubbed against his unmarked shoulder area, moving her lips over the rounded end. Bending down, she tasted the slope of his side just beneath his arm. Her hands descended, taking her down inch by inch. She touched each shallow valley between the ribs, reaching the crisp hair that narrowed to a point over his flat abdomen. Down to the hipbone, her palm finding the buttock. Another blink of her eyes and the darkness was slinking sullenly away, clouds defeated by his blazing heat. She felt the golden fire of his eyes like the warm touch of sun on her hair and skin. And like the sun they were something she could not look at directly. Her bare foot pressed on his, her toes digging in to feel it flex under hers. When she sank down, her cheek grazed his cock, still remarkably semi-erect above his scrotum. She tasted him there, a shy kiss.

Sliding her arms from his hips, she found a lower circle around his thighs and rested her head just below his genitals. Her mouth, the wetness of her breath against that first mark she'd put on his thigh. Her fingers told her he had welts everywhere. Bleeding in several places, for her dress was stained with it.

She couldn't top him. She didn't want to. She didn't want to be a Mistress to Tyler.

The knowledge of it was quietly there, the real battle she'd come in here to fight. What the waiting look in his eyes told her he'd known all along. He'd proven himself her Master even when bound, taking over her senses even without the privilege of touching her.

She was lost in him to the point of immobility, so integral that it went past having to define it as Master and sub.

She had denied what they both knew was true from the beginning, not because she didn't believe it deep in her soul but because she couldn't accept it. But he hadn't let her have any other choice. Her own needs had forced her to face the truth.

Tyler could not find sexual satisfaction with anyone but a woman whose nature could submit to him. She'd known that from the beginning, which made this moment an undeniable truth.

She was a Mistress who needed a Master. Who needed him.