“Is that what happened? You forgot your safe word?”

“We’d only been lovers a couple weeks,” Elle said. “I was a virgin until Søren, a virgin until I was twenty years old. But after our first night together, I felt like we’d done everything there was to do. But we hadn’t actually. We hadn’t even scratched the surface of everything...”

“Did he put his entire hand inside your vagina?”

“Not that night.”

“Then I still win.”

“You win,” Elle said, touching Kyrie’s face, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear. She kissed her again but Kyrie wasn’t to be deterred or distracted from her question by so obvious a ploy as a kiss.

“What happened?” Kyrie asked, and Elle knew she had to answer.

“It was after our third night together, a Thursday night. I remember that because Søren didn’t have anything to do until noon on Fridays so we could actually stay in bed together longer, spend the whole night and the morning after together. And it was a rough night. Rough in the good way. Lots of kink. Lots of sex. Afterward we were curled up together in bed. I was laying on his chest. Laying? Lying? I can never remember which. And we were talking.”

Elle closed her eyes. And when she opened them she lay on Søren’s chest, her head against his heart.

“How are you feeling, Little One?” he asked as he stroked her back with his fingertips. He’d left her covered in welts from his cane and even his gentle touches burned. But she didn’t stop him from touching her. She would never stop him from touching her.

“Sore. Happy. You?”

“Happy,” he said.

Søren happy was her favorite sort of happy. She knew everything there was to know about his past, his pain, everything he’d suffered growing up. To know that right now in this moment he was happy, that the darkness was outside the room tonight and not in it, that made her happier than her own happiness ever could.

“I want to make you happy,” she said, kissing the center of his chest.

“You please me very much.”

“Is there anything I can do to please you more?” she asked, hoping the answer was yes. Whatever it was, she would do it, allow it, enjoy it. Anything for him.

He sighed heavily and she grinned as she rose and fell on the wave of that big breath.

“There’s something I’d like us to do together. When you’re ready.”

“What is it? And I promise, I’m ready.”

“You don’t know what it is yet,” he said, rolling onto his side. She lay on hers and faced him. “So how do you know you’re ready?”

“It’s like the numbers game we play when you make me pick a number between one and ten and you don’t tell me what I’m picking. One kiss? Ten kisses? One strike of the cane? Ten strikes of the cane? I pick a number and you do whatever it is you want to do.”

“This is different.” He reached out and ran his fingers through her unbound hair. He caressed her face, traced her bottom lip with his thumb.

“Is it something you want to do?” she asked.

“Very much. It’s been a fantasy of mine since I saw you.”

She smiled at him. Her eyes were bright with the untold secret. She even bit her bottom lip, an act that he punished by kissing her and biting her bottom lip for her.

“I’m yours,” she said into the kiss. “Do anything you want to me, my sir. My body is yours...”

“Yes, it is,” he said, stretching out on top of her and deepening the kiss. “You’re all mine. Now and always...”

Whatever it was, she wanted him to do it to her right then, right there. She’d waited years to be with him and now that they were lovers, she wanted him all the time. She couldn’t get enough of his body inside hers, couldn’t get enough of the pain he gave her. Nothing made her feel more beautiful than to kneel naked at his feet and let him mark her with welts and bruises. And to know he’d fantasized about doing something to her since the day they met excited her beyond reason.

“Please...” she whispered as he pulled her back against his chest and settled into bed once more.

“Not tonight. But soon.”

“Never soon enough,” she said as he ran his finger around the edge of her white leather collar. She would fall asleep in it tonight and by morning he would have taken it off her and put it away. And she drifted off to sleep in the safety of his arms.

* * *

“What was it?” Kyrie asked. “What was his fantasy?”

Elle took a deep breath and smiled as Kyrie rose and fell on the wave of that breath. Now she was the Dominant and she had her a little Sub all her own. And she had no idea what to do with her.

“I found out the next morning,” Elle said. “I woke up in his bed and my collar was off my neck. I could hear water running down the hall so I went to take a shower with him.”

* * *

She wanted mornings with Søren almost as much as nights. Nights were a secret time, dark and erotic. A time for sin and whispers, passion and pain. But mornings...mornings were an everyday time. Light and bright. Drinking coffee together. Reading the newspaper. Discussing the day ahead and plotting how to make it through the hours until the next night they could be together came again. As much as she loved the sins and the secrets, Elle also longed for the light, for the simple pleasures of fighting over the sink while brushing their teeth and making the bed—he took the right side, she took the left—and, of course, taking a quick shower together.