Nero was quiet for a moment. "I can do that. But I need something from you in return."
"What?"
"If it's too much, you tell me. You don't perform through it. You don't use your training to mask what you're actually feeling. I know you can do that. You're a trained sub, you know how to look compliant when you're not. I need you to promise that if we're in a scene and something takes you back to the ranch, you stop. You don't endure it for my sake."
Amani's throat went tight. Because that was exactly what he would have done. Grainger had taught him, without meaning to,that compliance was survival. That the way through was to let the training take over and go somewhere else in his head. And Nero had seen that. Nero had seen the thing Amani hadn't even articulated to himself: that his greatest asset as a sub was also the thing most likely to hurt him now.
"Okay," Amani said. "I promise."
"Safe word?"
"Lioness." No hesitation. KK's universal safe word. His mother's word, the word that had kept people safe in that building since before he was born. The sound of it meant stop and it meant safety and it meant home.
Nero nodded. "Lioness. Now mine."
Amani looked up. "Yours?"
"My boundaries. This isn't one-directional, Amani. I have things I need too."
It hadn't occurred to him that Nero would have boundaries. Not because he didn't think Nero was human but because the power dynamic in his head was still calibrated to Grainger, where the person in control didn't have limits, only demands. The idea that a Dom would sit at a kitchen table and name his own vulnerabilities was so far from what captivity had taught him that he had to sit with it for a moment.
"I need you to be honest with me," Nero said. "Not just in scenes. In everything. If something I do reminds you of him, a gesture, a word, a tone of voice, I need you to tell me. Don't protect my feelings. I would rather know and adjust than not know and hurt you."
"Okay."
"And I need you to understand that when I'm your Dom, I'm not your owner. The difference is that you can leave. Any time. For any reason. The door is always open. If at any point this stops working, you walk out and I don't follow. That's the line between what we're doing and what he did."
Amani stared at him. The coffee had gone cold in both their mugs. The sprinkler had stopped. The kitchen was quiet and bright and the man across the table was drawing a map of a world where Amani could choose to stay and the staying meant something because leaving was always possible.
"You're nothing like him," Amani said. It came out without planning.
"I know. But I need you to know it in your body, not just your head. That's going to take time."
"What if it takes a long time?"
"Then it takes a long time. I'm a ferret. We’re ambush predators. We're patient."
Amani almost smiled.
"So," Nero said. "What do you want?"
Not what will you tolerate. Not what are you willing to give. What do you want? The question Grainger had never asked because Grainger had never cared, and the question Amani hadn't asked himself since the ranch because wanting things had become dangerous and desire had become a landscape he couldn't trust.
He sat with it. Let the question move through him and felt for the answer underneath the fear and the armor and the months of covering everything that used to be visible.
"I want to touch you," he said. "I want to be the one who starts. I need to go slow and I need to be the one setting the speed. I need to know I can stop and you'll let me stop and it won't be a problem."
"It won't be a problem."
"And I want the lights on. I need to see your face. I need to know where I am."
"Lights on. Always."
Amani looked at Nero across the kitchen table. The morning sun was on his face and he was not a big predator. He was notwhat Amani had spent his life telling himself he wanted. He was the only person in the world who had ever sat across a table and asked what do you want as if the answer mattered more than anything else in the room.
"Now?" Amani said.
Nero's eyebrows rose. "Now?"
