"Lioness still."
"Okay. Then here's mine." Nero leaned forward, elbows on the table. "I want to practice the safe word before the scene. Out loud. In the room. So your body knows the shape of it in that space."
"Okay."
"I want us to do a full check-in at the ten-minute mark. I'll stop, come around to your face, you'll tell me green, yellow, or red. Green keeps going. Yellow adjusts. Red ends."
"Standard traffic light. Fine."
"And for aftercare. If you use lioness, I'll step back like you said. But if you don't, I want to be the one who wraps you up. Iwant to be the person who brings you down. That's my need. I'm telling you because you need to know."
"You want to be the one who takes care of me after."
"Yes."
Amani looked at him. The ferret across the table was asking, with the same care Amani had brought to his own boundaries, for a specific form of intimacy that mattered to him. Not about control. About belonging to the scene together, start to finish. Wanting to hold him when the scene ended because the scene had been theirs.
"Yes," Amani said. "You get aftercare. Unless I use the word."
"Unless you use the word."
They drank their coffee. They talked through the setup. Soft flogger, the falls were leather but supple, stock was light. Nero had used one before, but years ago, and he wanted to practice on a pillow before he took it near Amani's skin. Amani had laughed at that, because the thought of this careful, meticulous man practicing on a pillow before a scene was so perfectly on-brand it was almost embarrassing. But it was also exactly why Amani was doing this with him and not anyone else.
They picked a night. Wednesday the following week. Lady Leo cleared the private room, Amani had told her he was going to play with Nero, and she had said "good" in a voice that closed the subject entirely. Amani had not pushed because there were some conversations he did not want to have with his mother, even on good days.
***
Wednesday night. Private room three. The club was closed, the cleaning crew gone, the lights dimmed everywhere except the room they were in.
Amani stood in the middle of the room in just his pants. No shirt. He'd chosen this. The hoodies were in a drawer at homeand he was not going to hide his back. The collar scar was visible on his throat, a pale ring, and the rope marks on his wrists were gone but the skin remembered. His back was unmarked. Ready.
Nero was setting up. The flogger on the bench. A bottle of water. A folded blanket for aftercare, if they got to aftercare. A towel. The room was a private room, well-appointed, soundproofed, with soft wood floors and a padded bench against one wall. No restraints visible because Amani had asked for none. The space was just a space. The scene was what they brought to it.
"Say it," Nero said.
"Lioness."
"Again."
"Lioness."
"One more time."
"Lioness."
"Good. Now remember it. The word is yours."
Amani nodded. His pulse was already up. Not fear. Not yet. Anticipation had a different tempo than fear, and he made himself listen for the difference. His body was alert, his breathing was fast, but his chest was loose and his jaw was relaxed. Green. He was green.
"Start where you want to start," Nero said.
"Against the bench. Forearms on the padding. Head down. Back exposed."
Amani walked to the bench and positioned himself. Forearms flat on the padded top. Feet shoulder-width apart. Back curved just slightly, shoulders open. The posture he'd learned at seventeen in this same club, the posture of a sub presenting, the posture that every cell of his body remembered the shape of.
It felt different without the shorts, the bar, and the confidence of being the lion everyone wanted. It felt smaller. More honest.
"I'm going to start with my hands," Nero said. "On your back. Just to warm you up. Flogger after, when I tell you."
