Page 109 of Suite 7

“Open.”

One word. I obey.

“Good girl.” His hand cups my jaw, thumb stroking my cheek once, tender, before anything else. “Keep your eyes on me.”

He pushes in slowly. Gives me time to adjust, my jaw stretching around him in a way that feels overwhelming and exactly right. The first sound he makes is quiet and controlled, barely there.

I want more of them.

So I change the angle. Subtle. Unauthorized.

His hand tightens in my hair immediately.

“What did I say?”

I look up at him through my lashes. Say nothing. Do it again.

“Vera.” That warning tone. Two notes below his normal voice. “Don’t test me right now.”

So naturally I test him.

His grip pulls back — not enough to stop anything, enough to make his point. He waits until my eyes come all the way back to his.

“You’re doing that on purpose.”

The corner of my mouth curves, just slightly. I watch his face do the thing it does when I’ve delighted and infuriated him in equal measure.

Two seconds. Maybe three.

“Fine.” The word drops into the room. “Have it your way.”

His fingers curl at the root of my hair, tilting my head back with a pressure that is neither gentle nor harsh — just absolute. He repositions me without asking, without explaining, moving me where he wants me.

Then he takes over. His pace. His depth. His angle, not mine. Every time I try to find my own rhythm he adjusts his grip and it’s gone.

My body goes liquid with relief.

He’s unhurried. Maddeningly unhurried. Shallow at first, reading every shift in my breathing, every flicker of tension across my shoulders. When I tighten he stills completely, hand smoothing through my hair until I breathe through it and soften. Only then does he press deeper.

“Touch yourself. Behind your back. Now.”

I work my fingers between my own legs at the awkward angle the cuffs allow — wrists bound, arms bent back, the reach nearly impossible. Nearly. My fingers find the right place and I make a sound around him I can’t contain.

I hate it.

I love it.

I keep my eyes on his the way he told me to, and that’s when I see it — a tightening around his eyes, the muscle working once in his jaw, his hand threading deeper into my hair with a pressure that has stopped being entirely controlled.

I hold his gaze and take him deeper than he’s been allowing me to.

“Vera.” Wrecked at the edges. “Don’t.”

I look up at him and do it again.

“Vera.” Just that. Not a warning, not a command — something underneath both, unguarded in a way he almost never allows.

And then the resistance — the part of me that always needs to be winning something — quietly steps back. I don’t decide to let it go. It goes on its own, and what’s left is just this. Him. Me.