Page 185 of Suite 7

He sets his glass down. Turns to face me fully. And his expression does the thing it almost never does — it opens. Serious and warm and nervous and certain, all at once, every layer of him visible at the same time.

“In our world,” he begins, “there’s a tradition. For partners who want to make their commitment visible.” A breath. “Permanent.” He holds my gaze. “It’s called collaring.”

He reaches into his jacket pocket and pulls out a small velvet box.

My whole body goes still.

“It’s not a substitute for anything else,” he says carefully. “It’s its own thing entirely — a visible symbol that you’re mine and I’m yours. That we’ve chosen each other in the way that matters most to who we are.”

He opens the box.

The collar is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. Delicate white gold, formed into something between a necklace and a choker, elegant and understated, with a small lock pendant at the center catching the candlelight.

“Kane—”

“Let me finish.” He takes both my hands in his, and I can feel that his are not entirely steady, which undoes me more than anything else could. “This past winter you moved into my home. Our home. And you’ve been teaching me things I didn’t know I still needed to learn. That I don’t have to compartmentalize anymore. That I can be whole — Dom and partner and brother and architect, all of it at once, none of it in conflict.” His voice roughens on the last word. “You showed me that. You walked into my life and you refused to let me be less than the full version of myself. You fought with me and challenged me and saw all of me and stayed anyway.”

Tears blur my vision.

He stands and draws me up with him.

“Vera Beckett.” His voice drops into something that is both the Dom and the man, both things at once, inseparable now, the way they were always meant to be. “Will you accept my collar? Will you be mine as I’m yours? Will you let me love you and claim you, for as long as you’ll let me?”

“Yes.” The truest thing I know, said in the simplest way I know how to say it. “Yes. Always yes.”

“Turn around.”

I do. I lift my hair.

His hands find my nape, careful and certain. The cool metal settles against my skin. The clasp fastens. The lock clicks into place, small and certain in the quiet.

I turn back and step into his arms. We hold each other without speaking, both of us shaking slightly.

“I love you,” I say into his chest.

“I love you too.” His arms tighten. One hand comes up to find the collar, traces it against my skin. Then, quieter: “I had it engraved.”

I pull back. “What does it say?”

He unclasps it gently. Turns it so I can see the inside.

My strength, my surrender.

My hands are shaking when he takes the collar back and fastens it where it belongs. His thumbs find my cheeks and wipe the tears carefully.

“It’s perfect,” I manage. “You’re perfect.”

“No,” he says. “We are.”

He steps back.

And then he goes to his knees and I go completely still.

Kane doesn’t kneel. In every scene we’ve built together, in every moment of the dungeon, I have never once seen him go to his knees. It is the one thing that has never happened. And yet here he is, on the floor where everything started, looking up at me with an expression I have never seen on him before — open and certain and completely unguarded, the Dom and the man occupying the same face at the same time, neither one diminished by the other.

Both of them choosing this.

“Every time we’re here,” he says, “you choose to kneel for me. Tonight I choose to kneel for you.”