Page 20 of Suite 7

“Say it back to me.”

“My job is to feel it,” I say. Flat.

“Again. Like you mean it.”

“My job is —” I stop. Breathe. Something in my chest resists the words because meaning them requires releasing control I’m not sure I can release. “My job is to feel it.”

“Better.”

Then silence. And the waiting.

I count his footsteps; he moves left, pauses, moves again. I track the sound of a drawer. And hear ice shifting in a glass.

Ice.

I’ve read enough to know what comes with temperature play. So when the cold touch lands at my throat I’ve already braced for it, already calibrating my response.

I gasp anyway. Louder than intended.

Because knowing it’s coming and experiencing it are not the same thing, and my body doesn’t care what I’ve read.

He trails the ice slowly down between my breasts. Cold water follows, trickling down my sternum, and I shiver despite myself. He circles my nipples through the lace, the cold magnifying every nerve, and a sound escapes me that I didn’t choose.

Then his mouth, hot and immediate where the ice was.

The contrast detonates. My head falls back. I’m already bracing for where he’ll go next, chasing it in my mind before he’s moved.

He lifts his mouth away.

“Breathe,” he says.

“I —”

“You’re anticipating. Stop thinking. Try to feel it.”

He returns. And this time I try. Every thought I reach for, I let go. Not chasing where he’ll move next, not mapping it, not —

“You’re holding your breath,” he observes against my skin.

“I’m concentrating.”

He lifts away again. “That’s not the same as feeling it.”

“How is it not? You can’t just switch awareness off. If I’m not paying attention, how am I supposed to know what I’m even feeling, let alone—“ I stop myself, restart. “Concentration is how I feel things. It’s how I feel everything. You’re asking me to do the one thing that doesn’t work.”

A pause.

“Did you just correct me?”

“I’m making an argument.”

“Vera.” His hand settles warm at my hip, and it doesn’t move. “There’s a difference between paying attention and running an analysis. One lets the feeling in. The other stands guard at the door and inspects it first.” His thumb traces a slow circle. “You’ve been doing the second one all night. So stop arguing with me and let me show you the first.”

I close my mouth.

He returns to the ice, to the heat that follows, and I try, I genuinely try, to stop monitoring. To stop bracing and calibrating and rating my own responses. But my brain keeps running its commentary: Is this right? What does he want? What should I be giving him? Am I doing this correctly?

His hands move to the front clasp of my strapless bra. With one precise movement, it falls away.