Page 45 of Suite 7

He stares at me for a long moment.

“Her name is Margot?”

“Yes.”

He opens the passenger’s door for me, then circles around and folds himself into the seat. When he turns the key, Margot starts on the first try, exactly as promised — and the check engine light blazes orange on the dashboard.

“How long has that been lighting up?”

“Three months. Maybe four.”

A muscle works in his jaw. His fingers flex once on his thigh. Then he adjusts the seat back and pulls out of the lot without another word, his hand finding mine on the center console after the first turn, fingers intertwining without comment.

I watch Lake Shore Drive blur past the window, the lake dark on one side and the city on the other, and feel settled in a way I haven’t been in longer than I can remember. Like something that has been vibrating anxiously inside me has finally gone still.

He doesn’t say anything about the engine light.

I note that. File it somewhere.

At my building he walks me to the door. He waits while I find my keys — he hands them back without ceremony — and when I have them he presses a kiss to my hair and steps back.

“Goodnight, Vera.”

I look up at him. “You could stay⁠—”

He goes still and looks at me with an intensity that makes my breath catch. “No.”

“Oh.” The sting is immediate, before I can stop it.

“Not because I don’t want to.” His voice is quiet. “Tonight deserves to be more than a prelude to something else.”

He squeezes my hand once. Releases it.

I watch him walk back down the hallway until he rounds the corner and is gone.

Then I go inside and sit with the quiet for a while.

8 Vera

My phone is in my hand before I’m fully awake.

Six fourteen AM. The quiet in my apartment is different from usual — cleaner, like something that was vibrating has finally gone still. I lie there for a moment just noticing it.

Then I open a new message.

The text sits in my drafts for forty minutes.

I wrote the first version before I’d made coffee. Read it back six times. Changed arrangement to dynamic and then back to arrangement. Deleted the whole thing and rewrote it from scratch. Added please and then removed it and then added it back.

Me: Sir, I’m asking properly: I want to continue exploring submission with you. I want you as my Dom. I consent to an ongoing arrangement on your terms. Please tell me what you require of me.

It’s formal. Almost stiff. Not how I talk.

That’s the point. The formality is the ask — it’s me putting down the snark and the armor and the years of reflexive combat and choosing, in plain language.

My thumb hovers over send.

Last night I knelt on the floor of his office and my brain went quiet for the first time in years.