Page 47 of Dominion’s Collar

Gaudet laughs at a remark Natalie makes. The sound is full and generous, carrying across the bar to where Renata glances over from the service well. She registers the interaction, returns to her pour.

Nothing wrong with the picture. A respected elder member talking to a newer one who's wearing Obsidian's collar. Social currency exchanged in the normal rhythm of a functioning club.

I take a slow breath and examine what I'm feeling, because examining what I'm feeling is how I keep it from becoming what I'm doing.

The reaction operates on two frequencies. The first is possessive. My submissive. My collar on her throat. Another Dom in her space, however benign, however correct his protocol, triggers a response that lives below rationality and doesn't answer to it. That frequency is loud.

The second frequency is quieter and older. Gaudet was at Elysium. Gaudet was always at Elysium. When things went wrong, he was nearby, present and helpful and steady. The role suited him so naturally that questioning it felt ungrateful.

I've been questioning it for five years without being able to say why.

Now the man I've been questioning is standing next to the woman I collared, and the doubt has edges it didn't have an hour ago.

I set the scotch down. Stand. Cross the floor.

The distance from the booth to the bar is a walk I've made hundreds of times. For a drink. For a word with Renata. For the private hallway. Tonight the walk has a different weight.

Gaudet sees me coming before Natalie does. His expression doesn't change.

"Obsidian." His voice carries the pleasure of a man who genuinely likes the people around him. "I was just telling Natalie about the community archives project. Recording oral histories from the older members. She'd be ideal for it."

"She would." I don't sit. I stand close enough to Natalie that my proximity registers as a claim. Her posture adjusts, a fractional shift toward me that she probably doesn't notice. I notice.

"I'll leave you to your evening," Gaudet says. The deference is smooth and correct. A Dom acknowledging another Dom's collar. "We'll continue this conversation, Natalie. I think you'll find the project rewarding."

He moves toward a group near the lounge and disappears into the room's social current as easily as he entered ours.

"He's helpful," Natalie says, neutral enough that the remark could go either direction.

"He is."

"You don't like him talking to me."

"I don't like anyone talking to you." The honesty is blunter than I intended. I let it stand. "Cole and Ezra included. Don't tell them I said that."

"Your possessiveness isn't exactly a secret."

"My possessiveness is the least interesting thing about me." I flag the deflection and let it pass. "What did he want?"

"To discuss his oral history project. He's been collecting stories from former Elysium members."

The sentence stops me. Not the content. The territory. Gaudet is collecting Elysium stories from the same person who's been circling Elysium people since she walked through the door.

Two collectors orbiting the same history. One of them is wearing my collar. The other I've been watching for five years.

I store it. Don't react. "Sounds generous," I say.

"Generous is his default setting." Her eyes meet mine, and underneath the composure I've been studying for weeks, the new tension is present. Visible if you know where to look. I know where to look.

"Come sit with me."

Not a request. She follows me to the booth, and the compliance has changed since the shibari scene. The fraction-of-a-second gap between command and response has narrowed to almost nothing.

She isn't stopping to examine the instruction anymore. The choice is still hers. She's simply stopped needing to analyze it before she gives it to me.

The cushion is where I left it. She lowers herself onto it without being told, bare legs folding beneath her. The voluntary nature of the descent is the part that catches. She chose the floor. She chose my feet.

Last week I had rope on this woman's skin and she made a sound that hasn't left my head since. Now she's kneeling at my feet in a corset I had made for her and my collar. The analytical distance I need to read her properly is competing with the memory of how she breathed when the rope tightened across her hips.