Page 117 of Redline Baby

I bite my lip.

“You don’t have to,” he says.

I look at the plug again.

The idea of sitting across from him in some perfectly ordinary café with nobody around us knowing—

Fuck.

“Yes.”

“Yes what?”

“Yes, Daddy. I want it. Please.”

“Good boy.”

He kisses my temple.

When it’s settled comfortably, I take a moment to breathe and adjust before standing again. The sensation is immediate and impossible to ignore—not painful, not even overwhelmingly pleasurable, just present.

A reminder.

I pull on the gray sweatpants. Every movement makes me aware of something: the warm soreness from the paddle, the new cool weight of the cage, the fullness of the plug.

I put on a clean T-shirt and stand in front of the mirror. My eyes are bright.My cheeks are flushed. My hair is still a disaster. I look like someone who has been thoroughly, deliberately taken apart and put back together. Soren appears behind me in the reflection and rests both hands on my shoulders. He kisses my neck.

“Ready?”

I nod. My throat is tight. We go downstairs. The shop is quiet and closed, bay doors still down, morning light coming through the high windows. Soren unlocks the front door and holds it open for me.

The café is only two blocks away, so we walk.

Two blocks.

Two entire blocks of being comprehensively aware of my own body.

Soren walks beside me with one hand occasionally brushing the small of my back, and I become increasingly convinced that he is enjoying this far too much.

Someone has left a bicycle chained to a post outside the café. Through the glass, I can see the interior glowing warm against the gray morning. Soren holds the door for me. Inside, it smells divine. Butter, coffee, cinnamon. The space is small, six or seven tables with mismatched wooden chairs, the walls painted dark green. A chalkboard menu hangs above the counter in handwriting too small to read from here.

The Sunday morning crowd has settled into a low hum of unhurried conversation.

Nobody knows. Nobody has any idea what I have under my clothes. The thought nearly kills me.

Soren finds a table near the window.

Two wooden chairs.

Wooden.

Of course.

I sit.

My body immediately files several formal complaints.

The hard seat against my sore backside is one. The plug’s opinion on the transition from standing to sitting is another. The cage adds a third piece of commentary to a discussion nobody invited it into.