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“On the bed,” she tells him.

He obeys. Heather puts a hand against his chest and presses him back until his head reaches the pillow. His black hair spreads across the green bedding. Jamie looks at me before settling into it.

Heather picks up the poetry collection and places it in my hands. Then she takes the ruler from her pocket and lays it on the nightstand where all three of us can see it.

“You’re going to read.”

“While you do what?”

“Whatever I want.”

I look at Jamie lying on my bed, then back at her. “And if I stop?”

Heather glances at the ruler. “You won’t.”

She opens the collection across my knees and finds the page she wants. “You read clearly. You don’t skip anything, you don’t rush, and you don’t stop unless I tell you to stop. If you lose your place, I’ll correct you, and you’ll begin the line again.”

I look down at the poem she’s chosen. Of course she chose the Duke.

Heather looks at Jamie. “Undress. Leave the choker.”

He sits up and does it like he’s been waiting for the order since she passed his door. Shirt first. Then the rest. He drops his clothes at the foot of my bed and lies back on the green bedding with the band still tight around his throat.

He finds my eyes. His cock is already hard. He doesn’t hide it.

Heather takes only what she needs from herself. Skirt up. Underwear gone. She climbs onto my bed and straddles him near the edge so my knee is close enough to feel the mattress take their weight.

Jamie reaches for her hips.

Heather catches his wrist. “Hands where I put them.”

She sets both of his hands above his head and presses them into the pillow until his fingers open and stay. Jamie obeys with that same ease. It’s worse than fear. He already knows the shape of this.

I’m still holding the book.

Heather looks at me. “You have a poem, Oliver. Read.”

I start.

“That’s my last Duchess painted on the wall,” I say, and Heather lowers herself onto Jamie.

Jamie makes a soft, satisfied sound. I keep going because the meter is a railing and if I let go of it, I’ll look at the place where her body takes him.

Heather sets the pace with her hips. Her skirt bunches at her waist. Jamie’s cock disappears into her and comes back shining and I have to look at the page to keep the next clause.

“Looking as if she were alive,” I read.

Jamie’s fingers tighten above his head. He doesn’t take them down.

Heather’s eyes stay on me while she uses him. I haven’t lost the line. The poem has commas. I use them.

She takes him deeper. Jamie’s breath breaks. The sound sits under Browning’s punctuation like it was always part of the poem.

“Will’t please you sit and look at her?”

I hear how ugly that is in this room.

Heather watches me miss nothing. The line. The way Jamie’s stomach tightens. The wet rhythm of her hips. The fact that she’s looking at the reader instead of the man inside her.