Sugar Silk and Shame

Perfection is a prison you decorate with pearls.”

The light in her bedroom window was always the first to go out.

Dominique Devereux made sure of it.

From the outside, her world was pristine: a penthouse apartment that overlooked the Manhattan skyline, an exclusive all-girls academy where she reigned with effortless, untouchable grace, and a life of polished smiles, curated events, and soft-gloved restraint. Her mother had always told her, “Real ladies don’t get angry, they host galas.”

Tonight, Dominique smiled her way through a charity dinner for the school’s new library fund, wearing Dior, pearls, and heels that made her ankles ache. She nodded when expected, gave a demure wave to her headmaster, and laughed when a senator’s son whispered something boring about Bitcoin into her ear.

Boys like him never really saw her.

They saw the idea of her—Dominique the debutante, Dominique the legacy girl, Dominique the good girl with a spine as straight as her posture.

But beneath the silk and posture was a girl starving for the opposite of all this. She didn’t want to be praised. She wanted to be seen.

The town car ride home was silent except for the hum of traffic and the occasional click of her mother’s phone camera. Dominique sat beside her like a mannequin, hands folded perfectly over a Chanel clutch.

“You were lovely tonight,” her mother said without looking at her.

Dominique said nothing.

“Smile a bit more next time. Your teeth are perfect.”

She smiled on command.

When they pulled up to the building, Dominique didn’t wait for the valet. She stepped out, heels clicking sharply against the marble as she strode into the lobby with practiced poise. Her mother lingered to gossip with a senator’s wife.

The moment the elevator doors closed, Dominique exhaled. Slowly. Precisely. As if releasing oxygen might accidentally unlace the corset of perfection she’d been born into.

Her bedroom was a work of curated femininity: pale blush tones, white lace curtains, glass perfume bottles, and an untouched vanity. No one would suspect that behind the locked drawer beneath her bed were black leather cuffs, a ball gag, and a riding crop.

She sat at her vanity, undoing her pearl earrings, one by one, and watched herself in the mirror.

There was something distant in her eyes. A cold kind of boredom. Her lips were the color of strawberries—her mother’s favorite—and she hadn’t smiled with them once that day.

“Perfect,” she whispered to her reflection. “Fucking perfect.”

She wiped her lipstick off with the back of her hand. Then she opened her laptop.

The screen flickered to life. A soft ding. One unread message on her secure, hidden account.

Domica, the screen name read.

Mistress. Queen. Goddess.

She logged in.

The interface was sleek—velvet black with deep crimson accents. The Velvet Room was an online lounge, exclusive and encrypted, where anonymity was law and reputation was everything.

In this world, she wasn’t Dominique.

She was Domica.

Mistress of the Room. Crusher of men. Queen of pain and praise.

Tonight, two subs had messaged her for a session. She scanned their bios, fingers idly tracing her lips. One begged to be degraded. The other wanted to be ignored while she humiliated someone else. They both paid well. They both bored her.

She replied to neither.

Instead, she opened a blank text box and stared at it.

She didn’t want a pet tonight.

She wanted a challenge.

It hadn’t always been like this. The first time she’d dominated someone, it was in a chatroom after her first heartbreak. She was seventeen. A boy at school had broken up with her because she was “too intense.” Too cold. Too calculating.

He had liked the way she looked but not the way she thought.

That night, she logged onto a kink forum under a fake name, just to lurk. She didn’t expect to talk. She certainly didn’t expect someone to call her “Mistress” and ask for orders.

But when they did, something in her cracked open like a window that had been painted shut.

She didn’t blush. She didn’t hesitate.

She told him to strip, kneel, and call her Goddess.

He obeyed.

The first orgasm she ever had wasn’t from fingers or toys or boys who didn’t know how to find her pulse beneath her skin.

It was from power.

The raw, aching feeling of knowing someone would beg for her voice, crawl for her praise, and cry for her disappointment.

It made her feel godly. It made her feel alive.

But lately… even that had dulled.

She ran her fingers across the edge of her laptop, her gaze distant.

Dominique Devereux was a ghost in a designer dress. Domica was the only thing that felt real.

And yet, even as Domica, something was missing.

They all gave in too easily. They all worshipped her before she could destroy them. There was no chase. No fight. No surrender worth winning.

She wanted a man who’d make her work for it. Someone who wouldn’t kneel without being conquered. Someone who didn’t crumble at her voice but stood tall and made her earn his fall.

She wanted war. A beautiful war.

She was about to log off when a new message arrived.

WolfEyes89: “Do you ever get tired of barking orders, Queen?”

Her breath caught.

The audacity.

She stared at the screen. Her fingers hovered over the keyboard.

Another message.

WolfEyes89: “Or are you just scared to beg?”

Something inside her flared. Not anger. Not offense.

Curiosity.

She clicked his profile. Minimal information. No visible sessions. High payment tier. Verified. New.

She wrote back.

Domica: “Try again, pup. Mistress doesn’t bark—she bites.”

WolfEyes89: “Good. Then bite me. If you can.”

Dominique closed her laptop an hour later, breathless and flushed.

They didn’t even touch. No scene. No commands. Just a conversation—a battle of words, slow and teasing. And yet, it left her trembling.

It wasn’t what he said. It was how he said it. Calm. Cold. Confident.

Like he knew she’d break first.

She didn’t sleep that night. She lay in bed, the glow of the laptop still burned behind her eyelids.

Domica doesn’t beg.

But Dominique?

Dominique was already dreaming about what it would feel like… to fall.