#Chapter 15: The Playroom

Lila's POV

I said yes.

My knees still ached from the hospital floor. The bruises on my elbows had turned yellow-green overnight, and when I lifted my arms to pull on a sweater, the scrapes stung. None of that stopped me.

The rational part of my brain screamed at me the entire time I was getting ready. This was reckless. This was a stranger from the internet with a reputation for being merciless.

But I was a writer. A writer who'd only ever imagined submission had a ceiling. If I wanted to write it real, I needed to feel it.

I put on the purple mask. The dom had said not to bring anything. No lingerie. No props. Just myself, on time. I pulled on jeans and a sweater and my worn canvas sneakers, looking exactly like what I was: a literature student heading somewhere she couldn't explain.

The address was a villa on the hill above the academy. Wrought-iron gate. Gravel drive. Stone and glass perched on the ridge, larger than my entire dormitory.

No lights on inside. The front door was unlocked.

The bedroom was dark. Heavy curtains blocked the windows. The only light was a thin strip of silver where the balcony door stood open, and silhouetted against it, a man. Back to me. Cigarette in hand. The ember flared orange.

He kept his back to me.

I stood in the doorway and tried to remember how to breathe. The darkness was a comfort. In the dark, I wasn't his student. I wasn't the wolfless girl who'd scored twenty-three percent on her last combat quiz. I was just a girl in a mask who'd walked into a stranger's house of her own free will.

"You came." The voice was low. Familiar in a way I refused to examine. "Took you long enough."

"I had to think about it."

He exhaled smoke. "You think too much."

A long silence. Then he turned. I couldn't see his face. The dark and my mask and the distance kept him in shadow. But I could feel his gaze on my body. Assessing. Measuring.

"Are you a virgin?"

The question was flat. Clinical.

"Yes."

He took another drag. The cigarette tip brightened. Then he leaned forward and blew the smoke directly at my face. The heat of it ghosted across my cheeks.

"I don't do virgins," he said. "Too much work. Too much crying."

My stomach dropped. I took a step backward. So that was it. I'd talked myself into coming all this way, and he was sending me home because I lacked experience.

I turned toward the door.

His hand caught my elbow.

The grip was firm but not painful. He held me the way you'd hold a glass you hadn't decided whether to set down or fill.

"I said I don't do virgins." His mouth was close to my ear. "I didn't say leave."

I was certain he could hear my heartbeat.

He led me down a hallway I hadn't noticed. Past the bedroom, past what looked like a study, through a door that opened onto a narrow staircase descending into the floor.

The basement.

The light down here was deep red, almost amber, cast by recessed fixtures behind frosted glass. The room at the bottom was large. Warm. The walls were lined with panels, and on those panels hung objects I recognized from my research and my fiction but had never seen in person.

Leather restraints. Silk ropes. A spreader bar. Clamps I couldn't name. And at the center of the far wall, mounted on hooks, a row of instruments that made my knees buckle.

"Choose one."

Every one terrified me.

Except the blindfold. Black silk, folded neatly on a shelf. Simple. Familiar. The similar kind I'd worn in the hotel room, when everything had been an accident and nothing was at stake.

I reached for it.

"Safe word," he said. "Pick one now."

"Lavender."

"Good. Use it."

He lifted the blindfold from my hand and stepped behind me. The silk settled over my eyes. His fingertips brushed the bridge of my nose adjusting the fit, and I stopped breathing.

Darkness.

Every other sense surged forward. Cedar. Smoke. Something warm underneath that flooded my senses. The texture of the silk pressed against my lashes. The sound of his shoes on the floor, circling me, measured and unhurried.

Lips at the side of my neck. A brush, barely contact. A hand at the small of my back guided me forward.

Soft sheets. My back pressed against the mattress. His weight above me. Not crushing, but present. Deliberate.

He kissed me. Slow. Mouth to jaw to the column of my throat. Each point of contact sent a pulse that pooled low in my belly.

"Breathe," he said against my collarbone.

He traced my arms, my ribs, the dip of my waist, never lingering long enough, always moving before I could lean in. I arched toward him. The blindfold turned every sensation into a guess.

Something thin and cool slid across my spine.

Not fingers. Not silk. Something narrow and rigid that flexed slightly. It traced a line from between my shoulder blades to the base of my spine, and the cold of it against my heated skin made me gasp.

A riding crop. Silver-handled. I could feel the tooled leather of the grip against my back.

My mind went blank and then vivid. The combat professor. Straight back. Clipped commands. The same unhurried control as the hands on me now.

Him standing over me in his training clothes, crop in hand. That flat voice saying stay still. The image hit so hard my body shuddered.

"So Sensitive," the dom observed. Clinical. Pleased.

The crop traced lower. I couldn't catch my breath. The blindfold made everything bigger. I felt too much.

Breath against my ear. "Ready?"

I didn't answer. My body did. The crop pressed against the inside of my thigh.

My phone rang.

The sound split the darkness. Shrill. Tinny. Insistent. Gemma's ringtone. The one she'd made me promise to always answer, after the bonfire.

"I — I need to —"

I ripped the blindfold off. The red light hit my eyes. I scrambled off the bed, grabbed my phone, and answered with shaking hands.

"Where are you?" Gemma's voice was panicked. "Amy said you left an hour ago and nobody knows —"

"I'm fine. I'm coming home."

I hung up. The dom was still on the bed. He hadn't moved. He looked like a man who was not used to being interrupted.

"I have to go."

"Go."

One word. Flat. He was letting me leave. He was not forgiving me for it.

I grabbed my bag and ran. Up the stairs. Out the door. Cold air slapped my flushed skin.

I didn't stop running until I reached the campus gate.

I was still trembling. The ache the crop had started wouldn't fade, and neither would the image behind my eyelids: the dom, silver handle catching the light.

I pressed my palms to my face and walked faster.

The next morning, there was an envelope under my door. Typed. Formal.

A D/s Contract.