When I think back on that night, despite the depravity that had just occurred with the food and oral play, the memory that comes back first is this: me, naked in a chair worth more than my first car, hands gripping armrests with toes flat against glossy floorboards so cold they left marks. Jemma was in front of me, maybe three feet away—her stance broadcast command, one hand braced on her own hip and the other drawing lazy figure-eights on the handle of a riding crop. I could see her thighs, the little flex each time her weight shifted from stiletto to stiletto.

The black corset stark against pale skin. The cock was already buckled into place: silicone, thick, obscenely lifelike, slanting upwards. Jemma’s auburn hair—usually braided, strictly confined—was loose for once, pouring over her right shoulder in a single, deliberate spill.

She circled me, once, heels biting out a metronome that made me hyper-aware of every muscle that wanted to tense and could not. The room—private, windowless, walls lined with those display bottles of wine no one ever drinks—smelled of old money and something more chemical: the polish on the floor, or maybe the faint metallic tang of fear. There were three guttered candles on the sideboard, their flames shuddering each time the air shifted.

Jemma paused behind me. I heard the whisper of silk against her skin, the fractional delay before she leaned down so close I could feel the heat of her breath behind my ear. “You don’t move,” she said. The crop tapped once, gently, against my left thigh. “You don’t touch.” Tap, tap, my right thigh now. “You watch.” She said it like a sacrament.

I did. I watched as she moved to the table, took her place at the head like she owned the world. Which, for the duration of this evening, she absolutely did.

For the second time that night, Monica was on the table. This time kneeling directly atop the table, hands splayed against the lacquered wood, her body compact and folded in on itself. Her hair was a mess, one pearl earring missing. The flush on her cheeks traveled straight down her neck and across her chest, each inhalation raising a visible tremor in her small, perfect breasts.

Sami was standing two feet away, also completely bare except her bow tie. She was smaller than Monica, dark where Monica was pale, but she stood differently—chin lifted, shoulders thrown back, arms locked behind her as if she’d been called to attention. Her breasts were larger than Monica’s, exaggerated by the deliberate arch of her posture. A small tattoo, binary code looping around her wrist, caught the candlelight. Her glasses had been left on, a choice that looked accidental but absolutely wasn’t. There was a bruise just forming on her inner thigh, shaped like someone’s jaw.

Jemma gestured to both of them with the crop, drawing a lazy figure in the air. “Which of you is going to ask first?” She didn’t bother disguising the smile in her voice.

Monica opened her mouth, then closed it. Sami said, quick, “Me. Please. Mistress.”

The corners of Monica’s mouth twitched. She looked away so hard she nearly overbalanced on the table. Jemma cocked her head, analyzing Monica the way a chess player reviews a board after a clever move. She pivoted back to Sami, slow smile widening, and beckoned her closer with a crook of two fingers.

“Come here, girl.” Jemma’s voice was a rung lower, husky with authority. Sami stepped forward, the floor creaking under her careful footfalls. She stopped a foot from the head of the table, staring straight ahead.

Jemma set the crop down. She reached out, gently palmed Sami’s cheek, and trailed her thumb along the line of Sami’s jaw until it dipped into the hollow of her collarbone. “Good girl,” she purred. Sami’s eyelids fluttered. Her hands, still behind her back, flexed once, knuckles going white.

I couldn’t move, but my body responded anyway. My cock twitched, memory of the last scene with Sami—her tongue, her mouth, the careful way she always waited for permission—flooding my nervous system and making the restraint feel a hundred times more present.

Monica hadn’t moved. She was breathing shallowly, little puffs of air fogging the polished wood beneath her face. Every so often her eyes darted up to me, then away, as if she was searching for an angle where she wouldn’t be implicated by her own want.

Jemma released Sami’s chin and, with both hands, guided her up onto the table so that she knelt beside Monica. The two of them were so close now, thigh to thigh, knees overlapping. Monica shivered, not with cold but with whatever chemical cocktail the scene had triggered inside her. Her hands, still planted on the table, dug in so deep the knuckles went white.

Jemma stepped back, hands clasped in front of her, as if admiring a work in progress. “Let’s make this simple. Monica, you will keep your hands where they are. Sami, you will not come until I say. If either of you disobeys, we’ll start over.”

Neither of them answered, but their bodies did. Monica’s fingers twitched. Sami’s breath caught, nostrils flaring as she processed the order.

Jemma stalked around the table, slow and steady, watching their posture, their micro-reactions. As she passed behind me, her fingers grazed the top of my skull. She didn’t look down, didn’t acknowledge me as anything other than one more object in her collection, but the touch was electric. She moved on, returning to the head of the table.

With the grace of a stage magician, Jemma produced a flask and poured two neat shots of something clear into silver shot glasses. She set them side by side, then gestured for Monica and Sami to take them.

Monica hesitated. Sami didn’t. She reached for the glass with her right hand, left still behind her, and shot it back in a single, practiced swallow. Monica, chastened, did the same, though she flinched at the burn and let out a small, involuntary cough. Jemma let the silence hang, a velvet weight, then said, “Now that everyone’s warmed up—” she trailed off, eyes landing on me for the first time since the ritual began.

“Damien, darling.” She said my name like it was an accusation. “You’re allowed to speak. Would you like to see more?”

The question was rhetorical. I could barely form the word, but I managed a hoarse, “Yes, Mistress.”

Her smile was as sharp as the edge of a razor. “Good. We’ll put on a little show. But remember: you do not move. No touching. Not unless I give you permission. Understood?”