Page 63 of 404: Consent Not Found

A plea?

My jaw clenched. The room narrowed. My breath caught in my throat.

Was she checking for approval? Or challenging me?

No.

I shook my head. That wasn’t possible. She was in full obedience mode. The collar was active. The pain settings calibrated. She was mine.

“Eyes forward, fuckdoll,” Socket snapped, and Charlotte immediately corrected her gaze, looking dead ahead like she’d never moved at all.

But the damage was done.

My perfect little machine… had blinked at me.

Why?

Was she feeling something I hadn’t programmed?

Or was I just slipping?

My fingers twitched at my side.

The others watched in silence, caught up in the spectacle. Socket raised the whip again, this time not as a question—but as a statement.

“Say it for him,” he said.“Say what a sadist is, for your master.”

Charlotte hesitated—again—and then responded.

“A sadist… finds pleasure in my pain.”

The whip cracked.

She gasped.

I came closer to the edge of something I hadn’t yet defined.

Not pity or guilt, but something deeper and darker.

Socket stepped forward, slowly, like a predator circling prey that had already surrendered.

Charlotte’s restraints creaked. Her chest still heaved softly from the earlier strikes. She kept her gaze forward—compliant.

Socket brushed her hair behind her ear, his gloved hand unhurried, reverent in the most perverse way. He leaned in close—so close I saw her neck twitch from the subtle vibrations of his voice.

“You’ve got no idea what I’m going to do to that tight little synthetic arse of yours,” he whispered.“I’ll make it hurt. I want it to hurt.”

Charlotte didn’t move.

“I wish you didn’t self-lubricate. I’d rather you feel every fucking inch of me. Split you open. Let you beg me to stop.”

I exhaled through my nose. Slowly.

The room was silent but for the low hum of the additional lighting and the creak of restraints under strain. The others watched, hard and breathing heavier.

I wasn’t revolted or jealous. No, I was fascinated.

Something clicked in my brain—not from rage, not from jealousy… but clarity.