Page 104

She probably thinks I’m talking to her like a child, but she nods anyway.

I can already see it. Kathleen doesn’t realize she’s radiating it, but everything about her eyes, her body language says submissive. Except it’s not the kind that gets me off.

I have my work cut out for me tonight.

“Are you ready?” I hold up the collar, the chain clinking between my fingers. “Once I put this on, our scene begins. Unless you say your word, it will continue until I decide it’s over.”

Kathleen averts her gaze for a split second, but it’s long enough for me to feel her doubt. My hand clasps on top of hers.

Why won’t you believe me, Katie? Why won’t you believe that I have your best interests in my heart? That I want to make you feel so good that you don’t know where you are anymore? It’s not only about my ego. It’s about yours as well. I want to make you feel like a spoiled princess. I want to hear your voice trill as I give you so much physical and emotional pleasure. I want to make you come so hard that you’re not just begging for me to give you more, but you’re begging yourself to take even more. You know as well as I do that this lifestyle is about letting yourself go to your innermost fantasies. You clearly harbor some. As flattered as I am that you’ve chosen me to help you see them through… well…

“Before we do this,” I say, cupping her face in my hands, “I need to hear that you trust me. Unconditionally.”

I kiss her before she can respond. A light kiss. A reminder that I care about her.

She’s smiling, albeit wanly, when I pull my lips away.

“Do you remember how nice it felt last Friday?”

“Of course I do.”

“Whenever you start to feel nervous, think of me from then. That’s the me lurking behind everything I do.”

The collar dangles from my hand and rests on her shoulder. She looks at it, then me.

“I trust you,” she whispers. “I trust you to be patient and give me exactly what I need.”

“I’m not giving you what you need, my sweet.” I loop the collar around her throat, although I don’t latch it yet. “I’m taking you apart and building you back up again. I’m purging your mind of everything you ever thought you knew. When I’m done with you?” The clasp latches, and she gasps, knowing that she’s mine. “You’ll be a whole new Kathleen.”

Her breath stills in her chest.

“You’ll be the Kathleen that you always wanted to be.”

Chapter 39

Kathleen

The change in her eyes happens instantly.

Even though I knew it was inevitable, I’m still struck by how much Ira Mathison changes when she dons the mantle of Domme.

No, she’s always been one. This whole time we fooled around, flirted, and even fucked without a collar on, she’s been a Domme. Just one who is holding back her true desires… for the sake of my sanity. None of that matters now.

I shake in my knee-high boots, not because I’m scared, though she probably reads me that way. After the first time we tried? I don’t blame her at all. I’m nervous, but I’m not scared.

Truly, I’m excited.

No way do I know what to expect. I don’t know what’s going to happen, how I’ll feel, or if her promises will come true. But I see this change that punctures me right in the heart and threatens to turn me inside out.

Her eyes have gone from kind and tender to…consuming.

These are feelings she’s harbored this whole time, but I’m only now seeing them. She’s letting me see them because she’s comfortable with who we are. I’ve promised to trust her, but I’m not used to being looked at as if I’m a piece of meat. Like a woman whose sole purpose is to please Ira and do whatever she commands.

These shivers trembling through me… are they because I’m afraid? Or because I’m finally getting what I’ve always wanted?

Please, Ira. Go slow. My brain doesn’t know what it wants yet.

Her arms wrap around me, tightly, possessively. I’m hers. I’m the prize she won, the woman she’s been coveting, and now she gets the smug satisfaction of knowing that I walked through that door a Domme… and will hopefully walk out her obedient sub.