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For a moment, I assume it’s meant as a form of no . She must sense my confusion, and she clarifies.

“I want you to make me do it .” Her tone is near breathless. One of her hands slides up my chest, and she tenses her fingers.

I try not to look surprised at the turn of events. “And just how might I enforce the behavior of such an unruly woman, hmm?”

She licks her lower lip nervously. A worried crease appears between her dark brows. “You might have to… do something… that makes me think about my behavior.”

An erotic slideshow of possibility flickers through my mind. Natalia is tense, waiting. My gaze pans the room, landing on a span of clothesline with black-and-white photographs affixed to it by wooden spring clothespins. It’s out of fashion now, but Sofia liked it, so I’ve never changed it.

I go to the wall and remove two clothespins from a photo of a bare tree on a cliff overlooking the sea. I set the photo aside and return, circling Natalia, eyes roaming her in stern inspection.

“After I put these on you,” I instruct quietly, “you’ll go to the guest bedroom and retrieve that necklace.” I stop, feet planted, arms crossed in feigned disapproval. “You will not dress first. You will not dally. And you will not defy me. Understood?”

She nods, eyes wide.

“That’s not a proper answer.”

“Yes,” she says, just above a whisper. “Understood.”

“Good girl.”

I cradle one of her lush breasts in my left hand and carefully trap the nipple in the shallow divot of the clamp, closing it slowly, mindful of Natalia’s reaction.

When it’s firmly in place, she releases a discreet sigh, closing her eyes as if focusing on the sensation.

I position the other clothespin, then take a small step back to survey the effect.

“Almost perfect…”

I ease her panties down her legs, and they slide to the floor. Giving her inner thigh a tap, I wordlessly direct her to open her legs more. Her luminous blue eyes are riveted on me, lower lip trapped between her teeth. I deliver a flick to both clothespins, and she moans.

I lift one eyebrow as if in censure. “Surely you can’t love that, do you? You’d have to be quite willful to stand there chastened and enjoy it.”

I trail one knuckle down her belly and place a hand over her pussy, sliding my fingers back and forth at the opening.

“My God— incorrigible ,” I reproach. “So wet.”

She can barely hide her smile. “I can’t help it.”

I turn her shoulders so she’s facing the door, then give her a mild smack on the ass to propel her forward. “Bring the necklace, impudent thing.”

She’s gone long enough that I wonder if she hasn’t gotten cold feet with her game, but in a few minutes she glides in again. In one hand is the velvet box. In the other, a wooden-handled hairbrush. She comes to where I’m sitting at the foot of the big bed, handing me the jewelry case.

Recalling how much she enjoyed it when I washed her hair the night we met, I ask, “You’d like me to brush your hair?”

She presses her lips together hard, and as they go nearly white with the pressure, a desperate blush colors her cheeks. Suddenly it connects, what she wants but is afraid to ask for. I correct my course, taking the brush from her and tapping it against my palm.

“Maybe I will, as a reward… after you’re a bit pink.”

Her nod is tiny, but energetic.

I open the jewelry box and withdraw the heart-shaped emerald on its weighty gold chain, then slip it over her head to drape around her neck.

“There now. Let me see you, kleine Hexe.”

She gathers her hair, piling it on top of her head and holding it to display the necklace. Her heavy breasts lift, the clothespins cocking outward. I give them another flick, and Natalia emits a lusty whimper.

“But I think,” I tell her with a slow smile, “you’re in want of correction for your carelessness, yes? Does that seem fair?”

“Yes,” she whispers.

I ease her hands off her head. A tumble of glossy coffee-dark hair spills over her shoulders, parting around the deliciously indecent display of those tits. I turn her to face the bed, guiding her hands flat on the mattress so she’s bent at a slight angle.

She peeks at me over her shoulder as I position myself behind her, to the left.

“It’s just a small transgression,” I tell her. “So perhaps only a small consequence is necessary.”

Again, she nods. Her gorgeous tits sway a bit, and she tilts her round ass in invitation. I deliver a light smack, and she tenses with a squeak, then looks back at me.

“I can’t imagine,” she tells me with a saucy smirk, “learning much of anything from such… hesitant instruction.”

“Really now?” I say with a chuckle.

Placing one arm in front of her hips for leverage, I land two sharp swats. She lets out a surprised “ Ah! ” and lifts a high-heeled foot off the floor.

Her bottom cheeks have two oblong patches of color, and she reaches back to smooth a hand over the area.

“Ooh, it’s warm,” she says. “But maybe… not warm enough.”

I move her hand aside and deliver another smack, a tiny bit harder.

“Ah! One,” she breathes.

“Counting your strokes, wicked girl? How many do you think you should take?”

She pauses. “Six. But fast. I want it to feel like… a little more than I expect.”

I wrap one hand around her wrist and firmly lock it at her lower back, then arc my arm down in five more quick, stinging blows. When I stop, she exhales with a trembling sound that’s half relief, half lust. I tenderly caress her ass, which now feels lightly toasted.

“I’ve never seen you wear pink before,” I tease. “It looks stunning on you.”

She straightens and turns to me with an expression of exhausted pleasure, and I gingerly remove the clothespins before pulling her into my embrace.

Finally I kiss her, just a brush of our lips. “I confess, I didn’t know I might have a taste for such a thing.” Another kiss, longer. “But everything is pleasure with you.”

Her hand works between us as we kiss more deeply.

She opens my trousers and starts to push them off impatiently.

I help, stepping out of the rest of my clothes.

Natalia moves the bundle of fabric into position with her foot, creating a landing spot on the tile floor before dropping to her knees.

Without hesitation she wraps my cock in her hand and plunges her mouth over me.

Her hunger is overwhelming—this is no cautious exploration but has the urgency of someone long denied an irresistible delight.

It takes me a few moments to regain command of my wits; then I sweep her hair back—relishing the feeling of her head moving eagerly beneath my hands—and gather it to keep the disheveled tresses from her face.

“So sehe ich Dich gerne,” I growl, falling helplessly into my native tongue, enraptured by the sight of her, the feeling, the depth of her passion. “Du hast immer noch nicht genug. Such a greedy woman…”

After a few minutes of her enthusiastic labors, a warning tension creeps through me, bright and potent as glowing coals.

My fist tightens on her hair. “Stop, Talia… wait.”

She pulls back and gazes up at me, lips parted and flushed, glimmering wet like her eyes. I draw her to her feet.

“You’re not crying, are you?” I ask, cupping her chin in concern.

“Hardly,” she says with a small laugh. “I just, um… choked a little, and it made my eyes water.”

Her words inspire a visceral stab of need, and I lift her into my arms. She kicks her shoes off and wraps her legs around my hips, my cock trapped between us.

As I stride toward the en suite where my shaving bag has condoms, she grinds against me.

The flexing of her ass in my hands, the warm patches that bring back the memory of her sighs and whimpers as I applied the hairbrush to her bottom…

it almost conspires to unman me, as if I were half my age.

I stop at the marble counter, leaning her on it so I can free one hand and riffle through the shaving kit to snag a string of condoms. Devouring her lips, I make my way all but blind to the bed and lay her half propped against the bank of pillows before sinking between her legs, kissing my way down her body.

Her heavenly tits still retain the pink imprints of where the clothespins were, and I pause to lovingly soothe the marks, bathing her nipples with my tongue, sweeping and swirling, tugging gently with a suction that makes her hips shoot toward me.

Humming a low, taunting laugh against her skin, I continue my path downward, my mouth and hands everywhere, insatiable. I move one of her knees and slide down, eager to kiss her firm, slick clit.

She digs her fingernails into my shoulder. “Please,” she gasps. “I need your—” She breaks off, shy even in this moment. “I… need you. I’m so close already, and I want you inside me when I come.”

I rise on my knees and she tears open a condom packet, hurrying to sheath me before she launches herself and topples me back with my head at the foot of the bed.

She throws a leg over me. The lamplight gilds her hourglass curves, shimmering with patches of faint sweat.

She rocks her hips, sliding along my length tauntingly for several passes before aligning with me and sinking slowly to the hilt, head thrown back.

I settle my hands on her hips, fighting the impulse to grip her hard and pound her against me, compelled by primal need.

My fingers almost tremble as I coast over the path of her waist and hips, transfixed by the sight of Natalia riding me.

Her arms are rigid behind herself, braced on my thighs, and her tits quiver mesmerizingly on each impact as she drives herself against me, eyes squeezed shut, hair churning.

“That’s it, my siren,” I urge. “You’ve placed the tools you wanted right into my hands and demanded the service of my cock. Can you let yourself cry out in victory as you take everything you deserve?”

“I want that,” she replies in a tight groan, moving faster. “I need everything…”

“It’s yours, sorceress. No door is barred to you. No lock can keep you out.”

After I say it, I realize the implications. Talia has infiltrated my soul, and at this point, I’d incur far more damage in resisting. My eyes settle on the green stone, stuck unmoving to her damp chest despite her vigorous thrusting against me.

Something shifts in me as I feel—for the first time in many years—truly with the woman I’m inside.

All points seem connected at once: past, present, future.

I surrender to it with a simple elation.

Unable to hold back, I’m overtaken by climax, perplexed by my own words as the tipping point is ushered in by my crying out, “ I am! ”

“Yes!” Natalia gasps, her expression triumphant.

I’m not sure if she’s replying to what I’ve rather cryptically shouted, or welcoming her own moment, but her single word rises into a wail of joy as she slows her movement, undulating her hips to rub against me, wringing out every lingering second of her orgasm’s assault.

She collapses into my arms, and our fevered pulses ricochet against each other, sending wordless dispatches.

After a few minutes’ recovery, Natalia sighs out a tired laugh. “You are… what ?” she prompts. “Leave it to you to get all existential during sex. ‘ I am ’?”

I echo her drowsy laughter and roll us sideways, knitted together in a muddle of spent limbs. “I don’t know,” I admit, kissing her. “It came from somewhere, I suppose, but is a puzzle to me as well.”

When my distracted gaze lights on the clothesline across the room—missing one photograph—it occurs to me that this is the first time I’ve made love in this room since Sofia died.

I expect the realization to drag pain in on its wake, but to my shock, it doesn’t.

Instead, the room feels almost sanctified.

I let my eyes drift closed, joining Natalia in tranquil repose, unsure but accepting of whatever comes next.

Though I didn’t fully recognize it at the time, this moment with Talia is what I dreamed of nine months ago, when our hearts opened to each other in Spain.