【Her · The Heroine】
My name is Shen Zhiwei, twenty-six, and I have been a copywriter at this ad agency for three years. My coworkers say I am the steadiest one on the team — my makeup never smudges, my hems always pressed below the knee, and I never use an exclamation point in an email. I like being praised as proper; it feels like a crisply ironed white shirt that no one can find a fault with. Until the second week Gu Han came on as creative director, when I discovered that beneath this white shirt I had long since soaked through — soaked so badly it frightened me.
【Him · The Wild Dom】
I saw straight through her in the first meeting. Sitting bolt upright, notes neat and tidy, answering every question with airtight politeness. But the roots of her ears go red, and the tendon in her neck gives a small twitch whenever I hold my stare on her for more than three seconds. A woman that well-behaved always has something starving locked up inside her; it is just that no one has been willing to pry the lock open for her. I am in no hurry. Prying a lock is the kind of thing that gets more interesting the slower you take it.
【Her · The Heroine】
He never touches me out in the open. He only rests his hand casually on the back of my chair when he passes my desk, his knuckles pressing into the leather of the backrest, a centimeter from the nape of my neck — not touching, just hanging there. The whole conference room is discussing next quarter’s ad spend, and I am the only one counting whether his hand will come down. It never came down, not once. But the wet heat between my legs had already answered for him, seeping stickily into my panties, and I sat the entire afternoon with my thighs clamped together, not taking in a single word on my screen.
【Him · The Wild Dom】
One day when everyone had left after overtime, I passed behind her and casually cinched the loose belt of her dress one notch tighter. Just one notch, tight enough that her waist sank in and she gasped. She did not turn around; her shoulders went rigid. I lowered my voice by her ear: “Sit up straight. Stop clamping your legs.” She actually let her legs relax. Obedient enough to make me want to laugh. I pressed my hand against the outside of her thigh through her dress for two seconds and then left, doing nothing more — sometimes doing nothing keeps a woman strung up and burning better than doing something ever could.
【Her · The Heroine】
The warmth of his palm through my dress for those three seconds — I was still burning from it when I got back to the shared apartment. I shut my bedroom door, slid down with my back against it to sit on the floor, and only then realized my panties could be wrung out. I hated myself. By day I am Shen Zhiwei, the one who has to straighten even her cup at a meeting; by night I slid my fingers in to that one line of his, “Stop clamping your legs,” biting my pillow so I would not make a sound — my roommate sleeping just one wall away. I cursed myself for being so cheap even as I came, my tears wetting a small patch of the pillowcase. My reason was screaming that this was wrong, but my body was shamefully honest.
【Him · The Wild Dom】
The WeChat messages came naturally enough. Work first, then talking late into the night. One early morning I sent: “Still up? Send me a picture of how you look right now.” After a long while she sent a home-clothes selfie that showed only down to her collarbone, all proper. I laughed. “Do it again. I want to see you in your work clothes, buttons undone to the second one.” This time she took even longer, long enough that I knew she was struggling — and then the photo came. White shirt, the second button loosened, a small patch of pale chest showing. She did not even dare put her face in the frame. It is exactly this kind of half-reluctant obedience that gets to me the most.
【Her · The Heroine】
I do not know how I pressed send. As my trembling fingers undid the second button, I told myself just one, just this one, and never again after this. But the moment his “Good girl” popped up on the other side, my whole body felt as if someone had stroked me up along the tailbone, tingling until my legs could not stay shut. Later he made me change into the little-devil cosplay miniskirt I had bought for the department Halloween thing, and photograph my whole body. I stood in front of the mirror, the skirt too short to cover the top of my thighs, already a swamp underneath, my panties clinging wetly to me. I took it. I sent it. And then I crouched on the floor hugging my knees, shaking — not from fear, but from the high, from that shameful high of handing over my well-behaved shell inch by inch.
【Him · The Wild Dom】
I saved a whole album of her. The work clothes, the home clothes, that absurdly short cosplay skirt. Behind every one I could picture how wet she had been when she took it. I never push too hard, asking for only a little more each time, like slowly heating water, waiting for her to get used to obeying on her own, used to stripping for me, used to swallowing her “I can’t” back down. By this Thursday she had started asking first, before I even opened my mouth: “Tonight … do you want to see?” Hungry. This lock is nearly pried open.
【Her · The Heroine】
Thursday night I slid down against my door to the floor again, staring at his line on my phone screen: “Next time, no more doing it through a screen.” I knew what that meant. I should have refused — I am a decent woman who blushes even at being late, I should not. But I buried my face in my knees, and that familiar wet heat between my legs began welling up beyond my control again, staining a small dark patch into the lining of my dress. Reason called out one last faint “don’t go” in my head, but my body had already made the decision for me. I typed: “Friday. My roommate’s away. Come over.” The instant I pressed send, I felt for the first time that handing myself over could make my legs go this weak.