【Her · Bitch】
He told me to arrive at his rented apartment an hour early. At twenty I was a college junior, had been an adult for over two years, had been dating for half a year, and thought I understood everything. The door clicked locked behind me. He didn’t hug me the way he usually did; he just shoved a paper bag into my arms and told me to go change in the bathroom. I opened it and my face caught fire — a black maid outfit, white apron, so short it barely reached the top of my thighs, and a pair of over-the-knee white stockings. I looked up to ask if it was a joke, but he only watched me, his gaze very calm, so calm I didn’t dare say another word.
In the bathroom mirror, the girl in the maid outfit didn’t look like me. One shift of the skirt bared half my backside; the tube top squeezed so tight it pressed my not-so-large breasts into a shallow line of cleavage. I lingered in there for a long while, my palms slick with sweat, my heart pounding until it ached. But I couldn’t say whether that was fear or something else — the faint wetness on the inside of my thighs, I pretended I hadn’t noticed.
【Him · Master】
I had timed it precisely. During the dozen-odd minutes she took to change, I sat on the living-room sofa doing nothing at all, just waiting. The waiting itself is a kind of taming — I wanted her to face that outfit alone in front of the mirror, to face her own little shame and the anticipation she couldn’t hide. Half a year of dating and I had her figured out: her mouth says no, but her body is more honest than anyone’s. Tonight I had no intention of coaxing her gently again. Tonight she would learn a new word — obey.
When the door opened she kept her head down, both hands wringing the hem of the apron, her calves in their tight white stockings pressed close together. I didn’t stand; I only lifted my chin. “Come here. Stand straight.” Every step she took was hesitant, but she took them anyway. She stopped a single step away — close enough that I could reach out and touch her, yet not quite touching — because I wanted her to take that one small step forward herself.
【Her · Bitch】
He took something out of the drawer beside the sofa. The moment I saw clearly that it was a collar, my breath skipped half a beat — black leather, a small brass ring dead center, glinting cold under the light. “Come here,” he said. Just two words. My feet felt like they weren’t mine, shuffling over one small step at a time, until I stood between his two knees. He swept my hair to one side, and the instant the leather touched my neck, it was cool. The brass buckle clasped shut at my nape with a click, very soft, yet it was as if something inside me had locked shut along with it.
From that moment I couldn’t speak. The collar wasn’t tight, but what it bound wasn’t my throat — it was something else. He hooked two fingers into the brass ring and drew it gently downward, and my whole body followed that pull and bowed low, sinking to kneel on the carpet at his feet. My knees on the floor, the skirt spread open, I could feel the cold air crawl over the inside of my thighs, over that patch that had already stopped obeying me. I lifted my eyes to him. He was smiling — a smile I had never seen before, one that held me completely in his hand. My face burned hotter, but down below … down below burned hotter still.
【Him · Master】
The way she knelt wasn’t proper, her knees spread too wide, but I didn’t correct her — the obedience in that clumsiness was more moving than any practiced skill. I brushed my thumb across her lower lip, and her mouth parted a fraction on its own, her lashes trembling. I slipped my hand up under her skirt, pressed the pad of my finger against her through a thin layer of panties, and there was already a small damp patch soaked through, warm enough to scald. She let out a stifled “mm,” her waist jerking, her knees clamping tighter, but I pried her legs apart and forbade her to close them. “While you’re wearing this,” I said, “you don’t get to close your legs on your own. Understood?” Her eyes were red-rimmed. She nodded.
【Her · Bitch】
He said he was going to blindfold me. A black silk band wound around, and the world went dark all at once. Not being able to see amplified every sound — the metal of his belt unbuckling, the friction of fabric, his footsteps circling behind me. He drew both my wrists together behind my back and bound them with another band, wrapping it three times and knotting it. The moment my hands were tied behind me I lost all control over my own balance and could only lean on him holding me up. The strange thing was, I stopped panicking. Unable to see, unable to move, I instead handed over the whole matter of “being responsible.” All I had left was sensation — his breath falling on my nape, his hand roaming up from my waist, pinching my nipple through the tube top.
The pad of his finger ground against that already-hardened nipple, circling through the fabric, then suddenly pinching. Not being able to see turned every touch into a blend of fright and pleasure; I cried out without being able to hold it back, and my voice sounded especially obscene in the empty room. I heard myself saying “Master” — the title he had taught me before — and the first time it left my mouth, the shame left my whole face tingling numb, yet once I had said it, my body went soft by another notch. His other hand lifted my skirt from below, his fingertip sliding up along the inside of my thigh, maddeningly slow, so slow I couldn’t stop myself from pushing up to meet it.
【Him · Master】
Blindfolded, she was ten times more sensitive than usual. I only rested my finger at the edge of her panties, without going in, and her hips lifted again and again, chasing my hand, her knees trembling from kneeling and still refusing to stop. Bound hands, blindfolded eyes, a fastened collar — those three things together dismantled her whole self from a “girlfriend with her own mind” into a body that could only crave. I leaned to her ear and asked her what she wanted. She bit her lip and wouldn’t say it, so I pulled my hand entirely away. She grew frantic, tears welling up at once, soaking dark through the silk of the blindfold, and begged me with a sob in her voice: “Master … please don’t stop, I want …” — the first lesson, she learned to open her mouth and ask.
【Her · Bitch】
That night he never went in after all. He only played me through my panties until my legs went weak, until that scrap of cloth was wet enough to wring out, until I cried out “Master” and “please” over and over, and then he stopped at the very edge of what I wanted most, leaving me to buck, to grind, to beg shamelessly on my own. When he finally untied my hands and lifted the blindfold, I slumped into his arms, the collar still around my neck. He cupped my face and asked, “From now on, every time you come, you change first, put on the collar, and wait for me. Can you do that?” I looked at him and, as if bewitched, nodded. I didn’t know then that this one nod was the beginning of a rope that would coil tighter and tighter over the next two years. The leather of the collar pressed against my pulse as it beat, cold, and yet I felt it steadied me more than any embrace ever could.