James
I should be asleep.
But instead, I’m lying across my bed, drenched in sweat, my dick stiff in my grip, aching for a release that feels as much emotional as it is physical.
The sheets are twisted around my calves, and the only light in the room is the soft bronze glow from the lamp on my nightstand, casting long shadows across my chest and the palm that’s working me slow.
I can’t stop thinking about her.
Calla.
No, The Black Dahlia.
Except now I know better.
Now I know they’re the same woman.
And I haven’t been right since.
I stroke slower, squeezing at the base and dragging my fist upward, imagining it’s her hand, firm, confident, unhurried. The way she touched me after. Once the restraints were off. Once the adrenaline faded and my body was spent, used up in the most perfect fucking way.
I’d just taken the strap for her. She’d flogged me until I cried out, my hips shaking, my skin lit up, and begging. Each strike had unraveled me, making me forget my own name and remember hers. I took every inch of her with trembling limbs and a thank-you on my tongue.
And then she wrapped me in a soft blanket, cradled me in her lap like I hadn’t just spent the last hour reduced to nothing but sensation and obedience.
Her hand stroked through my hair as I came back down to earth, my breathing slow, chest warm with something more profound than pleasure. I rested my cheek against her thigh, eyes closed, body limp.
And then she spoke.
“James.”
My eyes blinked open. I thought I’d imagined it.
“Look at me.”
I looked up, and she was already reaching for the laces of her mask.
My breath caught. “Wait—”
But she didn’t.
She pulled it off and stared down at me with that same calm confidence I’d seen weeks before across a crowded wedding reception. That soft blue dress. That sharp tongue.
Calla.
Calla fucking Black.
Every nerve in my body went still.
“You,” I whispered.
Her lips curved in the faintest smile. “Now you know.”
I couldn’t speak. Could barely think. My mind spiraled back to the night of Maverick’s wedding, me, drunk on bourbon and nerve, cornering her at the bar and trying my best lines.
“You look dangerous tonight,” I’d told her.
She sipped her drink and said, “Only if you’re not careful.” And walked away.
I had no idea. Not a clue that the woman brushing me off that night would be the one to bend me over and fuck me like salvation just weeks later.
Now I’m here, alone, stroking my rigid length to the memory of her voice, her weight behind me, the whisper of her praise against my neck.
I remember the weight of her words when she whispered, “You’re mine,” against my ear.
God, I want to be.
I pump faster, squeezing at the head, my other hand drifting lower to cup my balls and tug gently, just the way she did to keep me grounded. My thighs tense, I’m biting my lip, my hips stroking up into my fist.
I want her strapped again, sliding inside me with her palm pressed to my spine, holding me there like she owns me. I want to beg again. To need again. To break open in her hands and let her put me back together.
And I want her after.
Soft. Solid. Safe.
My moan is low and broken as I stroke harder, chasing the memory of her dominance and the comfort that followed. Her fingers against my neck. The press of her lips against my temple. The power and the tenderness, two halves of the same woman who destroyed me and soothed me all in one night.
The orgasm rips through me like a confession.
My back arches off the bed, and hot ropes of my desire spill across my stomach, her name tangled in a groan that echoes through the room. I pant, squeezing every last drop from the head, my hand trembling.
And then I fall back.
Eyes shut. Body spent. Heart racing like I just lived it all over again.
I wipe myself off, but nothing can wipe away the truth of what happened, what I felt. What I still feel.
She revealed herself to me in that vulnerable, sacred space after domination. When most Doms retreat, she showed up. Unmasked herself. Sat in her power and shared it with me.
Calla Black. The brilliant, cold, untouchable CEO of BlackSphere Technologies.
The Black Dahlia. The sensual sadist who made me feel seen for the first time in my life.
And now I can’t look at either version of her without wanting both of them.
I don’t know if she regrets showing me. I don’t know what she sees when she looks at me now.
But I know what I see.
The only woman who’s ever held all of me, mind, body, soul.
And whether she invites me back into her world or slams the door behind her, she already owns me. She didn’t look at me like I was filthy, as if she were disgusted by what we’d done. She looked at me like she knew me, really knew me.
And it fucking wrecked me.
There was this softness in her gaze, not pity, not guilt, just something steady and unflinching, like she’d seen the most vulnerable parts of me, the ones I’d never dared to show anyone, and decided they were worth loving anyway.
That look… it made my chest tighten. My heart beat against my ribs so hard I could barely breathe. I wasn’t used to being seen like that. Not with warmth. Not with adoration. Not after being taken the way she took me.
She didn’t retreat. She didn’t vanish behind the mask and leave me with nothing but a memory. She stayed. Sat beside me. Bestowed the most gentle aftercare on my depleted body. Let me lie there in her lap like I belonged.
And maybe I did.
Because truth be told, out there? In Winston Hills? I’m the one who always holds the power. I sign off on infrastructure that keeps whole neighborhoods from crumbling. Contractors, architects, planners, they all look to me for the final say. The fix. The plan.
I’m the resident engineer. The one with the clipboard. The answers. The pressure.
But behind closed doors?
I don’t want the power.
I want to be stripped of it.
Mind. Body. Soul.
I want to surrender to someone who knows what to do with that trust. Someone who can handle the weight of my submission and never use it to break me, only to bring me back to myself.
And that someone… is Calla.
With her, I never felt small. I felt whole.
Every command from her lips was a gift. Every strike of her flogger was a reminder that I was still capable of feeling, not just performing.
When she strapped me and filled me, her hands braced on my back, voice thick with need as she fucked me deep and rough… I felt wanted in a way I’d never known.
Not tolerated, not used, wanted.
And when her breathing shifted, when her moans grew ragged, I knew she was close, knew she wasn’t holding back, wasn’t just giving me a performance.
She was taking her own pleasure, from me, with me, and when she came, her hips grinding against mine, her fingers clawing into my skin, it was the most intimate thing I’ve ever witnessed.
Calla came with me. Not just physically. But emotionally. Spiritually. She let herself go. She let me in.
Which is why I can’t reconcile it with how she acted before.
At Maverick’s wedding, she barely tolerated me. Arms crossed, voice clipped, giving me that death stare like I was the most irritating man in the room.
Every time I showed up at CJ’s house for a cookout or a holiday, she’d make herself scarce. Sitting on the opposite side of the room, refusing even to meet my eyes unless she had to, and even then, it was quick and cold, like any attention I gave her was a problem she didn’t have time to fix.
And I tried. I tried to crack through that wall with a joke, a smile, hell, even small talk.
Nothing worked.
She acted like I was just noise. Like my flirting was some annoying buzz in her ear, she couldn’t wait to swat it away.
But then last night?
She had me cuffed and bent over in her private chamber at Provocateur, fucking me slow and then hard, dragging every filthy moan from my lips, pushing me so deep into submission I forgot what it felt like to stand.
She called me hers, touched me like I mattered.
She came because of me.
And now, I don’t know where we stand. Or if we’re even allowed to stand at all.
But what I do know is that last night changed everything.
I can’t go back to pretending I don’t see her. I can’t pretend that she didn’t take me apart with nothing but her voice and her strap. I can’t pretend that I don’t crave the feeling of her hand in my hair, her fingers on my skin, her power surrounding me like something holy.
Because when I’m at her mercy?
I don’t feel weak.
I feel free.
The meeting room was humming with tension, clicking pens, the dull rustle of paper, and the overly enthusiastic voice of Roger from Traffic Control running down peak-hour detour models like he was auditioning for a TED Talk.
A dozen bodies sat around the conference table, eyes half-glazed, all of us pretending to be laser-focused on a $1.
2 billion highway overpass modification.
I should have been focused.
But my mind was still stuck on the night before. Still playing the sound of her voice in my head like a fucking hymn.
Calla.
Or rather, The Black Dahlia.
I was already hard again when I walked into this meeting, the ghost of her strap still echoing in my hips, her words carved into my skin like scripture.
“Take it all for me.”
I cleared my throat and flipped to the next page in the binder in front of me, gripping my pen a little too tightly.
I needed to get it together. My signature was already on half the damn paperwork.
This wasn’t some backlot patchwork job; we were rebuilding a bridge, modifying the lane structure, reinforcing piers, and relocating utilities.
People would be driving over this for the next fifty years.
I couldn’t afford to be distracted.
“James?”
That voice. That tone.
I didn’t even have to look to know who it belonged to.
Amiyah.