Chapter 6
CHAPTER SIX
Sebastien
Two nights since the negotiation. I sent the contract to Natalie the next morning, as promised. She returned it this afternoon with one note in the margin.
She wants the early-exit clause made explicit rather than buried in the contract language. A reasonable request. Also the request of a woman who's already thinking about how she'd leave.
I could have written it in before tonight. I didn't. Contract amendments happen face to face. That's not negotiable, even when the amendment is.
The contract is on my desk in the study. I've read it four times since she sent it back. That's three more passes than any decision in my life has ever required.
I'm ignoring the scotch sitting untouched beside it. Ignoring the specific memory of Natalie's jaw under my thumb. Her breath catching before she composed it away.
The terms are set. Meticulous, precise, and waiting for my signature. Everything in this room waits for me: patiently, in order, exactly where I put it.
Nothing about her stays where I put it.
My study is the only room in the townhouse that looks occupied.
The rest of the place is maintained by a service, kept in the condition of a house where someone occasionally sleeps but rarely lives.
This room is different. Books spine-out on mahogany shelves I found in an estate sale in the Marigny and had delivered the same afternoon. An armchair worn to my shape.
The scotch I keep at home is older and better than what I drink at Dominion. I hold it more than I consume it. The St. Charles streetcar rumbles past outside, close enough that the windowpanes hum with it.
Tonight the glass sits untouched. My discipline is holding. The rest of me is less certain.
I've dismantled years of careful distance in weeks for a woman I've known barely long enough to justify the contract sitting on my desk.
Margot vetted Natalie personally and approved her membership. The independent check I ordered hasn't come back yet. Her cover story, researching power dynamics for a book, is plausible enough that I can't reject it on substance.
I don't reject it on substance. I reject it on instinct.
Her questions pattern. Tourists wander. Investigators circle. Natalie circles.
And she circles the people who were at Elysium. Not obviously. Not by name. But the people she gravitates toward, the conversations she initiates. It all orbits territory my fragments have occupied for years.
That could mean anything. Writers research. True crime writers research obsessively and without apology.
Or she could be looking for something particular that happened there.
I reach for the glass. Hold it without lifting. Let go. In here the only sound is my own breathing and the occasional creak of a house older than anyone currently living on this block.
The terms are sound. I wrote them myself. Consideration. Thirty days. Exclusive. Safeword protocol: traffic light system plus the word 'Savannah'.
Savannah. Her hometown, according to Margot's membership records. She offered it without hesitation and without explaining why home is the word she needs when everything else fails.
But I noticed how her body changed when she said it. The crack in the control, the fracture that lasted less than a second before she rebuilt. That word costs her something.
Five years ago, I watched a community I helped build collapse. A submissive I barely knew spoke to me shortly before she died. I've forgotten her name, if I ever knew it.
There were other things. A different submissive left without explanation. An incident was smoothed over as a negotiation failure. These are fragments. They don't resolve into anything I can prove. But the shape they almost make is reason enough to keep looking.
That failure lives in me like a low-grade fever. Not debilitating. Constant. The kind of thing you stop noticing until someone new walks in with questions that make the temperature rise.
I pick up the glass again. This time I drink.
The phone on my desk lights up. A text from the contact I used for verification.
I read the report. Exactly what I asked for: verification, not excavation.
I asked whether Natalie Chastain is who she claims to be and whether anything in her background poses a risk to Dominion.
I didn't ask someone to dismantle her life.
She checks out. Published author. Legitimate research interests. Finances that make sense. References confirmed.
Nothing in the report suggests she's dangerous to Dominion. Nothing in the report explains what I read in her either. A clean report doesn't tell me why she's really here. It tells me she's not a threat. Those aren't the same thing.
None of the other submissives at Dominion interest me. Natalie interests me because past the research, past whatever she's running, there's a woman who doesn't know what she is yet.
I told her that during the negotiation and saw it land. The composure slipped for half a second before she pulled it back into place. I want to see it again.
I offered her a collar before the verification came back. Worse, I offered it knowing I don't believe the whole story she's given Dominion.
I'm not recklessly trusting her. I'm knowingly accepting uncertainty because I want her.
That's worse.
The glass is empty when I set it down. That hasn't happened in this study in longer than I can remember. The held glass is a ritual. Finishing it means the ritual failed.
I want to take Natalie apart. To find the seam between the performance and the person, put my hands on it, and open it. The first time I put my rope on her, I'll learn things that weeks of conversation haven't shown me.
The contract goes into my jacket. I drive to Dominion.
New Orleans slides past in its gold-and-shadow palette.
Streetlights through live oaks. The smell of the river carrying through the open window.
I've driven this route for years. Tonight the familiar streets feel charged with a decision I've already made and haven't fully examined.
Heart-pine and twelve-foot ceilings behind me. Whatever Natalie is, ahead.
The Lower Garden District gives way to the area where Dominion sits, quiet behind an unremarkable facade. You'd walk past it without knowing what the doors held. That's by design. Everything about Margot's operation is by design.
Dominion's entrance is quiet tonight. Cole is at the staircase, phone in hand, looking like a man with nothing more pressing than checking the weather. I've been around him long enough to know that look is a choice. Every relaxed gesture is a calculated one.
"Evening, Obsidian." I nod. The private room is already set. Amber warmth. Wood paneling. Two chairs.
Luc intercepts me at the hallway.
His gaze drops to the box under my arm. Then back to my face. The expression that forms is the precise intersection of delight and vindication.
"No," I say.
"You bought one."
"Move."
"You actually bought one." He falls into step beside me. "Is it black?"
I look at him.
"Of course it's black." He's grinning. I'm going to hear about this for years. "The woman from the bar. The one you had a conversation with."
"Luc."
"I'm savoring this. Give me a moment."
"You've had your moment."
His grin fades to something quieter. The shift is fast enough that I know it was waiting underneath.
"Don't punish her for being the first thing you've wanted in years."
"Are you done?"
"Not remotely. But she's waiting."
He steps aside. I walk to the private room.
Natalie is already seated when I arrive. Street clothes: fitted jacket, dark jeans, boots.
She dressed for a meeting, not a scene. Good. She's taking this seriously enough to separate the negotiation from the dynamic.
She looks up when I close the door. Her eyes track me across the room with the focused attention of someone who misses nothing and shows less.
She's already assessed the room, the exits, and the distance between us. I know because I did the same thing when I set up the chairs.
I take the opposite chair and set the contract on the table between us.
"I've reviewed your terms," she says. "Two questions."
"Go ahead."
"The physical contact clause. You said your hands aren't restricted to negotiated sessions when I'm wearing the collar. The scening areas only, or anywhere on the premises?"
"Anywhere on the premises. Bar included." I let the silence hold. "If that changes your answer, tell me now."
She considers it. I can read the difference between Natalie weighing something and Natalie putting on the appearance of weighing something. This is the former.
"It doesn't change my answer."
"Second question."
"The corset." A faint edge enters her voice. Amusement wrestling with challenge. "You said you'd have it made. I assume you'll need measurements."
"I have them."
Her eyebrows lift. A fraction. Managed, but the surprise is real.
"You're telling me you can estimate my measurements from across a room?"
"I'm telling you Margot has your fitting records from your membership intake. I asked her to have the corset made."
"Before or after I agreed to this?"
"Before."
She holds my gaze for a long beat. The amusement wins over the indignation. Close contest.
"That's either extremely presumptuous or extremely confident."
"The two aren't mutually exclusive."
Her mouth moves at one corner. An acknowledgment that I've won a round she didn't expect to lose.
"There's one more thing we need to discuss before either of us signs this." I lean forward. "Practical, not romantic. But it needs to happen."
"Safe sex."
"You've been waiting for this part."
"I've been wondering when you'd get to it." She settles deeper into the chair. "I'm on birth control. An IUD. Last panel was a few months ago. Negative across the board. No partners since."
"I'm tested quarterly. Last panel was recent. Negative. No partners since."
"Condoms?"
"Your preference."