Chapter 14
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Sebastien
She tested me last time. Dropped Vivienne's name and watched my face the way a journalist watches a source. Dropped Claire's name and watched harder.
She caught the freeze. I watched her catch it, and neither of us said what we'd seen.
She sat beside me instead of kneeling. I let her. Whatever she was carrying had changed the shape of our usual protocol, and correcting her posture would've answered a question she hadn't asked yet.
What Natalie doesn't know is that every name she placed between us connected to a name I wrote on a legal pad after Luc left my study. Claire Bergeron. Natalie Chastain. Two names. Two sisters. One dead. One wearing my collar.
Luc is pulling Elysium records through Rapier. Booking systems, access logs, property filings. The investigation is moving underneath both of us like groundwater, and neither Natalie nor I can see the whole shape.
Tonight I'm going to light a fire on her skin.
The stage is set. Center of the main scening area, the padded table positioned beneath the amber downlights.
Fire blanket folded on a side cart beside a spray bottle and two wet towels.
My fire wands rest on a tray lined with foil, the Kevlar-wrapped tips dark against the metal.
Isopropyl alcohol in a squeeze bottle, the correct concentration.
No synthetic fabrics on any surface within reach.
Preparation is routine. The routine is the point. Fire play leaves no room for error, and the preparation itself is a form of discipline. Every item in position. Every contingency addressed before the match strikes.
I've done fire play with experienced submissives who negotiated it as a specific request. The technique is mine. The control is mine. Every pass of flame calibrated to warm without burning, to startle without harming. I've never lost a submissive's trust during fire.
Tonight I'm accepting trust I haven't fully earned.
Cole is leaning against the bar rail with a drink in his hand. He sees the setup and straightens slightly. Not concern. Assessment.
"Natalie?" he asks from across the floor.
"Yes."
"She good with fire?"
"It's in the contract."
Cole nods. The charming version of Cole Fontenot is nowhere present. This is the operative, and the operative trusts my competence without questioning it. He lifts his glass a fraction. Goes back to nursing his drink.
The scening area isn't empty. A couple is finishing a rope scene on the far side of the floor.
Marion is settled in the lounge archway with a glass of wine, comfortable, watching nothing in particular.
The same two Doms who are always near the suspension rig are talking again.
Good guys. More enthusiasm than technique, but they keep showing up.
The room has the low-energy hum of a Wednesday night at Dominion. Intimate, unhurried. Every person in it fluent enough in what happens here to watch without staring.
Natalie arrives in the corset and thong, barefoot, the collar already at her throat.
I fastened it in the hallway outside the submissives' lounge, sent her to the bar while I changed, and told her no alcohol tonight.
She didn't ask why. The ruby sits against the hollow of her neck, and the braided leather holds the warmth of her skin.
She registers the stage. The open floor. The people. Her step doesn't falter, but I catch the fractional widening of her eyes before she controls it.
"Do you know what fire play involves?" I ask.
"Alcohol applied to the skin and briefly ignited. A flash of flame that warms without burning." She meets my eyes. "I did the reading."
"The reading covers technique. It doesn't cover what it feels like to trust someone enough to let them set you on fire." I hold her gaze. "In front of a room."
The words land in the space between us. Her chin lifts. The defiance is subtle, the same angle I've been tracking since her first visit.
"I trust you," she says.
The sentence inflicts a wound she can't see.
"Turn around. Hair up."
She turns. Lifts the dark mass of her hair and secures it in a knot at the crown of her head. The gesture exposes the nape of her neck, the collar, the bare line of her shoulders above the corset.
I check the knot. No loose strands.
I step behind her and work the corset lacing free. One cross at a time, pulling the tension loose, easing the boning away from her ribs. The fabric loosens and I lift it over her head. Set it aside on the cart.
She's standing on an open stage with her back to the room and nothing above the waist except the collar. The muscles along her spine are taut.
I hook my thumbs into the thong and slide it down her hips. She steps out of it without being told.
Naked except for the collar, standing in the amber light of Dominion's scening area. The ruby at her throat and nothing else. Every person in the room can see exactly what she's offering.
Her breathing is steady. She doesn't cover herself.
"I need you on the table. Face down."
She climbs onto the padded table and lies on her stomach. Her arms rest at her sides, palms flat.
I move beside her. "Color?"
"Green."
I pick up the first wand. Dip the Kevlar tip into the alcohol. Let the excess drip back into the bottle.
The lighter is a long-reach butane. The click carries across the scening area. The flame catches the wand's tip and holds, blue at the base, gold at the edges.
I pass the wand above her shoulder blade without touching. The heat radiates downward.
Goosebumps race across her back, and the fine muscles along her spine contract. Her body registering danger. Her mind choosing to stay.
"That's the heat," I say. "The flame doesn't touch you. The heat does."
"I know."
"Knowing and feeling are different conversations."
I trail the wand lower, following the line of her back. The flame dances in the amber light, casting moving shadows across her skin. She holds still with the particular looseness of a woman giving me her immobility because I need it.
I extinguish the wand. Set it on the tray.
"Now the alcohol."
I squeeze a thin line of isopropyl across her upper back. The liquid is cool on her heated skin. She flinches at the temperature contrast, and a soft sound escapes her. Not pain. Anticipation.
I touch the wand to the alcohol.
The flame blooms blue across her skin and burns off almost instantly. A brief flash of fire on her body, the warmth flooding the surface.
Her shoulders tense and release, and the exhale that follows is long and shaking.
"Color?"
"Green." Her voice has dropped a register.
I apply the alcohol again. Wider this time, tracing diagonally across her back. The wand touches the trail. The flame races across and vanishes. Her breathing deepens, audible to anyone close enough to the stage to hear it.
I work my way down her back. Each pass covers more skin. Each flash lasts a fraction longer as I learn how her body takes the heat. Shoulders, ribs, the curve of her waist, the small of her back.
Her hands have curled into fists. The goosebumps haven't subsided since the first pass.
A low, involuntary moan rolls out of her when the flame traces her lowest rib. The resonance of it settles at the base of my spine.
At the edge of the floor, the two Doms have stopped talking. They're watching. Not crowding. Not commenting. The stillness of men who know they're seeing something above their level.
I set the wand down. Put my hands on her back. She softens under my palms almost immediately. Her skin is flushed and hot where the flame has been, every nerve primed. I press my palms flat against her upper back and drag them slowly down to the small of her back.
She arches into the contact. Involuntary. The motion pushes her hips into the table, and the faint roll that follows isn't something she planned.
"Everything I do now registers louder," I tell her.
I drag my fingertips back up her back. Feather-light. She shivers, and the shiver runs from her neck to her hips.
I trace the heated path with my mouth. My lips against the curve of muscle where flame was. The skin is hot under my tongue.
A guttural, unguarded noise escapes her. Her hips grind into the table, and this time the motion is deliberate. She's looking for friction. For contact.
The fire has done what fire does: stripped away everything analytical and left the body running the conversation. And the room can see it happening.
"Turn over."
She rolls onto her back. The flush from the fire has spread across her collarbones and down between her breasts. She's naked on an open stage with the room behind my shoulders, and she doesn't look past me. Not once.
Her eyes are dark, pupils blown wide in the low light. She's looking at me with an openness I've seen twice before—the shibari, the flogging—and both times only at the end.
This is the beginning.
I apply the alcohol to her sternum. A thin line between her breasts. She watches the wand come toward her skin, and she doesn't close her eyes.
The flame runs the line and vanishes. Her back lifts off the table. A ragged exhale breaks out of her, wrecked and wordless.
I bend down and put my mouth where the flame was. The skin is scorching under my lips.
I kiss the heated line between her breasts, and her hands come off the table and grip my hair.
"Hands down."
She drops them. The obedience is immediate and costs her a whimper that has my cock throbbing harder against the leather.
I alternate fire and hands. Fire and mouth.
A flash of flame across her ribs, then my tongue tracing the heated skin.
A pass of the wand above the curve of her hip, then my palm flat where the heat lingers.
My thumb stroking the sensitive crease where hip meets thigh.
Every time the fire recedes, my body arrives.
Every time she adjusts to the touch, the flame returns.
Her body stops distinguishing between the two. My hands and the fire and my mouth become one continuous act of dismantling her.