3. Kane #2
“Breathe.”
The command comes without thought, voice dropping into Dom register.
She draws a shaky breath. Her shoulders drop slightly under my hand.
Trusting me completely.
“Color?”
“Green, Sir.”
Vera Beckett calling me Sir.
I close my eyes.
She doesn’t recognize my voice.
I won’t do that to her.
Whatever happens next has to be her choice.
“Do you know who I am?”
I let my natural register bleed through, dropping the Dom cadence, letting Kane surface.
She tilts her head, confusion visible even with the blindfold.
“No, Sir. Isn’t that the point?”
The hint of her usual sass, creeping through protocol.
I reach up and find the ribbon securing her blindfold.
This will change everything. But she deserves to know.
I let the blindfold fall.
“Open your eyes, Vera.”
Her eyes fly open.
Shock. Disbelief. Three heartbeats.
“Kane?”
She scrambles backward, nearly tumbling off the bed. I catch her arm, instinct, nothing else. She yanks free like I’ve burned her and presses herself against the headboard.
“What the — what are you —” Words fail her. She just stares. Chest heaving. Face flushed. Utterly betrayed.
“What are you doing here?” My voice comes out harsher than I intend. “Why are you in a BDSM club about to submit to a complete stranger?”
“A vetted stranger! Dominic vetted! I vetted! I did everything right! I was safe!”
Her voice cracks. “You think I’d sign up to —“ She gestures wildly between us, unable to finish. “This was supposed to be anonymous. Safe. A chance to finally — and instead I get you.”
The words land like a slap.
Tears gather in her eyes. She blinks them back furiously, refusing to let them fall.
“This is a nightmare.”
“For both of us,” I say.
We stare at each other. Both breathing hard. Both furious. Both terrified.
Then her focus shifts. She looks around the room properly for the first time, really seeing it without the blindfold. The St. Andrew’s Cross. The cabinet. The suspension rigs. The leather furniture positioned with obvious purpose.
Her gaze comes back to me. Takes in what I’m wearing. I watch her mind work through it.
“Wait.” All the volume goes out of her voice. Which is somehow worse than the shouting. “You’re —“ She looks at the room again. Back at me. “You’re the Dom.”
Not a question. A detonation delivered without raising her voice.
“You’re the Dom they matched me with.”
I nod.
The silence sits between us. Her processing, me watching her process.
Then she laughs, slightly hysterical, a sound that’s more shock than humor.
“Kane Sinclair is a Dominant.” Testing the words. Trying to make them fit. “You. Mr. Control-Freak-Architect who lines up his books by spine height and irons his workout clothes.”
The specificity catches me. She’s noticed details about my life I didn’t think she registered.
“Yes.”
“You’re serious.”
“Completely.”
She stares at me like she’s seeing me for the first time.
“I don’t — “ She stops. Shakes her head. Starts again somewhere else entirely. “Sloane doesn’t know. Does she. She can’t know.”
“No.”
“Okay.” She presses her fingers to her mouth briefly. Then takes them away. “Okay.”
Her gaze moves to the door. Then back to me. The arithmetic playing out in real time — what staying means, what leaving means, what either option looks like on the other side of tonight.
“I don’t believe you,” she says finally. “That you — that this is — “
“Don’t you?” I let my voice drop. “You’ve been looking for someone who wouldn’t move when you applied pressure. And you know from experience that I don’t.”
“Fuck you.” But she doesn’t move toward the door. Doesn’t step back.
I hold her gaze and let the silence do the rest.
“Stop doing that.” Her voice comes out smaller than she intended. She hears it too — her chin lifts immediately, armoring back up. “Stop acting like you know what I —”
“I read your assessment.”
She goes still.
“So you know everything,” she says.
“Yes.”
She looks away. A long beat. When she comes back, something has shifted.
“I should leave,” she says.
“You should,” I agree. “If that’s what you want.”
She doesn’t move.
I cross to the bed and sit beside her, not touching. My forearms rest on my knees, hands loose, aware of the six inches between us and the specific effort required to maintain them.
A moment passes. Then another.
“Why don’t we start with tonight,” I say. “This is what you came here for.” My jaw is tight. I let it be tight. “No expectations beyond this room. Just this. Just tonight, and we deal with what it means after.”
She turns her head. Her gaze finds mine and holds, reading me the way she reads a room, fast and thorough, looking for the thing that doesn’t add up.
I let her look. Let her see what I’ve been hiding. The want. The restraint fraying at the edges. The truth I can’t disguise anymore.
“You’re Sloane’s brother,” she says. Like reminding herself.
“And you’re Sloane’s best friend.”
She’s quiet for a long moment. Then her shoulders drop and she stands — not toward the door, just up, because she won’t have a hard conversation from a position of disadvantage.
I watch her do it. The shift in her spine. The way certainty arrives in her body before she’s finished deciding.
“Just tonight,” she says. “Then we go back to normal. The Sinclair-Beckett Smackdown. Pretend this never happened.”
This isn’t going to be one night. But I don’t say that.
“If that’s what you want.” I stand too. “But I need you to understand what you’re agreeing to first. This isn’t a sanitized fantasy, Vera.
I won’t go easy on you just because I know you.
I won’t pretend I’m someone else. And I won’t apologize for how thoroughly I intend to do this.
” I hold her gaze. “Last chance to walk away. No judgment. No consequences. We go back to our separate lives and this stays in this room.”
Her jaw sets. The reflexive defiance arrives first, then stalls. Underneath it, something quieter and more honest surfaces. The version of her she showed Dominic. The version she came here to find.
When she speaks, her voice is steady.
“Tonight I want this. I want to know what it feels like with you.”
“Say it. Do you consent?”
She’s quiet for a moment.
“I consent. To this. To you. To letting you lead.” She exhales. “I’ve never said that to anyone.”
“I know.” I don’t move. “And I won’t waste it.”
The silence that follows is different from all the ones before it.
“And if you change your mind during?”
“I have safewords.” Her voice is firm. “I’m not fragile, Kane.”
“I know you’re not.” I let her see my certainty. “That’s not why I’m asking.”
Her shoulders drop and her hands go still.
“I’m asking because once we start, I won’t be gentle. I’ll push you. I’ll make you give me things you’ve been holding back.”
“Good.” She takes one step forward, closing the distance between us by half, and everything in the room pulls taut. “Because I’m not asking you to be gentle. And I’m not going easy on you just because I know you, Sinclair.” That spark of defiance flares back into her eyes. “You want my submission?”
Her chin lifts.
“Earn it.”
My lips curve.
Years of restraint held in exactly two words: “You’ve been waiting for someone who could actually handle you. Tonight you find out if I’m him.”
Her breath catches.
“We’ll see,” she manages. Breathy. Uncertain.
“Final question,” I say. “Do you trust me?”
She doesn’t hesitate.
“I hate that I do.”
My smile is slow. “That’s enough.”
I step back from the bed. Put distance between us.
“Stay there.”
I watch her receive it, the almost-imperceptible moment her body decides to obey before her mind can argue.
She stays.
She watches me cross to the door with eyes wide. I don’t look back. I don’t need to. Her gaze follows me the whole way.