8. Vera
My phone is in my hand before I’m fully awake.
Six fourteen AM. The quiet in my apartment is different from usual — cleaner, like something that was vibrating has finally gone still. I lie there for a moment just noticing it.
Then I open a new message.
The text sits in my drafts for forty minutes.
I wrote the first version before I’d made coffee. Read it back six times. Changed arrangement to dynamic and then back to arrangement. Deleted the whole thing and rewrote it from scratch. Added please and then removed it and then added it back.
Me: Sir, I’m asking properly: I want to continue exploring submission with you. I want you as my Dom. I consent to an ongoing arrangement on your terms. Please tell me what you require of me.
It’s formal. Almost stiff. Not how I talk.
That’s the point. The formality is the ask — it’s me putting down the snark and the armor and the years of reflexive combat and choosing, in plain language.
My thumb hovers over send.
Last night I knelt on the floor of his office and my brain went quiet for the first time in years.
I press send before I can change my mind again.
Then I put the phone face-down on the counter and stare at the wall.
Thirty seconds.
The phone buzzes.
I flip it over.
Kane: Good girl for asking properly. My penthouse, seven PM tonight. Wear something comfortable you can remove easily. Bring questions, we’ll negotiate everything before any scene. Come prepared to discuss limits, frequency, discretion, and expectations. Don’t be late.
Kane: P.S. I called Morrison's Auto. Your appointment is confirmed for ten in the morning. Don't skip it.
I read it twice.
He made an appointment for my car. Before I’d even sent this message. Before I’d said yes to any of this in daylight, in plain language, with full information.
I set the phone down and stand there for a moment.
Then I pick it back up.
Me: Yes, Sir. I’ll be there.
Me: Both places.
I send it. Then immediately send the follow-up before I can stop myself:
Me: Just to be clear, this means I don’t get to scene with other Doms at Eclipse, right? Asking for a friend.
His response takes about fifteen seconds.
Kane: If you scene with anyone else, I’ll spend an entire session making sure you remember exactly who you belong to. Clear enough?
I stare at my phone.
Me: Crystal. Worth asking though.
Kane: Careful. I’m keeping track of the bratty behavior. It all gets addressed tonight.
Me: Looking forward to it, Sir.
Kane: I’m certain you are. Seven PM. Don’t be late.
I set the phone down and stand in my kitchen in my pajamas, grinning at the wall like an idiot.
Seven PM.
I have twelve hours to figure out what on earth I’m going to wear.
Kane
I’ve read the message eleven times.
Vera: I consent to an ongoing arrangement on your terms. Please tell me what you require of me.
She rewrote this. Multiple times, I can see it in the almost-stiffness of the phrasing, the considered language of someone who talks in quick sharp sentences and has made herself slow down and mean every word.
She added please and then took it out and then put it back, I’d guess, because the please is doing something specific — it’s not deference, it’s not managing, it’s Vera Beckett choosing to say the word she’d least naturally reach for because the choice itself is the point.
The exchange that followed was —
I look at my phone again.
Vera: Just to be clear — this means I don’t get to scene with other Doms at Eclipse, right? Asking for a friend.
Thirty seconds after the earnest formal message. Thirty seconds of sincerity and then straight back into the brat, because that’s who she is, because she can’t hold the vulnerable register longer than a minute before she needs to put something sharp between herself and it.
I know this about her. I’ve known it for years and I know it differently now, from the inside of a scene. The way she deflects with wit when something lands too close, the way the joke is always the armor going back on.
She lasted considerably longer than that.
I look at the blueprints.
The east elevation sits exactly where it’s been since eight this morning.
I’ve run the load distribution figures twice.
I have made zero amendments. The pencil is in my hand and has not touched the paper in forty minutes, which is the kind of data point I would find unacceptable in any other context.
I picture her face when she typed Asking for a friend.
She was grinning. And I bet she put the phone down after my response and laughed, or at least smiled, the smile that starts at one corner of her mouth and takes its time about arriving anywhere.
I’d like to have seen it.
The thought arrives before I’ve given it permission, and I put it down and look at the east elevation.
The east elevation continues to require nothing from me.
Rachel appears in the doorway.
“The structural engineer’s beam specifications came through. And the Zhao consultation moved to Thursday — I mentioned that this morning, but—“
“You did. Thank you.”
She looks at me, then at the untouched blueprints, then at my phone sitting face-up on the desk. “I’ll hold your calls,” she says, and disappears before I can tell her that isn’t necessary.
I pick up my pencil.
Look at the east elevation.
Think about Sir, I’m asking properly.
Put the pencil down.
A knock at the open door.
Marcel fills the doorway with two coffees, jeans and a jacket — off-duty visit, then. He drops into the chair across from my desk and sets one of the cups in front of me.
“Harlow contract closed this morning,” he says. “Full security integration. Eighteen months.”
“That’s good. Congratulations.”
“Yeah.” He sips his coffee and does his usual survey of the room, blueprints, desk, me, phone, without commenting on any of it. “How was your week?”
“Moretti revisions. Working on the east elevation.”
He stretches his legs out. We sit in the comfortable silence of two people who don’t need to fill it, the kind that only exists when you’ve known someone long enough that the quiet doesn’t require explanation. Then: “So how was the Sinclair-Beckett Smackdown this week? You’ve got the face.”
“I don’t have a face.”
“You’ve absolutely got a face.” He’s almost smiling. “What was it this time?”
“I’m not discussing Vera.”
“I didn’t say Vera. I said Smackdown.” The almost-smile becomes an actual one.
My phone beeps and lights up on the desk between us.
We both look at it. Marcel raises an eyebrow.
“Client?” he says.
“Possibly.”
“You usually have it on silent when you’re working.”
“I forgot.”
Marcel settles back and laces his fingers behind his head. He’s got the look he gets right before he says something calculated to enjoy my reaction to.
“I remember when Vera called one of your buildings a glass box with ambitions above its station.” He tilts his head. “And you responded by saying her client’s rebrand looked like it was designed by someone who’d googled the word contemporary and stopped there.”
“That tagline was genuinely—”
“You did it at Sloane’s birthday dinner.” Marcel’s expression is perfectly neutral. “With eight people at the table.”
“She started it.”
“She always starts it.” He waves a hand. “That’s the thing about Vera — she knows exactly where to push. She goes straight for your work, every time. Calls it cold, calls it soulless, calls it structurally impressive but spiritually empty.”
“She is deliberately provocative,” I say.
“She is,” Marcel agrees easily. “And you take it every time. That’s the interesting part.”
He looks at me steadily. “Because you don’t take it from anyone else. I’ve watched you shut down clients, partners, city planning committees: you have the most effective conversational off-switch I’ve ever seen. Complete, polite, absolute disengagement.”
“But with Vera you never disengage. She says your work has no soul and you spend forty-five minutes proving it does.”
“Because she’s wrong.”
“Because it matters what she thinks.” He says it simply, without emphasis. “You don’t argue with people whose opinions don’t matter to you. You’ve never once explained your design philosophy to anyone who questioned it. Except her.”
He picks up his coffee. “Every single time. She calls a building a glass box and you dedicate the rest of the evening to making her understand why she’s wrong.”
He pauses. “You did it at Sloane’s birthday dinner. At that fancy gallery opening, and at the charity auction last November where she asked if the windows on one of your designed building could be more window and you spent twenty minutes talking explaining your load-bearing structural philosophy.”
“She was—”
“You knew she was doing it on purpose,” Marcel says.
I stare outside.
“For someone who doesn’t care about her opinion,” Marcel says, “you have a remarkably detailed memory of every single one she’s ever expressed.”
A silence sits between us that is doing more work than either of us is saying.
“I had a scene Saturday night,” I say. “Dominic matched me with someone. New member, first experience.”
The shift in Marcel is immediate but subtle: the ease remains, but his attention sharpens. He’s always been like this about Eclipse: genuinely respectful, curious without being intrusive, interested without making it into something it isn’t.
“Yeah? How’d that go?”
“Well. She’s a good match.” I pause. “We’ve agreed to an ongoing arrangement. I’m negotiating terms with her tonight.”
He settles back. “Tell me about her. What’s she like?”
And here is where I should give him something vague and privacy-preserving. I’ve done it before with previous arrangements. I know exactly how to answer this question.
“She argues,” I say. “Tests limits. Has an opinion about every instruction I give her and voices every single one before she complies.”
Marcel looks at me.
“She sounds exhausting,” he says.
“She’s not.” The correction comes out faster than I intend. “She’s — it keeps the dynamic honest. She doesn’t comply blindly. She engages with everything and then she chooses. That’s different.”
Marcel is quiet for a moment.
“Hm.” He tilts his head. “So you found yourself a submissive version of Vera.”
He’s grinning when he says it.
“God, can you imagine? Vera Beckett, yes Sir, whatever you say Sir —” He’s shaking his head at the image, still grinning. “That woman would last about forty seconds before telling the Dom his technique needed work and suggesting three alternative approaches—”
“She lasted considerably longer than that.”
I hear exactly what I’ve said approximately half a second after I’ve said it.
Marcel’s grin stops. Not fades. Stops. Like a frame frozen mid-motion.
The silence is about three seconds long and contains approximately everything.
“She—” He sets his coffee down, both hands, flat on the desk on either side of it. “You just said she. As in—”
He stops. His expression moves through disbelief, then calculation. Then he just looks at me. “You have firsthand data on this. Specific. Recent. Firsthand data.”
I look at the drawing on my desk.
“Kane. You just defended Vera Beckett’s ability to submit. With evidence.” A pause. “Vera Beckett is your new submissive.”
Not a question.
I say nothing, which is the same as saying everything.
Marcel leans back in his chair. “Tell me what happened,” he says finally.
So I tell him. Marcel listens through all of it without interrupting.
When I'm done, he exhales and looks at me.
“Okay,” he says. Just that. One word, doing a lot of work.
“Vera Beckett.” He says. “Your sister’s best friend is your new submissive.”
“Yes.”
“And Sloane doesn’t know.”
“Sloane doesn’t need to know. This is between me and Vera. It’s an arrangement, it may run its course in a few weeks, it may not go anywhere, there’s no reason to upset Sloane over something that might resolve itself.”
Marcel looks at me. “It might resolve itself,” he repeats.
“These things have natural endpoints,” I say.
“Mm.” He picks up his coffee. Says nothing. Just drinks his coffee and looks at me.
“What,” I say. “Just say it.”
He sets the cup down. “Kane. You don’t do things that might not go anywhere. You’re the man who ran load calculations on a doghouse.” He holds my gaze. “So you’re calling it an arrangement.”
“That’s what it is.”
“Okay,” he says simply. And leaves it there.
He stands and checks his phone, the Marine surfacing briefly in the shift of his posture, then pockets it.
At the door he pauses and turns back, and gives me the look he reserves for things he’s only going to say once. “You’ve had a thing for that woman for years.” He holds my gaze. “And now you’re calling what you have with her an arrangement.”
A pause. “Just make sure you’re calling it that because it’s true. Not because it’s easier.”
He leaves and I stare at the door.
The coffee has gone lukewarm in my cup. I push it aside and fold my hands on the desk. I’ll think about this the way I think about anything: precisely, starting from what is actually true.
What Vera and I have is a D/s arrangement.
That is a thing with a definition — edges, a container, clear terms, agreed by both parties with full understanding of what they were agreeing to.
It is not casual. It is not nothing. It is built on consent and negotiation and a level of trust that takes most people years to develop.
It is exactly what she asked for and exactly what I agreed to provide.
It is not a relationship.
I reach for my pencil. Turn it end over end. The wood is smooth, worn at the grip from use.
A relationship involves integration. Telling Sloane. The question of what you call each other in rooms where people ask. Neither of us is having that conversation, because that is not what this is.
And Sloane doesn’t know about Eclipse, doesn’t know about this part of my life, and introducing it requires sequencing. You don’t open with I’ve started a D/s arrangement with your best friend. You build the context first. You give her the information in the right order.
Waiting isn’t avoidance. It’s sequencing.
I set the pencil down. Line it up parallel to the edge of the desk.
That is the whole situation, laid out plainly.
I straighten in the chair, roll my shoulders back. If Marcel finds it unsatisfying as an answer, that is a problem with Marcel’s appetite for drama, not with the clarity of the situation itself.
Just make sure you’re calling it that because it’s true. Not because it’s easier.
I look at the east elevation. The lines are still there, waiting. Clean. Solvable.
The roofline needs to come down another forty centimeters or the proportions read wrong against the neighbouring building. A concrete problem with a concrete solution. I make a mark. Erase it. Make it again slightly lower and hold the page at arm’s length.
It works better.
I set the pencil down.
In approximately five hours and forty minutes Vera Beckett will be standing in my apartment, and I am not thinking about that. I am thinking about this. The line. The proportions. The work.
I pick the pencil back up.