Morning didn't arrive so much as bleed in. Pale light slipping across the floor, soft as silk but heavy like guilt. The thread was still around my neck. I hadn't untied it. Couldn't. It felt like the only thing holding me together.
I lay still in bed, tangled in my sheets, staring at the ceiling with dry eyes and a wet mouth, remembering the taste of him, the weight of his gaze, the silence he left behind like fingerprints on glass. The air in the apartment felt too still, like it was waiting. Like I was waiting.
I wore the coat to work again. Not because I needed warmth, but because it smelled like him. I could feel the collar beneath it, hidden beneath my clothes. It wasn't just leather, it was truth. A quiet one, coiled around my throat.
My shift passed in smudges.
I dropped my keys twice. Spilled sugar across the counter. Laughed too hard at a customer's joke just so I wouldn't cry when I blinked. My body moved, but my mind stayed curled up on that bed, knees drawn tight, waiting for a command.
He didn't come.
Instead, she did.
The woman from the other day. Alone this time. No coat for camouflage. She wore something sharp and simple, a long dress that looked like it cost more than my monthly rent. Her mouth was tight, her stare tighter.
She didn't order. Didn't smile.
She waited until there was no one else around, then leaned across the counter like a hunter inspecting prey too scrawny to bother killing.
"You're not special," she said, voice low and clipped. "He breaks things. It's what he does. You just look new."
I opened my mouth, but nothing came out.
She tilted her head. "Don't act surprised. You think that thread makes you different? It makes you next. That's all."
I tried to look away. Couldn't. Her eyes were made of hooks.
"Just remember," she said, pulling something from her pocket and placing it on the counter—one of the same black threads, knotted at the end. "I wore mine tighter."
Then she walked out, the doorbell chime like a final nail in something that wasn't quite a coffin yet.
I stood there long after she left. Frozen. Breathing through my teeth.
The rest of my shift passed in a blur of hot cups and cooler stares. I smiled when I had to. Bit my tongue when it wanted to bleed. And when it was finally time to close, I lingered, hands trembling as I locked the doors, half hoping the shadow outside would become him.
But it didn't.
The walk home felt longer than usual. Every step echoed in my chest. Every window felt like it was watching. Every streetlight flickered too long.
When I reached my door, I knew before I touched the handle.
He was inside.
I stepped in slowly. Quietly.
He didn't greet me. Didn't rise.
James was seated on the bed, posture easy, eyes heavy-lidded like a god half-bored by worship. His hand was resting between his knees, fingers curved around something dark.
Not the thread.
Something thicker.
Leather.
A collar.
He raised it without a word, like an offering.
My throat clenched. My knees softened.
"Kneel," he said.
And I did.
Not because he told me to.
Because I wanted to.
Because somewhere, beneath all the trembling and silence, I needed to.
The collar was leather, black and clean, a smooth band with a silver clasp. Not spiked, not rough, refined. It was silent authority in physical form. It didn't scream submission. It whispered it.
James held it like an oath.
I knelt, the way he told me to, my knees kissing the hardwood. The thread was still around my throat, but his fingers moved to untie it, slow and careful, as if cutting through a ritual.
He placed the thread in my open palm. "Keep it," he said. "This was the start."
Then he fastened the collar in its place.
It wasn't tight.
It wasn't loose.
It was perfect.
I didn't know if I was breathing right. Or at all. My lungs worked like they were learning how again, dragging in air and heat and a sense of falling forward into something I couldn't take back.
He stood above me, watching, his thumb brushing along the buckle.
"You wear this," he said, "only when you're mine. Entirely. No halfway. No safe words."
My stomach flipped. My thighs clenched.
He waited.
"Do you understand what that means?"
I nodded slowly, but he didn't move.
I realized that wasn't enough.
"Yes, James," I said, and my voice cracked right down the middle.
He smiled like he'd heard a confession.
Then he turned and walked into the bedroom without looking back.
I followed on all fours.
It wasn't something he told me to do.
It was something I wanted to.
The floor felt cold beneath my knees. The air brushed the collar. Every breath felt watched, owned. The moment stretched, quiet and slow, until I reached the doorway.
He was sitting at the edge of the bed again, shirt off this time, elbows on his thighs.
He looked at me like a painter looks at a blank canvas. Not because it was empty, but because it was his to make full.
"Crawl to me," he said.
I did.
And when I reached him, he leaned forward and slid his hand through my hair, not to pet, not to soothe, but to grip. To hold. To claim.
"You're going to earn it tonight," he said. "Not because I need you to. Because you need to."
And I nodded.
Because I did.
Because I wanted to.
He took me apart like a ritual.
Not hurried, not careless, intentional. His hands were steady. His voice, when he used it, came low and close, like a second heartbeat inside my ear.
First came the command: "Lie back. Arms above your head."
I obeyed.
He bound my wrists in soft leather cuffs that matched the collar. They clicked into place with quiet finality. My pulse quickened, not from fear, but from surrender. From the certainty of it.
Then came the blindfold. Velvet, cool, dark. The world vanished.
"Now you feel instead of think," James said. "You stop trying to guess. You just receive."
And I did.
His touch was everywhere and nowhere. Featherlight against my ribs. Firm against my hips. He teased the edge of pain but never crossed it. Heat pooled between my thighs, but he stayed away from it, kept me on the edge until my body felt like a question with no answer.
When his fingers did find me, I was soaked. Needy. Desperate.
And he didn't grant relief. Not right away. He circled, tasted, tested, like he wanted to map my pleasure by memory.
I was trembling, crying, pleading before he finally let me come. And when I did, he whispered, "Good girl," against the shell of my ear like it was a seal on something sacred.
Then silence.
The blindfold lifted. Light returned slowly. My vision blurred, then focused, on his face, inches from mine, serious and satisfied.
"You'll remember this," he said. "Every time you close your eyes."
And he was right.
I woke up sore. Not bruised, not wounded, sore in the way that meant I'd been used. Thoroughly. Reverently. Like a body taken apart and put back together better.
The collar was still there.
The cuffs had been removed.
He'd tucked me beneath the blankets and gone. No note. No text. Just the phantom ache of where his hands had been.
My thighs were sticky.
My chest still flushed with the imprint of his breath.
I lay there for a long time, staring at the ceiling, not thinking. Not needing to.
Something had changed.
Not broken. Not twisted.
Shifted.
It was the kind of change you feel before you see, like the air thickening before a storm, like gravity leaning just a little too hard in one direction.
He wasn't just in my body now.
He was under my skin.
And I didn't want to scrub him out.
I didn't go to work.
I didn't call out, didn't text, didn't explain. I just stayed in bed, naked but for the collar, covers half-draped like a lover's arm.
Time passed in blinks. I made no effort to chase it.
Every noise outside the apartment made my heart jump. Every silence after made me ache.
When a knock finally came, it wasn't him.
It was a delivery.
A black box. No label. No sender. Just weight.
Inside: a dress. Midnight blue. Backless. Short. Obscene.
A note, handwritten, with no greeting.
"Wear this tonight. Heels. No panties. Leave the collar."
My breath caught in my throat. I could almost hear him saying it.
I got ready slowly, carefully. Like preparing a shrine. Hair down. Lips bitten. The dress clung to me like sin. I looked in the mirror and saw someone new. Someone who wasn't flinching anymore.
When he arrived, he didn't say a word.
Just took my hand, led me out into the night.
And I followed, willing, waiting, marked.
The restaurant was all dim lights and quiet expense. No menus. No chatter. Just murmured voices and the sound of crystal glasses clinking in the dark.
James didn't speak. Not when we entered. Not when we were seated. He didn't need to. His hand stayed on my thigh, warm and firm, a silent tether that reminded me whose I was.
When the waiter came, he didn't look at me. He looked at James, nodded, and vanished. Like it was already arranged. Like James didn't need to ask.
The woman from the café was there.
She sat two tables away, eyes hidden behind a thin screen of candlelight and shadow. But I felt her stare like a knife pressed lightly to my ribs.
James ignored her. Entirely. But I didn't.
I couldn't.
Halfway through the meal, he leaned toward me. His voice brushed my ear like velvet wrapped in steel.
"You're still thinking about her."
I nodded before I could stop myself.
He smiled. Not kindly.
"Finish your wine. Then go to the bathroom. Take off the dress. Bring it back to me."
I blinked.
He raised an eyebrow.
"Now."
And I went.
The restroom was a temple of mirrors and marble. I peeled the dress off like shedding skin. Folded it. Held it like a secret.
When I returned, barefoot and bare-skinned beneath the coat, every step felt louder than the last. Louder than the voices. Louder than the blood in my ears.
I placed the dress in his hands.
He looked up at me like I'd just given him the world.
And in that moment, I believed I had.