Total pages in book: 103
Estimated words: 94181 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 471(@200wpm)___ 377(@250wpm)___ 314(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 94181 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 471(@200wpm)___ 377(@250wpm)___ 314(@300wpm)
“Perfect,” she said. “Stand by the bookshelf, Anne. Hands at your sides. Look like you’re waiting for him.”
I crossed the Persian rug on unsteady legs and took my position beside the bookshelf. The boning of the corset held me upright, held my posture in its rigid, elegant arch, and from the outside I must have looked composed—a girl in black lingerie standing in a wood-paneled study, waiting for the man who owned both her and the room.
On the inside, my body had become a riot of sensation. The corset’s interior lining worked against my nipples with each breath, the expansion of my ribcage pressing the responsive fabric more firmly against the stiffened peaks and then releasing, pressing and releasing, a maddening rhythm synchronized to the simple act of being alive. Between my legs the panties hummed their quiet insistence against my bare folds.
“Action,” Melissa called.
I heard Master Paul’s footsteps before I saw him. The heavy, measured tread of a man entering his own domain—the sound I’d come to associate with the shift in atmospheric pressure that preceded everything he did to me. He appeared in the doorway of the den set wearing charcoal slacks and a crisp white shirt with the collar open, the sleeves rolled to his forearms in the way that made the muscles there visible, the dark hair on his arms catching the lamplight. He held a leather-bound novel in one hand.
His eyes found me immediately. They moved down my body with that slow, proprietary sweep I knew so well—the gaze that catalogued and claimed—and I watched his jaw tighten fractionally as he took in the corset, the stockings, the tiny panties, the whole carefully constructed offering of me in black lace and satin.
“I’m so glad,” he said in a measured voice, “that you put on my present without a fuss, sweetheart. I didn’t want to have to give you the belt again.”
CHAPTER 32
Paul
I watched my improvised but highly calculated words take effect on Anne’s face. I couldn’t help marveling a little at how fast she had learned. The blush that spread across her cheeks seemed to carry a different quality than it had three days ago, maybe because of how it related to her body language. I felt certain the assessors at the Institute could have told me exactly why, but I didn’t need their help to see that Anne had come a long way.
That first blush, when I’d put her over my knee in the studio, had had the color of shock, of a girl’s body reacting to something her mind hadn’t yet processed. This blush looked to me like the color of recognition. Anne knew what my words meant. She knew what the mention of the belt did to her body. And she knew that I knew, and the knowledge of that shared awareness was what made her eyes drop to the floor and her lips part around a breath she couldn’t quite complete.
The corset held her beautifully. Melissa’s design team had outdone themselves. The structured boning created a physical reminder of submission that worked both aesthetically and functionally, cinching Anne’s waist into a narrow column that flared into the soft curves of her hips and pushed her breasts upward into pale crescents above the black satin edge. I could see her nipples straining against the lace panels, already hard, already responding to whatever the fabric was doing to them, and the sight of that involuntary arousal made visible through Selecta’s engineering sent a pulse of heat through my lower body that I channeled into a stillness born of long experience.
I crossed the den set without hurrying. I let my footsteps carry the weight of intention—each one measured and deliberate. I wanted Anne to hear in my tread that neither I nor my character had anywhere to be except exactly where I was going. I settled into the wingback armchair. The oxblood leather creaked beneath me as I adjusted my position, spreading my knees, letting my body occupy the chair with the expansive ease of ownership. I set the leather-bound novel on the arm of the chair and rested my hand on it.
Then I looked at Anne.
She stood by the bookshelf where Melissa had positioned her, her hands at her sides, her spine held in that rigid, elegant arch the corset enforced. The warm light from the standing lamp caught the sheen of the black satin and gilded the bare skin of her upper thighs above the stocking tops. She looked like something from a naughty painting in a private gallery: a study in controlled eroticism. Her green eyes watched me with an attentiveness that to my joy bordered on devotion.
“Come here,” I said.
She crossed the Persian rug on legs I could see quivering faintly above the stocking tops. The tiny black panties shifted against her with each step, and I watched the micro-expressions that flickered across her face. Her brow tightened slightly and her lips compressed into a line. She had an almost imperceptible hitch in her stride, too. I could read each element of her body’s motion for what it was: the responsive fabric doing its work, stimulating her bare, shaved pussy with every movement, keeping her in that state of low-level, inescapable arousal that Melissa’s design intended.