She’s lost the clean, clear edges of Chloe Virdani.

I know this, and I know she wants nothing more than to sit in a quiet corner and let what she just saw work its way through her as she climbs back into her own skin. Part of me is tempted to let her, because there’s also a storm brewing inside of me. A wild, hopeful, grateful one, because I just got my first look at the sub that might live in the heart of the woman I love.

Or at the Domme she wants to be. Her eyes spent as much time looking at the man holding the candle as they did at the woman he was tormenting.

I take a breath. She saw the beauty of what they were together, and that’s enough to earn her a place in my world. Whether she wants to enter and who she might want to be if she does are questions I don’t know the answer to yet, and the storms inside me will just have to wait until I know. Until she knows. Being a Dom can be the most patience-demanding job in the universe.

I let my attention shift to what is outside me. In the last scene, Chloe saw arrows lighting the pathway to her own surrender. This one is meant to let her see if the arrows on another path burn brighter.

I guide us toward a loveseat, one that Ari has kindly arranged for the guest of honor. I catch Tamelia watching us, and do my best to signal her to take a good read of the woman at my side. The wax play has untethered Chloe, and that might impact what happens next, or at least how she perceives it.

Tamelia nods and says a few quiet words to the man perched on the edge of a stool, blindfolded and ball-gagged. He shakes his head, and she removes the gag, touching his cheek. A Domme who can’t stop pushing boundaries, even when this scene is mostly for the benefit of one of its viewers. I don’t know Martin well, but I know it’s a victory he let her put the gag on at all.

Tamelia turns to her second sub, a young woman sitting back to back with Martin and casting interested glances at Chloe. One word from the woman in the latex pants and she pales, eyes heading straight for the floor.

A quiet chuckle from beside me. Chloe, appreciating the theater. Well on her way back into her skin.

Tamelia hasn’t missed that either. She gives Chloe an assessing look as she holds up a mess of thick, clanky chains, and then her attention is entirely back on her two subs. Which is a good thing, because they’re both reacting in spades. Martin is relaxing, already headed to subspace. The young woman, who I don’t know, is fidgeting hard enough that she’s going to dump both of them off the small stool they share.

One sub who enjoys bondage, and one who very much doesn’t, but wants this badly enough to be willing to try. Tamelia has a reputation for wringing her people dry—and for building a bonfire of confidence inside them while she does.

Chloe’s eyes follow the chains, fascinated, as Tamelia wraps her two scene partners up into something that looks like it belongs in a prison holding cell—one where they think Martin might turn into a werewolf any minute. Ambience. Tamelia is famous for it.

She finishes her cuffs-and-chains artwork and pulls a blindfold down over the young woman’s eyes. Her satisfied hum as the nervous sub finally quiets is audible, which isn’t an accident.

And is echoed by the woman sitting beside me.

Chloe, resonating with what she sees. I hold my body still, determined to be the Dom she needs in this moment, even though I want to kick this scene in the knees or find a Domme with less-fascinating skills to finish it out. Neither of which would be remotely fair to Chloe. I take her hand instead, stroking her palm in my lap. A distraction for me, and a way to help me hang on to whatever patience I have left. There’s more noise in the audience now, so I lean over and find Chloe’s ear. “Any questions?”

She nods slowly. “Why the blindfolds?”

I grit my teeth and give her the answer a Domme would want to hear. “It takes away one of the ways a sub can hold themselves steady. It encourages them to lean on the steadiness the top is providing.”

“It’s scarier for him,” Chloe says softly. “But not for her. The blindfold soothed her.”

I blink. She’s talking about Tamelia’s two subs. “Some subs find the limited sensory input to be comforting. They like knowing someone else is firmly in charge of their experience.”

Chloe’s eyes are on Martin now. “Not him.”

Not him at all. “It took him a lot of time and work with Tamelia to get to this point.” I don’t like the point I’m making, even as I make it. “Sometimes surrender is really hard.”