It took me fifteen minutes to get back to the R+D office. I spent fourteen of them devising ways to push Diana’s limits while staying within my own. I had a few ideas, but they’d take more than an hour. My wife was stubborn. If she knew she only had to last an hour, she’d last an hour. Then she’d demand more and more opportunities to sign over the loft. Each time, her limits would expand and the game would get harder to win.

I didn’t care about the deed to the loft. I had plenty of property.

I cared about winning the game for our mutual benefit. I wanted to live with her.

“You look chipper today,” Eva said, all in red as I came through the back entrance.

“First day of the rest of my life, et cetera.”

“Does that have anything to do with the long-stemmed rose in reception?”

Odd. Why would Diana send me a flower? I could use it later on her body, certainly, but it wasn’t her place to make suggestions.

“Have Britt leave it on my desk.”

“Not a real flower.” Eva’s words stopped me as I tried to walk off. “Don’t be so literal.”

I knew who she was talking about before she’d even finished the second sentence. “Thanks, Eva. And no.”

We walked toward my office together.

“No?”

“I’m not chipper because of her.”

“That’s almost an answer to a personal question.”

I texted the receptionist on our messenger service.

“I’ll give you one more question,” I said without thinking. And fuck it, because I loved making her smile that wide.

“Can I save it?”

“Save it and you get interest.” I held up two fingers as I got behind my desk.

“Two questions? Please. No more. I’ll die of happiness before I can make a list.”

“Don’t die. I need you.”

“Now you’re getting mushy. I’m leaving before you embarrass yourself.”

“Thank you.”

She passed the long-stemmed rose on her way out. I’d been right. It was Serena in black slacks and sage-green polo shirt. Even Eva turned to look at her when they passed. My ex-sub usually walked around as if she was well aware of that fact that she was the most beautiful woman in the room. She moved with precision when she walked down a runway and when she kneeled and opened her mouth for a cock. She spent her life striving for aesthetic perfection and came close to achieving it.

It was boring as hell, but that wasn’t my problem. I didn’t have to live with her.

“You can close the door,” I said.

When she did, I held my hand out to the chair on the other side of my desk. I had a perfectly serviceable couch, but I didn’t want her to get the wrong idea. By checking on her so often, I’d already given her enough reasons to think I wanted her.

She sat in the chair and crossed her legs so that one of her feet hit the floor, resting sideways in her stiletto, and the other stretched to the side of the chair. Her crossed legs were not decorous and demure. She was tense and engaged. Purposeful, yet somehow fragile.

“What brings you?” I asked.

“I know something.” She played coy, adding a sheen of seduction to her expression, running her finger along the crease of her pants. “I thought you’d like to know too.”

“Maybe. Depends on what it is.”

She broke into a self-conscious smile. “This seems silly. I didn’t ask how you were. Didn’t tell you what a nice office this is.”

“It’s just an office. It’s for business.”

She cleared her throat and turned back into a sophisticated supermodel in the blink of an eye. “Of course.”

My hands were folded on the desk. I tapped my thumbs together. “You said you had something to tell me?”

She uncrossed her knees, letting the cross fall to her ankles. “I had an experience the other night. When you were kneeling in front of your ex-wife?” More than the knowledge that she’d seen me kneel, I bristled at ex-wife. “Stefan saw it. It inspired him.”

“To what?”

“Kneel.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Yeah. The exact same thing. After you left.”

I didn’t believe what I was hearing. I’d gotten on my knees for Diana in a moment of unbearable pain. I knew Stefan loved Serena, but apparently I hadn’t known how much. “What did you do?”

She cleared her throat and lifted her chin, making eye contact. “I was shocked. I was anxious. It turned everything upside down, but he wouldn’t get up. He’s a very stubborn man.”

“Apparently.”

“Then something changed. I felt kind of… gratified… from the inside out, instead of the outside in. And that… well, there’s no other way to put it. I got turned on. Very turned on. I couldn’t keep my eyes open.”

“Ah.” The pieces clicked together in my mind.

“It’s not like he was there for twenty minutes. The whole thing took seconds.”

People evolve. Sexual urges and needs can be unlocked at different life stages. Stefan and I hadn’t seen Serena’s inner Domme because she wasn’t ready, or the Dominant side didn’t exist. Had this side of her been conceived in Montauk? Or before? Or had she been gestating for years? And did it matter?

“I don’t know, but subbing hasn’t been working for a long time. It doesn’t feel right anymore. When I heard you were back and you’d been vanilla all those years, I thought I could try it. You wanted to try it with me and I rejected you. But when Stefan kneeled, I knew vanilla wasn’t what I needed.”

She was all balls. I was proud of her on the one hand. On the other, I couldn’t leave the door open half an inch for her, or she’d burst through and insist I train her as a Domme.

“I can’t help you explore this, Serena.”

“I know, I know. But I’ve had three masters, three real ones I care about, in my life. You’re one of them. I want your blessing.”

“That’s very submissive of you.”

“Do you want me to kneel for it?” She raised an eyebrow, as if the prospect had appeal despite everything she’d said. But the expression also had a tinge of a dare, as if she was the one in control.

“No.” I stood. “You have my blessing and my encouragement.”

Her grin was worth ten thousand dollars. Literally. “Thank you!”

“Now you can top from the top.”

We shook hands as equals. I didn’t realize we hadn’t been equal in my mind, but until I showed her out, she’d been a pest or a toy. That guilt was on my shoulders, not hers. Not the community’s. I knew in my head that the sub was an equal partner, even though they gave up power.

I’d been operating under some kind of delusional fog.

Had Diana cured me of it? Only the fear of her being beneath me had driven me away. I could never see her as anything less than an equal. Had Serena just been the proof of the truth as I came to know it? How many more years of loneliness and upside-down thinking did Diana save me from?

Thank God for her. Thank God for her a million times.