Domination

She was hiding something in her hand, and that smile promised nothing innocent. “Stick out your tongue,” she ordered, and I already knew I’d obey.

I had never paid attention to anyone’s feet until that hot afternoon when she stretched one toward me and asked, with a smile, if I dared to touch it.

For years I fantasized about serving a woman who wanted me at her feet. Renata didn’t pretend to dominate: she did it with a calm that left me breathless.

She put her feet on my legs, ordered me to unbuckle the straps of her sandals, and with a smile that was anything but innocent, told me that would be the price of her silence.

I offered to check her ankle as a doctor. She crossed her leg, brought her foot to my face, and I knew, in that instant, who was really in charge.

Lying on the edge of the bed, black stockings climbing my legs, I warned him I wouldn’t use my hands that night: I’d undo him with my feet alone.

“I’m your lady and I order you to stay still,” she whispered. I had survived three combat missions, but nothing had prepared me to obey her.

The rule had always been the same: her virginity was untouchable. Tonight, before a room full of eager men, that rule would be broken at the highest bid.

They trained me to please and obey, but that ajar door awakened something else: a spark of defiance that even the cold cuffs against my skin couldn’t extinguish.

I went down to the study that night only to discover the plan they had for me. And instead of running, I knelt and said yes to everything.

When he pinned the man who had been harassing her, Mariela felt something she shouldn’t: the certainty that that boy could do anything he wanted with her.

No one dared move, until she lifted the bottle of oil toward the strangers and, without saying a word, invited them into the game.

Marcela looked at me through the rearview mirror with a smile that was nothing like a calm mother’s. I didn’t know that afternoon would change everything between us.

I ran through the downpour to my door thinking I was safe. I didn’t realize he had come in behind me until I felt his hand on my back.

I know I shouldn’t, but every time I walk home alone in the early hours I look for him: that stranger who’ll pin me to the wall and not ask permission.

She crossed half the kingdom for a legendary relic; what she didn’t expect was to kneel before those guarding it, or to desire it with every fiber of her body.

When I opened my eyes I wasn’t at my desk: I was naked, tied to the teacher’s chair, and heels were beginning to circle me in the empty classroom.

I watched him from before his failure. He said I was too perfect to walk in the mud, not knowing that sentence condemned him never to leave it.

When I opened the backpack he handed me in the lobby of that run-down hotel, I understood the meeting was nothing like I’d imagined. And it was already too late to turn back.

The will said my family’s fortune had been built between my mother’s legs. That very night I understood it was now my turn.