Domination

She put her feet on my thighs, ordered me to untie her sandal straps, and with an innocent smile 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 hungry men, that rule would break before the highest bidder.

I was trained to please and obey, but that half-open door awakened something else: a spark of defiance that even cold rings 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 to move until she raised the bottle of oil toward the strangers and, without a word, invited them to join 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 whenever I walk home alone after dark, I look for him: the stranger who will pin me against the wall without asking 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.

I tripped over a root, and before I could get up, she was already on top of me. Her cold skin brushed mine, and I knew that night I wouldn’t leave the forest unchanged.

I thought the noise among the crates was rats. It was her, crouched in the darkness, and the moment she smelled my fear I knew I wouldn’t go home the same that night.

I had spent weeks imagining a night without names or promises. What I hadn’t imagined was him watching me from the bar as if he already knew everything.