Submission

The paper robe barely covered me. When his hot hands slid down my back, I knew that session wasn’t going to end the way I’d imagined.

—You don’t have to believe you can —he whispered in her ear—. I do. Your only job tonight is to surrender and let your body obey.

His wife’s friend opened her legs in front of him, smiling, just to show him what he would never get to touch that night.

We had a pact and one word to stop everything. But as she slept face down, I knew that morning I wasn’t going to say it.

I’d spent three weeks swallowing dust and loneliness when the driver looked at me fixedly, without smiling, and said: “Come, my house.” It wasn’t an invitation: it was an order, and I followed him.

That night she would perform the ritual for the first time: naked, bound to the stallion, with a veteran warrior ready to wrench from her the pleasure that belonged to the goddess.

That witching night, he wasn’t expecting company. But something cold materialized at the foot of his bed and whispered his name as if it knew all death.

If we ordered beer, we’d say goodbye. If we ordered wine, we’d stay. I never imagined where that glass she chose without hesitation would take us.

I sent him a photo of a little box and four words: “tonight I’ll play with you.” I didn’t know the new toy wasn’t for me, but for him.

A stranger’s hand brushed my waist just before I left the bar. One question in my ear was enough to make me forget my friends and follow that couple home.

I never told my partner. But when I close my eyes, I’m not the one who decides: someone comes in, holds me down, and my body stops obeying me.

When he walked in and lingered half a second too long on her feet, I knew something inside me had cracked. And to my surprise, jealousy wasn’t the first thing I felt.

I wear the thong under my cycling shorts and no one knows. It’s my secret on the bike, the beginning of the fantasy I rehearse in my head again and again.

Sitting in the armchair, the key dangling between her breasts, I knew that night I’d finally watch her give herself to another man while I stayed locked up.

I crossed the threshold without underwear, just as she had ordered. What I didn’t know was that on the other side of the door, a face I knew far too well was waiting for me.

When I opened the door and saw her standing in the middle of the room, I knew that night’s lesson would never be forgotten: she had come back, and everything changed.

I had never paid for anyone’s attention, but that night, in front of the screen, her words reduced me to something I never imagined I would want to be.

He had the clamps biting into my nipples and the chain taut between Adrián’s fingers. One word was enough to make it all stop. I didn’t say it.

I don’t know your name, but I know what’s waiting for you. I also thought it was love before I learned to obey every one of his orders.

I had her against the wall when her phone rang. I ordered her to answer on video call: her friend was going to see just how far her obedience went.