Submission

I went down to the garden in the dark, not knowing that this time she wouldn’t leave me alone with her underwear: she had something of her mother’s saved for me.

She had something hidden in her hand, and that smile promised nothing innocent. “Stick out your tongue,” she ordered, and I already knew I would 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 thighs, ordered me to untie her sandal straps, and with an innocent smile told me that would be the price of her silence.

I always thought there was nothing dirtier than feet. That night, barefoot and nervous in my friend’s bed, I found out how wrong I was.

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 couldn’t resist the thong smelling of her whole day: I climbed into bed ready to taste her while she slept, not knowing she’d been waiting awake for me.

Eight years had passed since that coach trip, but the moment I saw him standing in front of the terminal I knew I wouldn’t be coming home for dinner that night.

“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.

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.

“I live inside the lake,” she told him without blinking. Damián took her for an eccentric and followed her anyway. What he found at the bottom was no heaven.

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.