Valerie pushed the ribbed fabric of Lucca’s tank top up their torso, her fingers trailing lightly along the revealed skin. She undressed Lucca like she was unwrapping a gift; unveiling a sculpture.

“But you want to show me how strong you are, don’t you, my pet?” Valerie stared agape at Lucca, still at a complete loss for words. Lucca took their hand off her neck, and patted her cheek gently, then hooked a finger through the attachment ring dangling from the front of her collar.

Valerie lay in bed for an hour trying to collect herself. Her heart settled down to a more restful tempo, but her thoughts kept returning, again and again, to her need and desperation. The memory of her dream fragmented and faded, but the central elements of it remained clear; especially the way Lucca’s whip purified her thoughts even as it drove her to the brink of climax.

Valerie was shaking, trapped against a cold concrete wall by unyielding steel wrapped around her wrists and ankles. Chains rattled dully against the concrete; in time with the shuddering of Valerie’s breath. She worried she was hyperventilating, but the fear was already too much to control.

The rest of Valerie’s work week glided easily by; but her dreams grew more vivid, erotic, and distracting.

Lucca picked the movie, a polished musical romance from a few years prior. Valerie remembered seeing trailers for it in theaters, but in the years pre-transition she had avoided that sort of picture, afraid of the potential cracks it might reveal in the carefully-constructed masculinity that kept her safe.

Valerie’s headache lingered, much diminished, into Sunday. The exertion of a run that morning would have been cathartic, and she had no lack of stress to work out; but the mere thought of pounding feet on desert regolith to match the pounding in her head was almost enough to bring back the previous day’s dizzy nausea.

Valerie rested her head on the wooden counter-top of the island, simultaneously steadying herself and letting the cool, rough wood surface ground and distract her from the way the room was trying to spin and twist around her.

“Wait, you’re still married?” “I didn’t even read the prenup. I trusted Matt. He flipped through page by page and told me what each one said, only he left out a few things.”

Valerie thought seriously about simply leaving. Lucca’s outburst had not been, precisely, violence directed at her; but it felt like a threat, or at least a danger. It was, at least, not a strong indicator that she was safe with them. She reflected blackly that it at least helped settle the tension between her concerns about how they had treated her, and her arousal and attraction to them. Despite whatever other ways her mind was twisted and broken, Lucca’s demonstration did not in any way draw her interest.