“Ness, wake up.” … “Ness, come on!” The voice was urgent, quiet, and right next to her ear. Ness groaned exhaustedly, and tried to roll away from it.

Valerie did not, in general, enter Dana’s closets. The woman selected for her what she would wear each morning, and it was not a subject that was up for debate. She wasn’t forbidden from the closets, but she never had any reason to enter. The one time she had wandered in, bored from being left to her own devices during one of Dana’s trips, she had felt guilty, as though she was invading Dana’s privacy. She had not lingered.

“No no no no no no no no—” Ness was hugging her knees to her chest at the side of the trail, hyperventilating.

Lucca brought Valerie a glass of water, and helped her move to a sitting position. The reversal— the sudden care, the tenderness— felt confusing and unsafe to Valerie; but she drank the water all the same, and the act of doing so helped her tamp down the sobbing, and gain some measure of control over her emotions. It wasn’t much.

Lucca led — practically dragged — Valerie up to Dana’s bedroom. One of the room’s walls was decorated with a sculptural panel about eight feet long, of dark walnut slats. The slats ran floor to ceiling, and were mounted to the wall on their narrow edge and spaced evenly apart. Each slat was carved into an organic series of curves and arches, reinforced with black steel edge-work. Each arch was a potential attachment point, and a hidden panel opened to a neatly organized set of locks and other hardware. Restraints, rope, or chain could be attached almost anywhere across the surface, and Dana regularly bound Valerie against the wall for whatever teasing or torture she had in mind; or merely as an objet d’art to admire. Valerie was very familiar with this section of wall.

Dana answered the door, and Lucca was there. They were a silhouette in the doorway, resplendent in the afternoon light. Even from that first moment, something felt off. Dana expected a Lucca that was relaxed, maybe even eager to have Valerie to themself for a few days; but instead, they seemed dour, and tense. They seemed unhappy.

A chain ran from the ring on Valerie’s collar to a second steel ring set into the wall. She had come to learn that Dana’s house had dozens of hardpoints scattered about; hidden behind electrical outlets, artwork, or in some cases simply disguised by architectural visual elements. In the cell, where she had first been kept those weeks ago, they were more overt.

Dana marked Valerie’s first month with a candle-lit dinner; the romantic overtones of such a celebration were subverted by the fact that, opposite her at the table, Valerie was clad from the neck down in black latex, and bound tightly to the dining room chair. She had just enough range of motion in her hands and arms that she could reach her own food and wine, but she couldn’t reach any of the knots or hardware that held her in the chair.

Later that evening, Dana cooked dinner for the two of them, fresh pasta that was close to expiring, in a simple pan sauce of peppery olive oil emulsified with a little of the salted pasta water, and root vegetables that she cubed and roasted. Valerie watched rapt from a bar stool opposite the expansive kitchen island.

Valerie shared Dana’s bed that night, though they simply slept— or at least, Dana did. Valerie slept poorly; she was nervous, sharing a bed with a new— her thought process shuddered to a stop before it could insert the word “girlfriend”. She was unsure what word to use, but certainly not that one. Boss? Mistress? Owner?