“So… we’re really doing this?”

Her furtive smile. Soft crease across her brow. Like dice, a dull bell rattles above the door. Two students saunter in, bringing the April air with them. Wet and warm. The scent of citrus and fir. Like a drink. I’d like a drink. Something stronger than coffee. They’re holding hands. In love, most likely. Maybe not.

Lena sips, cupping the mug with both palms. She’s trying to look calm like this means nothing to her. Naught but a novelty. A sport and a pastime. Her trembling hands betray her.

“Yes,” I glance at the clock. Hands like a beating heart. Always pulsing. Running out of time, “I mean… if it’s what you really want.”

The idea was to sound impassive. Disinterested, even. No better than her, the quaver in ‘you’ gives me away.

“I don’t want to force you.”

Another nervous smile. She sips and swallows.

“Liar.”

Lena was to be my slave.

We’d talked about it a lot. Today, the day before, the day before that. Over iced tea at dusk. The air obese with night-blooming jasmine. Her feet in my lap, nails chipped and chokeberry red. All around, lazy fireflies burn their citrine, come-hither lanterns. Or brushing our teeth in the same sink before dawn. Words slurred with spearmint and saliva. She sways on tiptoe. Smooth ivory crescents of her ass, winking at me beneath yesterday’s t-shirt. I can never resist a swat. Make her squeal. Spit foam on the mirror.

We’d mulled it over in abstracts mostly. The way one debates determinism. Metempsychosis. The existence of God. We’d talk about it til arousal took over. Til a light breeze on her chest was enough to light her on fire. Til I had to stop and stopper her mouth with my cock. Words still lingering on her lips. So much unsaid.

It was fun to talk about. A fantasy. A forbidden one. As intoxicating as it was impossible.

But now. Now we’re about to make it real. Still invisible, maybe. But as true and testable as the laws of motion. The physics of a falling body. Little Lena’s fall from grace. To her, all it really took was an incantation. The magic words, so to speak. Whisper a proverbial ‘I do,’ and suddenly the fabric of our relationship will rip itself inside out. She’ll be mine. Entirely. Mine to control. To punish. To possess. Mine do with what I will. No pretense or artifice. To swear an oath could make it so.

But I’m not like Lena. I have far less faith in words. Impermanent. Ambiguous. You can worship and sin in one breath, and by the next, they’re both forgotten. In a wedding, the vows are only a symbol. The rings are a symbol. The kiss, especially, is a symbol. A collar’s not enough. To make it real, a marriage must be consummated. Queen Anne’s lace. The heat of deeds. Red floret in a field of white. Like a kiss, a kind of violence. All the rest is rhetoric.

The same holds true here. The question was how to go about it. How best to deflower her. To pluck her petals. To bed my bride.

“…Well?”

She’s making eyes. Sliding her ankle along mine. Bitter mocha on her breath. Lips wet. Nipples stiff. They show through her blouse like braille. I want to touch her. Badly. Move my hands across her breasts. Read and rewrite the sounds of her arousal. Make her sigh. Make her scream.

Not yet.

I grit my teeth, glance again at the clock. The steamer hissing and spitting on the counter. Frothing milk. Streaks of grime on all the windows. Salt tears of yesterday’s rain. A sullen girl in a soiled apron slops her flaccid mop across the floor. Everything’s damp this time of year.

“'Well' what?”

Swallow. Don’t want to seem too eager.

She’s already wet. I’m certain. Talking about this. Anticipating. Pasiphae, ready and waiting. Trying to guess what’s next.

The cafe’s filling up. The air’s getting stale. I was ready to go before we walked in. But Lena’s still sipping.

Let her finish. I frown. And don’t rush her. Savor it.

Eyes down, she turns a clouded spoon in her coffee. Sucks it. Tucks a chestnut tress behind her ear.

“Well, what now,” she murmurs, “Master?”

My cock swells. Turns to stone. She’s murdering me.

I could tell her, of course. All I have planned. Everything waiting once we walk out that door. The bell rattles. I’ve thought of little else for almost a month now. Driven to distraction at work. Running. Reading. Cooking. Sleeping. Putting gas in the tank. To say nothing of masturbation. I’ve been cursed since adolescence with a deviant’s daydreams. But my fantasizing of late was beyond pornographic. Even for me. The sadism was elevated. Almost philosophical. An artist in the atelier. Infatuated with his muse.

But I’m also not impractical. The trick was distilling something useful from all the lawless excesses of a daydream. We don’t have a villa in Spain. Don’t have a dungeon. We don’t have our 120 days in Sodom. Only the twelve we’d taken off work. Twelve days to enslave her. To consummate. To make her mine. In word and deed alike. The bell rattles. Clock ticks.

“Drink up,” I glare, “we’re going.”

She drinks. Doesn’t hesitate. There’s fear in her eyes. Arousal, too. It's the urgency. Lena likes being desired. Being used. Likes knowing what she does to me.

She puts her palm in my lap. Smiles like the sun, feeling out the contours of her handiwork. That, too, she thinks is magic.

I watch her drink the dregs. Her throat, peristalsis. Fleck of frothed milk on her lip. A pearl. Pale as come.

I want everything from her. All at once. Choke her. Slap her. Spit in her face. Fuck her throat til she forgets how to speak. I want to bend her over this filthy table, strip her bare in front of everyone. Stuff her damp little panties in her mouth and split her little cunt in two. Let her crawl out behind me on her hands and knees. A whore’s gauntlet. Salvo of slurs, whistles, and leers.

Not here.

Not yet.

It’s getting harder. Lena’s small. Feet flat on the floor, her head barely breaks above my chest. And slouching there in her wobbly cafe chair, she looks smaller still. Ingénue. An innocent. A doll with glass eyes. Sometimes I worry about breaking her. Maybe never more so than now.

She swallows and stands. Eyes down. Hiding her smile.

“…What are you?”

“Yours, sir.”

“My what?”

A blush. Tucks her hands behind her back. Nervous, I suppose. So am I.

“…Your slave, sir.”

I rise behind her. Hard-on daggering the small of her back. A threat. A promise. A kind of violence. Like a kiss. We walk out together. My hand low on her waist, holding tight. In love, most likely. A bell rattles. Clock stops.

It’s starting.