His To CONTROL

CHAPTER 2 - JAMERSON

The remaining years in Manchester become an exercise in discipline and dual identities.

By day, I study brand strategy, consumer psychology and market dynamics. I submit work early, earn marks my father considers acceptable and sit through weekly calls reminding me that the junior marketing desk at Summers Global is waiting.

At night, I learn the craft of dominance.

I begin slowly. Observation. Workshops. Conversations with people who have no patience for inherited arrogance. Nobody cares that my suits are tailored or my surname is printed on buildings. In this world, confidence without competence makes a man dangerous.

I study anatomy before I touch impact equipment. I learn where nerves lie close to the skin and which areas should never receive a strike. I practise knots until I can release them with one hand. I learn how subspace affects temperature, speech and decision-making, and why a submissive who appears serene may still need immediate grounding.

My first practical workshop is humiliating.

I arrive believing preparation will compensate for inexperience. Then I fumble a simple cuff, speak too formally and concentrate so intensely on procedure that I fail to notice my practice partner has become bored.

Remi watches from the wall, grinning.

"If you laugh," I tell him afterwards, "I will leave you locked outside the flat."

"You asked her colour every thirty seconds."

"Checking is responsible."

"Checking without observing is a questionnaire. Her body answered before her mouth did."

The criticism irritates me because it is correct.

I return the following week and do better. I learn to let silence exist. To watch shoulders, hands and breath instead of waiting for spoken confirmation alone. Non-verbal cues never replace consent, but they reveal when another question is necessary.

The responsibility suits me more than the spectacle.

Remi approaches the same world differently.

People gravitate towards him. He can make a crowded room feel as if it exists solely for the person standing before him. He is attentive, polished and utterly certain. His partners leave smiling. His technique earns praise from people whose approval is not easily purchased.

But even then, I notice how skilfully Remi turns his wants into someone else's idea.

He does not ignore a no.

He makes people want to replace it with yes.

Outside the private scene, our friendship settles into habit. We revise until the library closes, argue over groceries and invent excuses for family functions we do not want to attend. Remi's mother sends food from London that feeds half our corridor. My father sends articles about advertising acquisitions with paragraphs highlighted in blue.

Our families imagine we make sense because we share ambition.

They do not know we also share the relief of entering rooms where our surnames carry no authority.

Remi thrives under attention. I prefer the work before and after a scene. We develop reputations, his for intensity, mine for patience. Neither of us lacks willing partners, yet I remain wary of anyone more interested in my future title than the person I am still becoming.

"Persuasion is not inherently coercive," he tells me after I challenge him.

"Not inherently."

"You worry like a solicitor."

"One of us should worry before something goes wrong."

He only smiles.

During our final term, he invites me to observe a farewell scene in a converted studio near Castlefield. His long-term submissive is leaving Manchester after completing her postgraduate degree. Their arrangement has lasted months, and the final session has been negotiated in advance.

I take my position on the mezzanine.

In the centre of the room stood an upholstered, heavy timber bondage bench, its leather cushions angled and worn smooth. The ritual began without haste. Remi was dressed in dark trousers and a crisp white shirt, the cuffs rolled neatly to his forearms. He spent nearly twenty minutes warming her skin, using heated cedar oil to work the tension from her calves, thighs, and lower back. His hands were broad, firm, and thoroughly deliberate.

When he guided her onto the bench, she moved willingly, resting her hips against the incline, her chest supported against the padded bolster while her hands rested in soft leather restraints fastened to the frame. The posture was intensely vulnerable, hips elevated, thighs parted wide, completely exposed to him from behind.

Remi bent low over her back, his grey eyes steady and focused. He pressed a warm, grounding palm against the small of her spine, feeling the rapid flutter of her breathing.

"Comfortable?" Remi asked, his voice low, cultured, and smooth.

"Yes, Sir," she murmured into the bolster.

Remi loved the primal purity of skin on skin. He had an overt breeding preference, a deep-seated fixation on claiming, fullness, and raw, unbroken contact that meant he never wore latex with his negotiated partners. He unbuckled his belt and stepped up behind the bench, aligning his hips with hers. He did not rush. He rested the flat of his palm against her inner thigh, coaxing her muscles to soften, before pressing into her slowly, filling her inch by inch until she let out a long, ragged exhale.

He set a deep, heavy rhythm, keeping one hand buried in her hair and the other resting heavily over her hip bone, anchoring her against the bench. Remi's dominance was severe and demanding; he pushed her steadily toward the edge of her stamina, increasing the pace until her breath came in sharp, breathless hitches.

"You're holding back," Remi murmured against her ear, his tone commanding yet intimate. "Let the control go."

"Remi… It's too much," she gasped, her knuckles whitening inside the restraints as the intensity overwhelmed her. "I'm right at the line."

Remi immediately stilled his hips, holding her securely without retreating. He leaned down, brushing the damp strands of hair from her cheek, his thumb gently catching a bead of sweat along her jaw.

"Look at me," he commanded softly.

She turned her head, meeting his gaze.

"You asked to be taken past your limit before you left," Remi said, his voice entirely composed, giving her his full presence. "We can stop here, right now, and step down to the mat. Or you can let me take you through it. Your choice."

She looked at him, her chest heaving, before nodding with fierce certainty. "Take me through it."

"Use your words."

"Take me through it, Sir. Please."

Remi smiled a brief, devastatingly confident curve of his lips and resumed his rhythm with powerful, focused intent. He brought her across the threshold in a shattering, weeping climax, holding her firmly against the bench until the spasms subsided into absolute stillness.

The moment it was over, Remi unhooked her restraints with practised care. He lifted her easily into his arms, carrying her to a low sofa draped in plush fleece blankets. He wrapped her securely, brought her a glass of electrolyte water, and sat beside her for thirty minutes, speaking in quiet, reassuring tones until her pulse normalised and colour returned to her cheeks.

When she leaves, she does so with an affectionate embrace and a promise to call after she settles. Nothing about her suggests regret.

I descend the stairs as Remi pours two measures of single malt.

"Well?" He offers me a glass. "What did you think of the bench? Custom build. Keeps the pelvis perfectly angled."

"Your technique is flawless. Your aftercare is thorough, and she clearly receives what she asks for."

"But?"

"You pushed her because you want to see her break there."

He laughs, genuinely amused. "She asked me to take her past the line."

"After you explained why she should want it."

"Most people don't know what they can withstand until someone shows them."

"There is a difference between leading someone and deciding for them."

His grey eyes sharpen, but his smile remains. "Dominance requires conviction. If you second-guess your authority, you dilute the experience."

"Authority that cannot survive a question isn't authority."

"And caution that prevents surrender is merely fear in an expensive suit."

We drink in silence.

"Will you see her again?" I ask.

"If she returns to London. Our arrangement ends tonight."

"You sound remarkably calm about that."

He studies the scotch. "A contract ending is not failure. She gives me everything we agree, and I return her satisfied."

"People aren't campaigns, Remi."

"Everything involving desire contains persuasion. You of all people should understand that."

Our degrees teach us how to influence behaviour at scale. The private world teaches us how dangerous that knowledge becomes when narrowed to one person. I see the connection. I am not certain Remi sees the danger.

Remi is my closest friend. He is also the person most capable of exposing every weakness in an argument I thought secure. I tell myself that is why his darker instincts do not worry me more.

That summer, we graduate with first-class honours and return to London.

I begin at Summers Global on the junior desk as promised. Remi enters his family's corporate-marketing business. The degrees end, but the lives planned for us begin precisely on schedule.

We remain friends because we understand the pressure that comes with inherited expectation.

We remain bound by the private world neither family knows we share.

And beneath it all sits a disagreement we have not resolved: whether control is made safe by certainty or by the willingness to surrender it.

Years later, that distinction will cost far more than either of us imagines.