Denver.
The marks on her skin were still faintly visible when I untied the silk from her wrists, thin pink lines that would fade by morning but linger long enough to remind her body of who had held it and who had decided how far she could go.
She had endured beautifully, not in silence and not in stubborn resistance, but with awareness, with intention, with the kind of conscious surrender that meant she had chosen every second of it.
That mattered to me far more than blind obedience ever could, because obedience without choice was empty, and I did not want something empty kneeling in front of me.
I stepped in front of her and removed the blindfold slowly, giving her eyes time to adjust to the dim light while I watched awareness return in careful stages. There was no resentment in her
