POV Floris
I should’ve known it was a trap.
When Eric said the event was to identify the breach, to catch whoever had been undermining the system, I believed him.
I don’t know why. Maybe because I wanted to.
Maybe because some part of me still thought there was a version of him that didn’t enjoy watching me unravel.
But the moment I stepped onto that stage, I knew I’d been played.
The room was cavernous—dark and silent, lit only by a crimson halo above the platform that cast long shadows over the audience below.
I couldn’t see faces, but I felt them. Rows upon rows of men in tailored suits, each seated beside a woman like she was part of their outfit. Perfect posture. Glossed lips. Leather collars that matched their masters’ ties.
Some had leashes coiled beside champagne flutes. One girl sat with her head bowed against her handler’s thigh, unmoving.
They weren’t assistants. They were trophies. And now I was standing center stage, the only one under the spotlight.
I didn’t dare speak. Not here. Not with Eric beside me, his expression unreadable and his hand resting lightly on my lower back.
“Face the cross,” he said quietly.
My breath hitched, but body moved anyway.
It was tall. Sleek. Padded leather against cold steel, with adjustable straps at the wrists and ankles. And still, some part of me told myself it was just for show. That this was theater, not punishment.
But when he lifted my arms and fastened the cuffs, when he knelt and locked my ankles into place, I realized exactly what this was.
Exposure. Complete. Unapologetic and intentional.
My dress rode up the back of my thighs as he stood behind me. I flinched—reflex, not defiance—but I didn’t dare speak.
I could hear the silence of the room deepen, stretch into anticipation. The kind of hush that didn’t come from politeness, but from hunger.
Eric leaned in, his breath hot at my ear. “You’re trembling.”
“Because this is humiliating,” I whispered.
“No,” he said, adjusting the last strap at my thigh. “Because it’s working.”
I bit the inside of my cheek. Hard.
A low click sounded behind me that I recognized. That toy. The one from the Red Velvet Room. Small. Cruel. Precise.
“Eric—” I tried, but my voice cracked.
“No words,” he murmured. “Just listen.”
The toy pressed inside, unrelenting. I gasped, jolting against the restraints as it settled deep. My legs tensed automatically, and the cuffs dug into my skin as my body arched.
And then it buzzed.
A low hum, steady and focused, vibrating against the spot that made my eyes roll back and my jaw clench. My knees buckled but the cuffs held. My breath stuttered.
He didn’t touch me. Not really. But he didn’t have to.
My body betrayed me in real time, on a stage, under the eyes of strangers who didn’t even bother to hide what they were watching.
I could feel their gaze. The weight of it. The way it peeled back every layer of resistance and exposed the fact that I was soaking, writhing, straining against leather and steel for a man who never played fair.
The buzzing intensified.
“Oh god—” I choked, head falling back.
Eric stepped in close, pressing a palm to my lower back to steady me—no comfort, just control. “Let them see how obedient you are,” he whispered.
My teeth sank into my lip to keep from crying out, but it didn’t help. A tremor shook through me, and heat coiled tight, too tight, molten and overwhelming. My body seized.
And then I came. Hard. Too hard perhaps.
The kind of orgasm that ripped through muscle and breath and pride. My legs gave out completely, held up only by the restraints, and I sobbed against the padded leather, skin slick with sweat and shame and something else I didn’t want to name.
Applause didn’t follow. Only silence, like the room itself was holding its breath.
Eric reached up slowly and brushed the hair from my cheek. His thumb lingered at the corner of my mouth. “You feel that?” he murmured.
I didn’t answer. Couldn’t.
He leaned closer until his lips brushed the shell of my ear, soft enough that no one else could hear, cruel enough that I knew it wasn’t over.
“I love you,” he whispered.
My heart stopped. Not metaphorically. Not romantically. It just… stopped. Like my body didn’t know what to do with that kind of confession after everything he’d done to me.
And maybe that was the point, because he didn’t untie me right away.
He let me hang there for a moment longer—still, wrecked, stunned into silence—before unbuckling the restraints with agonizing precision.
I didn’t exactly fall when I was free, but I didn’t stand tall either.
I turned toward him on shaky legs, searched his face for any hint of what the hell that had been.
But Eric Brighton? He just smiled like a man who’d won something.
Like a man who never gambled without already owning the outcome.